Heart of the Hunter

by Deon Meyer

  Members of the public who have had contact with Mpayipheli, or who have information that could lead to his arrest, are advised to call the following toll-free number.

  With my luck, thought Tiger Mazibuko, some idiot will force Mpayipheli off the road with his souped-up Opel and demand the reward, too.

  He sat down beside Lieutenant Penrose. “Is Bravo ready?”

  “When the signal comes, we can be rolling in five minutes, Captain.”

  “If the signal comes.” He motioned toward the building behind him where the operation was coordinated. “This lot of monkeys couldn'’t find a turd in a toilet.”

  The lieutenant laughed. “We will get him, Captain. You’'ll see.”

  * * *

  Fourteen kilometers south of Koffiefontein the Gatsometer gave its fine electronic scream and the officer closed the book in one flowing motion, checked the speed reading, stood up, and walked into the road. It was a white Mercedes-Benz, six or seven years old. He held up his hand and the car immediately began to brake, stopping just next to him. He walked around to the driver’s side.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Franzen,” he greeted the driver.

  “You got me again,” said the farmer.

  “A hundred and thirty-two, Mr. Franzen.”

  “I was in a bit of a hurry. The kids forgot half their stuff on the farm and tomorrow is rugby practice. You know how it is.”

  “Speed kills, Mr. Franzen.”

  “I know, I know. It’s a terrible thing.”

  “We’ll look the other way this time, but you must please respect the speed limit, Mr. Franzen.”

  “I promise you it won’t happen again.”

  “You can go.”

  “Thank you. Cheers, boet.”

  He doesn'’t even know my name, the officer thought. Until I write him a ticket.

  * * *

  Quinn motioned for everyone to keep quiet before he allowed Monica Kleintjes to answer. She had a headset on, earphones and microphone, and then he pressed the button and nodded to her.

  “Monica Kleintjes,” she said in a shaky voice.

  “You have a lot of explaining to do, young lady.” Lusaka. The same unaccented voice of the first call.

  “Please,” she said.

  “You gave the drive to the guy on the motorbike?”

  “Yes, I—”

  “That was a very stupid thing to do, Monica.”

  “I had no choice. I I couldn'’t do it on my own.”

  “Oh, no, Monica. You were just plain stupid. And now we have a real problem.”

  “I’m sorry. Please ”

  “How did the spooks find out, Monica?”

  “They the phone. It was tapped.”

  “That’s what we thought. And they’re listening right now.”

  “No.”

  “Of course they are. They are probably standing right next to you.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  The voice was still calm. “Unlike you, my dear, we are sticking to the original deal. With maybe a few codicils. You have forty-eight of the seventy-two hours left. If the drive isn'’t here by then, we will kill your father. If we see anything that looks like an agent in Lusaka, we will kill your father. If the drive gets here and it is more bullshit, we will kill your father.”

  Monica Kleintjes’s body jerked slightly. “Please,” she said despairingly.

  “You should know, Monica, that your daddy is not a nice man. He talked to us— with a little encouragement, of course. We know he is working with the intelligence people. We know he tried to palm off bullshit data. That’s why we ordered the real thing. So here’s the deal for you and your friends from Presidential Intelligence: if the motorbike man does not make it, we kill Kleintjes. And we’ll give the bullshit drives and the whole story of how they abused a pensioner to the press. Can you imagine the headlines, Monica? Can you?”

  She was crying now, her shoulders shaking, her mouth forming words that could not escape her lips.

  And then everyone realized the connection was broken, and the director was looking at Janina Mentz with a strange expression on his face.

  26.

  He was doing nearly 180 when he saw the double tubes of the Gatsometer on the road in front of him and grabbed a handful of brakes and pulled hard, a purely instinctive reaction. The ABS brakes kicked in, moaned; one eye on the instrument panel, one eye on the tubes, still too fast, somewhere around 140, he saw the man run over the road, hand raised, and he had to brake again to avoid contact, realizing it was traffic police, one man, just one man, a speed trap. He must decide whether to run or stop, the choice too suddenly on him, the causality too wide; he chose to run, turned the throttle, passed the traffic officer and one car on the right, under the tree, only one car; he made up his mind, heart in his throat, and pulled the brakes again, bringing the motorbike to a standstill on the gravel verge. It didn’'t make sense, a lone traffic cop, one car, and he turned to see the man jogging toward him, half apologetic, and then he was standing there, saying, “Mister, for a minute there I thought you were going to run away.”

  * * *

  For the first time she felt fear as she climbed the stairs with the director to his office.

  In that moment when he had looked at her in the Ops Room, something had altered between them, some balance. He had made a small movement with his head and she knew what he meant and followed, her staff unknowing but silently watching them.

  It was not the change in the balance of power between her and the Zulu that clamped around her heart, it was the knowledge that she was no longer in control, that perception and reality had drifted apart like two moving targets.

  He waited until she was inside, closed the door, and stood still. He looked unblinkingly at her. “That is not the CIA, Janina,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “Who is it?”

  She sat down, although he had not invited her. “I don'’t know.”

  “And the drive that Mpayipheli has?”

  She shook her head.

  He walked slowly through the room, around the desk. She saw his calm. He did not sit, but stood behind his chair, looking down at her.

  “Have you told me everything, Janina?”

  * * *

  One man, the situation was surreal. He was moving in a dream world as he climbed off the motorbike, pulled off his gloves and helmet. “That’s a beautiful bike,” said the traffic officer.

  For a moment he considered the irony: the traffic cop saw the removal of his accessories as submission; he knew he did it for ease of movement, should he need to react. Retreating from the threat of violence, he forced himself into pacifist mode. He could see the weapon in the shiny leather holster on the officer’s hip.

  “We don'’t see many of those around here.”

  The blood was pulsing through him, he was aware of his readiness. As long as he recognized it, he could control it. He still felt unreal; the conversation was impossibly banal. “It is the biggest-selling bike bigger than seven-fifty cc in the country,” he said, keeping his voice even with difficulty.

  “You don'’t say?”

  He didn’'t know how to answer. The motorbike was between them— he wanted to reduce the gap but also maintain it.

  “You were going quite fast.”

  “I was.” Was he going to get a ticket? Would it be as ridiculous as that?

  “Let me see your driver’s license.”

  Suspicion: he must know something, he could not be alone.

  “Of course.” He took the key from the ignition, unlocked the luggage case, tried to scan the line of thorn trees and bushes surreptitiously. Where were the others?

  “Lots of packing space, hey?” There was an ingenuous quality in the man, and the question loosened something in his belly, a strange feeling.

  He zipped open the blue sports bag, looking for his wallet, took out the card, and handed it over. He kept a vigilant watch on the officer’s face, looking for covertness or deceit.

  “Mpay—”

  “Mpayipheli.” He helped the man pronounce it.

  “I
s this your motorbike, Mr. Mpayipheli?”

  Then he knew what was happening, and the urge to giggle was overwhelming, pushing up in him without warning as his brain grasped the possibility that this provincial representative had absolutely no idea. It almost overcame him. He allowed it to bubble up modestly careful not to lose it but suddenly relaxing, laughing heartily, “I could never afford one of these.”

  The officer laughed along with him, bonding— two middle-class men admiring the toys of the rich. “What do these things cost?”

  “Just over ninety thousand.”

  The man whistled through his teeth. “Whose is it?”

  “My boss’s. He has an agency in the Cape. For BMW.” And again the laugh bubbled up in him, any minute now he was going to wake up under the tarpaulin of the El Camino, these moments of drama could not be real.

  The traffic officer handed back his driver’s license. “I rode a Kawasaki when I did traffic in Bloemfontein. A seven-fifty. Big. I don'’t see a chance for that anymore.” Trying to strengthen the bond.

  “I'’ve got a Honda Benly at home.”

  “Those things last forever.”

  They both knew the moment of truth was coming, a defining factor in the budding relationship. It hung in a moment of silence between them. The officer shrugged his shoulders apologetically. “I really should ticket you.”

  Fuck, he could not hold it in. It was filling his body with the urgency of a call of nature. “I know” was all he could manage.

  “You’d better go, before I change my mind.”

  He smiled perhaps too widely, put out his hand. “Thank you.” He turned away quickly, putting away the license in the wallet, wallet in the bag, bag in the motorbike.

  And take it easy,” came the voice over his shoulder. “Speed kills.”

  He nodded, put on the helmet, and pulled on his gloves.

  * * *

  “You know all that I know,” said Janina Mentz, but she lied. “I planned the operation on Ismail Mohammed’s testimony. I recruited Johnny Kleintjes. Me alone. No one else knew anything. We compiled the data together. It is false but credible, I am sure of that. He contacted the Americans. They showed interest. They invited him to Lusaka. He went, and then the call came to his house.”

  “And she got Mpayipheli.”

  “Unforeseen.”

  “Unforeseen, Janina? According to the transcript of Monica’s interview, Johnny came to her work two weeks before he left for Lusaka and said if something happened to him, Mpayipheli is the man. And moreover, on top of the hard drive in his safe was a note with Mpayiphlei’s phone number.”

  Then she saw what the director saw, and the hand around her heart squeezed a little tighter. “He knew.”

  The director nodded.

  She saw from a wider perspective. “Johnny Kleintjes sold us out.”

  “Us and the Americans, Janina.”

  “But why, sir?”

  “What do you know of Johnny Kleintjes?”

  She threw up her hands. “I studied his file. Activist, exile, ANC member, computers ”

  “Johnny is a communist, Janina.”

  She sprang up, frustration and fear the goads. “Mr. Director, with respect, what does that mean? We were all communists when it suited us to have the help of the Eastern bloc. Where are the communists now? Marginalized dreamers who no longer have a significant influence in the government.”

  She stood with her hands on the desk and became conscious of the distaste in the Zulu’s demeanor. When he eventually answered, his voice was soft. “Johnny Kleintjes may be a dreamer, but you were the one who marginalized him.”

  “I don'’t understand,” she said, removing her hands and stepping back.

  “What don'’t you understand, Janina?”

  “Sir,” she said, sinking slowly into the chair, “to whom could he go? To whom did he sell us out?”

  “That is what we must find out.”

  “But it makes no sense. Communism There’s nothing left. There’s no one anymore.”

  “You are too literal, Janina. I suspect it’s more a question of ‘the enemy of my enemy’ ”

  “You must explain.”

  “Johnny always had a special hatred for the Americans.”

  Insight came slowly to her, reluctantly. “You mean ”

  “Who does the CIA currently view as threat number one?”

  “Oh, my God,” said Janina.

  * * *

  A bespectacled black soldier with the epaulettes of the Anti-Aircraft School on his shoulders came to fetch Captain Tiger Mazibuko under the tree. “The colonel asks the captain to come quickly.”

  He jumped up. “Have they got him?” He jogged ahead, aware of the expectations of the RU behind him.

  “I don'’t think so, Captain.”

  “You don'’t think so?”

  “The colonel will tell you, Captain.” He jogged into the building. The colonel stood at the radio, microphone in hand.

  “We have a situation.”

  “What?”

  “There are thirty-nine Hell’s Angels on motorbikes at the Windsorton Road roadblock. They want to come through.”

  “Where the hell is Windsorton Road?”

  “Forty-five kilometers north, on the N12.”

  “The Johannesburg road?”

  The colonel nodded.

  “Fuck them. Send them home.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Why?”

  “They say there are another fifty on the way. And when they arrive they are going through and if we want to stop them, we will have to shoot them.”

  Tiger reconsidered. “Let them through.”

  Are you sure?”

  Mazibuko smiled. “Very.”

  The colonel hesitated a moment and then depressed the SEND button on the microphone. “Sergeant, let them through whenever they want.”

  “Roger and out,” came the response.

  “What is your plan, Captain?” the colonel asked just before Mazibuko walked out with a certain zip in his step.

  He did not look up, but kept walking. “diversion, Colonel. Nothing like a bit of diversion for a bunch of frustrated soldiers,” he said.

  * * *

  The traffic officer was carefully rolling up the tubes of the Gatsometer. It was a tedious job on his own, but he did it mechanically, without bitterness, just another part of his easy routine. His thoughts were occupied with the black motorcyclist.

  Strange, that. A first. Black man on a big motorbike. You don'’t see many of those.

  But that wasn'’t all.

  The thing was, when he rode off, the BMW’s flat, two-cylinder engine made a nice muffled sound. He could swear he heard the man laugh, a deep, thundering, infectious, paralyzing laugh.

  Must be his imagination.

  * * *

  “Who?” asked Janina Mentz. “Al Qaeda? How, sir? How?”

  “My personal feeling is Tehran. I suspect Johnny had made a contact or two some way or another. Perhaps through the local extremists. But in my opinion, that is not the burning question, Janina.”

  She drew a deep breath to damp the growing unease. She was watchful for what would follow.

  “The question we must ask ourselves now is, What is on the hard drive?”

  She knew why the balance had shifted. He was not the Zulu source, he was not Inkululeko. He was free. Of suspicion, misunderstanding, circumstantial evidence. He was pure.

  The director leaned toward her and said, with great tenderness: “I had hoped you would have some ideas.”

  * * *

  The lieutenant of First Infantry Battalion had put a lot of thought into the roadblock at Petrusburg. His problem was that the place had a proliferation of roads leading like arteries out of the heart of the town in every direction— three dirt roads north, the east-west route of the N8 to Kimberley and Bloemfontein, the R48 to Koffiefontein, another dirt road south, and then the paved road to the black township, Bolokaneng.

  Where to put up the blockade?

  His eventual decision was based on the available intelligence: the fugitive was heading for
Kimberley. That is why the roadblock was just four hundred meters outside the town boundary on the Kimberley side, on the N8. For extra insurance, the SAPS, who provided two vans and four policemen, according to the agreement, were sitting on the gravel road that ran parallel east-west and joined the N8 farther along toward the City of Diamonds.