The Prey

by Tony Park

  Tobias rose from his chair. ‘You did the right thing, Cameron. Now I should be getting back to work.’ He extended a hand.

  ‘Sit down.’

  Tobias looked at him, then at the door, and realised it wasn’t a request. He lowered himself back into his chair.

  ‘Gideon will be waiting for you outside.’

  Tobias seemed to visibly relax a little, as if he’d misjudged Cameron’s intention. Cameron liked that. Maybe Tobias was thinking that his stupid, weak boss was simply concerned about his safety.

  Cameron walked around Tobias so that he was standing behind him. He rested his hands on the seat back. Tobias swivelled his head to look up at him. ‘I can look after myself, Cameron. I really can’t imagine why Gideon was so angry at me. Did you see the way he kept glaring at me?’

  Cameron vaguely remembered Tobias making some reference to being an ex-MK man. It was probably bullshit, but if Tobias had served in the ranks of the ANC’s military wing, Umkonto we Sizwe, the Tip of the Spear, during the struggle against apartheid, then he might have had some resistance to interrogation training and therefore known that the best defence was often attack. Cameron would have been throwing questions back at his interrogator as well, for he had been through the training himself.

  ‘Oh, I saw it, all right.’

  Cameron reached behind his back. When he had gone to his bakkie, after sending Kylie ahead of him inside to his office, he had opened the glove compartment and taken out the small lockable gun safe he kept there. Inside was his Sig Sauer nine-millimetre pistol. He drew it from the waistband of his overall trousers and placed the barrel up under Tobias’s chin, ramming it hard.

  ‘What –’

  ‘Shut the fuck up. Listen to me, China, I know you’re running the supply operation into the zama zamas and bringing the gold out.’ Cameron reached down to Tobias’s belt where, like the uniformed men in his charge, he carried a pair of handcuffs and a can of mace in leather pouches. He took out the handcuffs and opened one of the bracelets. ‘Put that on your left wrist.’

  Tobias took the bracelet but paused. Cameron dug the gun in deeper into his throat. Tobias snapped the cuff in place.

  ‘Hands behind your back.’

  ‘Cameron, please, be reasonable.’

  ‘Do it.’

  Tobias sighed, and did as he was told. Cameron tightened the first bracelet and fastened the other to Tobias’s right wrist. This should have been the moment Tobias tried to knock him off balance and go for his gun, but he was going to play innocent.

  ‘I have done nothing wrong, my friend,’ Tobias said.

  ‘Paulo Barrica had fingered you already, my friend’

  Tobias glared back at him. ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Yes. You assigned him the task of escorting Chris and the new guy underground. Why?’

  ‘You agreed with my decision. You wanted to send Barrica because you knew he wouldn’t take any shit if they bumped some zama zamas.’

  The accusation hung between them. Cameron swallowed and hoped Tobias didn’t see his bobbing Adam’s apple – an admission of Cameron’s uncertainty and his realisation that Tobias had played him. Cameron pushed the gun harder into Tobias’s throat and had the pleasure of watching him squirm. ‘What did they want with Chris?’

  ‘I … don’t … know … what … you’re … talking … about.’

  Cameron had already racked the pistol. Tobias blinked. With his free hand Cameron reached for the phone on the boardroom table and called Hannelie. She answered immediately. ‘Hann, I’m going to be in a strategy meeting with Tobias for the next two hours, until after five. Please make sure we’re not disturbed – by anyone. I won’t be needing anything more from you this afternoon.’

  ‘Ja, OK, Cameron. I wanted to take my grandson to get some new rugby boots some time, so I might go a bit early if that’s OK.’

  ‘That’s fine. See you tomorrow.’ Cameron hung up the phone. ‘We’ve got all afternoon and all night if we need it.’

  ‘My uncle is the provincial governor …’

  ‘And mine was a dustman. It doesn’t matter, Tobias, and don’t try and scare me with your ANC credentials or your time in MK. I was a recce in Angola.’

  Now it was Tobias’s turn to swallow. ‘You’re crazy. Global Resources will fire you when they find out about this and I’m going to the police.’

  Cameron shook his head. ‘I’m finished here anyway. And I don’t think you’re that stupid. No, I’ve got a better idea. You tell me what I want to know and I’ll let you live. You can resign from Global Resources and go and rip someone else off. All I want to know is who’s in charge underground.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m going to scream in three seconds. Three, two …’

  Cameron had never tortured a prisoner during his time in the South African recce commandos, the army’s elite special forces unit, but he’d been present while others had. The screams of those men were one of the things he’d tried to put behind him, but they still returned in his occasional nightmares. They always talked, in the end.

  ‘Let me save you some time.’ Cameron turned his hand and smashed the butt of his pistol into Tobias’s nose. It shattered with a crack of cartilage and Tobias screamed. Blood spattered the desk and gushed from Tobias’s nostrils. He moaned. ‘Did you forget about the HIV AIDS awareness seminar that’s on this afternoon, Tobias? Hannelie’s the only person in the office and she’s slipped out to Mr Price already for her son’s new boots. Ag, shame, man, there’s no one here to listen to your crying.’

  Cameron gently touched Tobias’s bloodied nose.

  ‘Aaah! I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you all I know.’

  Just as Cameron thought. Tobias was full of hot air; he was a bully and a coward who had caved in at the first sign of pain. Cameron was pleased. He didn’t like what he had just done and didn’t know if he could do much more to Tobias. ‘Who’s in charge down there?’

  ‘A Zimbabwean. I don’t know his real name. He calls himself Wellington, after the British general who defeated Napoleon, and Shumba, which means lion in Shona.’ Tobias coughed and spat blood on the carpet squares. ‘It’s what they called a chimurenga name during the bush war in Zimbabwe – not his real name.’

  ‘Is he ex-military, a former Zimbabwean guerrilla?’

  Tobias shrugged. ‘All I know is that he used to be a shift boss in a goldmine in Zimbabwe. He knows what he’s doing. He and his men are well armed.’

  Cameron moved his face so that he was close enough to breathe on Tobias. The other man flinched away, his tears mixing with his blood and streaming down his chin. ‘Tell me, did you set Paulo Barrica up to be killed?’

  ‘On the lives of my children, I did not.’

  ‘You knew those men were going to be attacked, didn’t you?’

  Tobias screwed his eyes shut.

  Cameron lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘I know this mine better than anyone, Tobias. I can find a madala side and finish you off down there and no one will ever find you – not your God, not your children.’

  Tobias opened his eyes and Cameron saw the fear. ‘No, please. Listen to me. Wellington wanted Chris – he told me no one would get hurt. He was going to capture them, disarm Barrica and release him, and then ransom Chris and Themba Tshabalala when he was finished with them.’

  Cameron bought part of the story, but not all of it. The zama zamas stole Global Resources’ water, power, machinery, tools and gold, so why not their expertise? There had been a significant increase in recent weeks in the number of dead zama zamas dumped by the main shaft. Perhaps this Wellington Shumba wanted a solution to this problem from Chris. But that still didn’t explain Paulo’s death.

  ‘You recommended Paulo because you knew he wouldn’t let himself be taken. You wanted him dead.’

  ‘You agreed with me. You wanted a fighter down there,’ Tobias reminded him.

  Cameron wasn’t buying that. ‘You wanted him dead.’

  Tobias drew a breath and co
ughed. Tears of pain rolled from his eyes, but there was a spark of his former defiance there. ‘How are you going to explain how I came out of this strategy meeting looking like this?’

  ‘That’s easy. No one here is ever going to see you again. You’re going to leave and you’re going to email me your resignation letter.’

  ‘You’ve got nothing on me.’

  Cameron reached into the top pocket of his overall shirt. He pulled out a digital voice recorder – he’d never learned to type properly and dictated all his correspondence into it for Hannelie to transcribe. He hit the review button then pushed play at a random point. ‘No, please, listen to me. Wellington wanted Chris …’ On hearing his own words, Tobias closed his eyes again.

  Cameron reached for the stack of personnel folders that Hannelie had extracted for him before the disciplinary meeting. Gideon’s was on the top. He opened it and found the man’s cellphone number. He dialled while he kept his Sig trained on Tobias, even though the man had his head on his chest and looked utterly defeated. The phone rang four times, then Gideon answered.

  ‘Gideon? It’s Cameron McMurtrie. I’ve had a change of heart. You can have your job back. Meet me at the Wimpy in town, in an hour’s time.’

  *

  Kylie had set up her laptop in the meeting room of the mine offices. She recognised the layout from the many video conferences she’d sat in on. The decor was older here than most of the mine offices she had worked in or visited in Australia. It was a bit like a seventies or eighties time warp with its carpet squares and timber panelling.

  Hannelie, Cameron’s personal assistant, had knocked and come in to check on her, announcing that Cameron had told her she could leave early to collect her son from school. Hannelie had explained that everyone else in the office was at a health seminar.

  ‘And your hire car is here now,’ Hannelie said. ‘The man from the office in Barberton dropped it off. It’s the silver Tiida just outside. Cameron thought you might like to have your own vehicle while you’re here.’ Hannelie put the keys down on the boardroom table beside Kylie’s computer then said goodbye and left.

  Kylie checked her watch. Cameron had been half an hour with Tobias. She could only guess at what was going on in the mine manager’s office. Perhaps he was giving Tobias a written warning and although she had heard a muffled yelp she had resisted the urge to check on them. She shut down the laptop and closed it. She knew it was right to give Cameron some space, but she wasn’t used to being kept waiting. Cameron could come and find her when he was finished. She packed her laptop in her small wheelie bag and went outside.

  A stiff, hot breeze was blowing dust from nearby mine dumps over the car park and her rental car was sporting a fine coating of grit. When she opened the door Kylie saw a GPS unit on the passenger’s seat. She attached it to the windscreen, turned it on, looked up ‘accommodation’, and found the address of the Diggers’ Retreat Hotel.

  She left the mine via the main gate and, although the GPS told her to turn right, decided she would drive around the mine’s perimeter and check out the local area first. She turned the sat nav off. The wind trapped plastic bags against the diamond mesh of the fence and snagged on the coils of razor wire on top. Workers coming off shift turned to look at her as she cruised past. She waved and two waved back, although the third just stared at her. About a kilometre down the road she carried on past the corner of the Eureka property until she came to a settlement of what looked like about thirty or forty shacks. Some were made of sheets of rusted corrugated iron, others with odd bits of timber and sheets of plywood. Smoke curled from makeshift pipe chimneys in a couple of the shanties. A woman with a baby in her arms stared at her through listless eyes as she slowed. Kylie made a mental note to ask who lived in these huts.

  Bush-covered hills rose steeply to her left and on her right a wide green valley patchworked with farms stretched across to the base of the next mountain range and Nelspruit beyond. It was stunning countryside.

  Kylie made a U-turn and switched the GPS on again. Two hundred metres from the Eureka entrance gate she saw a ute – what the South Africans called a bakkie – pull out and turn towards her. All the mine’s vehicles had the same livery, but as they closed on each other she thought the single male driver looked like Cameron, with his dark wavy hair. She reached over to her handbag on the passenger seat and took out her iPhone. Driving one-handed she scrolled through the recent calls and found Cameron’s number. She dialled it. Kylie saw the oncoming driver look down and take something from his pocket and hold it out in his left hand, towards the windscreen. She could see, now, it definitely was Cameron and she waved at him through the windscreen. The phone continued to ring for two more seconds, then stopped.

  He passed her and while he had missed seeing her because he was checking his phone and not the road, he had deliberately ended her call before answering it.

  She was annoyed. Furious, in fact. She had been discreet and professionally deferential to him when she had agreed to leave him in peace with Tobias, even though she’d had every right to sit in on their discussions, and now he was snubbing her because he wanted to get home. She swung her car’s steering wheel to the left, driving onto the verge, then wrenched it around hard to the right in a another U-turn. She changed down and stood on the accelerator.

  Kylie bit her lower lip. Was it petty of her, she wondered, to be following him? Perhaps he was merely sticking to the letter of the law by not talking on his cellphone while driving. The GPS started badgering her again, telling her to turn around when possible, directing her to the hotel. Just as she was thinking of doing exactly that she saw Cameron raise his phone to his ear. He obviously had no qualms about talking while driving, even though she knew from her security briefing it was illegal in South Africa.

  ‘When possible, make a U-turn,’ the GPS lady said again as Kylie carried on through a cross-street, in pursuit.

  ‘Shut up,’ she said to the device.

  From behind she saw the blur of Cameron’s hand moving in the cab of the truck, as though he was putting his phone in his pocket. She stabbed his number from the recent calls list. It was hard to see him clearly, but his phone rang a couple of times before it cut to voicemail; she was sure he had killed the call deliberately.

  ‘Bastard.’

  She would tell him the truth when she caught up to him, that she had been out for a drive and had seen him on the road and wanted to talk to him. She would put him on the defensive and see what he had to say for himself about ignoring her calls. Kylie sometimes ignored calls when she was busy, but never from Jan, her immediate superior. With things in such a state at the mine and Loubser still missing, there was no excuse for Cameron snubbing her. She had been too soft, she realised, giving him his space with Tobias, and now he was riding roughshod over her. That would soon change.

  Cameron indicated and accelerated to overtake a lorry. Kylie started to veer out but saw a line of traffic coming the other way. A horn blared as Cameron nipped in front of the lorry. The oncoming driver flashed his lights in annoyance. Not only was he disrespecting her, he was also a maniac driver. She wondered if his recent split from his wife was affecting his judgement.

  The stream of oncoming traffic seemed never-ending. Kylie knew the sensible, mature thing to do would be to turn around, find her hotel and calm down over a glass of wine. She could deal with Cameron in the morning.

  The truck in front of her pulled over to the left, over the yellow line that marked a half-lane. Even though there was still traffic coming towards her she had enough room to squeeze through. She hit the accelerator and sped past the truck.

  She couldn’t see Cameron’s vehicle and she was coming into town now. Her phone rang and she indicated left and turned into a suburban side street.

  Kylie exhaled, feeling relieved. This would be Cameron and he would be calling to say that he was sorry, and that he hadn’t wanted to take her calls while driving. She picked up the phone from the centre console and saw that
it was Jan.

  ‘Shit.’ Kylie hit the answer key. ‘Jan, hi.’

  ‘Kylie, howzit?’

  ‘Fine,’ she lied.

  ‘You don’t sound too sure. How are things going with Cameron?’

  It was what made him such a good leader, she thought, the ability to read nuances, to cut through the bullshit and not waste time on trivialities. She was angry with Cameron right now and she wanted to vent, but that wouldn’t solve her problems and she didn’t want Jan to think that she needed him to sort out her problems. ‘He’s under a great deal of stress.’

  ‘I’m sure he is. Any word about Loubser?’

  ‘No, nothing, but I’m learning more and more about these zama zamas all the time. It’s out of control here, Jan.’ That wasn’t venting, she told herself, that was the truth.

  ‘It’s out of control throughout South Africa in the entire gold-mining sector – and it’s also a problem in the platinum mines. The question is what do we do about it?’

  He was asking her for the solution to a multimillion-dollar problem after she had been in Africa for less than twenty-four hours. It was good to analyse and plan in business, and to make important decisions only once you had a full appreciation of the facts and had considered all possible courses of action. And sometimes it was fine to shoot from the hip. ‘We can’t stop the underground illegal miners without sending in a private army and causing casualties in the process. We need to go after the middlemen and use them to get to the heads of the syndicates.’

  There was a brief pause on the other end of the line. ‘Kylie, you were the one cautioning Cameron not to act like a vigilante. If you don’t want him sending armed security underground to clear out the miners, and the police aren’t interested in acting to help out foreign mining companies, then how do you suggest we catch these buyers and middlemen above ground?’

  Kylie knew she had put her foot in it, but she wasn’t one to back down from a point of view she knew was right, even if she didn’t yet know how she would implement her plan. ‘Intelligence.’

  ‘You’ve got plenty of that, but how’s it going to help you bust an international gold-buying syndicate?’