by Deon Meyer
Look what you made me do.
* * *
The digital radio at Tiger Mazibukos hip came to life and he heard an unexpected word: Hello. Immediately temper flamed up in the tinder of his frustration and discomfort and exhaustion.
Alpha One receiving and why the fuck aren't you using radio protocol? Over.
What is your name, Alpha One? He didn't know this voice. It was deep, strange.
This is a military frequency. Please get off the air immediately over.
My name is Thobela Mpayipheli. I am the man you are looking for. Who are you?
It was a bizarre moment, because there was joy in it, tempered with a sudden deep apprehension. He knew something had happened to one of his teams, but that would take some level of skill. It would take a worthy opponent.
My name is Captain Tiger Mazibuko, he said. And I am talking to a dead man. Over.
No one needs to die, Captain Tiger Mazibuko. Tell your masters I will do what I have to do, and if they leave me alone, there will be no blood. That is my promise.
Who did you steal that radio from, you bastard?
They need medical help here, west of the Ni, the Sneeukraal turnoff. Your men will tell you the serious injury was an accident. I am sorry for it. The only way to avoid that is to avoid confrontation. I am asking you nicely. I don't want trouble.
A wonderful thing happened in Tiger Mazibukos head as the meaning of the mans words was assimilated and processed, like tumblers falling into place. The end result was the synaptic equivalent of an explosion of white fire. Youre dead. You hear me, youre dead. He ran toward the nearest vehicle. You hear me, you cunt, you fuckin shit. No, the helicopter. He spun around. If its the last thing I do, youre gone, you cunt, you fuckin dog. The helplessness of the distance between them was driving him insane. Get this thing going, now, he told the pilot. Da Costa, Zongu, get everybody, he shouted. Now. Back to the pilot: Get this fucking chopper in the air. He touched the weapon at his belt, the Z88 pistol, jumped out of the helicopter again, ran to the tent, pulled open a chest, grabbed the R.6 and two spare magazines, ran back. The Oryx engines turning, Team Alpha came running. He held the radio to his lips. Im going to kill you, I swear, as God is my witness, Im going to kill you, you fucking piece of shit.
* * *
Like a condemned man, Rahjev Rajkumar read the words on www.bmwmotorrad.co.za to the whole room, knowing the tidings he brought would not be welcome. At home all around the world. Adventures are limitless with the BMW R 1150 GS, whether on hard surfaces, pistes or gravel tracks. Uphill and downhill, through valleys and plateaus, forests and deserts the R1150 GS is the perfect motorcycle for every adventure.
He can ride dirt roads, said Janina.
The people in the Ops Room were quiet, the murmur of voices from the television bank suddenly audible.
Its my fault, she said. I take responsibility for this one.
She ought to have made sure. She should have had questions asked. Should never have accepted the conventional thinking.
She walked over to the big map of the country hanging on the wall and checked the distance between the turnoff and the roadblock. It was so near. She had been right. About everything. He had taken the Ni. He was an hour later than she had predicted, but he was there. But for the rain
She looked at the great stretches of the North West Province.
What now? Mpayiphelis choices multiplied with every thin red stripe that represented a road, no matter what the surface. Even with Team Bravo in action, there were simply too many holes, too many crossroads and junctions and turnoffs and options to cover.
What to do now?
She needed a hot bath, needed to wash the night out of her hair and scrub it from her body. She needed new clothes and fresh makeup. A good breakfast.
Her eyes wandered to the final destination. Lusaka.
She knew one thing. He had turned west. Written off the direct route through Bloemfontein. She traced a new line. Through Gaborone, Mmabatho, Vryburg, and Kimberley That was the strongest possibility.
The storm had saved him, but now it was his enemy. They knew the system was two hundred kilometers wide, but he could only guess. He had fallen on the gravel road, not too skilled. He would have to ride slowly in the mud, carefully. He would consider his choices. He would wonder where they were. He would look over his shoulder for the helicopters, check the road ahead for soldiers. He was tired and cold and wet. Sore from the fall.
five, six hundred kilometers to Kimberley. How fast could he go?
She checked her watch. Of the seventy-two hours, twelve had passed. Sixty remaining. Six, seven, eight hours to reach Kimberley. A lot could happen in that time.
She looked around at the waiting faces throughout the room. Anxious. Tired. Chagrined. They needed rest, to regain their courage. A hot shower and a hot breakfast. Perspective.
She smiled at the Ops Room. We know where he is, people. And he has only one place to go. Well get him.
* * *
At the T junction he nearly fell again. As he braked sharply the motorbike slid and he had to wrench his body to stay upright.
Pain focused in his shoulder. The signpost opposite him said Lox-ton to the left, Victoria West to the right. He hesitated for long seconds, wavering. Instinct made him turn left because it was the only unpredictable option he could make. He kept moving, the events that lay behind him resting heavily on him; he would have to check the map again.
He would have to sleep.
But it was raining, he couldn't just park in the veld and lay his head down, he needed a tent.
The dirt road was bad, the surface erratic, where it dipped it was easy to expect the soft mud; he kept to the middle. His hands were freezing; his head dull now that the adrenaline had worked itself out of his system. He wanted to defer thinking about the two soldiers and his own deep disappointment when he picked up the motorbike and got going again, fleetingly surprised at the lack of damage, at the engine that sprang to life at the first turn, taking off with back wheel waggling in the sodden ground. He was disappointed in himself, over the incredible hatred that had come over the radio, but he didn't want to think of that now.
He made a list of his problems. They knew where he was. They would count his options on a map. They were using the army, unlimited manpower, helicopters. Vehicles? He was weary, a deep fatigue, his shoulder muscles were damaged or badly bruised, his knee less so. He had been driven from the highway, the fast route was denied. It was raining.
Lord, Johnny Kleintjes, what have you got me into? I want to go home.
Add that to the list: he had no stomach for it; he wanted to go home to Miriam and Pakamile.
He saw the homestead out of the corner of his eye. To the left of the road, a ruin between stony ridges and thorn trees that suddenly made sense. It altered the predictable, offered a solution and rest. He pulled the brakes carefully, turned about slowly, and rode back to the two-track turnoff The gate lay open, ramshackle and neglected. He went slowly up the rocky track, the handlebars jerking in his hands. He saw the cement reservoir and the windmill, the old house, windows filled with cardboard, walls faded by the Karoo sun, tin roof without gutters, the water running off in streams. He rode around to the back and stopped.
Did anyone live here? No sign of life, but he remained on the bike, hand on the accelerator. No washing on a line, no tracks, no vehicle.
He turned the key, switched off the engine, clipped open the helmet.
Hullooooo
Just the sound of rain on the roof.
He climbed stiffly off, put the bike on the stand, careful to prevent it from tipping over in the soft ground. Pulled off the sodden gloves and the helmet.
There was a back door, paint long since peeled away. He knocked, the sound was hollowHullo he turned an antique doorknob was it locked? put his good shoulder
to the door, pushed, no luck.
He walked around, checking the road. No sound or sign of traffic.
No door on that side. He walked back, tried to peer through a window, through a crack between cardboard and frame, but it was too dark inside. He went back to the door, turning the knob, bumped hard with his shoulder, a bang, and it swung wide open. A field mouse scurried across the floor, disappearing into a corner; the smell was of abandonment, musty.
The small coal stove against the wall was once black, now dull gray, the handle of the coal scuttle was broken off. A dilapidated cupboard, iron bedstead with a coir mattress. An ancient wooden table, two plastic milk crates, an enamel basin, dust and spider-webs.
For a moment he stood there, considering. The motorbike could not be seen from the road. Nobody had been there in weeks.
He made up his mind. He fetched his bag from the bike, closed the door properly, and sat down on the mattress.
Just for an hour or two. Just to ease the fatigue.
He pulled off the leathers and boots, found warm clothes in his bag, shook the worst dust from the mattress, and lay down with the bag as his pillow.
Just an hour or two.
Then he would study the map and define his options.
* * *
The news that the fugitive had outmaneuvered the helicopters and the roadblock, that one Special Forces soldier was being flown to Bloemfontein by helicopter, spread through the law enforcement community like a brushfire. By the time Allison Healy contacted her source in Laingsburg, it had garnered the baroque embellishments of a legend in the making.
And he is ex-MK. Hes a forty-year-old has-been fucking up the spies left, right, and center, Erasmus told her with relish so that she could have no doubt that the police were enjoying every minute of the drama.
I know hes a war veteran, she said, but why are they after him?
How did you know that? Erasmus was hungry for more gossip.
I had a visitor. An old friend. Why are they chasing him?
They wont say. Thats the one thing the fuckers wont say.
Thanks, Rassie. I have to go.
Ill phone you if I hear something more.
She put the phone back in her bag and walked in to the Absa offices in the Heerengracht. At the information desk she had to wait in line. The newest information milled in her head. The phone rang again.
Allison.
Hi, Allison, my name is John Modise. I do a talk show for SAFM.
Hi, John.
You broke the story about the black guy on a motorcycle.
Yes.
How would you like to be on the show this morning? Telephone interview.
She hesitated. I cant.
Why not?
It would compromise my position, John. You are competition media.
I understand, but your next edition is only tomorrow morning. A lot can happen
I cant.
Did you know this guy was Umkhonto we Sizwe?
I did, she said with a sinking heart. Her lead was disappearing. How did you find out?
My producer got it from the Beaufort West police. He slipped through their fingers just an hour ago.
Now they were all singing like canaries.
I know.
You see, its public knowledge. So theres no harm in being on the show.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Okay, but if you change your mind before eleven, you call me.
I will.
It was her turn at the desk. Hi, she said. Im looking for a Ms. Miriam Nzululwazi. She works here.
18.
I'am finished with all these things. I am finished with fighting, with the violence, with shooting and beating and hate. Especially the hate. Finished, he said.
That was in the hospital in Milnerton, beside the bed of his white friend Zatopek van Heerden, the two of them full of medication and bandages and pain and the shared trauma of a strange and violent experience that he and the ex-policeman had gone through together by sheer chance. That was while he worked for Orlando Arendse. He had felt an inner glow, a Damascus experience of a new life vision, pumped up by the lucidum intervallum.
Van Heerden had stared expressionlessly at him, just his eyes betraying a hint of empathy.
You don't believe I can change?
Tiny, its hard.
Tiny.
That was his name. He had rejected it in the metamorphosis, part of the process of killing off the past, like a snake shedding its skin and leaving it behind as a ghostly reminder. He had become Thobela. It was his christened name.
If you can dream it, you can do it.
Where do you get that populist crap?
Read it somewhere. Its true.
Thats Norman Vincent Peale or Steven Covey, one of those false prophets. Great white witch doctors.
I don't know them.
We are programmed, Tiny. Wired. What we are, we are, in sinew and bone.
We are growing older and wiser. The world is changing around us.
Van Heerden was always excruciatingly honest. I don't believe a man can change his inherent nature. The best we can do is to acknowledge the balance of good and evil in ourselves. And accept it. Because its there. Or at least the potential for it. We live in a world where the good is glorified and the bad misunderstood. What you can do is to alter the perspective. Not the nature.
No, he had said.
They left it there, agreeing to differ.
When he was discharged and left the white man behind in the hospital, he said good-bye with so much enthusiasm for reinventing himself, on fire for the new Thobela Mpayipheli, that Zatopek had taken his hands and said, If anyone can do it, you can. There was urgency in his voice, as if he had a personal stake in the outcome.
And now he lay on a dusty, musty coir mattress in the middle of the Karoo and sleep eluded him because the scene with the two soldiers played over and over in his head. He sought the singularity, the moment when he had regressed, when that which he wanted to be had fallen away. The high blood of battle rising so quickly in his head, his hands so terribly ready to kill, his brain clattering out the knowledge of the vital points on the soldiers body like machine-gun fire, despairing don't, don't, don't fighting with himself, such deep disappointment. If Pakamile could see him and Miriam, how shocked she would be.
Look what you made me do. The words had come out before they were formed. Now he knew it was displacement of blame; he needed a sinner, but the sinner lay within. Wired.
What could you do?
If Van Heerden was right, what could you do?
They went to visit Van Heerden once, he and Miriam and Pakamile, on a smallholding beyond Table View, at a small white house his mother lived in the big white house. A Saturday afternoon, the family from the townships picked up at the taxi rank in Killarney Van Heerden and Thobela chatting straight off, the bond between them as strong as it always is for people who have faced death together. Miriam was quiet, uncomfortable; Pakamiles eyes wide and interested. When they arrived Van Heerdens mother was there to sweep the child away: Ive got a pony just for you. Hours later when he came back, the boys eyes were shining with excitement. Can we have horses on the farm, Tho-bela, please, Thobela?
The attorney, Beneke, was also there, she and Miriam had spoken English, but it wouldn't work, lawyer and tea lady, the gulf of color and culture and three hundred years of African history gaped in the uneasy silences between them.
Van Heerden and he had made the fire for the barbecue outside. He stood around the fire, he told stories of his new job, of motorbike clients, middle-aged men looking for remedies for male menopause, and they had laughed by the burning rooikrans logs, because Thobela had a talent for mimicry. Later, when the coals were glowing and Van Heerden was turning the
sausage and chops with a practiced hand, he had said to his friend, I am a new man, Van Heerden.
Im glad.
He laughed at the man. You don't believe me.
