Heart of the Hunter

by Deon Meyer

  They were all like that.

  Lord, why did there have to be men, why did she have to fight against their weak, brittle, fragile egos? That and the sex thing, the one-way traffic of their thoughts— if you were a woman, you were prey. If you didn’'t give in and jump into bed, you were a lesbian; if you were a woman in authority, you had slept your way to the top; if he was a man with more authority, then you were screwable.

  She had learned these lessons hard. A decade ago, after a long, frustrating, and even painful realization that she would have to live with a constant of overt and covert innuendo and sexual advances, she had taken stock of herself and pinpointed her two physical assets. Her large mouth, wide and full-lipped, white and regular teeth, and her bust, impressive without being excessive. She had developed a deliberate style: no lipstick; small, severe steel-rimmed glasses, and hair always drawn back and fastened; outfits never too formfitting, neutral colors, mostly gray, white, and black. And her actions, interactions, communications, were refined until eventually the volume of erotic interest was turned down to acceptable, manageable levels.

  But about the other thing, the ego, she could do nothing.

  That is why she forced her thoughts away from her children, stood up and straightened, brushing the wrinkles from her skirt, smoothing her hair.

  Rajkumar brought a result. “The other debit order, ma’am, the R129 per month?”

  “What?” she said, not in the present right then.

  “The other debit order on Mpayipheli’s bank account. The clearance code I ran it down. We know where the money is going.”

  “Yes?”

  “To the CCE. The Cape College of Education.”

  “For the child?”

  “No. It’s a correspondence college. For adults.”

  “Oh.”

  “High school education. Grade ten to twelve. Someone is doing a course with them.”

  There was little new in the information. “Thanks, Rahjev.”

  Her cell phone rang. She checked the screen, which read

  MAZIBUKO.

  “Tiger?”

  “I am letting Bravo come down from Bloemfontein. In our vehicles.”

  “What for?”

  “There’s nothing happening here. Two policemen and a speed cop with two vehicles. There’s a big thunderstorm on the way that looks bad, and there are two or three roads off the N1 between here and Beaufort West and who knows how many farm roads.”

  “He’s on a motorcycle, Tiger.”

  “I know. But if he spots the blockade and turns back, how do we pursue him?”

  “With the Rooivalks.”

  “In the rain?”

  “How sure are you that it will rain?”

  “Ma’am, it’s raining already.”

  “It’s a five-hour drive from Bloemfontein, Tiger.”

  “That’s why I want them to leave at once.”

  She decided. “Okay, let them come.”

  “Mazibuko out.”

  “Tiger?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Mpayipheli. He might have been more than MK.”

  “More?”

  “don'’t underestimate him.”

  “What do you mean? What have you found?”

  “He We don'’t know enough yet. Just don'’t underestimate him.”

  “He’s still only one man.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Mazibuko out.”

  She pressed the END button on the cell phone. Her eye caught the fax machine printing out a document. Stepping up to it she read the heading as she waited for it to finish. NIA.

  “Well, well,” she said softly, keeping her fingertips on the paper till it finished and then picking it up.

  Last known address— Derek Lategan: Orange river Wine Exports, P. O. Box 1J98, Upington, Northern Cape

  Last known address— Quartus Naudé: 28 Fourteenth Avenue, Klein-mond, Western Cape

  Masethla had supplied the information. She could imagine his internal struggle, his reluctance, irritation and fear that his outburst would be reported. A small victory for her. She found no pleasure in it.

  Frowning, Radebe came over the floor to her with another document in his hand. “Here’s an odd one, ma’am. This report came in from Pretoria, but we hadn'’t given instructions.”

  She took it from him.

  * * *

  Transcript of interview by V Pillay with Mr. Gerhardus Johannes Groenewald, 23 October, 21:18, 807 Dallas Flats, De Kock Street, Sunnyside, Pretoria

  P

  : You were on the integration team with Johnny Kleintjes?

  G

  : I was second in command.

  “It was on my orders, Vincent.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “I phoned Pillay direct. Groenewald was in our records.”

  Radebe looked at her, frowning still.

  “I’m sorry, Vincent. I ought to have told you.”

  “Ma’am, that’s not it .”

  “What is it?”

  “I thought I knew all our agents.”

  She kept eye contact with him, smiling reassuringly. “Pillay doesn'’t work full-time for us, Vincent. I don'’t want to interfere with your people.”

  The frown lifted.

  “Ma’am, there’s something else .” His voice was soft, as if he didn’'t want the others to hear.

  “Talk to me.”

  “Mpayipheli, ma’am. We are treating him like a criminal.”

  “He is one, Vincent.”

  It seemed that he wanted to contradict her but thought better of it.

  “He disarmed two of our agents, refusing a legal request to hand over state property. He stole a motorcycle.”

  Radebe’s gaze was far-off. He nodded, but she did not feel that he agreed. He turned around. She watched him thoughtfully until he sat down.

  * * *

  Transcript of interview by V Pillay with Mr. Gerhardus Johannes Groenewald, 23 October, 21:18, 807 Dallas Flats, De Kock Street, Sunnyside, Pretoria

  P: You were on the integration team with Johnny Kleintjes?

  G: I was second in command.

  P: Did you have access to the same material?

  G: Yes.

  P: Did you know Mr. Kleintjes had made backups of certain sensitive records?

  G: Yes.

  P: Tell me about it, please.

  G: It’s ten years ago.

  P: I know, Mr. Groenewald.

  G: Most of that data is useless now. The people Things have changed.

  P: We need to know.

  G: Those were strange times. It was To suddenly see what the enemy had on you, to show them what we had, it was surreal. Your enemy was no longer your enemy. After all those years. To work with them, it was difficult. For everyone. Both sides.

  P: You worked for the National Party government, before 1992?

  G: Yes.

  P: Proceed, Mr. Groenewald.

  G: Some people on the team couldn'’t handle it. It was conditioning, hammered into you for so many years, the secretiveness, the idea of us against them. Stuff disappeared.

  P: What sort of stuff?

  G: Operational records. The kind of stuff individuals didn’'t want counting against them. When Johnny Kleintjes realized that people were deleting stuff, he began to make backups. We worked together, as fast as we could. And when one of the backup tapes disappeared, he started taking work home.

  P: Did you know what material he took home?

  G: He never hid anything from me.

  P: What was it?

  G: There were the X-lists of the politicians, judges, and intelligence people. You know who is sleeping with whom, who has financial troubles, who’s in league with the opposition. And the E-lists. “E” for elimination. Who was killed. Who was to be taken out next. And the Zulu dossier.

  P: The Zulu dossier?

  G: You know, the Zulu nationalists.

  P: I don'’t know, Mr. Groenewald.

  G: You must know that in the Zulu ranks there is a conservative nucleus that still dreams of Zulu independence?

  P: Proceed, Mr. Groenewa
ld.

  G: They supported the former regime’s policy of separate development. They saw it as the way to their own sovereign Zulu state. Elements in the old regime were only too eager to help, promises were made, they worked intimately together. And then F. W de Klerk went and cheated them by unbanning the ANC and allowing free elections.

  P: Yes?

  G: The Zulu dossier contains names of the secret Organization for Zulu Independence, the OZI. There are politicians, businessmen, and a lot of academics. The University of Zululand was a breeding ground. If I remember rightly, the head of the History Department was head of OZI for years.

  P: Is that all? Just a list of OZI members?

  G: No, there was more. Weapons caches, strategy, plans. And the name of Inkululeko.

  P: You’'ll have to explain.

  G: Inkululeko. A code name. It’s the Zulu word for freedom. A member of the OZI who infiltrated the ANC years back. A mole. But high up. There was talk that he also worked for the CIA during the Cold War. Lately I heard a rumor that considering the present government’s attitude to Libya and Cuba, for example, he was still helping the Americans.

  P: Do you know who it is?

  G: No.

  P: But Johnny Kleintjes knows?

  G: Johnny knew. He saw the list.

  P: Why did he never expose it?

  G: I don'’t know. I wondered about that. Remember the violence in Kwa-Zulu, Pillay? Remember the political murders, the intimidation?

  P: I remember.

  G: I wondered if he didn’'t use the list as a trump card in negotiations. You know, a sort of “stop your nonsense or I will leak the list” type of thing. The unrest decreased, later.

  P: But that is rather unlikely, isn'’t it?

  G: Yes. It is.

  P: What do you think the real reason is?

  G: I think Johnny Kleintjes knew Inkululeko personally. I think he was a friend.

  14.

  Through the lens of a hidden camera or the eyes of a voyeur the scene would have been sensual. Allison Healy sat before the hi-fi in her restored duplex in Gardens. She was naked. Her plump body glowed from the hot bath, the creams and oils she was massaging into her skin. The CD playing was Women of Blue Chicago: Bonnie Lee, Karen Carroll, Shirley Johnson, and her favorite, Lynne Jordan. Music about women’s trouble with men. There was a cigarette in the ashtray on the small table next to the navy blue easy chair, smoke trailing upward in a tall, thin column. The room was softly lit by one table lamp alongside the small television.

  Despite the potential an eye could find in this stage, her thoughts were far from sexual. She was considering a motorcyclist speeding through the night, a mysterious man hunted by law enforcement and intelligence officers. She wondered why.

  Before she left the office she had phoned Rassie Erasmus of the Laingsburg police again. Asked questions. There was mischief in their talk, as if they were co-conspirators against the secret forces of the state, but the chat had yielded little new information.

  Yes, the request to be on the lookout had come from the regional police head office. And the order to report there if they spotted something. No, it was never explicitly stated that it was the Presidential Intelligence Unit looking for Mpayipheli, but the police had their own language, their own references, their jealousies and envy. He was fairly certain it was the PIU. And from what he could gather, the fugitive had something the PIU was after.

  Any news on Mpayipheli, Rassie?”

  “No. Not a word.”

  She reached for the journalist’s study bible— the telephone directory. There were three Mpayipelis and four Mpayiphelis listed. All in Khayalitsha or Macassar, but none had the initial T. She phoned every number, aware of the late hour, knowing she would be disturbing hardworking people in their sleep, but she had a job to do, too.

  “I am so sorry to bother you so late, but can I speak to Thobela, please?”

  Every time the same response: a sleepy voice saying, “Who?”

  Just to be sure, she had searched with Ananzi and Google on the Internet, typed in “Thobela Mpayipheli” and to be thorough, “Thobela Mpayipeli” and clicked on SEARCH .

  Your search— Thobela Mpayipheli— does not appear in any documents.

  So she had turned off the computer, took her handbag, said good-bye to the few colleagues still at work, and come home to a long hot bath, half a glass of red wine, her skin-care routine, music, and a last cigarette.

  She rose to pack away the bottles and jars in the bathroom and returned to lie back in the chair, drawing deeply on the tobacco, closing her eyes to let Johnson’s “As the Years Go Passing By” flow over her. It evoked nostalgia in her, for Nic, for the intensity of those moments. No. Longing for a journey. To the smoky blues bars of Chicago. To a world of pulsing, moaning rhythms, sensual voices, and strange new experiences, a new uncontaminated life.

  Focused on the music. Sleep was near. The prospect of a long, well-deserved rest. She wasn'’t due back at work until noon.

  Where was he now, the big, bad Xhosa biker?

  * * *

  He was two kilometers from Leeu-Gamka, the headlights turned off, the GS standing in the veld a few hundred meters from the road. He stripped off the suit, locked it in one luggage case, put the helmet in the other, and began walking toward the lights.

  The night air was sharp and cool, carrying the pungent scent of Karoo shrubs crushed under his boots. The weariness of the last fifty or sixty kilometers had invaded his body, his eyes were red and scratchy, he was thirsty and sleepy.

  No longer twenty, his body complained. He knew he had been running on adrenaline, but the levels were running low. He knew the next few hours till dawn would be the most difficult. He walked briskly to get his circulation going, his boots crunched gravel on the road verge rhythmically. Lights from the petrol station on the right and the police station on the left of the highway came steadily closer. There was no movement, no sign of life, no roadblock or other indications of a search. Had the petrol jockey in Laingsburg said nothing? He owed him, he thought. It was so difficult to read people, how oddly they behaved. Why did the man not tell him he would keep quiet? Why keep him worrying? Was he still making up his mind?

  He walked into the petrol station. There was a twenty-four-hour kiosk, a tiny café. Behind the counter was a black woman, fast asleep with her chin dropped onto her chest, mouth half open. He took two cans of Coca-Cola from the fridge, a few chocolate bars from the shelf. Behind her on the wall he saw the rack of road map books.

  He cleared his throat. Her eyes opened.

  “Sorry, sister,” he said softly, smiling sympathetically at her.

  “Was I asleep?” she asked, baffled.

  “Just resting a bit,” he said.

  “What time is it?”

  “Just after three,” he said.

  She took the cool drinks and chocolate and rang them up. He asked for a map book.

  “Are you lost?”

  “No, sister, we are looking for a shortcut.”

  “From here? There are no shortcuts here.” But she took the book down from the shelf and put it in the plastic bag with the other things.

  He paid and left.

  “drive safely,” she called after him, and settled back in her chair.

  He looked back once he was a little way off. He could see through the window that her head had dropped again. He wondered if she would remember he was there, in case anyone asked.

  Halfway back to the bike he popped open a can of Coke, drinking deeply, burped the gas, drank again. The sugar would do him good. He emptied the can, opened a Milo bar, pushing the chunks into his mouth. A white Mercedes flashed past on the highway, spoiling his night vision for a while. He put the empty can and candy wrappers back into the plastic bag.

  He would have to inspect the map book. He had no flashlight. The moon gave less light now, almost setting in the west. He should have bought a flashlight.

  Perhaps the moonlight was sufficient. He left the road, cutting across the veld, for th
e first time thinking of puff adders. The night was cold, they shouldn'’t be active. He reached the GS and took the book out of the bag.