by Tony Park
‘You cannot let that woman arrest me,’ Luis had said when Cameron told him Radebe was on his trail. ‘She is with Wellington – he bragged about having the police in his pocket, and his bed. She will have me killed on his orders.’
‘I can try the Hawks again,’ Cameron had said.
‘No.’ Luis had been adamant. ‘Wellington has been arrested for breaking into Hippo Rock. You have seen him, first hand, trying to kill you underground. The police here have enough to put him in prison. Not even this Colonel Radebe can stop that. Please, Cameron, let me go home and bury my wife and see my son. If you can set up immunity for me, if you need my testimony, I will return from Mozambique to meet with the Hawks. You have my word. But first, I need to get home. I’m worried Radebe will have people watching the border for me, and in any case I have no passport.’
Cameron had offered to smuggle Luis across the border. Kylie had quietly objected, saying it was putting Cameron at risk. ‘He won’t be able to make Miriam’s funeral any other way. If he walked through Kruger it would take him days.’
They had set out from Hippo Rock the next morning via Barberton, where Cameron had left Jess with her friend Mandy. He didn’t trust Sindisiwe Radebe to see through Wellington’s prosecution to a lengthy prison term, but at least he was behind bars for the time being so they could all sleep safe for a while. Why Kylie had decided to join Cameron on the trip, though, she still didn’t quite know. Now, at the border, she was again wondering why she felt this loyalty to these two men, McMurtrie and Correia, and regretting her impulsive decision to be part of this. They had to wait a few minutes at immigration. The airconditioner was thrumming and struggling and only one officer, who took her time, was attending to people leaving South Africa. Four others faced long queues on the opposite side of the room, trying to keep pace with the seemingly endless parade of Mozambicans waiting, with varying degrees of patience, to enter the land of gold.
A woman with a baby on her back, the child tied to her in a blanket, was explaining something to the immigration officer in their language. The baby looked at Kylie and she smiled at it. She had yet to feel clucky, but she didn’t dislike babies.
The woman moved and Kylie slid her passport over, remembering to greet the woman and ask how she was. The woman looked up and returned the greeting and said she was fine. The passport was stamped and that was it. Kylie exhaled on the way out of the door.
They got back in the bakkie and Cameron drove slowly towards the boom gate. A SARS man, a customs officer, just waved them on. Another security guard took the stamped gate pass and they were through.
‘Phew.’ Kylie ran a hand through her damp hair.
‘It’s not over yet. Now the fun begins.’
Once through the boom gate they left Komatipoort behind and entered Ressano Garcia – another world. Immediately, everything was different. It was more like transiting to another world, another culture, another time than just another country.
The SARS and home affairs officers on the South African side wore blue uniforms, starched and cut with an almost Aryan precision, but the officials she saw now on the Mozambican side looked like they’d been outfitted with surplus clothes from some failed South American dictatorship. Men wore berets set at jaunty angles, fitted tight with small black bows at the backs of their heads. AK-47s seemed the accessory of choice.
Unlike the South African side there were people milling around the car park. Young boys rushed the pickup as soon as Cameron pulled into a parking bay; they were waving wads of meticais notes and offering to escort them through the border. A man in jeans and body-hugging black lycra tank top and thick gold necklaces was passing something to a uniformed official.
In front of where they parked was a row of half-a-dozen or more offices, each set up in porta cabins, advertising insurance and customs clearance. ‘Stay close, don’t talk to any of them,’ Cameron said as he got out of the truck.
Kylie followed him and was besieged by touts. ‘No thank you, no thank you,’ she said.
Cameron said nothing, and Kylie realised that even saying ‘no thank you’ was an encouragement to the chancers. Cameron pushed open the door of one of the porta cabins and held it for her.
‘Yes, madam, I work for this company,’ said one of the youngsters, trailing her closely. She squeezed past Cameron, eager to get inside. The airconditioning was almost as welcome as the relative silence.
Cameron greeted a man who rose from behind his desk. ‘Bom dia, Mr McMurtrie.’
‘This is Freddy,’ Cameron said. Kylie nodded to a young man in a white shirt who wore his mirror sunglasses inside.
‘Did that boy say he worked for me?’ Freddy asked, his Portuguese-accented English sounding strange to Kylie, coming as it did from a black African. He pointed at the nodding, smiling face of the last youth to tug on Kylie’s sleeve.
‘Yes,’ she said.
Freddy turned to Cameron. ‘Hit him if he says that again.’
‘My pleasure.’
They sat down and Kylie soon gave up trying to keep track of the forms that were filled in and the monies paid to Freddy, and a runner who took all the paperwork across the car park while they waited in the refuge of Freddy’s office.
‘Customs?’ Freddy asked, leaning back in his office chair and lighting a cigarette.
‘We’re in a hurry, Freddy. We don’t want a thorough search.’
Freddy exhaled smoke through his nose. ‘I understand. You can make a donation to the customs officers.’
‘A hundred rand?’ Cameron asked.
Freddy shrugged. ‘It is up to you, but fifty would do.’
‘I want to make sure we get away quickly.’
Freddy nodded. ‘I understand.’
Kylie felt her anxiety levels rising. She was sure she would hear a shout from the car park as Freddy’s runner escorted them across to the immigration hall where they had to present their passports for inspection and where Kylie, as an Australian, had to pay for her visa. The immigration officer had her stand in front of a blue background while he took her picture with a camera linked to a computer. Next she had to place her left and right index fingers on a scanner. It all seemed a bit over the top, to her, for a border crossing in Africa teeming with people who mostly didn’t seem to have a cent to their name.
While she waited for her visa to be produced her eyes were drawn to a flat-screen monitor showing a revolving series of advertisements and messages. Do not become involved with illegal immigration, said a message in Portuguese and English that seemed to be aimed directly at her. She swallowed her fear.
‘Miss Kylie,’ said the immigration officer at last. She took her passport and the runner escorted Cameron and her back outside. The advertising display was showing an Indian restaurant in Maputo which seemed to also do home-delivery pizzas.
Freddy and a short rotund woman in blue uniform slacks, shirt, tie and beret were standing an arm’s length from the bakkie. Kylie saw Freddy palm her Cameron’s hundred rand note. She slipped it into her pocket and placed her hand on the black vinyl covering the back of the pickup. Kylie imagined Luis in there, sweating under the cover. She and Cameron stopped. The woman was fiddling with the elastic cord that secured the cover to the hooks around the cargo bin.
‘What’s she doing?’ Kylie whispered.
‘Sheesh, no,’ Cameron said.
Freddy was talking in rapid Portuguese to the customs officer, but she shook her head and unhooked the elastic.
Freddy looked across at them and rubbed his thumb and fore-finger together, out of the woman’s line of sight.
‘I think she wants more money,’ Kylie said.
‘She could be suspicious because I told Freddy to give her twice the normal amount. Shit.’
‘Change some rand, boss?’ a young tout in a Blue Bulls baseball cap said.
‘Fokof.’
‘Madam?’
Kylie was as annoyed as Cameron by the invasive presence of the tout, who had no concept of pers
onal space. The customs woman was unfastening another hook and shaking her head at Freddy’s protestations. He looked to them, shrugging his shoulders. He probably figured they were just trying to get across the border with more tobacco or alcohol than was legally permissible. Kylie had a thought.
She reached into her pocket and then withdrew her hand. ‘My purse!’
The tout took a step back, shocked at the volume and pitch of Kylie’s scream. He looked puzzled.
‘What?’ Cameron looked at her.
Kylie pointed at the young scammer. ‘I think he just pickpocketed me!’
Cameron reached for the man and grabbed his forearm, but the tout shook it off and backed away, his hands up. ‘Not me, boss. I no take anything.’
‘Officer!’ Kylie shrieked at the customs lady. ‘This man just robbed me.’
The portly woman let go of the elastic rope on the pickup’s cover and started waddling towards them. Cameron lunged at the boy again and he broke into a sprint. The woman yelled in Portuguese to a man in green army uniform and beret who saw the running boy and unslung his AK-47.
‘No!’ Kylie ran after the tout and put herself between the fleeing boy and the man with the gun, who was starting to bring his rifle to bear. She didn’t want the boy to be shot. The youth was looking over his shoulder, his eyes wide in panic, and didn’t see the security guard in front of him who wrapped his arms around him and tackled him to the ground.
Cameron, Freddy and the customs officer caught up with them as Kylie went to the security guard, who had his knee on the tout’s back, keeping the youth pinned on the ground.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ Kylie said. She reached into another pocket and drew out her nylon travelling wallet. ‘I’ve found my purse. I was mistaken. This man is innocent.’
Freddy translated for the benefit of the security guard and the customs lady stood there, hands on plump hips, shaking her head at the ruckus, which had by now drawn another half-dozen onlookers.
Kylie apologised again to the young tout, who just scowled at her. She pulled a hundred rand from her wallet and gave it to him. He turned his back, shaking a fist in the air, and walked away from them.
Freddy said something to the customs officer and she shrugged as she replied.
‘Is everything all right with the truck?’ Cameron asked.
‘She says we are keeping her from her duties.’
‘Tell her this is to compensate her for her lost time,’ Kylie said, taking out another hundred and pressing it to Freddy. He slipped it into the custom’s lady’s hand as he shook it. She waved, dismissing them.
When they were back in the Toyota and passing through the security barrier, Kylie punched the air. ‘Whoo!’
He looked at her and grinned as he changed gears. ‘You enjoyed that?’
She laughed. ‘In a funny way, I did. I’ve never consciously broken a law before.’
‘Welcome to Africa.’
*
Cameron waited until they made it to Matola, on the outskirts of Maputo, before he turned off the EN4 onto a dirt road that led to a building site, a housing complex under construction.
More new housing estates, such as this one, were springing up every time he came to Mozambique, and old Portuguese villas and bungalows, once the homes of civil servants and businesspeople, were being renovated and repainted in Mediterranean pastels. Mozambique was still a desperately poor country, but it was moving forward. This was as good a place as any to release Luis from his stifling imprisonment.
Cameron got out of the truck and looked around. It was midday and he presumed the construction workers were having a siesta in the shade somewhere out of sight. He unhooked the elastic cord securing the vinyl cover of the cargo compartment. Luis raised his head and also checked around him before sitting up fully. His shirt was drenched in sweat and he blinked at the harsh sun. It always seemed hotter, brighter, here in Mozambique.
Cameron unlatched the tailgate and Luis swung his legs over the back and stood, taking a moment to straighten himself out before extending his hand. ‘Thank you.’
‘I’m sorry, again, for your loss, Luis. But Wellington is in custody and we will make sure he stays there, with your help.’
He nodded and Cameron saw the faraway stare. Grief, he knew from his time in the army, manifested itself in many forms. One of them was revenge.
Luis nodded again. ‘Goodbye, madam.’
Kylie shook his hand, awkwardly mimicking the three-part African handshake that Luis and Cameron had just exchanged, and Luis forced a small smile in thanks for her effort.
‘We’re at Matola, where you asked to be dropped,’ Cameron said. ‘You’re sure we can’t take you further?’
‘No. There may be roadblocks. I can get a chapa from here. I must get to the funeral home, and then to my son, and tell him what has happened to his mother.’
Kylie went to him and put her arms around him. Luis didn’t cry, and seemed embarrassed to return the hug. He looked out over her shoulder and Cameron saw it again, the look he’d seen in the eyes of men who had killed, and men who wanted, needed, to kill again.
‘I want Wellington to rot in prison as badly as you do,’ he said to Luis.
Kylie took a step back and put her hands on her hips. She nodded in agreement. ‘He’s killed three of our people, too.’
Luis pushed his rimless spectacles up his nose, turned and walked up the dirt driveway to the EN4. Cameron waited until Luis had flagged down a minibus and then he and Kylie got back into the bakkie.
‘What now?’ she asked.
He exhaled and started the engine. ‘I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink.’
‘You’re driving a company vehicle, on company time.’
‘I am.’
‘We’ve got a crisis brewing back at Eureka and I have to read through my briefings on Zambia. We still have a flight to catch tomorrow.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you know somewhere nice?’
He smiled. ‘I do.’
*
Kylie closed her eyes and stamped her foot into the footwell of the pickup as Cameron swerved to miss a minibus taxi that had slammed on its brakes in front of them.
Cameron laughed and she opened her eyes and looked at him.
‘You have to laugh,’ he shrugged.
‘That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh. Ever.’
‘This place,’ he raised his right hand from the steering wheel and waved. ‘It can get you down, cripple you with its tragedy and sorrow. Like poor Luis and his wife. But people have to carry on. They find a way to survive.’
Cameron found his way through the congested, chaotic, thumping, bumping traffic of downtown Maputo, dodging other cars and pedestrians who all jived to a set of rules Kylie could not begin to understand. That’s if there were any road rules, she reflected. Maybe that was the secret to this place. Chaos reigned but, remarkably, she didn’t see anyone lose their temper, or hear a horn tooted in anger.
Maputo’s buildings were a mix of old Portuguese colonial grandeur and 1960s and 70s concrete monoliths. Everywhere there seemed to be construction or renovation happening and Cameron filled her in on the country’s history. The country now known as Mozambique had been a trading port for the Dutch and British before the Portuguese had concreted their claim to its long stretch of Indian Ocean coastline. Even though the Portuguese had abandoned their former colonies in 1975 after going through their own domestic revolution, every sign Kylie saw and every snippet of conversation she overheard as they stopped for traffic jams and, occasionally, for red lights, was in Portuguese.
Cameron entered a grand square dominated by a whitewashed building topped with a domed cuppola. ‘That’s the train station,’ he said. ‘Designed by Gustave Eiffel, he of the tower in Paris fame.’
‘Wow. What was he doing here?’
‘I don’t know that he ever made it here,’ Cameron said, cruising slowly past the stately old station building.
‘I know.’
He manoeuvred them out of town and onto what he explained was the Rua da Marginal, the coastal road that ran along the sand-fringed waters of Maputo Bay. Young boys splashed in the shallow water and one did cartwheels on a sand spit. Roadside traders sold beers and soft drinks from carts and when Cameron lowered his window she smelled chicken peri-peri sizzling on charcoal braziers. On their left, inland, was more construction – villas and shopping complexes.
Cameron indicated left and pulled into a car park in front of an art deco building washed in lime green and white. Tables were emptying on a sheltered verandah as patrons finished long or late lunches.
‘This is us. For lunch. The Costa do Sol’s been here since the 1930s and never stopped serving, even through the civil war.’
A waiter greeted them and ushered them to a prime outside table. Kylie put on her sunglasses to cut down the glare from the bay. ‘This is a beautiful spot.’ The waiter took their drinks order, with Cameron asking for a Dois M beer and Kylie a glass of white wine and a sparkling mineral water.
‘I love it here. I used to bring … I come here whenever I’m passing through Maputo.’
She looked at him over the top of her glasses, but he cast his eyes down to the menu. She was sure he had been going to say that he used to bring his wife here.
He had finally seemed to relax a little, which was odd given what they’d been through. Perhaps he was a man who thrived on risk and danger. She wondered why his wife had left; maybe it was his pig-headedness and inability to communicate his feelings.
‘I was about to say, before, that I used to bring my wife here.’
Kylie was surprised. Before she had a chance to say anything the waiter was back with their drinks.
‘That would have been not long after the civil war ended, right?’ she said when the waiter had left.
He laughed. ‘A few years after the fighting ended, yes. The country was in a terrible mess back then. Maputo was rundown, but it had existed as a kind of neutral safe zone during the war, with both sides agreeing not to shell it or shoot it up.’
