Heart of the Hunter

by Deon Meyer

  She and Nic in her flat once or twice a week. Why had she let it happen?

  Because she was lonely.

  A thousand acquaintances and not one bosom friend. This was the lot of the fat girl in a world of skinny standards. Or was that just her excuse?

  The truth was that she could not find her place. She was a round peg in a world of square holes. She could not find a group where she felt at home among friends.

  Not even with Nic.

  It felt better after he left, lying naked alone on the bed, sexually sated, with music and a cigarette, than it did in the moment of passion, the peak of orgasm.

  She did not love him. Just liked him a lot. She did still, but after the divorce and the guilt he carried around like a ball and chain, she had ended the relationship.

  He still asked every now and then. “Could we start again? Just one more time?” She considered it. Sometimes seriously because of the desire to be held, to be caressed He had liked her body. “You are sexy, Allison. Your breasts ” Maybe that was the thing, he had accepted her body. Because she could not change it, the curves were genetic, passed on from grandmother to mother to daughter in an unbroken succession, stout people, plump women, regardless of the best efforts of diets and exercise programs.

  She crushed the cigarette into the grass with the tip of her shoe. The butt lay there like a reproach. She picked it up and threw it behind a shrub in a bed of daisies.

  Where was Monica Kleintjes?

  Her cell phone rang.

  “It’s the boss, Allison. Where are you?”

  “Newlands.”

  “You had better get back. The minister is doing a press conference in fifteen minutes.”

  “Which one?”

  “Intelligence.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  * * *

  During the design and equipping of the interview/interrogation room of the Presidential Intelligence Unit, Janina Mentz has asked why a table was necessary. Nobody could give her an answer. That is why there wasn'’t one. She had asked why the chairs should be hard and uncomfortable. Why the walls must be bare except for the one with the one-way mirror. She asked whether a stripped, unpleasant, chilly room yielded better results than a comfortable one. Nobody could answer that. “We are not running a police station” was her argument. So there were three easy chairs of the sort that Lewis Stores or Star Furnishers sold in the hundreds for people’s sitting rooms. They were upholstered in practical brown and treated with stain-resistant chemicals. The only difference was that these chairs could not be moved, so no one could prevent or delay entry to the room by pushing the chairs under the door handle. The chairs were bolted down in an intimate triangle. The floor was covered in wall-to-wall carpet, uniform beige, not khaki, not pumpkin, but exactly to Janina’s specification: beige. The microphone was concealed behind the fluorescent light in the ceiling, and the closed-circuit television was in the adjoining observation room, pointing its cyclopean eye through the one-way glass.

  Janina stood by the camera and looked at the woman in one of the chairs. Interesting that everyone brought in chose the chair half turned away from the window. As if they could sense it.

  Was this the result of too many television serials?

  She was Miriam Nzululwazi, common-law wife of Thobela Mpayipheli.

  What had Umzingeli seen in her?

  She did not seem a cheerful type. She looked like someone who was chronically unhappy, the permanent lines of unhappi-ness around her mouth. No laugh lines.

  She predicted that the woman would not cooperate. She expected her to be tense and hostile. Janina sighed. It had to be done.

  * * *

  Allison’s phone rang as she climbed the stairs.

  “It’s Nic.”

  Any news?”

  “We don'’t have your Mrs. Nzululwazi.”

  “Well, who has?”

  “I don'’t know.”

  “Can the intelligence services detain people? Without trial?”

  “There are laws that are supposed to regulate them, but the intelligence people do as they please, because it is in the interest of the state and the people they work with are not the sort who run to the courts over irregular treatment.”

  “And the drug angle?”

  “I talked to Richter. He says Mpayipheli is well known. He worked for Orlando Arendse when he was Prince of the Cape Flats. No arrests, no record, but they were aware of him.”

  “And Orlando Arendse was a dealer?”

  “An importer and distributor. A wholesaler. Mpayipheli was a deterrent for dealers who would not pay. Or who did not reach their targets. It’s another kind of business, that.”

  “Where do I get hold of Arendse?”

  “Allison, these are dangerous people.”

  “Nic ”

  “I'’ll find out.”

  “Thanks, Nic.”

  “There’s something else.”

  “Not now, Nic.”

  “It’s not about us.”

  “What is it?”

  “Memo from the minister. Strong steps if they catch anyone leaking information on the Mpayipheli affair to the media. Full cooperation with our intelligence colleagues, big mobilization in the Northern Cape.”

  “You were not supposed to tell me that.”

  “No.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “I want to see you, Allison.”

  “Good-bye, Nic.”

  “Please.” In a little-boy voice.

  “Nic ”

  “Please, just once.”

  And she weakened in the face of everything.

  “Maybe.”

  “Tonight?”

  “No.”

  “When then?”

  “The weekend, Nic. Coffee somewhere.”

  “Thanks.” And he sounded so sincere that she felt guilty.

  * * *

  It had been fifteen years since Miriam Nzululwazi’s terrible night in the Caledon Square cells, but the fear she felt then made the jump to the present, here to the interrogation room. Her hands gripped the arms of the chair, but her eyes were blind to the wall they faced. She remembered one woman in the cell kept screaming, screaming, a sound that penetrated marrow and bone, a never-ending lament. The red-faced policeman, who opened the cell door and cleared a way through the perspiring bodies to the screaming one with his truncheon, raised the blunt object high above his head.

  She was seventeen, on her way home to the thrown-together wooden hut on an overpopulated dune at Khayalitsha, her week’s wages clasped in her handbag, on the way to the buses at the Parade when the mass of demonstrators blocked the road. A seething mass like a noisy pregnant python curling past the town hall, banners waving, whistling, chanting, toyi-toyiing, shouting, a swinging carnival of protest over pay in the clothing industry or something. She had joined in, as they were flowing in her direction, laughing at the young men cavorting like monkeys, and suddenly the police were there, the tear gas, the charge, the water cannon— the python had borne chaos.

  They pushed her into the back of a big yellow lorry, pulled her out at the cells with the rest of the horde, shoved them into a cell, too full, nobody could sit and the screaming woman, wailing something about a child, she must go to her sick child, the red-faced white man threatening with the truncheon above his head, shouting, voice lost in the din, the arm dropping, again and again, and terror had overwhelmed Miriam— she needed to escape, she pushed against the others, through the screaming women till she reached the bars, put her hands through them, and there were more policemen shouting, too, faces wild, till someone pulled her back, the lamenting voice suddenly quiet.

  She felt the same fear now, in this closed space, the locked door, the locking up without reason, without guilt. She jumped as the door opened. A white woman entered, went to sit opposite her.

  “How can I convince you that we want to help Thobela?” Ja-nina Mentz used his first name deliberately.

  “You can’t keep me here.” Miriam heard the fear in her own voice.

  “Ma’am, these people are misusing him.
They are putting him in unnecessary danger. They have lied and misled him. They are not good people.”

  “I don'’t believe you. He was Thobela’s friend.”

  “He was. Years ago. But he has gone bad. He wants to sell us out. Our country. He wants to hurt us and he is using Thobela.”

  She could see uncertainty in Miriam’s face; she would capitalize on it. “We know Thobela is a good man. We know he was a hero of the Struggle. We know he wouldn'’t have got involved if he knew the whole story. We can sort this out and bring him home safely but we need your help.”

  “My help?”

  “You talked to the media .”

  “She also wanted to help. She was also on Thobela’s side.”

  “They are manipulating you, ma’am.”

  “And you?”

  “How will the media be able to bring Thobela home? We can. With your help.”

  “There is nothing I can do.”

  “Do you expect Thobela to phone?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “If we could just give him a message.”

  Miriam glanced sharply at Janina, at her eyes, her mouth, her hands.

  “I don'’t trust you.”

  Janina sighed. “Because I am white?”

  “Yes. Because you are white.”

  * * *

  Captain Tiger Mazibuko could not get to sleep. He rolled about on the army bed. It was muggy in Kimberley not too hot, still overcast, but the humidity was high and the room poorly ventilated.

  What was this hate that he felt for Mpayipheli?

  The man was in the Struggle. This man had not sold out his comrades.

  Where did this hate come from? It consumed him, it influenced his behavior; he had not treated Little Joe well. He had always had the anger, but it had never before affected his leadership.

  Why?

  This was just a poor middle-aged man who had a moment of glory a long time ago.

  Why?

  Outside there was a rumbling that grew louder and louder.

  How was he supposed to sleep?

  It was the Rooivalks. The windows shook in their frames, the deep bass note of the motors reverberated in his chest. Earlier it had been the trucks, departing one after another with single-minded purpose. Soldiers were being deployed to set up the roadblocks on the dirt and blacktop roads. The net was cast wider to catch a single fish.

  He turned over again.

  Did it matter where the hate came from? As long as he could control it. Channel it.

  Any necessary force, Janina Mentz had said. In other words, shoot the fucker if you like.

  Lord, he looked forward to it.

  22.

  The six-man team searched the house in Guguletu with professional skill. They took video footage and digital stills before they began so that everything could be replaced exactly where it had been. Then the methodical, laborious search began. They knew the hidey-holes of amateurs and professional frauds, no nook or cranny was left unsearched. Stethoscopes were used on walls and floors, powerful flashlights in the spaces between roof and ceiling. The master keys they had brought for cupboards and doors were not required. One of the six men was master of the inventory. He murmured into a palm-size tape recorder like a businessman dictating a letter.

  It was a small house with not much inside. The search took 130 minutes. Then they were gone in the microbus they had arrived in. The master of inventory phoned his boss, Vincent Radebe.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Nothing at all?” asked Radebe.

  “No weapons, no drugs, no cash. A few bank statements. The usual documentation. Mpayipheli is taking his high school equivalency, there is correspondence and books. Magazines, cards— sentimental love notes to the woman in her clothes drawer. ‘From Thobela. To Miriam. I love you this, I love you that.’ Nothing else. Ordinary people.”

  In the Ops Room Vincent shook his head. He had thought so.

  “Oh, one other thing. A veggie garden out back. Very neat. Best tomatoes I have seen in years.”

  * * *

  The trick at a news conference is to phrase your questions in such a way as not to disclose to the other media the information you have.

  That was why, after the minister had read the prepared statement on the stormy life and violent criminal times of Thobela Mpayipheli and had responded to a horde of questions from radio, newspaper, and television journalists almost without exception with “I am not in a position to answer that question, due to the sensitive nature of the operation,” Allison Healy asked: “Is anybody else connected with this operation being detained at the moment?”

  And because the minister did not know, she hesitated. Then she gave an answer that would cover her if the opposite were true. “Not to my knowledge,” she said.

  It was an answer she would later wish with all her heart never to have uttered.

  * * *

  They brought Miriam coffee and sandwiches in the interrogation room. She asked when they would let her go. The food bearer did not know. He said he would ask.

  She did not eat or drink. She tried to overcome her fear. The walls suffocated her, the windowless room pressed down on her. Tonight it was she who needed to go to her child, tonight it was she who wanted to cry out with a high frightened voice, “Let me out.” She must go fetch Pakamile. Her child, her child. Her work. What were the bank people thinking? Did they think she was a criminal? Were they going to fire her? Would someone here go and explain to the bank people why they had come to fetch her?

  She needed to get out.

  She must get out.

  And what about Thobela? Where was he now? Was it true what the white woman said, that he was in danger?

  She had not asked for this.

  * * *

  Janina Mentz waited until everyone who had been resting was back before she gathered them around the table.

  Then she told them almost the whole story. She did not mention that the director’s name was on the list, but she confessed that she had set up the operation from the start. She did not apologize for keeping them in the dark. She said they should understand why she had done it that way.

  She described the meeting with the minister, the confirmation that Thobela Mpayipheli, code name Umzingeli, was a former MK operatI've, that he had received advanced training, that he was a dangerous opponent, and that it was of cardinal importance that he be stopped.

  “We will waste no more time finding out who he was. We are going to focus on finding out who he is now. With his background, his behavior the past eighteen hours makes no sense. He has deliberately refrained from violence. At the airport he said, I quote, ‘I don'’t want to hurt anybody’ In the confrontation with two Reaction Unit members he said, ‘Look what you made me do.’ But at neither of these occasions did he give himself up. It doesn'’t make sense to me. Does anyone have an opinion here?”

  She knew Rajkumar would have an opinion. He always had an opinion. “Escalation,” he said. “He’s not a moron. He knows if he shoots someone, things will escalate out of his control.”

  Radebe said nothing, but she had her suspicions. So she drew him out. “Vincent?”

  Radebe sat with his palms over his cheeks, fingertips on his temples, and his eyes on the big table. “I think not.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Rajkumar irritably.

  “Put everything together,” said Radebe. “He left the drug work. Of his own free will. Orlando Arendse said he just left without explanation. He deliberately chose an occupation without violence, probably at a much-reduced salary. He begins a relationship with a single mother, lives with her and her child, enrolls in a high school correspondence course, buys a farm. What does that tell us?”

  “Smokescreen,” said Rajkumar. “What about all the money?”

  “He worked for six years in the lucratI've drug industry. What could he spend his money on?”

  “A thousand things. Wine, women, song, gambling.”

  “No,” said Radebe.

  “What do you think, Vincent?” asked Mentz soft
ly.

  “I think he began a new life.”

  She watched the faces around the table. She wanted to test the support for Radebe. She saw none.

  “Why not give himself up then, Vincent?” Rajkumar asked with a flamboyant gesture.

  “I don'’t know,” said Radebe. “I just don'’t know.”

  Rajkumar leaned back as if he had won the argument.