Heart of the Hunter

by Deon Meyer

  That meant

  Spooks.

  It made sense, if you took into account what was on the hard drive.

  Fuck them. He was not afraid of spooks. He jumped for the fence.

  * * *

  “Put them on speaker,” said Janina Mentz, and Quinn pressed the button.

  “ he was just lucky, Control, that’s all.”

  “You’re on speaker, Willem.”

  “Oh.”

  “I want to know what happened,” said Janina Mentz.

  “He got away, ma’am, but—”

  “I know he got away. How did it happen?”

  “We had everything under control, ma’am,” said the voice in awe. “We waited until he sat down in the departure lounge. We identified ourselves and asked the target to accompany us. Control said we must keep it low-profile. He’s only a motorbike mechanic; he sat there with the bag on his lap like a farm boy, he looked so shy and lonely. He said he didn’'t want any trouble. It was obvious he was scared. It’s my fault, ma’am. I wanted to take the bag and he got hold of my firearm—”

  “He got hold of it?”

  “Yes, ma’am. He grabbed it. I um his actions were I didn’'t expect it.”

  “And then?”

  “Then he took the bag, with Alfred’s firearm in it, and ran away.”

  Silence.

  “So now he has two firearms?”

  “I don'’t think he knows what to do with them, ma’am. He called my pistol a revolver.”

  “Well, that'’s a relief.”

  Willem did not respond.

  Quinn sighed despondently and said in a quiet aside to Mentz: “I thought they could handle it.”

  “Ma’am, he just got lucky. Judging by his reaction, we’ll get him easily,” said Willem over the ether.

  She did not answer.

  “He even said ‘please.’ ”

  “Please?”

  “Yes, ma’am. And we know he’s not on a plane.”

  Mentz pondered the information. The room was very quiet.

  “Ma’am?” said the voice on the radio.

  “Yes.”

  “What do we do now?”

  6.

  There comes a time to show anger, controlled but with purpose, rejection not of your people but of their actions.

  Mentz turned off the speakerphone angrily and walked over to her computer. “We were in control of this thing. We knew where she was, where he was, where he was going, how he was going to get there. Absolute control.”

  Her voice carried across the room, the anger barely submerged. Everyone was looking at her, but no one made eye contact.

  “So why did we lose control? Lack of information. Lack of intelligence. Lack of judgment. Here and at the airport. Now we are at a disadvantage. We have no idea where he is. At least we know where he is going and we know the quickest way to get there. But that is not enough. I want to know who Thobela Mpayipheli is and I want to know now. I want to know why Monica Kleintjes went to him. And I want to know where he is. I want to know where the hard drive is. Everything. And I don'’t care what you must do to get that information.”

  She looked for eyes, but they were looking at the floor.

  And those two clowns, Quinn.”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Let them write a report. And when that’s done ”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Let them go. They don'’t belong on this team.”

  She walked out of the room, wishing there was a door to slam, down the passage, into her office— there was a door to slam— and dropped into her black leather chair.

  Let the fools sweat.

  Let them understand in the first place that if you can’t take the heat, Janina Mentz will remove you from the kitchen. Because, Lord knows, this was no place for failure. She would live up to her promises.

  The director knew. He sat there in his office in his snow-white shirt and he knew because he was listening. He heard every word spoken in the Ops Room— and judged it: her actions and reactions, her leadership.

  It seemed a lifetime ago that he had asked her at their first interview for the job: “Do you want it, Janina?”

  And she had said yes, because as a white woman in a black administration, there were only so many opportunities, never mind that your IQ was 147 and your record one faultless minor success after another, with the emphasis on minor, because the big chance had not yet come. Until the director had taken her to lunch at Bukhara’s in the Church Street Mall and laid out his vision to her: “An intelligence service that is outstanding, Janina, that is what the vice president wants. A new intelligence service without a past. Next year he will be president and he knows he doesn'’t have the Madiba magic, the charisma of Nelson Mandela. He knows it will be hard work against every form of resistance and undermining that you can think of, nationally and internationally. I have carte blanche and I have a budget, Janina, and I believe I have the architect here before me this afternoon. You have the profile, the brainpower, you have no baggage, you have the loyalty, and you have the persistence. But the question is: Do you want it?”

  Oh yes, she wanted it, more than he realized. Because it had been eleven months since her husband developed an itch for young things and told her, “The marriage is not working for me,” as if it was her fault, as if she and the children were not enough fulfillment for him anymore, whereas the only fulfillment in question was the space between Cindy’s legs. Cindy. The pseudo-artist with dirty feet who peddled her fabrics to German tourists from her stall at Greenmarket Square and fluttered her big brown eyes at married men until she caught one in the snare of her firm, free, braless breasts. And then the happy couple moved to Pilgrim’s Rest to “open a studio for Cindy.”

  So, Mr. Director, she wanted it. She hungered for it. Because she was consumed by an anger that was fed by the rejection— oh yes, let there be no doubt. Fed by ambition, too, make no mistake; the only child of poor Afrikaners, she would pay any price to rise above the soul-destroying, pointless existence of her parents. Fed by frustration of a decade in the Struggle, and all she had to show for it despite her talents was a deputy directorship when she could do so much more; she could fly, she knew the landscape of her psyche, knew where the valleys were and where the peaks were, she was impartial in her self-awareness. She could fly— what did it matter where they came from, the winds that blew beneath her wings?

  She did not say that. She had listened and spoken coolly and calmly at lunch and answered with quiet assurance, “Yes, I want it,” and then began the very next week to work out their vision: a First World intelligence unit in a country trying to drag itself up by its Third World bootstraps, a new independent unit with a clean slate.

  And she still wanted it. No matter what price must be paid.

  Her phone rang with the single ring of an internal call.

  “Mentz.”

  “Pop in for a moment, Janina, would you,” said the director.

  * * *

  He took a minibus to Bellville— the first opportunity that came up. He was driven to put distance between himself and the airport, regardless of the direction; ramifications were coming through to him one after another. He could not go back to Monica Kleintjes; they were surely watching her. He couldn'’t phone her. He could not go home. He could not go back to the airport— by now there would be swarms of them. And if they were at all awake, they would be watching the station— bus or train travel was also out of the question.

  Which left him with the big question. How to get to Lusaka?

  He sat in the dark between the other passengers, domestics and security guards and factory workers on their way home, talking about the rise in the price of bread and the soccer results and politics, and he longed to be one of them. He wanted to leave the hard drive on Monica’s lap and say, “There is one thing that you didn’'t take into account,” and then he would go to Miriam and Pakamile and tomorrow he would ride to work on his Honda Benly and during lunch he would walk up St. George’s to Im-manuel the shoeshine man and play a game of chess with him between his cell-phone-talking
, wealth-chasing clients and all the while they would good-naturedly mock the whites in Xhosa.

  But right now he had two Z88 pistols and a flat hard drive in a blue sports bag standing between him and that life.

  “And what do you do for a living?” asked the woman next to him.

  He sighed. “At the moment, I’m traveling,” he said.

  How was he to get to Lusaka?

  * * *

  You wouldn'’t say that he was in the office by six every morning— here it was nearly half past eight in the evening and the director, in his early fifties, looked fresh, rested, and alert.

  “I had an interesting call, Janina. This afternoon our Tiger assaulted a Parabat at Tempe.”

  “Assaulted?”

  “Landed him in the hospital, and the commanding officer started phoning higher up. He wants justice.”

  “I am sure there was reason for the fight, sir.”

  “I am, too, Janina. I just want to keep you informed.”

  “I appreciate that, sir.”

  “Ask him about it when you see him.”

  “I will.”

  “Is that all, Mr. Director?”

  “That is all, Janina. I know you are busy.” And he smiled in a fatherly way. She hesitated a moment before turning away; she willed him to say something about the happenings in the Ops Room, he must bring it up so that she could assure him that everything was under control, but he just sat there with his smile.

  She took the stairs, stopped halfway.

  I know you are busy.

  He was weighing her, testing her; she knew it as an absolute truth.

  She laughed softly. If only he knew. She took a deep breath and took the last steps one by one, measuring, as if enumerating a strategic plan.

  Radebe began reporting the minute she walked into the Ops Room, his voice softly apologetic, explaining the redeployment of the teams— six of the best at the airport, six at the Cape Town station, in two teams of three each to watch the trains and the bus terminal. His three teammates beside him were busy contacting every car-rental business in the city, with instructions to let them know if someone of Mpayipheli’s description tried to hire a vehicle. They would also contact every private plane charter service. Three more teams of two each were in their cars, awaiting instructions, down below on Wale Street. There was no activity at Monica Kleintjes’s or at Miriam Nzululwazi’s.

  She nodded. Quinn confirmed monitoring of the Nzululwazi phone. There had been no calls yet.

  Rajkumar, ever sensitive, had a bearing of injured pride as he gave his report: “No record of Thobela Mpayipheli in the Um-khonto we Sizwe files. Mpayipheli’s registered home address is Mitchell’s Plain— the property belongs to one Orlando Arendse. Probably the same Arendse that Monica phoned this afternoon, looking for Mpayipheli. But Arendse’s registered home address is in Milnerton Ridge.” The obese body shifted subtly, self-confidence returning. “The interesting thing is Arendse’s criminal record— twice served time for dealing in stolen goods, in 1975 and 1982 to 1984, once charged and found not guilty of dealing in unlicensed weapons in 1989, twice arrested for dealing in drugs, in 1992 and 1995, but the cases were never brought to trial. One thing is certain: Orlando Arendse is organized crime. Drugs. Big-time. Prostitution, gambling, stolen property. The usual protection racket. And if I read the signs correctly, the Scorpions are looking very closely at his dealings. That Mitchell’s Plain address could be a drug house, seems to me.” Rahjev Rajkumar leaned back in satisfaction.

  “Good work,” she said. She paced up and down the wall behind the Indian, her arms folded.

  Organized crime? She grasped at possibilities, but it wouldn'’t make sense.

  “Organized crime?” she spoke aloud. “I don'’t see it.”

  “Money makes strange bedfellows,” said Rajkumar. “And if it’s drugs, it’s money. Big money.”

  “Mpayipheli could be a dealer,” said Quinn.

  “He’s a motorbike mechanic,” said Radebe. “It doesn'’t fit.”

  Mentz stopped her pacing, nodding. “Rahjev, find out who the owner of the bike shop is.”

  “Company registrations are not up-to-date. I can poke around but ”

  Radebe: “I’ll send a car over there. Sometimes there are emergency numbers on the door.”

  “Do it.”

  She tried to analyze the known facts, angles, and different points of perspective, stumbling on the crime bits of the jigsaw puzzle.

  “No record of Mpayipheli with the ANC, MK, PAC, or APLA?” she asked.

  “Nothing. But, of course, the ANC systems have had a few knocks. They are not complete. And the PAC and APLA never really had anything. All the PAC info came from the Boers. And there’s nothing on Mpayipheli.”

  “There must be a connection between Mpayipheli and the Kleintjeses.”

  “Hell,” said Quinn, “he could have been their gardener.”

  Radebe, always careful with what he said, frowned deeply as if he had strong doubts. “She phoned the Arendse number to find Mpayipheli. Maybe Arendse is the connection.”

  “Could be.” She was walking up and down again, digesting the input, weighing possibilities. Her thirst for information all-encompassing, they had to make a breakthrough, shine a bright light into the haze of ignorance. But how do you get a drug baron to talk?

  Another cycle in her traverse of the wall.

  “Okay,” she said. “This is what we are going to do.”

  * * *

  In the dirty toilets of Bellville Station, behind a closed door, he took the pistols out of the rolled-up magazines. Then he went out and placed the different pieces in separate trash cans. He began to walk toward Durban Road. He still had no idea where he was going. He was aware of minutes ticking by and was only ten kilometers closer to Lusaka than when he had been at the airport. The temptation to drop the whole mess and go home lay like yearning on him. But the question kept returning to him: Is that what Johnny Kleintjes did when Thobela needed him? And the answer was always no, no matter how many times he thought about it, no matter how little he wanted to be there, no matter how little he wanted the urgency and tension growing in his belly. He owed Johnny Kleintjes and he would have to move his butt. Turning the corner of Voortrekker and Durban Road, he saw the vehicles at the traffic lights and a light came on in his head, hurrying the tempo of his footsteps as he moved toward the office of the Revenue Services.

  There was a taxi rank there. He must get back to the city. Quickly.

  * * *

  For the second time that day Captain Tiger Mazibuko cut his cellphone connection with Janina Mentz and began barking out orders to Team Alpha: “Let’s get these boxes open, there’s work to be done. Hecklers, handguns, smoke grenades, bulletproof vests, and night sights. And paint your faces.”

  They sprang into action with a will, snapped open the equipment cases, flicking glances at him, curious at the type of order, but he gave nothing away while he reflected on his conversation with Mentz. Why had he assaulted an officer this afternoon? Because the fucker had set his German shepherd on Little Joe Moroka. What had Little Joe done? didn’'t salute the little lieutenant.

  Why not? Because Little Joe is Little Joe. So busy inside his head sometimes that he doesn'’t know what’s going on around him. In-a-fog negligence was all that it was. And when the lieutenant confronted him with a stream of obscenities, the outcome was inevitable. Little Joe takes shit from only one person and that’s me. That’s why we fetched Little Joe out of the MP cells in the first place. Little Joe told him to go do an unmentionable deed with himself or his dog, and the lieutenant encouraged the dog to bite him. Which in any case, militarily speaking, is a contravention of the worst degree. Did the dog bite Little Joe? Yes, the dog bit him in the trousers. Was Little Joe hurt? No. The lieutenant and the dog embarrassed Little Joe. And that is as bad as a bite that draws blood. Worse, in his case. An injustice was perpetrated, however you look at it. Tiger Mazibuko chose not to work through channels to restore the balance because then others would start taking chances with the RU. A point ha
d to be made. And now the Bats were crying.

  “Yes, indeed they are crying. They want disciplinary action.”

  “Then discipline me.” Challenging, because he knew the RU was untouchable before he beat up the Bat.

  “Not before you’'ve earned your keep.” And she gave him the background, the task.

  His team handed him his jacket and weapons, the night-sight headset and camouflage paint last. He prepared with deft, practiced movements till the RU stood in line before him and he walked down the row, plucking at a belt, straightening a piece of equipment.

  “I have a new name for the Ama-killa-killa,” he said. “After tonight you will be known as the Gangsta Busters.”