by Tony Park
Hess unzipped Orlov’s Russian camouflage smock and, with difficulty, removed it from the unconscious man. He stuffed the jacket under the seat. He wanted to arouse as little suspicion as possible.
From the clinic doorway Isabella could see the helicopter now, coming in low and fast over the trees like a gigantic dragonfly. What I could have done with that ten hours ago, she thought.
The machine slowed and reared up on its tail as it approached the square between the mission buildings. Isabella held up her forearm to her face as the stinging dust struck her and the wash from the rotor snatched the cigarette from her fingers. The fools would be spraying the patients with grit. She had left the louvres on the clinic windows open as there was not a breath of wind that morning.
As the helicopter touched down, the rotors began to slow and the dust storm abated. Isabella angrily started to stride across to the chopper. This was a clinic, damn it, not an airport, she would tell them. She was checked by the sight of a tall blond man – unusually handsome, was her first thought – lifting an older, heavier man with a moustache down from one of the helicopter’s seats. The older man, both men in fact, were covered in blood. Isabella forgot her anger, doubled over to clear the spinning rotor blades, and ran to the helicopter to help them.
‘Gosh, ma’am, are we all glad to see you,’ the tall blond man called above the noise of the dying engine, his accent a thick American drawl. Hess had noted Isabella’s olive complexion and guessed that she was a ‘Porc’, South African slang for Portuguese.
‘What has happened?’ she asked in English. The two gardeners, who had been resting in the shade of the clinic, came rushing out with a stretcher.
‘Hunting accident, ma’am. My friend here, he accidentally shot himself in the leg. Sounds stupid, I know, but it happens. It’s his calf. He might have a fractured shinbone. He sure is in some pain.’ Hess hoped that by appearing as guileless as possible he would throw the woman off-balance and avoid too many probing questions. They lifted Orlov onto the stretcher, and Isabella checked his pupils and pulse as she and Hess trotted alongside the litter.
‘Why didn’t you fly him to Maputo? There isn’t even a doctor here normally,’ she said, annoyance at the men’s stupidity hardening her voice. Boys with guns, when would they ever learn?
‘Well, that was our plan, but then we passed overhead and saw your red cross, and decided to chance it. My buddy here, he didn’t look too good and I didn’t know if he’d last much longer,’ Hess said, a little too rapidly.
‘Well you were probably right about that,’ Isabella said, pushing open the swinging screen door of the clinic with her back. There was something odd about what the man had just said, but she didn’t have the time to stop and analyse it. The gardeners carried the unconscious Orlov past the row of beds in the main room of the clinic and then into the small treatment room at the end of the building. There they placed the stretcher on a surgical bed and stepped back. Isabella thanked them and said they could go. ‘And it would be better if you left us now, too, Mr . . . ?’
‘Schultz, George Schultz, ma’am. But, I sure would like to be here when my buddy comes to. He’ll be very confused.’ Hess wanted to be there to urge Orlov to silence when he regained consciousness. If the man started babbling in Russian, it would be one more oddity he would have to explain away.
Isabella hurriedly washed her hands at the sink in the corner of the treatment room and pulled on two fresh pairs of rubber gloves. With the prevalence of AIDS in southern Africa she always double-gloved, just to be sure. ‘Yes, well, Mr Schultz, I understand your concern for your friend, but unless you give us room to work, your friend may never come to. Please wait outside now, OK? You can sit on the step there.’
Hess nodded. It was clear the woman knew what she was doing and a black woman was scrubbing her hands in the sink, preparing to help the female doctor. Hess had to hope Orlov stayed quiet until he could get to him first. The doctor was filling a syringe from a small glass bottle, presumably an anaesthetic. His main problem now would be getting Orlov away from the clinic before the woman began to ask too many difficult questions.
‘Well, if you’re sure I can’t be of assistance, Doctor, I’ll just wait outside,’ he said in his thick phoney accent.
Isabella cut away the bloodstained field dressing and surveyed the wound. ‘It’s a mess,’ she said in Portuguese to the nun. ‘Compartment syndrome – the blood is trapped in the leg. We’ll have to cut him. Shit . . . Sorry, Sister.’
Sergeant Jose Mpofu shook his head and licked the tip of his pencil. He began writing in his ponderous hand in the police-issue notebook. This would be a long report. A lot of paperwork, he sighed.
Every now and then there was the screech and clang of twisted metal being wrenched as the two mechanics struggled and sweated at the work of levering apart the prime mover and the bus. The bodies of the two drivers, or what was left of them, were still enmeshed in the glass and steel and plastic of their vehicles, and it would probably be nightfall before they were freed.
Already the sun was low on the horizon. The sergeant didn’t have a watch, but he guessed the time to be close to five. He had hoped to get to the mission clinic just up the road before dark to interview the last of the surviving passengers, but his orders were to stay at the scene of the accident until the remaining bodies, those of the drivers, were retrieved. He didn’t want to be too late home. There had been a basket of live chickens tied with the other luggage on the roof of the bus but, sadly, it appeared the four chickens had suffered broken necks as a result of the accident. As their owner had not come forward to claim them (probably because he or she was now dead), Sergeant Mpofu had decided to take the bodies of the birds into protective custody. His wife would be pleased, for once.
The sun was setting by the time Isabella again emerged from the clinic. She was tired and she stank, and she was looking forward to a bath.
The tall blond American – Mr Schultz, she recalled after a moment’s thought – was walking towards her across the square. He had been talking to his African friend, who stood by the helicopter along with the machine’s Caucasian pilot, whom Isabella had still not met. The man was sitting in the open cargo door of the helicopter smoking a cigarette. Isabella wondered why they weren’t all crowding her for news.
She studied the American as she lit a cigarette of her own. She guessed him to be in his mid to late forties, but his muscled arms and broad shoulders showed he exercised regularly and there did not seem to be a gram of fat on his big frame. There was something not quite right about him, though. Something cold, maybe something false. It is in the eyes, she thought, as he approached. She looked into them and saw no emotion, no concern, even as he mouthed the words.
‘How’s my buddy, Doctor? We’ve been worried sick about him. Is he gonna pull through?’
‘Yes. It was difficult. It was the artery, but I have repaired that now. He lost a lot of blood. You must let him rest here tonight, at least. If you move him now and the wound reopens, he may bleed to death.’
Hess frowned. This was not what he wanted to hear. He had hoped to be on his way at dusk, and to cross the border in darkness. The longer they stayed at the mission, the greater the risk of their being discovered for what they were.
‘You’re sure, Doc? Only, I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier today. Maybe we should fly him to Maputo tonight. No offence, but maybe he’d be better off in a bigger hospital now?’
‘None taken, Mr Schultz,’ Isabella said. ‘But, no, the best thing for your friend now is to rest. If you wish, you can send your helicopter to Maputo to the hospital and pick up some more blood, plasma and dressings for us and then you can move him when he regains consciousness tomorrow.’
Hess did not want the helicopter out of his sight. It was their only means of escape.
‘I’m taking our friend now, Doctor,’ Hess said, stepping around Isabella as he started for the clinic.
Isabella reached out and grab
bed the man’s upper arm. Anger flared in her eyes. ‘I saved his life, Mr Schultz, but you might kill him if you move him now!’
Hess checked his pace. He took a deep breath and forced himself to stay calm and not drop his disguised accent. ‘He can’t stay here. He needs to get to a proper hospital. We’re leaving.’
‘And if he starts to bleed again? If he needs a transfusion in the aircraft, can you or your colleagues do that?’
Hess frowned. He had started intravenous drips on combat casualties in his time, but he knew nothing about blood transfusions.
‘The other factor to consider is that I have precious little blood here, certainly none that I would let you take away if you left now. If your friend does need a transfusion, I may have to take the blood straight from you or one of your men.’
He looked into her eyes. The woman was not exaggerating. ‘OK, Doc,’ he said, forcing a smile. ‘You win. We’ll stay the night. We’ll leave in the morning, if our friend is well enough to move, and I’ll bring you back some more supplies tomorrow after we’ve dropped him at Maputo,’ he lied. ‘That’s the least we can do.’
‘Very well, Mr Schultz. Now, I need to get some details. Your friend’s name, nationality, passport number. All your details as well. I’m sure you’ll appreciate this continent’s love of paperwork, and it is even worse for us poor doctors.’ Now it was Isabella’s turn to lie. This was a non-government clinic, dispensing health care to anyone who needed it. There were no records to be kept or papers to fill out – that was one of the reasons she liked working there. However, she wondered what reaction her questions would provoke from the American.
‘Sure. Happy to help, ma’am. But if you don’t mind me saying, you look as if you’re about to fall asleep on your feet. I’m sure we’ll have time for all this in the morning and I want to make sure my boys,’ he jerked a thumb towards Klaus, Viljoen and the Mozambican tracker, ‘are squared away with some chow and a bed before it’s too dark.’
Isabella nodded, concerned by his blatant evasiveness. ‘Tomorrow will be fine. I will tell the mission cooks to put on some extra food for you and your men. It will not be a gourmet feast, but it will be filling.’
‘We’ve got rations on board the chopper, ma’am. Don’t bother, please.’
‘No, it is no trouble at all,’ she said. ‘Come to the house over there around seven. OK? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go and freshen up.’ Before she headed for the cottage, though, she went in search of Joseph, the nightwatchman.
‘So, what were you hunting?’ Isabella asked later, as she ladled goat’s meat stew into four enamelled bowls. The nuns were eating by themselves, as they usually did, leaving Isabella with the American, his African assistant and the helicopter pilot.
Hess had introduced Klaus and Viljoen under false names and told Isabella that the fourth member of their party, the Mozambican tracker, had hitched a lift to Mapai to visit relatives. In truth, Hess had paid the man his promised sum and told him to disappear. The man was no longer of any use to him.
He had tried to leave Klaus at the helicopter, to guard the ivory, while the rest of them ate, but the doctor had been insistent that the African join them for dinner and reassured him that no one would approach the aircraft. He realised that if he had pushed the point he would probably arouse her curiosity.
‘Buffalo. At least, we were trying to hunt buffalo,’ Hess lied, then tasted the stew. It was bland and oily, but Hess didn’t care. To a soldier, food was nothing more than fuel for the body.
‘Surely you don’t need a helicopter to shoot buffalo?’ she asked, smiling.
‘Well, our friend, Mr Jankowski,’ Hess had described Orlov as a wealthy Polish immigrant businessman who now lived in the United States, ‘is not short of cash. We’ve been staying on the coast, near Beira, doing some diving as well, and the chopper makes it easy for us to get around and do everything in a short period of time.’
‘Looks like you were rushing things a little too much,’ she chided.
Hess laughed, but secretly bridled at the woman’s insolence. He would dearly have loved to teach her a lesson in respect. ‘You’ve been most kind, but Frank here,’ he said pointing to Viljoen with a fork, ‘gets kinda nervous if he’s away from his chopper for too long, and Luke,’ Hess nodded to Klaus, ‘has offered to help him check the rotor blades. In fact, we all need to turn in. It’s been a big day.’
Isabella nodded. Clearly her questioning was making the men nervous and they had stayed with her the bare minimum amount of time. She hoped Joseph had had time to follow her instructions. ‘You’re sure we can’t fix you a bed in the storeroom?’
‘No, but thanks again, Doctor. We’ll sleep in the helicopter. It won’t be the first time.’
‘Very well, gentlemen. Goodnight.’
Soon after the men departed, Isabella answered a soft knock on the back door of Father Patrick’s cottage. Joseph, the nightwatchman, dressed in green overalls with his aged shotgun slung over one shoulder, greeted her in Portuguese.
‘Ivory, Doctor,’ the nightwatchman said. He had followed her directions, and sneaked through the bush around the mission station and come in behind the nuns’ cottage, where he could approach the parked helicopter unseen while the hunters were dining with Isabella. With the cargo doors removed, there was nothing stopping him from examining the interior of the machine. Joseph had smelled elephant as soon as he stuck his balaclava-clad head into the strange machine. Under a green tarpaulin were two of the biggest tusks he had ever seen in his life. Although he didn’t tell the doctor how he knew, he had a good idea how much money tusks such as these would fetch.
Isabella took a deep breath when he told her the amount, knowing the end value of the ivory, wherever it was destined for, would be many times the sum a Mozambican poacher could expect to earn. She debated the merits of sending Joseph into Mapai immediately to fetch the police. However, she didn’t know if the police station would be manned at that hour and, besides, she would feel safer if she had an armed guard of her own at the mission during the night.
‘Tomorrow, Joseph, first thing you go to Mapai. Fetch the police. Tell them what you have seen. I will keep these men here until the police arrive. Understand?’
Joseph nodded.
Sergeant Mpofu was up early. His belly gurgled pleasingly every now and then. The unclaimed chickens would never be claimed now.
The sun was coming up in front of him as he cycled up the long dirt driveway to the mission. He wanted to get this business at the mission over with as quickly as possible. Some of the other officers from the station were taking a trip into Maputo later in the day and the sergeant did not want to miss his lift. It should have been his day off, but the bus accident had ruined all their rosters and he still had to interview the surviving passengers. The cocking handle of the AK-47 slung across his back dug painfully into his kidneys every time his old cycle hit a bump, and there were many bumps on this road.
Isabella was awake early as well and had just finished repeating her instructions to Joseph for the third time, when she saw the portly police sergeant cycling up to the mission clinic. Relief flooded through her, calming her jumpy nerves. Joseph was loyal and hardworking, but she doubted he would be able to convey the seriousness of the situation to the police on his own.
Karl Hess had slept on the cargo floor of the helicopter in his sleeping bag, sandwiched between the plundered ivory and Viljoen. Klaus sat on the ground with his back resting uncomfortably against one of the upright supports of the helicopter skids. His AK-47 rested on his lap, but was hidden by the coarse woollen blanket draped across his knees.
Hess checked his watch. Six o’clock. With luck they would be across the border and safely ensconced at the lodge before nine.
‘Baas!’ Klaus hissed.
Hess looked up and swore when he saw the policeman. He sat up, unzipped his sleeping bag and then reached into the rucksack he had been using as a pillow. Using his back as a shield to the fast ap
proaching policeman, he pulled out a Glock automatic pistol and thrust it into the waistband of the trousers he had slept in. He swung his long legs out of the chopper, at the same time digging Viljoen in the ribs with an elbow. ‘Wake up. Be ready to start this thing in ten minutes, or on my signal.’
Viljoen rubbed his eyes and started to protest, but then held his tongue when he saw the uniformed man dismounting from his bicycle a scant fifty metres away. Hess strode across the square and arrived at the policeman’s side at the exact same moment as Isabella.
Sergeant Mpofu recognised the doctor. How could he not? He fancied himself a ladies’ man and, though he did not remember his former colonial masters with anything other than hatred and contempt, he knew a beautiful woman when he saw one, and acted accordingly.
‘Good morning, Doctor, and how are you this fine day?’ he asked, smiling, in Portuguese.
Isabella flashed him her warmest smile and replied, in her native tongue, ‘Sergeant, say nothing and do nothing to alarm this man. He is a criminal and he and his men are armed.’
The smile fell from the sergeant’s face for a second until he regained his composure.
‘Good morning, officer. Schultz is my name. Do you speak English?’ Hess butted in, delivering his lines in his thick American drawl.
The sergeant looked at Isabella. He had no idea what the tall white man had just said.
Isabella filled the awkward silence that followed. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Schultz, the sergeant speaks no English. Perhaps I can translate for you both?’
Hess nodded warily, and launched into his story about a hunting accident. To Isabella, he asked, ‘How is our friend doing? I’m getting really worried about him and I think we should move him to Maputo as quickly as possible.’
‘A moment, please. Allow me to translate for the sergeant,’ Isabella said, desperate to buy time and not let the American bully her. To the policeman, she said, ‘He thinks I’m translating for him. There is ivory in the helicopter. They are poachers and one of them has been shot. He is in the clinic. You must arrest them now!’
