Far Horizon

by Tony Park

  Hess returned to his armchair and crossed his long legs. He settled back into the soft leather and raised his drink to his thin lips. He watched the Russian over the rim of his glass and held back a smile at the man’s anticipation. The brute was nearly salivating, Hess thought.

  There was a knock at the door connecting the dining room to the kitchen. ‘Come,’ said Hess.

  Klaus walked in, towering over a petite young black girl dressed in a short red satin evening dress and tottering unsteadily on black patent-leather platform shoes. Her long chocolate-coloured hair was braided and piled high, but the sophisticated style and heavy make-up did nothing to hide her age. Her legs were long and slender, her breasts tiny and barely showing against the flimsy fabric of the dress. Her eyes were wide and nervous, like a startled impala in the moment it senses the presence of a predator.

  ‘She’s Swazi. Sixteen, or so her parents claim. Isn’t that right, Klaus?’ Hess said with a bemused smile.

  ‘Yes baas,’ the big African said with a leering grin.

  ‘And a virgin, yes?’ Orlov asked, unable to hide his eagerness.

  The girl turned her face away to hide her embarrassment and fidgeted with her hands, intertwining her long, thin fingers.

  ‘Certified, by a doctor,’ Hess said. ‘Klaus, show Herr Orlov and his guest to their quarters.’

  Orlov nodded his thanks as he stood to leave. ‘You have done well, Karl, as always.’

  Hess thought this man, this former soldier, pathetic at that moment. ‘Enjoy,’ he said as he raised his gin and tonic in a mock salute.

  11

  ‘Theron needs to speak to you.’

  The phone call from Rian on the drive to Punda Maria continued to rattle Mike. He spent the rest of the next day in the camp by himself, as much as he could with ten other people dependent on him. He was particularly conscious of Sarah, who kept watching him with a suspicious look on her face. That was the worst part of the job – the inability to escape from people when he needed to.

  He busied himself cleaning the truck’s fuel and air filters, checking the tyre pressures, oil and water – anything to give himself time to think. He avoided Jane, feeling even guiltier now that he was faced with the prospect of news about Isabella’s killers after so long. He hoped the police had caught someone. He longed to call Theron, to ask him what the meeting was about, but Rian had not given him the policeman’s number.

  The next morning they drove through their last stretch of Kruger to the Pafuri gate in the very far northern tip of the park. Usually, he felt a little sad to leave the park, with its bounteous game, good roads, spotlessly clean facilities and almost Teutonic efficiency. He knew things would get rougher the farther north they travelled, but today he was in a hurry to leave.

  The drive to Messina was long and hot. They wound through the old African homeland of Venda, where the standard of living wasn’t as good as in other parts of South Africa. In Venda many people still lived in poverty, in simple huts with mud walls and thatched roofs, although there were signs of new housing projects under construction.

  They rolled into the border town of Messina around eleven and Mike dropped his passengers at the Spur restaurant, a fast-food joint with an American wild-west theme, on the outskirts of town.

  ‘My boss called yesterday and asked me to pick up a spare alternator for one of his other trucks. He’s got a good deal on a reconditioned one from a guy in Messina,’ Mike told them. ‘I’ve got to go pick it up now, but you’ll be fine here for a while. Enjoy your lunch. I’ll be back soon.’

  They bought his story, although he couldn’t help but notice Sarah’s doubting frown. He wondered if she had been able to hear Rian through the mobile phone.

  He had to move fast, as the border post was a good fifteen kilometres from the town itself. He wanted to get back to the crew within about an hour and a half. Any longer and they would start to worry. He had learned as a tour guide that passengers soon became overly dependent on him.

  As he neared the border he swung off the road and followed a sign to the South African Police Service post. A uniformed officer in a peaked baseball-style cap and matching blue fatigues waved him through a wire-mesh gate, topped with coils of nasty-looking razor wire.

  ‘Captain Theron, please,’ he said to the hot and bored looking female officer behind the charge desk in the main police station. She picked up the phone and spoke Afrikaans into the receiver when her call was answered.

  ‘Down the corridor, up the stairs. First office on the left,’ she said, fanning herself with a manila folder.

  His rubber sandals squeaked on the polished linoleum floor. At the top of the stairs he knocked loudly on a door with a sign that said ‘Investigations’.

  ‘Mike, Mike, come in, please. How have you been? My God, where did all that bloody hair come from, man!’ Fanie Theron grabbed his hand and shook it vigorously. ‘This is Captain Radebe, the local head of investigations,’ he continued.

  Mike shook hands with an African man who had a high-and-tight US Marine-style haircut, and wore a white shirt and black trousers. Theron was wearing a white polo shirt and jeans. An air-conditioner hummed noisily and dripped water into an overflowing foam cup on the floor. Mike took a seat in a hard-backed metal chair. On the desk in front of him was a cheap radio-cassette player. Radebe sat behind the desk, Theron sat on it. He took out a cigarette and offered Mike one. He accepted the smoke and a light.

  ‘We’re not supposed to smoke in here, but Thomas and I, we can’t do our job without them, eh, Thomas?’ Theron said to the other policeman, who just smiled.

  ‘Fanie, it’s good to see you again. Is there some news? I’ve got people waiting for me,’ Mike said.

  ‘Ja, we know. Jo’burg, Kruger, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique. We got your itinerary from your boss,’ the big detective said.

  Mike was surprised, as he couldn’t see what his full itinerary had to do with anything the police were up to.

  ‘Mike, let me get to the point. I’ve got a question for you, and, maybe, some news for you about the men who killed your girlfriend.’

  Mike nodded.

  ‘First, the question. In your statement regarding the events of last year you said that after you fired the AK at the poachers, after the ranger was shot, that you heard a man call out in a foreign language, but that you couldn’t place that language. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Since then, have you been able to recall anything about that voice, that strange language?’

  ‘No,’ Mike said. Then added, ‘Sometimes I hear it, in dreams, you know? But the words are a jumble.’ He didn’t want them to think he was a basket case, but it was true that the whole scene, the elephant charge and the gunfire, sometimes featured in his dreams. Isabella also sometimes walked towards him, arms outstretched, beckoning, with blood dripping from the hole in her head, but he didn’t mention that to Theron.

  ‘If you heard that language, that accent, again, would you be able to place it?’ Theron asked.

  Mike got the impression this was very important to him – it must have been for Theron to travel to the border from Pretoria for their meeting.

  ‘I don’t know, Fanie. I really don’t know.’

  ‘I’m going to play you a tape, and I want you to listen very carefully. It’s a tape of a couple of our linguists saying some things in different languages and I want you to tell me if you recognise anything that sounds familiar from that day.’

  Mike nodded, and Fanie stabbed with a meaty finger the play button on the ghetto blaster.

  What followed was a string of short phrases, each of three or four words, repeated, Mike imagined, word for word, in five different languages. The first, he could tell, was German. He recognised none of the words, and none sounded like the cries he had heard in the Mozambican bush.

  The next language he wasn’t sure about – maybe Italian, or possibly Romanian. Again, he shook his head.

  The next
string of phrases he recognised as Afrikaans. He’d heard that language enough, and even knew a few words of it. He shook his head again.

  Mike looked up as the fourth set of phrases rolled off the tape. The first phrase, whatever the person was saying, meant nothing to him, but there was something about the guttural accent, the rhythm of the words that started the wheels of his mind spinning. In the pause between the first and second phrases he tried to recall the words from his nightmares. He heard them, again, when the voice on the tape resumed speaking.

  ‘Stop! Play that again.’

  Theron pressed the rewind button and re-cued the tape. He pressed play.

  ‘That’s it, or almost it. That’s the language I heard. Maybe not word for word, but close enough,’ Mike said. He was excited, and eager to learn more. ‘What’s he saying?’

  Theron gestured towards the black policeman. ‘Captain Radebe can help us there. He spent a bit of time in the old Soviet Union in the good old days.’

  Radebe nodded. ‘In the good old days, before I was a policeman,’ he said with a smile. ‘The voice is speaking Russian. The man is saying, “I’ve been hit, I’ve been shot, help me”.’

  ‘Russian?’ Mike replied, surprised, although now that he had heard a few phrases spoken in a row he could identify the language more easily.

  ‘We get a few Russian mafia types snooping around Africa. Usually it’s diamonds or weapons. Sometimes they’re here for fun. Sometimes for hunting,’ Theron said.

  ‘You’re chasing a Russian?’

  ‘A foreign national is the subject of our investigations into the death of that elephant last year. I’ll need you to add to your statement, now that you can identify the language you heard spoken on that day.’

  ‘What about the deaths of Isabella and the Mozambican ranger, and all those people at the clinic?’ Mike snapped.

  Theron held up open palms to placate him. ‘I’d ask the same question if I were you, too, Mike, but that, unfortunately, is not our jurisdiction. I’m keeping the Mozambican police informed of everything that’s happening with our investigation. I wish I could tell you they’ve made progress on the murder inquiries, but they haven’t. They are still treating the deaths at the hospital as a separate incident from the elephant kill and the ranger’s death. As far as they’re concerned, the hospital deaths were caused by bandits.’

  ‘Bandits don’t fly helicopters. So what can you do now?’ Mike asked.

  ‘There is a man who is, or, I should say, has just been in South Africa. He is a Russian citizen and he is here on a hunting safari. So far, all the indications are that it is a perfectly legal trip. We’ve been keeping an eye on him where we can, and we have the means to get closer to him and his guides if the right opportunity presents itself.’

  ‘So why don’t you talk to him? Bring him in and question him?’

  ‘It’s not that easy, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate. The man has done nothing wrong, broken no laws, and he’s not even a South African citizen.’

  ‘Then what about the hunter who’s leading him around?’

  ‘You’re quick, Mike, and we’re on the same wavelength. He, the hunter, is also the subject of surveillance and an investigation. He is . . . what’s the term in English? He is known to us. Known to me, actually.’ Theron stubbed out his cigarette and reached for another. Mike declined his offer, intent on learning more.

  ‘You remember my theory, about the helicopter being used in the hunt?’ Theron continued. Mike nodded. ‘After I left you last year my officers and I interviewed the owners of every helicopter charter company in South Africa and as many freelance helicopter pilots as we could track down.’

  ‘Big job,’ Mike said.

  ‘Yes and no. I know a few ex-military pilots. Some of them are in business for themselves and, when business is slow, they will do almost anything for a price.’

  ‘You found the pilot?’

  Theron shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know, and that’s the truth. There was a suspicious incident during our investigations. I spoke to one man I knew from my time in the military in the old days, in South West Africa . . . er, sorry, Namibia,’ he corrected himself and smiled at Radebe.

  ‘Anyway, this oke seemed . . . well, he seemed not very relaxed when I started questioning him about charters to Mozambique. He denied ever flying across the border, of course, but I told him to contact me if he heard of anyone else who had been taking on illegal charters. About a week later I got a message that he had telephoned and needed to speak to me urgently. I went around to his house the next day and found him. He was dead. Shot with an assault rifle – an AK-47, most likely – during a robbery of his home.’

  ‘An unfortunate coincidence,’ Mike said.

  ‘I don’t believe in coincidences like that,’ Theron said, shaking his head. ‘I interviewed his latest girlfriend – this pilot was a stud of note back in the old days, I can tell you, and he was still doing well for himself. The woman arrived at the house just after me. Fortunately she was not living in the house at the time and had not been there when the killers arrived. She had been with the pilot, Viljoen was his name, for a few weeks. During that time she said he had been gone on a job for a few days and that when he returned she could tell he was a changed man, even in the short time she’d known him. He became moody and started drinking more than before. She said there was something that seemed to be eating him up inside.’

  ‘This is a violent country you live in,’ Mike said.

  ‘You don’t have to tell us that, we see it every day. But this killing was one for the books. Viljoen had been handcuffed and tortured first – cut several times. One of his ears was missing. At some point the killer raped him as well.’

  The killers at the mission station had shown no mercy. Mike shivered inwardly. ‘What was the link between the dead pilot and the man you’re following now?’ he asked.

  ‘I checked Viljoen’s telephone address book. There was a card from a hunting lodge in it – the only hunter’s name in the book, from what we could see.’

  ‘Where is this man now? Who is he?’ Mike asked. The memory of Isabella’s body, of Fernando the ranger, and of Carlos dying in his arms made him clench his fists in silent rage.

  ‘Steady, Mike. By rights, I should tell you none of this,’ Theron said.

  ‘So why are you about to tell me?’

  He gave a little laugh. ‘Because, you are going where they are going, and where I cannot go.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To Zimbabwe. They crossed the border an hour ago, travelling in a white Gauteng-registered Land Cruiser.’

  Gauteng is the South African province that encompasses Johannesburg. The province’s blue-and-white vehicle registration plates carry the abbreviation ‘GP’ which, given the city’s reputation for crime, is often translated by non-residents as ‘Gangster’s Paradise’.

  Theron continued. ‘The vehicle was hired, and not in the name of either the hunter or his client. There’s an African driving and two white passengers – the hunter and the client. No offence, Mike, but I didn’t come here just to talk to you. I’ve followed these two as far as I can – my jurisdiction ends here. I’ve alerted the police, my counterparts, on the Zimbabwe side, but they’ve got problems of their own up there.’ Theron paused.

  ‘So you want me to what, follow these men? Spy on them? I couldn’t keep up with a Land Cruiser in that old crate of mine even if I wanted to,’ Mike said.

  Radebe joined the conversation again. ‘No, no, of course not, Mr Williams. This man, the Russian, is a foreign national. You’re a foreign national, on a valid work visa, I assume. I can’t very well order a civilian from another country to spy on a foreign tourist in another country, can I?’ he said with a conspiratorial smile.

  Mike’s work visa was perfectly valid but it was up for renewal in three months’ time. He didn’t think Radebe was threatening him, but it was a pretty strong hint.

  ‘But if I were to note anything unus
ual, anything suspicious, about this South African hunter and his Russian client, it would be my duty, as a resident alien, to report it to the police in South Africa. Is that about the size of it?’ Mike asked.

  ‘That would be most commendable of you,’ Theron said with a broad smile. ‘But Mike,’ he added, his tone suddenly serious, ‘I don’t have to tell you how dangerous these men are, assuming they are the men we’re looking for. You would have no protection from the law in this country or any neighbouring country if you took it upon yourself to do anything illegal. All we want you to do is let us know if you see anything unusual on your travels. We know where they are planning to stay in Zimbabwe, but we don’t know when they will be at each of these places or for how long. Also, we don’t know if they are coming back to South Africa after Zimbabwe or heading somewhere else.’

  ‘How do you know where they will be in Zimbabwe?’ Mike asked.

  ‘As you probably know, when you fill out your entry card on your way into Zimbabwe you have to state exactly where you will be staying and for how long. A couple of entry cards came into my possession about half an hour ago. Your timing couldn’t be better.’

  Theron handed Mike a page from his notebook on which he had listed a string of five-star hotels and luxury game lodges. They were not exactly the sort of places where an overland tour guide would be able to lounge inconspicuously around the bar.

  ‘I’ll do what I can. Do these men have names?’ Mike asked

  ‘The Russian’s name is Vassily Orlov. Interpol keeps a close eye on him. He’s a suspected mafia boss – drugs, porn, smuggling, you name it – but he’s never been busted for as much as a parking ticket so far. We checked the immigration records for last year. Orlov was registered as a visitor to South Africa at the time of the incident in Mozambique. He returned to Russia a week after Isabella’s death. I checked all the airlines flying to Europe on the day he left the country. He flew British Airways and there was a note on the computer booking saying he needed special assistance, that he was using a wheelchair because of an injury.’