ST KATHARINENKIRCHE
Auckland
Saturday, 20 June 2009 32
A solitary seagull on the light pole across the street brought Pierre de Villiers back to the present. He checked again whether his cellphone was on, the one he always wore on a thong around his neck.
The call came on time.
‘They want you back here in three days, no more,’ Johann Weber said. ‘No argument and no delaying tactics.’
De Villiers was ready. ‘Have you spoken to Liesl recently?’ he asked. ‘Are there any clues?’
‘Yesterday morning. I could hear lots of birds that are not of our local variety. Definitely hornbills, and a ground hornbill, I thought. Liesl would have known for sure, but we weren’t allowed to say much.’
‘They must be somewhere north of Durban, Zululand perhaps,’ De Villiers ventured.
‘Or further north, I thought,’ Weber added.
‘You mean in the bushveld?’
‘I grew up there,’ Johann Weber said. ‘I know the sounds. There was something that reminded me of the place where I grew up. It wasn’t just the hornbills, but the cicadas and the smaller birds, including a rainbird.’
Pierre de Villiers’s survival training had covered a lot of that: which birds were edible and where they were found throughout the subcontinent. ‘There’s not much left to hunt in Zululand, so it has to be north of that.’
‘I think so too,’ Weber agreed.
‘Is she alright, though?’ De Villiers asked.
There was a pause before Weber replied. ‘She sounded alright, but I can’t be sure. She’s never been the type to complain. And they were standing right next to her, they told me, so she couldn’t say much. And I didn’t want to take any risks.’
‘I’ll come over on the earliest flight,’ De Villiers promised. ‘And then we can sort this out once and for all.’
‘That’s fine. Let me know when you have a flight number.’
‘I’ll do that,’ De Villiers said. ‘And Johann, I’m sorry.’
There was a long silence, so long that De Villiers thought the connection might have been cut. So he said again, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sure it’s my fault.’
‘Oh, nonsense!’ Weber replied. ‘How can it be your fault when we both know that we’re dealing with totally irrational people?’
When there was no answer, Weber added, ‘Let me know your flight number when you’re ready,’ and cut the connection.
De Villiers was more than ready. His bag was packed, with both his passports in the top pocket of his multipocketed travel jacket. His Leatherman multitool was in the bag. It would have to travel in the hold. A gift from his brother-in-law, it had been strapped to his ankle during numerous missions in Angola during the war years. All he had to do was to make some phone calls. Four or five, he reckoned.
His beard had come along nicely, but it made him look ten years older and accentuated the lines at the corners of his eyes. He was ready. This time he would use the knife. This time there would be blood. It can’t be done otherwise, he had concluded during one of the nights when he couldn’t sleep. Closure was going to come at a price, and the price was blood. De Villiers had no intention that the blood should be his, or his daughter’s, or Liesl Weber’s.
This time Emma de Villiers was more understanding. She knew De Villiers had to go back to South Africa, that it was the only way they’d get Zoë back. ‘Yes, you can go, but I don’t want you to take any risks,’ she said. ‘Give them what they want, and then come back as soon as you can.’
De Villiers made the first call standing on the veranda on the first floor, looking out over the Macleans Reserve and to the islands beyond. He needed an excuse to go to South Africa. An alibi, should he ever need one. Considering what he intended to do, he might well need one. In line with his training as a Special Forces operator, the exit strategy was always the first thing he planned. He called his doctor. Dr Annette de Bruyn was on weekend duty at her practice and took the call.
‘Annette, I need an excuse to take some leave and go back to South Africa. Could you please make arrangements for me to see Dr McKerron in Durban in about five or six days?’
‘You also need to see a gastroenterologist for the radiation proctitis we spoke about. And you might as well have a check-up from the oncologist who treated you last year. What’s her name again?’
De Villiers couldn’t remember either. Most of the treatment had been administered by a radiographer, Marissa, a mischievous girl hardly out of her teens. ‘Come by later,’ Dr de Bruyn said, ‘and I’ll have the referral letters ready for you.’
Next he phoned DS Veerasinghe. She was at home and she sounded tearful. ‘Has he roughed you up again?’ De Villiers asked.
She denied it, just as she always did, but De Villiers was not convinced. ‘Vaishna,’ he said, ‘one of these days I’ll drive over there and break his neck, I swear.’
‘He is the father of my children. Leave him alone,’ she said. Her husband was a taxi driver who worked odd hours and then expected his wife to be waiting for him when he arrived home. She had to be in the kitchen, ready to serve her master. If she was family, De Villiers thought, I would have broken both his legs already. He resolved to pay the man a visit on his return from South Africa.
‘Please let me know how the police investigation is going,’ he said. He had been warned off the investigation and they were treating him like a suspect. ‘Please send me an email every day with a full report.’
She promised, although he couldn’t expect much. The case was, after all, in the hands of another unit.
He booked tickets for Auckland-Sydney-Johannesburg-Durban on the internet, printed the tickets, and sent a text message to Johann Weber with the Durban flight details.
It was still too early to make his daily call to Zoë. The number they had given him was on speed dial. He called it anyway.
‘Hallo.’ It was a man’s voice, a South African. He had said, hallo, not hello. On the last two scheduled calls, a woman speaking with a Remuera Kiwi accent had answered.
‘It’s De Villiers,’ he said in English, although he was tempted to speak Afrikaans. ‘I’d like to speak to my daughter.’
‘Thus iss not the time to phone. You muss only phone in the evening.’
De Villiers took a chance. ‘I’ve had a message from your boss. And I need to speak to my daughter now.’
‘I only take orders from the general,’ the man said. The clue slipped out and confirmed De Villiers’s own conclusion.
‘Well,’ De Villiers lied, ‘the general sent me a message through the major, and I need to talk to my daughter now.’
After a short delay, Zoë came on the line. ‘Dad? Is that you?’ The phone was on speaker, De Villiers could hear.
‘Hello, Babyshoes. Are you okay?’
‘Of course I’m okay. I can look after myself. Are you okay, Dad?’ She sounded like her mother.
‘What are you doing, my girl?’
‘I’m painting and drawing and writing. And in the evening I watch TV with Auntie Sandy.’ De Villiers had correctly identified the local kidnappers.
‘That’s nice. Is Auntie Sandy taking good care of you?’ De Villiers asked.
‘That wasn’t nice,’ the man said. ‘You are trying to trick us. It won’t work. Don’t phone again. We will phone you. Unnerstand?’
The line went dead before De Villiers could answer.
When he rang again, there was no answer. The message option was set to the service provider’s answering service. He left a short message that he regretted as soon as he had rung off. Another empty threat. De Villiers was angry with himself for his lack of professionalism. They won’t take me seriously if I carry on like this, he thought. But another thought also crossed his mind. That might be just what I need: them not taking me seriously enough.
De Villiers ate his breakfast slowly. The cereal stuck in his throat like unbuttered bread. He took out the pay-as-you-go cellphone with the se
cret number and speed-dialled another number on his list.
‘Have you found the house yet?’ he asked.
‘No, but we’re narrowing the search to an area between the main street and near the river. We think it’s there.’
‘Good. Keep looking, and let me know as soon as you find it. It would help a lot if you could pinpoint their location today or tomorrow, the earlier the better,’ De Villiers said. ‘I’m flying out on Monday morning and I’d like to know where they are before I leave.’
‘Will do, Captain.’
‘It’s Major to you.’
‘Yes, sir!’
‘I’m going to be away for six to ten days. I’m counting on you to bring her out safely.’ De Villiers knew that these men he had contracted to get his daughter back were good. Though he hadn’t met them before, he knew them by the reputation of their unit. They were recces who got the job done. In close confines, face to face with the enemy. In hand-to-hand combat. Without causing civilian casualties.
He had no choice but to put his trust in them. ‘When you find the house and have confirmed that my daughter is inside, don’t do anything until I give the final order, alright?’
‘Yes, Major. Loud and clear.’
De Villiers drove to the doctor’s rooms and collected the referral letters. There were three, addressed to Drs McKerron, Zaug and MacDonald. He drove home slowly.
‘Have they found Zoë yet?’ Emma asked. It was always the first question.
The answer was the same as before. ‘Not yet. But they will.’
Sunday, 21 June 2009 33
Two days after their meeting in his chambers, James Mazibuko turned up at Weber’s house in The Gardens. Unannounced, uninvited, unrepentant.
The Gardens was a small security complex in La Lucia. The houses – all built to a uniform style – rose against the sides of a north-south valley partly protected on the eastern side from the humid sea breeze that blows constantly from the northeast. Weber was lying under his car. He was shirtless and barefoot, wearing just a pair of baggies he had found in his son’s wardrobe. The Porsche had been built long before the coach-builders had thought of galvanising the chassis and the body panels to prevent the car from rusting. Rust was the classic car’s greatest enemy, spreading like a cancer once it had taken hold and never completely defeated. At The Gardens, so near the warm water of the Indian Ocean, the cancer had a willing ally in the salty air.
Working on the car, taking parts off for refurbishing and cleaning, rustproofing the components one by one before reinstalling them, was Weber’s escape from the stresses and strains of his profession. It gave him time to think in an unstructured way that allowed his mind to wander and find its own solutions while his hands were engaged.
He was half under the car, outwardly calm and unconcerned, but inside he was in turmoil; had been the whole week. His helplessness and the uncertainties of the situation exacerbated his anger. In his practice, he maintained control over each case by meticulous preparation of the facts and the law to the point of scripting each trial and each argument as if it were a Shakespearian sonnet with every word and line in place. So much so that the last stanza was, as it had to be, irresistible in its logic and attraction, elegant even, if that could be achieved.
But there was no logic here, nor elegance. The situation was a brutal one. He was helpless in the face of the unknown. That Pierre de Villiers was convinced that Liesl would be returned to him unharmed was no consolation. Pierre had had problems of his own for years, as everyone in the family knew, and Weber was unwilling to rely too heavily on his judgment.
His leg went dead and he realised he had been lying under the car without doing anything for a long while. He was stretching for a spanner when a brown brogue blocked his reach.
‘How did you get in?’ he asked as he slid out from under the car. He turned over onto his side and sat up, a cumbersome process when you’re over sixty and have to start from prone on your back on a car trolley with multidirectional wheels.
‘Come on, don’t just stand there. Help me up,’ he said.
James Mazibuko extended his right hand and pulled Weber to his feet, then held his greasy hand out as if it offended him. Weber’s leg tingled as the blood started circulating again.
‘How did you get in?’ Weber asked a second time. He didn’t bother to ask how Mazibuko had found out where he lived. The Webers’ home phone number was ex-directory – at Liesl Weber’s insistence – so that they would not have to deal with attorneys phoning in the evening or over the weekend. But a man of Mazibuko’s talents and contacts would find them quickly if he wanted to.
‘I told the guards I was your client and I needed to see you urgently,’ Mazibuko said. That would not have worked, Weber knew. Some money must have changed hands.
He directed Mazibuko towards the guest bathroom and limped through the open-plan lounge area to the patio. Does this mean that Mazibuko has accepted the assignment, Weber asked himself. If so, Weber would become the client and Mazibuko would be in charge. It would be difficult to cede control, especially to someone he hardly knew.
‘Your security is useless,’ Mazibuko said when he came out onto the patio. He was dressed casually but expensively – the same brown brogues he had worn at their first meeting, navy blue Aigner slacks, light-blue shirt from the same designer displaying the logo above the pocket, brown belt to match the shoes, khaki dust coat folded neatly and carried over the arm.
‘Take a seat,’ Weber offered. ‘What can I get you to drink? A beer? Something soft?’
‘I don’t drink alcohol, but I’ll have some tea if that’s going around.’
‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ Weber said. He went back inside and put the kettle on. He scrubbed his hands and arms up to the elbows in the sink outside the back door of the kitchen. When he returned to the kitchen, Mazibuko was reaching up for the cups and saucers from the top shelf. It struck Weber that Mazibuko knew exactly where to find them.
‘You’ve been here before,’ he stated as a fact rather than a question.
‘I like to know who I’m working for,’ Mazibuko said.
‘You could have asked me and I would have told you,’ Weber said.
‘It’s not the same,’ Mazibuko said. ‘Isn’t there a theory that says everything in nature changes simply by being observed?’
Weber cocked his head to one side. He tried to calculate the odds of someone like James Mazibuko knowing the laws of physics. Or to be more precise, some obscure theory pertaining to scientific experimentation.
‘I need to know more about you too,’ he said. He carried the tray out to the patio and watched to see if Mazibuko would follow. ‘But I’ll ask you directly, not break into your house,’ he said over his shoulder.
Mazibuko laughed out loud, a deep baritone. ‘You wouldn’t get past the gate. If the dogs don’t get you, my bodyguards will. I get pictures from my CCTV to my cellphone.’ Mazibuko poured tea for both of them. ‘Look, if you want me to do this job, you are going to have to trust me. And the less you know about me, the better. I need to know everything about you, and you need to know nothing about me. At least, not more than a lawyer would normally know about his client.’
Weber knew it was wise to keep the incriminating evidence to a minimum.
‘Tell me where your problem started,’ Mazibuko said. ‘It couldn’t have come out of the blue. No one kidnaps another man’s wife unless it’s personal.’ Weber started a denial, but Mazibuko cut him short. ‘I need to know everything, including why you keep fingering that lion’s claw you wear around your neck. It is a lion’s claw, isn’t it?’
Weber nodded. ‘So you’ve decided to—’ he started to say, but was interrupted a second time in as many seconds.
‘Start at the beginning. I’ll decide after I’ve heard all of it,’ Mazibuko said. He grinned. ‘Isn’t that what you lawyers do? You want to hear the whole story first before you agree to take the case.’
‘Not advocates,’ Weber
defended his profession. ‘We are obliged to take every case that comes our way.’
It took two hours and another round of tea for Weber to tell Mazibuko everything he knew from the beginning.
‘I think it is clear,’ he concluded, ‘that they were taken by people who know what they are doing, both here and in New Zealand.’
‘I agree. That’s the good news. If they are professionals, they won’t hurt them. The bad news is that it’s not going to be easy to find them.’ Mazibuko stood up and stretched. He had listened in near complete silence as the story unfolded.
They walked out through the garage. Mazibuko ran his fingers over the Carrera’s paintwork. ‘1964 Carrera 356C, the last year they made them.’ He walked around the car as he spoke. ‘And a cabriolet to boot. Very rare. Special two-litre four-cam racing engine pushing out 130 horse power. Black-on-red interior, very popular combination, left-hand drive, which means I can sell it in the US for more than $300,000, maybe as much as $450,000, seeing it is in such good condition and entirely original.’
Mazibuko knew how to impress. And he certainly knew which buttons to press.
‘I have more good news,’ Mazibuko said with a smile. ‘If they can’t hide their money from me, how do you think they are going to hide your wife from me?’
Weber shrugged. He was unsure how to deal with Mazibuko. The man appeared to be quite jovial, but underneath his banter, there seemed to be a layer of steel.
‘They’ll make contact again,’ Mazibuko said. ‘And when they do, I want to know exactly what they said. I want the whole truth, remember? And nothing but the truth. No secrets, no parallel schemes. I’m not going to risk my life, or worse, my freedom, because of some cockeyed parallel operation to find your wife. Understand?’
Weber had to nod.
‘I want to hear you say it,’ Mazibuko insisted. ‘The whole truth and nothing but the truth.’
A Sailor's Honour Page 18
