by Tony Park
It was something of an epiphany for him. He still missed Danielle’s financial and organisational skills, and Lord knew they’d be lucky to find a diesel and marine mechanic to match Sarah, but both women were lost to him now. He hadn’t thought of pursuing them, nor given a thought to whether they’d arrived at their next destination safely. He was, however, worried for Jane.
She was attractive – though so were the other girls – so there had been more to his growing attraction to her than her physical beauty. Although clearly shaken by the trauma she’d gone through on the Penfold Son, she had gone down fighting in the lifeboat and then set off on the kayak and discovered the island’s secret. She’d also taken the time to get her payback against Mitch before leaving. She was clever and tough and she had let him take her as far as the mainland before escaping. Jane hadn’t fallen for him, as other women had. She had bested him, and while he respected her for it he was still concerned for her safety. It was a long way to Johannesburg.
But he also had his men to think of, and others on Ilha dos Sonhos who relied on them. To some of the Mozambicans he was, though he felt uncomfortable about it, their padrao, the father figure cum employer that his own father had been in the resort’s heyday. He wasn’t comfortable with the almost feudal connotations, but he couldn’t escape the fact that without him they had little to look forward to other than a life of subsistence fishing.
Mark and Lisa Novak wanted to retire somewhere in Mozambique, and Alex had offered the reliable former warrant officer a stake in the hotel, perhaps running the dive business or fishing charters once they went straight. Heinrich had said on many occasions that there was no way he would want to live in Germany. Henri and his lover might stay, or might move to the mainland, and Kevin was a free agent, though Alex sensed that all of them would, given the chance, make a life for themselves on the island. Jose wanted to be the richest bartender in Mozambique and Alex was quite happy to help his childhood friend’s dream come true – if he could.
Removing Mitch from the team was like excising cancerous tissue. Things might be all right from now on, but the poison he’d spread might also have taken hold in some small measure. His were men of action and without it – and money – they would grow restless and either leave or try to depose him.
Money. With another million US dollars he reckoned he could have two full floors renovated and the restaurant open and staffed. Then he could implement the marketing plan Danielle had written for him. There would be travel agents and journalists to be feted before paying customers were enticed back to Ilha dos Sonhos, but a quick injection of cash could see them in business before the onset of the next wet season.
Despite the Triad leader’s laissez-faire attitude to the Peng Cheng and its crew, Alex was sure Chan would cough up at least a hundred grand for the return of his ship. That, however, would barely cover the cost of the appliances for the new commercial kitchen for the gutted restaurant. Alex needed more cash, which was why he would travel to Johannesburg and listen to Chan’s offer. If it was drugs he wouldn’t touch it, likewise wildlife or people smuggling, or the illegal export of timber.
He crossed the Limpopo River at Mapai. The water was low this time of year – barely ankle deep – so he waved away the boys with a span of oxen who made their money during the wet season towing South African tourist vehicles.
Alex had decided to change his route into South Africa after Jane had run off. His new route would take him cross-country to South Africa through the Mozambican extension of the Kruger National Park, the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park. The crossing into South Africa would be through an out-of-the-way border post with fewer police, and if Jane had tipped anyone off about his movements then the law would most likely be lying in wait in Zimbabwe, or at the main border crossing into South Africa at Beitbridge.
On the other side of the river he paid his money to enter the Limpopo Park. It was a bubble of land – a hunting concession in the days of Portuguese rule – that had been designated as national park; however, there were still villagers living, growing crops and tending their cattle inside the area that was now shaded green on the map. It would be a long time before the Mozambican side of the reserve could boast anywhere near the same densities of wildlife as Kruger, although efforts had already been made to restock the land with elephant and buffalo from South Africa.
What Alex liked in this part of the country were the trees – towering mopanes and leadwoods which had been spared the annual feeding cycles of elephants and other game for many years. Alex’s thoughts turned, briefly, as they occasionally did, to the little elephant with the tear in its ear. What had happened to her? he wondered. Had she migrated, with many others, across the border into Kruger to escape the guns of hunters or hungry soldiers during the civil war? More likely she was long dead.
He crossed through the quiet border post at Pafuri, in the far north of the Kruger Park, and then turned left towards the Punda Maria Gate. Once out of the park and free of its fifty kilometre an hour speed limit he floored the accelerator. At Louis Trichardt he joined the main N1 road which would take him to Pretoria and then on to Johannesburg.
As he drove one-handed he reached under his seat and found his Glock pistol, wrapped in its oily cloth. It was loaded and cocked. It would be ironic, he thought, if he, a major supplier of stolen cars into the South African market, was stopped by a car-jacker in Jo’burg. The man would regret it.
Over the years she had moved her family further and further south, in search of more food and water.
The terror of her younger years was a distant memory now. There had been no wholesale death, no discoveries of piles of fresh bones for many years. Some of her children had never known danger, and that, of course, was a good thing.
The only threat to her family now was food – or lack of it. It seemed she had to walk a little further, work a little harder every year, to find enough vegetation to feed herself and her offspring. Sometimes, as was the case right now, she had to destroy to care for her brood. She leaned her massive squared forehead against the trunk of the tree and pushed against it.
She took the strain, feeling it in her ageing shoulders, and pushed against the bark that dug into her skin and bone. If she didn’t push the tree over, her children wouldn’t be able to reach the leaves and the seeds, and she would be denied the succulent treat of the newly exposed water-rich roots at the base.
Behind her the rest of the family milled about, anxiously awaiting the food their matriarch’s efforts would bring. The trunk started to creak. Her baby wandered between her legs, but one of its elder sisters shooed it to safety with a swat of her trunk. She could feel the tree giving now, feel it starting to topple.
One last push.
She summoned her strength and took a step forward. One step at a time. It was how she had come from her birthplace all those years ago; how she kept her clan together and alive. The tree toppled over, sending birds squawking, squirrels scurrying and a mamba slithering from its excavated home beneath the roots.
She rested while her children and grandchildren eagerly started sorting among the leaves and the pods. Water was next. The pans to the north fed by once-turning windmills were dry – another reason for their pilgrimage southwards. She looked around her and wondered where the next big tree would be found, where the next source of water lay. There seemed fewer and fewer of each every year.
One more step on another journey. She was hot and she flapped her huge ears to allow the air to cool her blood, which was filtered through a web of veins. Somewhere deep in her memory was a recollection of searing pain in one of her ears, when the lion had tried to bring her down.
She had lived, but the long ragged v-shaped rent reminded her that life was never easy.
15
Jane waved goodbye to the coalminers and promised that she would send them some money to cover her share of the fuel, but Weynand told her he would send the money back to her if she did. Their dusty bakkie and boat stained with fi
sh blood and guts over the stern looked as out of place in the corporate ghetto of Melrose Arch as she did right now.
Her feet were black and her finger- and toenails encrusted with dirt. Her hair felt like straw and Alex’s former girlfriend’s once crisply ironed sundress was stained with perspiration patches. She’d telephoned ahead from Dirk’s phone and caught George between meetings. She’d given an approximate arrival time.
A towering bald-headed man in a long coat held open a heavy glass and steel swinging door for her as she entered the airconditioned cool of the Melrose Arch Hotel. ‘Mister Penfold’s suite, please,’ she said to the immaculately dressed African girl behind the reception. Jane ran her fingers through her hair and felt sand. She grimaced.
‘I’m sorry, madam, there is no answer.’
She frowned, but when she gave the receptionist her name she found there was a room – a luxury suite, in fact – booked for her.
The hotel’s decor was a mix of funky modern interspersed with colonial decadence. The smooth lines of the minimalist restaurant to her left contrasted with the deep leather sofas and shelves crammed with antique books in the library bar to her right. Somehow it worked. Vaguely, she wondered what Alex would have thought of it. She shook her head to clear it.
While she had slept on the drive through Mozambique, it had been a fitful rest and she’d woken every time a horn blared or brakes were applied harshly. Once, to her acute embarrassment, she had found herself slumped on Dirk’s shoulder. He had smiled at her when she opened her eyes, horrified to see she was linked to his T-shirt with a silvery strand of drool.
She closed her eyes and leaned against the wall of the lift, which was cool and dark, lit only by an understated blue light. The chime roused her from her micro-sleep.
Jane sighed as she scuffed down the carpeted corridor in her gritty flip-flops. She leaned her forehead against the door as the card clicked home. Bloody George, she thought. At least he could have had the decency to meet her after she’d been bloody hijacked at sea, bloody been in a gun battle, bloody shipwrecked, almost bloody tortured and nearly bloody shagged by a bloody pirate.
‘My God, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you looking so lovely.’
The dimmed lights brightened and there he was, in a charcoal suit and starched white shirt and school tie, not a hair out of place, and smelling deliciously of aftershave. In one hand was a dewy bottle of Pol Roger, the other held two champagne flutes by their stems. She laughed, loud and hard, a release of fatigue, fear and dread. ‘Oh, George.’
He set the bottle and glasses down on the receded bar and came to her, enfolding her in his arms. He nestled his face into her filthy hair and said, ‘Oh, Jane, I thought I’d lost you.’
She felt the lump rise in her throat. She had so much she needed to tell him, to ask him. There was anger, still bottled inside her, but it was soothed by his whispered words.
‘Darling, I would have died if anything had happened to you.’
A tear squeezed from her closed lids and she felt him kiss it away. ‘George, I . . .’
‘Hush. Come this way.’
He led her to a huge bath brimming with bubbles. She smelled aromatic oils heating over a candle. Everything else could wait.
‘Raise your arms,’ he commanded her. She dropped the day pack she still clutched and did as he told her. She slipped out of her sandals as he lifted the dress over her head. He knelt on the floor and she rested her hands on the padded shoulders of his suit jacket as he slid down her pants.
As he stood he offered her his hand, which she took as she stepped into the bath. ‘You don’t know how much I need this.’
He wrinkled his nose. ‘Err, yes, I do.’
She laughed again and it was good to be back with him, whatever he was involved in. It was good to be back in the fold of the corporate world she knew, not at sea, not on an island full of pirates, and not bouncing around the backblocks of Africa. She could easily forget everything that had happened to her.
George left the bathroom and returned, minus his jacket and tie, with sleeves rolled up and the champagne and glasses in hand. He poured a flute for her and then one for himself. Jane slid beneath the surface of the bubbled water. When she surfaced again, he was on one knee, beside the tub. ‘Mmm. Are you going to scrub my back for me?’
‘I’ll do you one better.’ He set down his glass and took her soapy right hand in his. ‘Jane Elizabeth Humphries . . .’
She felt her heart start to beat faster, a jolt of adrenaline cleaving through her tiredness. As she sat up straight, water and foam sluiced over her breasts. Oh God, she thought.
‘Will you do me the honour of being my wife?’
16
Alex fastened the second of his gold cufflinks and checked himself in the mirror. He wore a navy blazer, Oxford cotton shirt and chinos, and had buffed his leather brogues to a high sheen.
He cast an eye over the furnishings and decor of his suite in the D’oreale Grande Hotel in the Emperors Palace casino complex, and wondered how his resort rooms would compare. Here the first word that popped into his head was extravagance. That wasn’t a bad thing for a casino hotel, he supposed, as the idea was probably to inspire punters to hit the tables and win enough money to deck out their suburban homes like one of Louis XIV’s palaces. The furnishings and the colours were nice, though. He made a mental note to call the hotel’s head office and find out who their interior designer was.
Chan had chosen a particularly busy, high profile and highly defended place to meet him. Serious money changed hands at Emperors, and the camo-clad security guards at the car park entrance gate looked as though they’d have no hesitation in firing their R5 assault rifles if someone tried to break the bank in the wrong way. He had parked his Land Cruiser between a Porsche and a new Aston Martin. Did some people want to be car-jacked? He’d liked the look of the British sports car, however, and wondered how hard it would be to boost.
He left his room and took the lift downstairs. Where was the recording studio, he wondered, that put together the soundtrack for every lift and hotel lobby in the world? It was something else to remember for the resort – no elevator music.
Alex walked past reception, returning the smile of the smartly-uniformed brunette behind the counter who caught his eye, then headed left along a hallway that linked the D’oreale Grande to the main casino complex. The walls were lined with gilt-framed copies of old masters. He walked through a metal detector and set off the alarm. Alex lifted his arms while the security guard detected his cell phone and waved him through. Alex took some measure of comfort from the security – it was unlikely Chan or the henchman he would bring to the meeting had been able to smuggle in pistols.
To his right as he entered the casino was a circular room full of slot machines. He didn’t care for their bleeping and chiming and he felt sorry for the people who glared at the flashing screens, hoping for a win. He was addicted to a bigger game, with bigger stakes. The complex was an odd mix of styles. Leaving the French decadence of the hotel behind him, he passed a restaurant modelled on Queen Cleopatra’s barge, and then found himself in a faux Italian piazza, with a statue of Michelangelo’s David in the centre, surrounded by restaurants and fast food joints.
To add to the confusion, someone had plonked the front half of a 1940s DC-3 Dakota cargo aircraft – a Flossie as they’d called them in the South African military – atop one of the forum’s walls. An entranceway beneath the aeroplane led to an amusement arcade. Alex looked up and saw night was falling, the sky a darkening blue, with the first couple of stars poking through the gloom. In fact, he was looking at a roof, high above the jumble of restaurants.
Alex found the steakhouse Chan had mentioned in his email. ‘I think I can see the people I’m meeting,’ Alex said to the maître d’.
He had never met Valiant Chan in person, though he had seen his picture on an internet edition of a South African newspaper. Six months earlier, Chan had been arrested and charged over th
e death of an alleged drug baron called Lee. Speculation in the media, fuelled by leaks from the police, had it that Lee had been hacked to pieces in an escalation of a war between rival gangs over the importation of cocaine and heroin, and the manufacture of the highly addictive Tik, the local name for methamphetamine. The unspoken inference was that thirty-eight-year-old Chan, of the well-to-do suburb of Tokai on the slopes of Cape Town’s Table Mountain, was the victor in that particular battle, and that Lee’s messy demise had been a way of discouraging future competitors. Chan’s team of lawyers had beaten the rap, but there had been no more puff pieces about the determination of a hard-working, budding tycoon fighting off racial stereotypes.
As the slim Eurasian man rose to extend a hand, Alex wondered if Chan was being watched. Gold flashed at his wrist, and when he smiled. ‘Valiant Chan. You must be Mister Tremain.’
The handshake was firm. The pock-faced, stocky henchman beside Chan was introduced as ‘Mister Wu, the brother of the man you are currently entertaining’.
‘No hard feelings,’ Alex said. The other Wu did not return the smile.
‘We’ve already ordered drinks, Mister Tremain, or may I call you Alexandre?’
‘Alex is fine.’
‘And you must call me Valiant.’ Chan called the waiter over and Alex ordered a Scotch and ice.
‘I see you’ve come alone, Alex?’
Alex shrugged. He didn’t know if pleasantries or small talk were a part of doing business in Asia, nor was he inclined to care. ‘Do you want your brother back alive?’
Wu stared back at him and betrayed no sign of emotion.
‘This man, unlike his brother, is unfortunately mute. The fact that you raided the Penfold Son soon after illegally boarding the Peng Cheng tells me that the good Captain Wu was probably not very good at keeping his mouth shut. Am I correct, Alex, in assuming it was you who stormed the Penfold Son?’
