by Arthur Kerns
“Hosting a splendid dinner, or having wild sex with me?”
She didn’t answer, just gazed at him with her sparkling blue eyes. A moment passed and her expression changed. “What time is it?”
“About seven.”
“Bloody hell! I’ve got to get home and get myself ready for the council meeting downtown.” She jumped out of bed and began looking for her clothes.
“Take a shower here and I’ll get us some breakfast.”
Bunting found his robe and relaxed in the chaise, listening to messages on his cell phone. The butler brought breakfast on a large silver tray—scrambled eggs, rolls, juice, and rich coffee. Patience called from the shower asking for shampoo, and the man barely suppressed a smile as he set the tray down on the table. He poured Bunting a cup of coffee and discreetly left the room.
Last night’s tryst had come as a complete surprise. Of course, he had made his normal seductive moves, more out of fun engaging in the chase than expecting a conquest. He had learned years ago not to expect to always grab the victory torch. Fact of the matter, it was when the object of a quest suddenly agreed, or better still, surprised the hell out of him by unexpectedly dropping her drawers, he became lightheaded—in that confused way that men experience as they hurry to slide their zipper down.
He thought back at the previous night’s events. The last guest had departed the mansion and his household staff had started the cleanup to be finished the next day. He had taken Patience in his arms and kissed her, thanking her for helping him out with the reception. They moved from inside the mansion to the outside portico and had brandies. She drained her glass, looked up at the Southern Cross in the clear sky, said that she was too tired to drive home, and said it was time to go to bed. Just like that!
In bed, she showed no sign of being tired. She clutched, nibbled, scratched, and wouldn’t let go of him whether they were on the bed or after they had fallen to the floor. Somehow, during their journey around the bedroom, they found themselves on the French embroidered loveseat. By this time, after two serious coital encounters, Bunting was hoping for time to refill, but she was impatient for more. Taking him in her hand, she repeatedly squeezed as she blew and licked his ear. Her persistent efforts along with his breathing in her body scents of sandalwood and musk proved fruitful, and they had one last spasm of love.
He was smiling to himself as Patience burst from the bathroom, claiming she had time for only coffee. Eyeing the breakfast spread, she announced she’d have some eggs. After talking about the traffic she would encounter going into the city, Bunting asked matter-of-factly if she heard anything new about Dawid van Wartt or Abdul Wahab.
“For some reason, you appear obsessed by those men.”
Bunting paused; perhaps he was revealing more information than he could possibly obtain from her. “Maybe I just don’t understand the South African social milieu. Van Wartt dealing with this man Abdul Wahab doesn’t make sense. I only inquire because Van Wartt had sent me that invitation to attend his function two weeks ago.”
“In your capacity as ambassador, you must receive many strange invitations.”
“Yes, but enough of that. Let’s talk about you. I want to know everything about you.”
She looked at her watch. “Perhaps later? I must be going.”
“Will I see you tonight?”
The question appeared to catch her off guard. Carefully placing her cup on the delicate china saucer, she said, “Yes, but …”
“I’ll pick you up and we’ll have dinner at a quiet place.”
“That will be splendid.”
She rose, found her purse, and as they left the bedroom, Bunting caught her arm and drew her to him. “You realize five minutes after you leave I’ll begin missing you.” He kissed her gently.
From the front door, he waved good-bye and returned to his bedroom to get ready for his day. Draining the last of the coffee into his cup, he found he had a few moments to spare. He pulled back the draperies, threw open the French doors, and gazed at his garden below. The early morning had brought a sky turning from purple to pale blue, dotted with rose-tinted clouds. The air coming in had a fresh earth smell from the fields in the near distance. A mating pair of hoopoes fluttered in the olive tree. The peculiar-looking birds were residents in the garden.
The reception the night before had gone well. No mishaps with the visiting congressional delegation. He had to admit Patience contributed greatly to the success. She looked stunning in her black dress, just the right amount of cleavage, and seemed to have a sixth sense in choosing which staffer she should spend time with and which congressman’s arm she should touch. Quite the hostess.
His thoughts drifted to the two memos, one from the regional security officer and the other from the CIA station chief. The reports covered Patience St. John Smythe’s background. Born in England, she moved with her family to South Africa when she was twelve. After attending Catholic secondary school, she attended the University of Cape Town, where she received a law degree. She went to work with the city government. Her position became tenuous when the new government came into being, requiring a proper ethnic mix for official positions. Her contacts and talent for multi-cultural politics so far had kept her in place.
Bunting turned and headed for the shower. As the warm water flowed over his head, he wondered. Was she a spy? If so, for whom did she work? The South Africans or the British? Or both?
Dingane stood outside the kitchen door listening to his wife chatter about how he spoiled their son, how their son was disrespectful to Lady Beatrice, the woman who had most graciously provided the funds for their son to attend university, and how he, Dingane, showed little initiative to gain the respect of Abu Wahab. The lady’s husband.
“Soon. I know this to be true. The madame will tell us to leave the estate,” Dingane’s wife cried, coming out the door carrying a large pot of steaming vegetables. “You know this to be true.” She placed the pot on a warped wooden table and sat heavily onto a bench, wiping her face with a bandana.
Shaking his head slowly, he walked over to the wall, picked up an old pair of snippers, and began trimming dead leaves and flowers off the plants growing in a line of boxes. The air from the ocean below had a touch of iciness, which the sun blazing down over his shoulder fought. Now and then he heard a wave crash.
“You need not fret yourself, woman. All this will move along.”
“What? What will move along? You, who are so passive?” She heaved an exaggerated sigh, and her ample bosom rose and fell while her black eyes teared.
“Madame knows how to handle her new husband.”
Dingane’s wife jumped up from the bench. “Hush!”
“Be still, woman. The lady is in the city.”
“This house has ears,” she whispered. “Many troubled spirits here.” She waved her hand across the mansion, to the sea, and back toward the rocky ridge above. With that, two shaggy baboons began to yell to each other high up on an outcrop.
Dingane knew it was useless to try and calm her now. She was correct. Trouble brewed in this house ever since Lady Beatrice married that Arab, and for what reason he could never fathom. Wahab was a decent enough chap. He treated Dingane and his wife well, but it was the company he kept. That weasel-looking man who visited Wahab the other day. The man Wahab had shown his prized car to and this same man, Nabeel was his name, treated Wahab disrespectfully. A day later he saw Nabeel and a stranger come out of the garage when Wahab was not at home. On investigating, Dingane found the car vandalized. He gave Abdul Wahab full details.
“Do you still listen?” she asked in a nervous voice. “Leave those flowers and talk to me.”
He placed the tool on the wall and walked over to his wife. “We will perform our duties. I know you worry.” She started to say something, but he interrupted. “All will be well.”
She settled back on the bench and stared ahead. Dingane thought of the Afrikaner who came to visit Wahab. The m
an called Van Wartt. One of the Broederbonders, the zealots who constituted the hard-line believers in apartheid. This one would always have hate in his eyes when he looked at a black man, a kaffir.
Whenever Dingane met with his secret service control, the agent always began his debriefs with questions about Van Wartt’s visits. The secret service was very interested in this Afrikaner. Dingane smiled. How things had changed with the new government; black men were now investigating the former white rulers.
From over the ocean came the familiar sound of a passenger plane coming in on time from Europe. It was making its approach to the airport north of the city. Dingane watched the huge plane bank and head in a northerly direction. The size of a Boeing 747 amazed him, and he wondered why with the plane moving so slowly it did not drop out of the sky.
A chill ran through Dingane’s body, followed by a feeling of dread. Years before, he had felt the same sensation hours before the ANC guerrillas had marched into his village. They were there to accuse the elders of collaborating with the Apartheid government. Seven were executed and their huts put to the torch.
“What is wrong, my husband?” The wife looked up, fear in her eyes.
“Someone comes, bringing trouble. Maybe death.”
Hayden Stone wiped his face with the warmed towel and handed it back to the flight attendant, who also took his breakfast tray. He returned his seat to the upright position as ordered and gazed out the plane window to the scene below. The white buildings of Cape Town shone in the morning sun, bright, clean, and orderly, contrasted against the ragged mountain standing above it. The sea appeared choppy, wave lines hard along the shore. Only good sailors could handle those currents; those who couldn’t met the sharks waiting beneath the surface.
This was the Africa he enjoyed, a place where one could find excitement and challenge. A forced sophistication awaited the visitor who toured the city or went out to the wine country, yet danger was always near whether down a dark alley or out in the bush. Stone had an eerie feeling, as if somehow he was returning to his prehistoric origins. After a few moments, he sat back and the sensation left. He was going to work.
Pretoria, Republic of South Africa
In the US Embassy, M. R. D. Houston sat across the walnut desk from the newly appointed station chief Charles Fleming, a serious middle-aged African-American who sported French-designer glasses. The scuttlebutt from headquarters had Fleming marked as a comer in the CIA, yet he was someone who had an evenhanded perspective of personnel management and agency operations. Fleming was a diplomat when it came to dealing with both subordinates and the many agencies that constituted the embassy team.
Houston decided to feel out his new boss by bringing up the ambassador’s irritation with the station, specifically the CIA base in Cape Town. “Ambassador Bunting is pissed that he wasn’t in the loop about the drones.”
“Was he posturing or genuinely annoyed?”
“He read the riot act to your hastily departed predecessor.”
The two men were in the embassy’s enclosed station. The embassy, a solidly built, highly secure structure, was in the style of an “Inman building” built by the US in response to the debacle in Moscow. There the new embassy had to be torn down and rebuilt after it was discovered to have enough KGB listening devices to make the embassy a virtual broadcasting station, capable of transmitting secrets to Soviet intelligence.
“I know. Colonel Frederick from the director’s office briefed me about Ambassador Bunting. Seems Frederick and Bunting worked together in the past. Sounded almost like Bunting was one of us. Who knows? With his connections, the ambassador may someday be the Director of Central Intelligence.” Fleming adjusted a family picture on his desk. “I have a meeting with him this afternoon.” He rose, walked around his desk, and took the armchair closest to Houston. “What happened to the bird, you know, the drone?”
“Damndest thing,” Houston said. “It was on its way back to the control post when a damn hawk attacked it. Swooped down in flight and struck it hard. The drone ended up in someone’s swimming pool.”
“Did we get it back?”
“Yeah, but not without a little, err, incident.”
Fleming waited for Houston to continue.
“We sent a new officer over the fence to get it.” Houston waved his hands around. “Well, to make a long story short, our guy goes in the pool, he dives down to the bottom to retrieve the bird, and when he surfaces, he’s looking into the barrel of a shotgun held by the irate homeowner.” Houston ran his hands through his hair. “Luckily, we had another officer standing by with her wits about her. She runs up to the fence and asks the man holding the gun if her model airplane was broken. She sweet talks the owner of the house, who grabs the bird from our guy climbing out of the pool. Our gal is, shall we say, attractive, and she establishes a rapport with the guy, we get the bird back, and all ends happily.”
Fleming sighed and appeared to be in thought, which made Houston nervous—had he explained too much about the disaster that could have happened?
“Do we have another bird … drone, that is?”
“Should have one operational tomorrow.”
“So, our technical coverage of Van Wartt in Cape Town is presently down.” Without waiting for a response, Fleming continued, “We’ll have to rely on human sources. How are we down in the Cape for assets?”
“Thin.”
“The station is getting a new operative. He should be arriving in Cape Town as we speak.” Fleming sighed. “Hayden Stone is his name.”
“Do you know anything about him? Is he good? Controllable?”
“Yes and yes to the first two questions.” Fleming went back to his desk. “As to the third question, Mr. Stone has a tendency to wander on his own. He’s former FBI.” Fleming did an eye roll. “Wait. I take that back. Three months ago he worked for me in the South of France. More apt, he was assigned to me when I was in Paris. Mr. Stone is hard to control to say the least, but his instincts are spot on, if you know what I mean. You must have heard about the shoot-out in Villefranche and then the termination of that terrorist in Montpelier? Stone was instrumental in both actions.”
“We can always use good people,” Houston said. “But back to Van Wartt. We still have a wiretap and random physical surveillance on him. He’s been in contact with Abdul Wahab. Something fishy going on there.”
Fleming sat with his hands lifted to his chin as if in prayer. “The agency has unfinished business with Mr. Abdul Wahab. Are we on Wahab? Is he being covered?”
“At the time, indirectly. The other service, actually two other services have coverage of Wahab. The locals, and we only get from them what they think will keep us happy, and the other service.”
“And the other service is who?”
“The Canadians.”
“You’re shitting me. I’ll be damned.” Fleming smiled. “God, at last someone we can trust.” Fleming crossed his legs and examined the crease in his trousers. “What’s your read on the relationship between Van Wartt and Abdul Wahab?”
Houston let a moment pass, then answered carefully, “Their connection might be commercial, in some way.” He knew Fleming wouldn’t be satisfied with this response.
“I was stationed in Paris when Abdul Wahab operated down on the Riviera. His people murdered two of our officers. Killed, we believe on his orders.”
“Are there plans to take him out?”
“Nope, and if you want to discuss it, we have to go into the bubble.”
They both remained silent for a few moments. “Now what about our ambassador and his love … that is, his extra-curricular activities,” Fleming asked.
Houston squirmed in his seat. “Again, boss, we should discuss that in a secure environment, like the bubble. The situation you’ll find quite interesting.”
Chapter Sixteen
Cape Town—August 16, 2002
Outside Hayden Stone’s hotel window, the morning sunl
ight washed over boats tied up at the Victoria Wharf. In the distance Table Mountain loomed over the tops of high-rise buildings floating above a soft haze. He had slept well, comfortable in the fact that the agency still valued his services. The potential danger he faced made his mind as sharp and clear as this bright winter morning by the sea. He still had to find out the full story behind the mission. It had to be good.
When he arrived at the hotel the night before, he refused the first room offered and asked for one on the second floor. If somehow he had appeared on the SASS intelligence watch list, they would have a bugged room waiting for him. This change of room would complicate matters for them, but again the entire hotel might be pre-wired.
His stomach growled and he debated whether to have breakfast at the restaurant downstairs or find a place along the wharf. He decided on the latter. He placed some intricate traps in his room, including the obligatory single hair over the lock of his suitcase, which any respectable intelligence service would find and replace after they had gone through his belongings. He turned on the TV, put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on his door handle, and departed. Outside he walked along the quay toward the shops and small eateries.
Already tourists and visitors began to filter into the area. Stone wore European-style shoes, trousers, and a long-sleeved shirt to blend in with his fellow strollers. He put on his Italian sunglasses and changed his gait by placing his hands behind his back and assuming a leisurely shuffle. Just another tourist taking in the sights.
Stone’s orders were to be available for any approach. He reasoned that the most likely would come from Jacob or Dirk Lange, but he had to be alert for an encounter with henchmen of Nabeel Asuty or Abdul Wahab. Operational protocol called for the local CIA base to place countersurveillance while he wandered about. Stone hoped his faith was not misplaced.
It took less than an hour for Stone to cover the whole Victoria Wharf waterfront. As he meandered, he made phone calls on the non-attributable cell phone provided to him on arrival at the airport. He had also received a pistol, not a Colt .45, but a .40 caliber Sig Sauer P226. Unfortunately, he had little luck in reaching his old contacts. One had moved to Australia, another was in prison, and a third had died mysteriously. He remembered one other, a woman named St. John Smythe. He’d try her later.
