The Delta

by Tony Park

  ‘What is it?’ Sonja’s eyes widened at the groan that emanated from the sergeant who suddenly looked very pale.

  ‘You didn’t have the kebab at lunchtime, did you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I had the hot chips, remember.’

  He winced as he nodded. ‘My bloody guts feel like they’re going to explode. Jesus Christ. We’ve got eyeball on the top X-ray in the province and I’m about to shit myself.’ Bruce lowered his hand to his belly.

  ‘Go. I’ll be fine. I’ll get the drinks while you’re in the bathroom,’ she said.

  He started to protest, then clamped his jaw shut as another cramp forced him to double over at the table. ‘OK. I’ll just be gone for a minute.’

  Sonja shifted in her seat and forced herself to relax as she watched Jones disappear into the men’s room. She ran a hand through her hair, got up and went to the bar.

  ‘Soda water and …’ she tried to think what Bruce would want. They were undercover, but was it a good idea for him to be drinking beer or spirits if he was ill?

  ‘Make up your mind, love,’ the elderly barman said.

  ‘Sure, and you can’t be entering a fine establishment like the Hen and be drinking soda water.’

  Sonja turned. She smiled to try and disguise the chill that ran down her spine, the likes of which she hadn’t felt since she’d been confronted by a Mozambican spitting cobra for the first time in her life. It was Byrne, standing behind her, nursing a pint of Guinness. ‘Um, soda water and a Coca-Cola, please,’ she said to the barman.

  ‘Coca-Cola?’ Byrne said, mimicking her accent poorly. ‘You sound like you’re a way from home. I would have picked you as a couple from across the water, but not that much water.’

  Sonja fished in her wallet for the money, frantically wondering what to say. If he thought they were ‘from across the water’, did that mean Byrne had already suspected the strangers in the bar were British agents? ‘Ja, I’m a long way from my ’ome,’ she said, laying on a thick Afrikaans accent.

  ‘South Africa?’ Byrne prodded.

  ‘Namibia, though it was called South-West Africa when I was born.’

  ‘Sure, and it’s a shame when someone takes over your country, isn’t it?’

  Sonja smiled. ‘Ja. The bloody British and the South Africans took it from my grandfather’s people in 1915. Before that we were German. Where I grew up we spoke Afrikaans and German. It was confusing.’

  ‘You don’t say. Well, what brings you to Ireland? This part of the country’s not usually recommended in the guidebooks. Most foreigners are too scared to visit Ulster.’

  Sonja shrugged. ‘I grew up in a war zone. I used to load my pa’s rifle for him and my mom had an Uzi she used to carry with her when she took us kids to school.’

  ‘Beautiful and a killer to boot, eh?’

  Sonja tried to look for Sergeant Jones over Byrne’s shoulder, wondering how she was going to get herself out of this mess. ‘Don’t joke. I shot a man when I was fourteen.’

  Byrne raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I didn’t kill him – at least I don’t think I did. The newspapers made a big thing of it at the time. It was a nice propaganda victory against the SWAPO terrorists, even if we couldn’t hope to win the shooting war.’

  ‘SWAPO?’ Byrne sipped his drink. ‘South-West African People’s Organisation if I remember my limited African history. I would have said freedom fighters rather than terrorists.’

  Sonja shrugged. ‘Terrorists when they’re shooting at you. Besides, if a firefighter fights fire, then what does a freedom fighter fight?’

  Byrne laughed. ‘Fair point, but you essentially had a colonial power, the Germans, subjugating the local people and then the South Africans taking over after that. You can understand the African people fighting to take control of their homeland.’

  ‘I was born there, too, but we were the minority, and the minority can never win, can they?’ Sonja raised her eyebrows.

  Byrne looked around the bar without moving his head. ‘It doesn’t mean we can’t try.’

  ‘You’re talking about Northern Ireland?’ She lowered her voice. ‘The IRA?’

  ‘Now what gave you that idea?’

  ‘Minority, majority. I’ve read enough about this place to know the British have no place here trying to enforce a system that disadvantaged Catholics for years.’

  ‘And what truck does a Namibian have with the British?’

  ‘My mom’s side are Afrikaners – my dad’s German. My maternal great-grandmother died of cholera in a British concentration camp in South Africa during the Anglo-Boer War, leaving four children, two of whom later died as a result of malnutrition. My pa’s people were interned during both the world wars, although I had an uncle who evaded detention and used to cache supplies for U-boats on the Atlantic Coast.’

  ‘Skeletons in the cupboard on the Skeleton Coast, eh?’

  She smiled and sipped her drink. ‘You know a lot about Africa, for an Irishman.’

  ‘You know a lot about the problems here, for an African. I think your friend’s coming. He’s been a while in the bog and doesn’t look too grand, now, does he? Who is he?’

  ‘That’s a forward question.’

  ‘I’m a forward man where a pretty girl’s involved.’

  Sonja glanced at Bruce, weaving his way towards them. ‘He’s nothing. I was hitchhiking. He picked me up and offered me a lift.’

  ‘Sure, and that’s a bit dangerous, isn’t it? Going into a pub with a stranger who’s just picked you up?’

  Sonja stirred her drink with her finger, making the ice cubes rattle on the glass, then licked her fingertip. ‘Nothing wrong with a little danger now and again, is there?’

  ‘Sorry?’ she said, aware the older man sitting by the camp fire had said something else. A hippo grunted out in the Chobe River.

  ‘I said I’m Chipchase, Sydney Chipchase. You looked like you were in another world for a few seconds there, staring into yer tea. Were you?’

  ‘Interesting name,’ Sonja said, attempting to change the subject.

  ‘My father was a sailor in the Royal Navy. Served in the Pacific and liked Sydney when he stopped there on leave.’

  ‘I meant Chipchase.’

  He smiled and shrugged, as though he’d heard it all before. ‘You were distracted. What’s on your mind? Zimbabwe – or maybe Northern Ireland?’

  ‘You seem to know all about me, Sydney. Whatever you heard about me, in Ulster, was true, and you likely haven’t heard the half of what went wrong.’ She clasped the tin mug tight, feeling the burn. She didn’t want to be reminded of the pain, nor of Daniel Byrne. ‘What are you going to do? Turn me into the police?’

  Chipchase shook his head. ‘I don’t live in the past any more. I left the army, hit the bottle for a while longer, then found sobriety and the Lord, around about the same time. I’m a travelling missionary here in Africa, distributing Bibles and religious text books to remote schools and missions. I don’t condone the path you seem to be on, but I won’t surrender you to the squalor of an African jail. You’ll have to find the right path for you, but you’ll be safer for a wee while if you let me take care of that leg of yours.’

  She drained her tea. ‘Don’t think I’m not grateful. If the police had found me before you I’d be in trouble.’

  ‘Like as not you’d be dead of blood loss.’

  She shrugged. ‘I had a sat phone with me.’

  Chipchase nodded. ‘There’s a storage locker under the bed in the camper. I put all your kit there. Your rifle and pistol are in there. Best leave them for the moment if you don’t want to attract undue attention around the camp ground.’

  Sonja set the empty mug down on his fold-out table and climbed gingerly back into the Land Cruiser. She opened the locker and found her bag and vest. She checked the M4 – there were still rounds in the magazine – and slipped her nine mil into the waistband of her pants, which Chipchase had turned into shorts to get to the bullet wound in
her leg. The phone’s casing was cracked and the battery cover had come loose. There were wires hanging out of it. When she went outside she held it up to the Irishman.

  He raised his palms. ‘Wasn’t me. Here,’ he said reaching into his shirt pocket, ‘you can use my mobile phone. Dial overseas if you wish.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She left the camp site with a nod to his generosity and wandered down to the water’s edge, by the thatch-roofed Sedudu Bar. She stopped by a sign that said Beware of crocodiles and dialled a mobile phone number in the UK.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Emma?’

  ‘Oh. It’s you,’ her daughter said.

  ‘Hello, my girl. It’s nice to hear your voice.’ And it was, after what she’d been through in Zimbabwe. Sonja did what she did for Emma – to ensure her only child wanted for nothing in life. She knew she’d missed too much of Emma’s life, as a trade-off, but at least Emma had, until recently, been safe and happy in the care of her grandmother when Sonja had been away. There were things Sonja liked – loved – about her work, but she tried hard not to dwell on them.

  ‘Whatever.’

  Sonja drew a breath and tried to remain positive. ‘How’s school?’

  ‘How do you think? I hate it and can’t wait for it to be over. Situation normal, all fucked-up. SNAFU. Isn’t that what you say in the army?’

  ‘Not my army.’ Sonja knew Emma was simply trying to provoke a reaction with her swearing. ‘University will be much more fun and it’s just a few short months away. You’re too clever for your teachers. How are you going with your pre-law subjects?’ Sonja prayed the pause on the end of the line meant Emma was continuing to do well, and that she might, reluctantly, show some pride in her academic achievements. She loved that her daughter was so bright – gifted according to her teachers – and took some solace from the fact that the things she did to earn a living would pay for Emma to become a lawyer. Sonja told herself the disciplinary incidents at school were a natural part of Emma’s intellect and strong personality – a tendency to challenge convention, rather than warning signs of delinquency. She was a teenager. She’d get over it.

  ‘We were studying human rights law. We discussed Iraq and Afghanistan and torture … rendition, that kind of stuff. It made me ashamed, like, to think you’d been part of it.’

  Sonja gritted her teeth. ‘How’s your friend … Gemma, isn’t it? She seemed nice when I met her at the last parents’ day.’

  ‘It’s Jemima. And she’s a slag. I hate her. Look, Mum, don’t pretend like you know or even care about my friends. You don’t. You’re not part of my life any more.’

  Sonja put her fingers against her temple. She’d nearly been killed and, while she wasn’t looking for sympathy from her daughter, she found it frustrating that she couldn’t even tell her what she’d been up to – even if she could, Emma would disapprove. She hated, too, the way Emma used words such as ‘like’ to dumb herself down.

  ‘Where are you anyway?’ Emma yawned.

  ‘Botswana.’

  ‘All right for some. It’s fucking dire here. Cold and raining.’

  Sonja saw the opening. Perhaps she could console herself with some small talk about the weather. ‘It’s lovely here. The sky’s clear and it’s a beautiful warm day. Perhaps one day …’

  ‘I have to go. Perhaps one day you’ll give up your bloody bodyguarding or whatever it is you do when you’re away and, like, really take an interest in my life for a change. At least Gran used to know who my friends were, but then again she did come and visit me on weekends in this jail.’

  ‘Emma, I …’

  ‘Or maybe it’ll be just like Gran all over again. I might die and you might miss the funeral. Wouldn’t that be sad?’

  ‘Emma …’

  The line went dead.

  Sonja stared out over the wide expanse of the Chobe River, which glittered blindingly in the midday sun. It was the reflection, she told herself, and the fact that she had been cooped up inside the stifling darkness of the campervan for so long, that made her screw up her eyes and push her palm against each of them, in turn.

  FOUR

  Sam felt toes sliding up the inside of his right calf, and he was fairly sure they weren’t Stirling’s. Two men had tried to hit on him at parties since he’d become a household name in the States, but mostly it was women, an uncomfortable number of whom, like Tracey Hawthorne, were already in relationships.

  He coughed, hoping Tracey would take the hint and ease off. Instead, he felt her toenail trace a path to his knee and along his thigh. She had long legs, that Tracey, as he’d seen in the pool.

  Sam had known from a previous dip that the plunge pool was over-chlorinated, so when he dived in he had kept his eyes shut and his hands out, so he could feel for the wall. Tracey had slid into the water and positioned herself so that he swam into her. His palm had connected with her hipbone and she had fallen backwards in the water as he’d surfaced.

  ‘You must think me a pushover, Sam,’ she’d giggled.

  Stirling and Sam were seated diagonally opposite each other, in the centre of the long dining table, with other guests and the members of the film crew on either side of them. Every now and then Stirling would lean over to Tracey, who was seated next to him, directly opposite Sam, and draw her into his conversation. At the precise moment that Tracey’s dainty, manicured toes found Sam’s crotch, Stirling laid a proprietary hand on her shoulder as he recounted a story about her and a python. Sam grimaced and Tracey winked as Stirling carried on talking.

  Shit, Sam thought. A beautiful, sexy young woman was coming on to him and he knew he couldn’t do anything about it. Sam knew from past experience that any of the dozen retirees and well-heeled guests from New York, Texas, Florida and London around the table wouldn’t have a second thought about emailing a gossip magazine or Fleet Street if they caught a whiff of a celebrity involved in a scandal abroad.

  His on-again, off-again relationship with Rebecca Lloyd, a Hollywood starlet who presented part-time on Wildlife World, had come to an end when footage of her kissing a Baldwin on a beach in Bermuda had aired on ET. In truth, the relationship was dead by then as for the third time, despite her protestations that she had given up, Sam had found a line of white powder in their hotel room in Denver. He’d offered to help her stay off drugs, but she’d told him she didn’t need him. Apparently it was the truth.

  But a Baldwin? That still hurt.

  ‘Cheryl-Ann,’ Stirling said, ‘have you thought about my offer to meet with the Delta Defence Committee when they get here? We’ve hired a public relations guy from Jo’burg. He could be good material for an interview about the negative effects of the dam.’

  Cheryl-Ann dabbed her mouth with a serviette. ‘I don’t think a PR flak is going to be your best spokesman, and in any case it’s really not the sort of thing we could use in our program … but I’ll think about it.’

  Stirling seemed about to try his pitch again, but one of the African safari guides came to the table and whispered something in his ear. Stirling excused himself from the table and pushed back his chair. ‘I just have to check the generator, ladies and gents. Back soon.’ He walked into the night, followed by the guide.

  ‘We’ve got an early start tomorrow, don’t we, Ray?’ Sam said.

  The cameraman had been focusing intently on the words and the breasts of a divorcee from Houston at the far end of the table. ‘We do? I mean, sure, we do, but, hey Sam, it’s still early yet.’

  ‘Well, I just don’t want you getting sick in the helicopter like last time, is all,’ Sam said.

  Ray sighed. ‘You go, if you like.’

  ‘Oh, Sam, please stay and tell us another story about trapping coyotes,’ said the divorcee. Perhaps, Sam wondered, she wanted to be freed from Ray’s halitosis as much as he did Tracey’s roaming foot.

  ‘You need someone to escort you back to your tent, in case of dangerous animals,’ Tracey said across the table.

  ‘That’s right,’ Sa
m said, relieved to feel Tracey’s foot slip out of his lap. ‘Let’s go, Ray.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘No, it’s fine, Ray,’ Tracey said, smiling brightly. ‘You stay here and finish your dessert … have an Amarula. I’ll be happy to show Sam back to his tent.’

  Sam looked over his shoulder and out into the gloom behind the deck, but there was no sign of Stirling, who was presumably still off checking the generator.

  Tracey grabbed the torch, with its heavy rechargeable battery slung underneath. She switched it on and shone it out into the darkness. She wasn’t looking for lions or leopards, but for Stirling. There was still no sign of him. The adrenaline and desire was burning her from the inside out.

  ‘OK, Sam?’

  She saw the reluctance on his face as he glanced one more time at the cameraman. Sleazy Ray with his bad breath who had already hit on Tracey, suggesting she come back to his tent for champagne the night before, was busy staring at the American woman’s cleavage.

  She wondered if Sam was shy, or if he was genuinely principled and avoiding her because he thought she belonged to Stirling. Tracey liked Stirling – loved him maybe – but she wasn’t owned by any man. Whether bashful or high-minded, the more Sam tried to resist her, the more his unwillingness excited her. Both Stirling and Sam were handsome men, but the TV star had something over the safari guide. Both were big men in their fields – alpha males – but Sam’s territory was the whole world. Women adored him and men wanted to be him. Tracey just wanted him. She hoped to god he wasn’t gay, although he was pretty enough.

  ‘This way,’ she said. ‘Come on,’ she added in a whisper once they were away from the riverside deck, ‘I won’t bite. Not unless you want me too, of course.’

  ‘Tracey …’

  ‘Shush.’

  ‘No, really, I just want to—’

  ‘No, shut up, Sam. For real. I heard something out there.’ She shone the powerful beam into the bush, away from the river. ‘There, see?’