Heart of the Hunter

by Deon Meyer

  In long discussions afterward with Van Heerden she would try to purge it from her mind by reconstructing the events over and over again. Try to analyze her emotions from where they had stood as they ate their meal through to the end of it all one day later.

  They sat at the table in Van Heerden’s kitchen. At Mpayipheli’s request, he had made coq au vin in the traditional Provençal manner. The serving dish stood in the middle of the table, steaming a heavenly aroma, golden couscous in a dish alongside. Three people in a happy domestic scene, the Xhosa man’s hunger practically visible on his face, the way he eyed the food, eager posture, hands ready, impatient for her to finish serving.

  It was a pleasant occasion, a convivial gathering, a mental photograph frozen in time to take out and remember with satisfaction later.

  Don Giovanni playing in the sitting room, a baritone aria that she was unfamiliar with but that fell with melodious machismo on her ear, the man she was beginning to love beside her, who continually surprised her with his cooking skill, his fanatical love of Mozart, his deep friendship with the black man, his ongoing teasing of the both of them. And Thobela, who carried his grief for Miriam Nzululwazi with so much grace— how her perception of him had changed. A week ago on the plane he and his past had filled her with fear, but now tenderness grew in her out of the conversations on the veranda when he related his life to her. There were moments when he described how he had met Miriam and how their love and companionship had blossomed that she had to fight back the tears. Here they sat now on the eve of his attempt to claim Pakamile, the future full of promise for everyone and the world, a wonderful moment framed in the dark reflection of a red wine glass.

  She would never be sure if she had heard the sound. Perhaps, but even if she had, her untrained ear could never have distinguished it from others, nor her consciousness read danger in it.

  Mpayipheli had moved with purpose, one moment in the chair beside her, the next a mass of kinetic energy moving in the direction of the sitting room, and then everything happened at once. Chaos and noise that she could only sort chronologically with great difficulty after the fact. First the dull thud of human bodies colliding with great force, then the apologetic reports of a silenced firearm, a short staccato of four-five-six shots followed by the crack of the coffee table breaking, shouts of men like bellowing animals, and she found herself in the doorway of the living room, the only light shining over her shoulder, and all she could see was rolling shadows and half-light.

  Mpayipheli and a man were on the ground, writhing and grunting for life or death, the silver flash of a steel blade in between, and another man, tall and athletic on the other side of the room with a gun in his hand, the long snout of a silencer searching out a target on the floor, but calm and calculating, unhurried by the frenetic motion of the two figures.

  And then Van Heerden. She had not seen him leave the kitchen, was unaware that he had gone out the other door into the passage. Only when the tall man placed his gun on the floor did she realize that Van Heerden was holding the double-barreled shotgun to the man’s head, and he called to her, “Allison, go into the kitchen, close the door,” but she was frozen. Why couldn'’t she move? Why couldn'’t she react? she would ask herself and Van Heerden over and over in the weeks afterward.

  Mpayipheli and the other one stood up against each other; his opponent, the one with the knife, had small eyes close together and a thick neck on massive shoulders.

  “Tiny,” Van Heerden called, and threw something across the room that the Xhosa deftly caught.

  Tiny.

  Everything regressed, everything rolled back to an ancient time, and the one with the neck said, “Amsingelly” with his head lowered and his broad-bladed knife weaving in front of him.

  “Umzingeli.” Thobela’s voice was a deep growl and then softer, much softer: “Mayibuye.”

  “What fucking language is that, nigger?”

  “Xhosa.” And she would never forget the look on Mpayipheli’s face, the light from the kitchen slanting onto it, and there was something indescribable there, a strange illumination, and then she saw the object he had plucked out of the air— it was the assegai, the one she had bought for him in the curio shop on Long Street.

  This office has been unable to re-establish contact with the two agents and can only assume that the mission was not a success.

  Inkululeko has been unable to supply any information as to what transpired at the house that belongs to a member of a local University’s department of psychology.

  We will continue to pursue the matter but regret to inform you that we have to presume the worst.

  “He’s not here, ma’am,” screamed Captain Tiger Mazibuko over the phone with a raging frustration that made her shudder.

  “Tiger ”

  “The doctor is here and he says if we don'’t leave within fifteen minutes, we will never see the hard drive again. And a redhead who says she is from the press. Something happened here, there’s blood on the walls and the furniture is fucked, but the dog is not here and these fucking people won’t cooperate .”

  “Tiger.” Her voice was stern and sharp, but he ignored her, he was out of his mind. “No,” he said. “I am finished. Totally fucking finished. I’ve already made a cunt of myself, I am finished. I didn’'t sit for two fucking days in a cell in Botswana for this. I didn’'t sign up for this. I will not expose my people to this. Enough, it’s fucking enough.”

  She tried calm. “Tiger, slow down. ”

  “Christ, jissis,” he said, and he sounded as if he would cry.

  “Tiger, let me speak to the doctor.”

  “I’m finished,” he said.

  “Tiger, please.”

  * * *

  High on the slopes of the Tygerberg in the heart of a white neighborhood, he climbed out of Van Heerden’s car. He was one block away from his destination, because there could be eyes, possibly two sets in a vehicle in front of the door and one or two bodyguards inside.

  He moved purposefully to the dark patches on the sidewalk, because a black man here in the small hours was out of place. On the street corner he stopped. The Cape night opened up for him, a fairy tale of a thousand flickering lights as far as the eye could see, from Milnerton in the west the coastline swept down to the lit carbuncle of the mountain. The city lay there like a slowly beating heart, the arteries curling away to Groote Schuur and Observatory and Rosebank and Newlands, and from there the Flats made a curve east, through Khayalitsha and Guguletu to Kraaifontein and Stellenbosch and Somerset West. Rich and poor, shoulder to shoulder, sleeping now, a resting giant.

  He stood, hands by his side. He looked.

  Because tomorrow would be his last day here.

  * * *

  Somewhere between three and four in the morning a part of Janina Mentz’s consciousness dragged her from a deep sleep. A sense that all was not right— a panicky, suffocating feeling. She opened her eyes with a jerk of her body, and the big black hand was over her mouth and she smelled him, the sweat, saw the blood on the torn clothes, saw the short assegai in his hand, and she made a sound of terror, her body instinctively shrinking away from him.

  “My name,” he said, “is Thobela Mpayipheli.”

  He pressed the blade to her throat and said, “We don'’t want to wake the children.”

  She moved her head up and down, pulling the sheets instinctively up over her chest where her heart leaped around like a wild animal.

  “I am going to take my hand off your mouth. I want only two things from you, and then I will leave. Do you understand?”

  Again she nodded.

  He lifted his hand, shifting the blade away from her, but still he was too close to her, his eyes watchful.

  “Where is Pakamile?”

  Her voice would not function, it came hoarsely through her dry mouth that failed to form words. She had to start over. “He is safe.”

  “Where?”

  “I don'’t know the exact place.”

  “You lie.” And the blade came nearer.

  “No Welfare, they
took him.”

  “You will find out.”

  “I will. I there isn'’t Tomorrow I’ll have to ”

  “You will find out tomorrow.” And her head worked frantically up and down in confirmation, her heart had slowed a fraction.

  “Tomorrow morning at eleven you will have Pakamile at the underground parking lot of the waterfront. If he is not there, I will send a copy of the hard drive to every newspaper in the country, understand?”

  “Yes.” Grateful that her voice flowed more easily now.

  “Eleven o’clock. Do not be late.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I know where you live,” he said, and stood up. And then he was gone, the room empty, and she took a deep breath before slowly getting out of bed and going to the bathroom to throw up.

  47.

  Bodenstein saw the GS stop in the street just before opening, and he knew he knew the rider but recognized him only when Mpayipheli removed the helmet. “Fuck,” said Bodenstein, and went out, amazed. “Thobela,” he said. “I came to pay you.” “Look at the bloody bike.” “A few scrapes. It’s fine.” “A few scrapes?”

  “I'’ve come to buy it, Bodenstein.” “You what?”

  “And I need another helmet. One of those System Fours that we only have in small sizes left. There are still a couple in the storeroom behind those boxes the exhausts came in.”

  * * *

  It was just Van Heerden and him in the parking garage. He stood by the motorbike; Van Heerden sat in his car with the CIA agent’s silenced machine pistol.

  Allison had chosen not to come.

  At one minute to eleven a black man came walking toward him from the shopping center entrance with a long, confident stride, and he knew instinctively that it was Mazibuko— he matched the voice and the rage to the physical before him.

  “I will get you, dog,” said Mazibuko.

  “Where is Pakamile?”

  “I’m telling you I will get you. One day when this data is not important anymore, I will find you and I will kill you, as God is my witness, I am going to kill you.”

  They faced each other and he felt the hate radiating from the man, and the temptation was strong, the fighting blood welled up in him.

  “The question you must ask, Mazibuko, is whether there is more in you than just the anger you feel. What is left if that is gone?”

  “Fuck you, Xhosa.” Spittle sprayed.

  “Are they using you? Are they using the rage that is eating you?”

  “Shut up, you dog. Come, take me now, you fucking coward.” Tiger’s body leaned forward, but an invisible thread held him back.

  “Ask yourself: how long until it’s no longer useful, before things change. A new administration or a new system or a new era. They are using you, Mazibuko. Like a piece of equipment.”

  Captain Tiger Mazibuko cracked at that moment, his hand went to the bulky bulge under his jacket and it was only the sharp voice of Janina Mentz that made him waver a moment, an authoritarian cry of his nickname, and he stood, torn between two alternatives, his eyes wild, his body a hair trigger, his fingers on the butt of the gun, and then Mpayipheli said quietly: “I am not alone, Tiger. You are dead before you can point that thing.”

  “Tiger,” Janina called again.

  Like a man on high wire, he struggled with balance.

  “don'’t let them use you,” said Mpayipheli again.

  Tiger dropped his hand, speechless.

  “Where is the hard drive?” he heard Mentz’s voice from somewhere between the cars.

  “Safe,” he said. “Where is Pakamile?”

  “In the car back here. If you want the child, you will have to give it to Tiger.”

  “You don'’t understand your alternatives.”

  “That is what you don'’t understand. The child for the hard drive. Non-negotiable.”

  “Watch me carefully. I am going to take a cell phone out of my pocket. And then I am going to phone a reporter from the Cape Times.

  ”

  Mazibuko stood before him, watching his every move, but his eyes had changed. The wildness had gone, and there was something else growing.

  He took out the cell phone, held it in front of him, and keyed in the number.

  “It’s ringing,” he said.

  “Wait!” screamed Mentz.

  “I have waited enough,” he said.

  “I will get the boy.”

  “Please hold on,” he said over the phone, and then to Mentz: “I am waiting.”

  He saw Mazibuko turn away from him.

  “You stay here,” he said, but Mazibuko did not hear. He was walking toward the exit, and Thobela saw something in the set of the shoulders that he understood.

  “You have two choices in life,” he said so only he could hear it. “You can be a victim. Or not.”

  Then he saw Pakamile and the child saw him, and the moment threatened to overcome him completely.

  * * *

  The white Mercedes-Benz stopped at the traffic lights and one of the street hawkers with packs of white plastic clothes hangers and sunshades for cars and little brown teddy bears knocked on the window and the driver let it slide down electronically.

  “The hard drive is safe,” said the driver, not in his natI've Zulu tongue but in English. “Not in our possession, but I believe it is absolutely secure.”

  “I will pass it on,” said the hawker.

  “Allah Akhbar,” said the small man, his delicate fingers relaxed on the steering wheel, and then the light changed to green up ahead and he put the car in gear.

  “Allah Akhbar,” said the hawker, “God is great,” and watched the car drive away.

  The driver switched on the radio as the announcer said, “And here is the new one from David Kramer, singing with his new find, Koos Kok, ‘The Ballad of the Lonely Motorbike Rider’ ”

  He smiled and ran a finger under the snow-white shirt collar to relieve the pressure a fraction against the small hump.

  * * *

  Reverend Lawrence Mpayipheli was busy searching for the ripest tomatoes and snipping them loose with the pruning shears, the scent of the cut stems full in his nose, the plump firmness of the red fruit under his fingers, when he heard the engine before the door and stood up stiffly from behind the high green bushes. There were two of them on the motorbike, a big man and a little boy and he thought, It can’t be, and he prayed just a short Lord, please, aloud, there in the middle of the vegetable garden. He waited for them to take off the hard hats so he could be sure, so he could call his wife in the clear voice that could reverberate across the backyards of Alice like the ringing of a church bell.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As usual, I am indebted to so many people and sources who contributed to this book. I can never thank you enough.

  The Afrikaans Language and Culture Society’s grant made it possible to take the GS on most of the routes described in the book and do a motorcycle tour of the Kat river valley and research in Grahamstown.

  Lisa Ncetani and the long, long list of Xhosa, Zulu, Tswana, Sotho, and Ndebele copassengers on business flights between Cape Town and Johannesburg, shop attendants, shoeshine men, taxi drivers, and porters: thank you for answering my questions so patiently and helping a white Afrikaner understand a little better.

  One of the more unsettling discoveries during the research was how little material is available about the more recent Xhosa lifestyle, culture, and history— especially on the Internet. But Timothy Stapleton’s Maqoma— Xhosa Resistance to Colonial Advance (Jonathan Ball, 1994) and Noël Mostert’s excellent Frontiers (Pimlico, 1992) were two indispensable sources.

  Dr. Julia C. Wells, historian at the University of Grahamstown, provided insightful information and comments on the history and development of the short stabbing spear, or assegai.

  Muneer Manie helped with the Arabic, and Ronnie Kasrils’s book Armed & Dangerous (Mayibuye, 1993,1998) was a similarly rich source of information on Umkhonto we Sizwe and the role of the East Germans and Soviet Russia during the Struggle.

  Intriguing and stimulating conversations with the
late Reverend Harwood Dixon, who was a missionary in the Eastern Cape for many years, and the enigmatic Professor Dap Louw from the University of the Free State’s Psychology Department had a great influence on the characters in the book. Similarly, I am indebted to Stephen Pinker’s How the Mind Works (W W Norton & Company, 1997), John L. Casti’s

  Paradigms Regained (Abacus, 2000), Richard Dawkins’s

  river Out of Eden (Phoenix, 2001), Desmond Morris’s

  The Naked Eye (Ebury Press, 2000), Brian Mas-ters’s ever re-readable

  The Evil That Men Do (Black Swan, 1996), and Geoffrey Miller’s excellent

  The Mating Mind (Vintage, 2001).

  I constantly made use of the Internet archI'ves of Die Burger, Beeld, and Die Volksblad.

  Other websites that provided essential information were Kalshnikov (www.kalashnikov.guns.ru), Valery Shilin’s Gun Club (www.club.guns.ru), the U.S. Marines (www.hqmc.usmc.mil), Denel (www.denel.co.za), Heckler & Koch (www.heckler-koch.de), Frikkie Potgieter’s rich source on the SADF and SANDF (http://members.tripod.com/samagte/index. html), Frans Nel’s Griekwa Afrikaans (www.ugie.co.za), the Intelligence Resource Program (FAS) (www.fas.org), and the Central Intelligence Agency (www.cia.gov).