by Tony Park
As he approached the vehicle he took up the pressure on the trigger of his pistol. The windows of the rear cab, he now noticed, were steamed up, as if there was someone inside, breathing heavily. There was no sign of a driver, but perhaps the woman had got in the back and was hiding.
‘I’m coming for you,’ he said.
He moved closer, his weapon at the ready. There was movement inside. Involuntarily, Jorge screamed when the snarling, drooling face of a hyena, teeth bared, popped into view. He pulled the trigger but his shot went wide.
He was turning to get away and steady himself when he saw a man with a shotgun step from the bushes on the roadside. Before Jorge could take aim, he was dead.
*
Fidel Costa slammed the leather-covered steering wheel of the BMW and cursed in Portuguese.
Maybe it was he who was cursed, he thought.
His African grandmother said hyenas carried witches on their backs in the night, and the way that clan of stinking animals had come to the rescue of the equally repugnant Graham Baird made him wonder, briefly, if the veterinarian had someone or something watching over him. Maybe he was a warlock.
Fidel shook his head. His other side told him it was just luck, and he was having a bad run of it at the moment. He would get Baird; it was just a matter of time. He hoped his other contacts here in South Africa, Jorge Silva and the Chinese-Vietnamese gangster, David Li, had experienced better luck than he.
Fidel called David.
‘I haven’t heard from Sally,’ Li said into the handset by way of greeting.
‘She should have been done by now.’
‘I agree. She is a professional, in every way.’
‘So was the man she was sent to visit.’
‘I’ll call you when she reports in,’ Li said.
‘You mean if.’ Fidel ended the call then dialled Jorge Silva’s number.
‘Boa noite,’ said the voice on the other end of the line.
Fidel held his tongue. Jorge Silva was, technically, an underling, but the ex-farmer rarely uttered pleasantries. The man said nothing else.
‘Who is this?’ Fidel asked in English. He didn’t want to identify himself or where he was from if it wasn’t Jorge.
‘John McLean.’
‘Who?’
‘American joke,’ the voice on the end said.
‘Sorry, wrong num–’
‘Howzit, Fidel, hold the phone. This isn’t a wrong number; it’s Graham Baird here. I’m just fucking with you.’
‘I don’t know who you are.’
‘Oh, yes you do. Your guy failed, Fidel. He can’t come to the phone right now, mostly because I took half his head off with a shotgun round. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, Kerry’s fine, as is her dad, Bruce. She just called the hospital; the hooker you sent to him won’t be turning any more tricks. Also, Fidel, I am very annoyed at you for wounding my favourite hyena.’
Fidel gritted his teeth. He would destroy this phone, which was a burner, one bought illegally and not registered, as soon as he was finished with Baird. ‘Listen to me –’
‘No,’ said Baird, all traces of false bonhomie gone from his voice. ‘You listen to me, motherfucker, I’m coming for you.’
Fidel ended the call then broke open the back of the device, took out the SIM card and tossed it out the window of the BMW. He was coming up to Bushbuckridge, the sprawling settlement to the west of the Kruger Park. Here he would lose the vehicle and stay with a distant cousin who also worked for him part-time as a poacher.
No, Fidel said to himself. He would fix Baird, Johnston, the Australian woman and her father. They would not escape him again and he was in no hurry. He would have his revenge for his brother. In time, he would kill them all, but first he might still be able to ruin them, one at a time, ironically by playing them at their own soft-hearted game.
Chapter 18
Kerry looked out the window of the British Airways Boeing and caught a glimpse of the green-blue snake of the Zambezi River that wound its way through the dry khaki bushveld, and Mosi-oa-Tunya, the Smoke that Thunders – Victoria Falls.
The jet turned, paralleling the river for a little while upstream of the falls, and Kerry scanned the waters for elephants that might be crossing, or browsing for food on the banks.
Graham sat next to her, in his trademark bush clothes, which, while frayed at the cuffs, were at least clean. He wore rafter sandals, his concession to civility. She wondered how long it would take him to end up barefoot.
Bruce had been furious that she was not flying back to Australia, but, then, neither was he, despite having been discharged from hospital and cleared to fly.
‘Dad, Graham has a job supervising the darting and de-horning of three black rhinos on a private reserve, and will give the animals a thorough check. It’s very straightforward. I’ll be perfectly fine – nothing can happen to me in Zimbabwe,’ she had told him, the day after they had all survived being assassinated, when he was still in hospital but now with a police officer sitting guard outside his room.
‘Did you hear what you just said?’ her father had replied. ‘Didn’t they have a coup there?’
‘Bruce,’ Kerry had noticed how Nurse Shepherd laid a hand on his forearm as she spoke, ‘Zimbabwe is actually quite a safe country to travel in.’
‘There’s something in the water in Africa,’ Bruce said as Tamara left the room to check on another patient. ‘It makes you all go cuckoo.’
‘Well, I can see what the water’s done to you,’ Kerry countered, nodding towards the disappearing nurse.
‘We’re just friends,’ Bruce said. ‘Tammy has a few days off and she has offered to show me around the Kruger Park when I get out of here. All above board.’
‘So it’s Tammy now, is it?’ Kerry had ribbed.
Bruce was pleased that she would be out of South Africa for a while, at least, and he had said he reserved the right to ‘order’ her to fly back to Australia as soon as she returned from Zimbabwe. It was pretty clear, however, that her father was in no hurry to get home either.
Perhaps he was right about there being something in the water, Kerry thought as she checked her seatbelt for landing. The flight attendant walked down the aisle and collected Graham’s fourth empty Windhoek Lager can. She gave Kerry a sympathetic look and Kerry just gave an eye roll in return. Graham had assured her they would be picked up at the airport – the game reserve was sending a car and driver – so it didn’t matter if he had a drink or two. Kerry had limited herself to one glass of white wine.
The aircraft bucked, thanks to a hot thermal rising up off the baking black runway, and Kerry grabbed hold of the armrest. Graham put a hand on hers and she didn’t try to move him away. The truth was, she was still unsettled by the attacks on her and Graham and Bruce, which had also reminded her of the ordeal she had gone through in Mozambique. The police captain investigating the case, Sannie van Rensburg, had said there were SMS messages between the phones owned by the dead prostitute and the man who had tried to kill Kerry, indicating that Eli would have been the female assassin’s next target, after Bruce. Without going into details about the illegal cross-border rescue mission, Graham had told the police that he had killed Costa’s younger brother in self-defence and that Kerry had been kidnapped but had managed to escape Costa’s thugs. He had said he was sure Fidel Costa was behind the attempts, but had to concede that he had not seen the face of the man who had come to Ukuphila to finish him off.
A couple of the South Africans Kerry worked with in Australia had filled her head with horror stories before she’d left home about how she would be carjacked, murdered and/or raped, and she had brushed off their concerns. Kerry was sure that if her itinerary had gone as planned she would have had an incident-free holiday, but meeting Graham, or rather not meeting him when she first arrived, had turned all that – and her world – upside down.
Graham, too, had tried to dissuade Kerry from coming with him, but she had insisted. After all, as Graham hi
mself reluctantly admitted, if he had remembered and honoured her booking to come and work her allotted period as a volunteer at Ukuphila, he wouldn’t have taken the job in Victoria Falls this particular week. Kerry had been more than happy to book a flight to see the falls – the only reason she hadn’t already was that she was supposed to still be with Graham at the wildlife orphanage.
Graham had promised Bruce that he would take care of Kerry. She had told both of them, when Graham drove to the hospital the morning after the attempted killings, that she did not need to be protected, and nor did she want to be treated like some man’s charge.
The fact was, though, that she was glad Graham was there next to her. Kerry was also pleased that she had at least been able to spend some time with her father alone, save for the frequent check-ups from Nurse Shepherd.
‘Are you OK, kiddo?’ Bruce had asked her, when they were by themselves.
She had shrugged. ‘Kidnapped twice, nearly killed, nearly raped, what do you reckon, Dad?’
He’d laughed, and it had been infectious. ‘You’ll be right, but, trust me on this, if you want to talk about it, sometime later, then don’t hold back. To me, to a therapist, it doesn’t matter, but don’t bottle it all up too long. I did that after Vietnam and it took me a long time to come right.’
She nodded, remembering his dark times – too much drinking, long days and sometimes weeks when he was on leave and wouldn’t want to leave the house, her mother’s tears, the screams from her parents’ bedroom as Bruce lived out his horrors in nightmares and Anh tried to calm him.
‘I will, Dad, I promise. Can I ask you something, though?’
‘Anything, kiddo.’
‘You know how we were just laughing about all this shit, just a few seconds ago?’
‘Yes?’
‘Is that what it was like for you, in the war? Terrified one minute then laughing the next?’
He nodded. ‘Pretty much. Humans are good at putting up defences, black humour and all that. Plus, and this is what you have to be careful of, there’s a thrill to it. Winston Churchill went to the Boer War as a war correspondent, and he summed it up by saying something like “There’s nothing so exhilarating as being shot at and surviving”.’
She thought about his words. She had come to Africa wanting to help save the continent’s wildlife, not to be a soldier. ‘I get it, but I don’t think that life is for me.’
‘Good, love,’ Bruce had said. ‘Take care of yourself in Zimbabwe.’
Next to her, Graham burped, jolting her out of her reverie.
Kerry sighed. The aircraft taxied up to a garish-looking airport terminal that Graham informed her had been built by the Chinese.
Zimbabwe was the third country she had visited since arriving in Africa and thankfully it was on better terms than her trip to Mozambique. When they entered the terminal Kerry, as an Australian, had to queue for and buy a visa before getting her passport stamped. The flight was full, mostly tourists visiting the falls, so Kerry was going to be a while. Graham, like the few South Africans on the flight, was able to proceed straight to passport control.
‘I’ll see what’s happening with our ride and meet you at the baggage carousel,’ Graham said.
‘OK.’
It was a slow but fairly good-natured business moving from the first of two counters, where she paid for her visa, to the second, where her passport was stamped. It seemed like needless duplication of effort, but she held her tongue and kept her patience. Within twenty minutes Kerry was through.
Graham had found their bags and a trolley, and true to his word he was waiting for her. Kerry spotted two men dressed like guides in khaki bush shirts and shorts; the logo on their shirts said Tatenda Safaris.
‘That’s them,’ said Graham. ‘Tatenda means “thank you” in Shona.’
Kerry followed Graham, pushing the trolley which he seemed to have left in her care. Graham greeted the men and introduced Kerry.
‘Welcome to Zimbabwe,’ said one of the men, whose name was Blessed.
‘Thank you, Blessed – tatenda. Now, which one of you is our driver?’ Graham asked.
The two men looked to each other and there was an awkward pause.
‘Um, Mr Garth said you would be driving yourself,’ Blessed said. ‘Nicholas here drove your vehicle to the airport and I now have to take him to Mr Garth’s lodge in Hwange National Park.’
‘Oh,’ said Graham.
‘Graham,’ Kerry said quietly, ‘you’ve had too much to drink to drive.’
‘Shush.’
‘Don’t you tell me to shush.’
‘There is a problem?’ Blessed asked.
‘No, no problem at all.’
Kerry put her hands on her hips. ‘Yes, there is a problem. I’m not getting into a vehicle driven by this man. He’s pissed to the eyeballs.’
Blessed looked down at his suede veldskoen bush shoes. ‘Ah, Mr Garth does not allow us to drive the vehicles when we have been drinking.’
‘Good idea,’ Kerry said.
Blessed looked to her. ‘Perhaps you can drive Dr Baird, madam?’
Kerry looked skyward. ‘Yes. Well, I suppose I’ll have to, won’t I.’
‘Stop fretting about nothing,’ Graham said.
‘Do you at least know where we’re going?’
‘More or less. Blessed, can you give me directions to the game reserve, please?’
Blessed looked at his shoes again, then at Nicholas and finally back to Graham, though he avoided eye contact. ‘Ah, there is a problem.’
‘You don’t say,’ said Kerry, rolling her eyes. ‘What is it?’
‘A local chief, he has invaded the reserve,’ Blessed said to Kerry.
‘Oh, no!’
Graham shook his head. ‘Damn. The farm invasions are pretty much over in Zimbabwe – there’s virtually no more farmland left to take – but now the last-ditch efforts are focused on taking over privately owned game reserves, one of the few uses of land that still makes money for the country.’
‘You are exactly correct,’ Blessed said. ‘The chief and his supporters have blockaded the gates. We flew out the last tourists this morning by helicopter. No one can get in by road. Mr Garth told us to bring a vehicle for you so that you are not stranded.’
‘We can try and organise a chopper,’ Graham said.
‘Perhaps, sir. Mr Garth is in Bulawayo talking to the provincial governor – they went to school together – to see if he can get the chief to leave the reserve, but for now no one is going in or out.’
Kerry could see this was not Graham’s fault, but she was left with the feeling, once again, that nothing he was involved in ever seemed to go according to plan. ‘So what do we do now?’
Graham shrugged. ‘Go get a drink?’
Kerry was exasperated. ‘All right, but I drive.’
Blessed escorted them out to the car park and gave Kerry a quick familiarisation of the Toyota Land Cruiser they would be driving for the next two days, or however long they ended up staying in Zimbabwe. Graham seemed to be paying more attention to his phone, which had beeped with a couple of messages. Kerry guessed he was very familiar with four-wheel drive vehicles, unlike her.
The plan had been for them to spend two nights at Garth’s game reserve just outside of Victoria Falls and for Kerry to watch the darting and de-horning of the reserve’s rhinos. At some point during their stay they – or Kerry at least – would visit the falls. Back in Johannesburg they would pick up a connection to Cape Town, where Graham would be, reluctantly, speaking at Sarah Hoyland’s Animals Without Borders fundraising event after performing a check-up on the rhinos at Kwangela Game Reserve.
They got into the vehicle. ‘Is there any point in us staying two nights now?’ Kerry asked.
Graham got into the front passenger seat of the Land Cruiser. ‘We may as well stay here, unless you want to spend an extra night in Johannesburg.’
Kerry drove through the airport car park, tentatively at first as she
got used to driving the big vehicle. It was different from other Land Cruisers she had seen in Australia. This one had been modified, with a big stretched cab designed to take up to nine passengers sitting in three rows of three behind the driver and front passenger. It felt like driving a tank – a fast tank as she found out when she left the car park and turned onto the main road.
‘Watch out for speed traps. The cops here are notorious for finding ways to fleece people,’ Graham offered, before closing his eyes and settling into his seat.
‘I don’t even know where I’m going,’ Kerry said.
‘Straight,’ he said without opening his eyes. ‘If you get to the waterfall you’ve gone too far.’
‘Where will we stay?’
‘No idea.’
Kerry took a deep breath. She had learned that things most certainly did not go according to plan all the time in Africa, but this complete lack of a plan was enough to make her want to scream her lungs out. She gripped the steering wheel hard enough to hurt as she fought to keep her anger in check. She didn’t have a guidebook and hadn’t begun to look at accommodation online as she had assumed they’d be staying in the game reserve.
As she approached what looked like the outskirts of town, judging by the Zambezi Lager billboard welcoming her to Victoria Falls, Kerry was stopped at a police roadblock. She had kept a close eye on her speed, so she wasn’t worried when the policeman on duty greeted her and asked to see her driver’s licence.
‘Australia? You are very far.’
‘Yes,’ she smiled.
‘What have you brought me from Australia?’
Kerry was flummoxed. ‘Um . . .’
‘A sunny disposition and a wish for world peace,’ Graham said, opening his eyes at last.
The policeman laughed and waved them on their way. ‘Safe journey.’
They drove into town and the first hotel Kerry saw, on the left, was called the Sprayview. ‘What’s that one like?’
Graham opened his eyes again. ‘Last time I stayed at the Sprayview there were no seats on the toilets – someone had stolen them all – and I got food poisoning. Says it’s under new management, though. It was always good value.’
