The Soldier who Said No

by Chris Marnewick

  De Villiers stood up to leave. ‘Thank you for everything,’ he said. He extended his hand.

  She stood up and held his hand. ‘You’ll feel some discomfort in about ten or eleven months. Don’t be too concerned; that is the time the radiation’s side effects kick in. Speak to your GP about that, and call me if you feel that you don’t know what to do.’

  De Villiers turned at the door. ‘What side effects?’

  ‘There will be some bleeding.’ She shrugged. ‘There might be a lot of blood.’

  Liesl made a special effort for their final dinner together. For once Johann Weber didn’t gulp down his food and disappear to his study.

  ‘So you found the Bushman,’ Weber said. ‘What does that mean exactly?’

  Liesl answered on behalf of De Villiers. ‘It means that what Pierre remembers is true and what the army told him isn’t.’

  De Villiers was more cautious about the meaning of their find. ‘It’s not quite as simple as that, I think. It means !Xau exists and that we know each other, but I’m not sure what it means beyond that.’

  ‘What will Pretoria say if confronted with the facts?’ Weber asked.

  ‘They will lie, as usual,’ Liesl suggested.

  ‘I think they’ll say we were together on another operation. The old man can’t hear or talk, and it looks to me as if he no longer has possession of his faculties.’

  ‘So it’s their word against yours,’ Weber said.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s what it boils down to,’ De Villiers had to concede.

  The lawyer in Weber took over. ‘So far the weight of circumstantial evidence is against you.’

  Liesl stood up and started gathering the crockery. De Villiers stood up too and helped carry the dishes to the kitchen.‘There must be something we can do,’ she suggested. ‘Ask Johann what he thinks. He can’t resist a puzzle.’

  They returned to the dining room. Weber was swirling his wine in his glass. Liesl nodded at De Villiers.

  ‘What do you suggest, Johann?’ De Villiers asked. ‘I’m at my wits’ end, looking for answers to questions that have kept me awake for twenty years. I know what happened. I know what I know, but they say it’s all imagined. They think I’m paranoid.’

  ‘Well, as they say, it’s not paranoia when there’s really someone after you!’ Weber said without a hint of a smile.

  ‘It’s nothing to joke about, Johann,’ his wife scolded him.

  ‘No, no,’ Weber defended himself. ‘You should prove them wrong.’

  ‘I’ve tried to do that,’ De Villiers said. ‘But there’s nothing. There are no records and the only two people who knew were Verster and !Xau. The one is dead, his body was never found, and the other one … Well, you know the other one can’t help.’

  Weber turned around and produced a box of cigars from the sideboard behind him. ‘I think you deserve a cigar,’ he said, offering a selection to De Villiers.

  ‘Ag no, Johann, not in here.’ Liesl complained. ‘You’ll stink up the curtains for weeks.’

  ‘Let’s go to my study then,’ Weber said. ‘I want to show the two of you how you bolster your case by concentrating on the little details no one takes seriously. Individual pieces of evidence appear to be insignificant, yet they have a cumulative effect.’

  They followed him to his study and watched as he turned his computer on. ‘What’s the name of that town where you say you conducted your operation, the one you say is not in the road atlas?’

  ‘Vila Nova Armada,’ Liesl answered for De Villiers.

  ‘Let’s look for it on Google Earth,’ Weber said.

  They waited for the computer to open the programme. Weber fiddled with the mouse. ‘Okay, here we have southern Africa.’

  Liesl and De Villiers stood behind him. ‘Now let’s move the cursor up to more or less where the operation took place and see what towns are there,’ Weber mouthed the words as if speaking to himself. ‘Okay, there we have the Caprivi. So we go up a bit.’

  The elevation was too high to see anything except the international boundaries between Angola and Namibia in the south and Angola and Zambia in the east. Botswana lay below the Caprivi.

  ‘Pierre, put the cursor where the town was,’ Weber instructed, getting up. He indicated for De Villiers to take his place.

  De Villiers moved the mouse up the mouse pad, clicking a few times to focus. He saw a landscape peppered with what appeared to be trees on either side of a river. He followed the river north to a fork. He again had to wait for the focus to sharpen, and when it did, he saw the signs of a small town just south of the fork in the river.

  ‘That would be the Cuito and Longa rivers,’ he explained. He clicked on the town to magnify. The elevation scale dropped to three thousand feet. The town he had known as Vila Nova Armada rose from the background to a clarity that astounded him. The lines drawn on the military maps of the area in 1985 were absent. In their place he had a bird’s eye view of the town, down to the last detail.

  A small white square appeared above the town, which really was not more than a village. ‘Click on that,’ Johann Weber suggested.

  At the click of the mouse the name appeared. Vila Nova Armada – rio e quartel fusileiros.

  De Villiers stared at the screen, transfixed, his heart beating in his throat.

  There was the airfield, a long straight line pointing north of northeast, directly at Vila Nova Armada. There was the dirt track leading from the airfield to the town, straight as an arrow, almost an extension of the landing strip, ending in the open area serving as the town square. De Villiers could remember the exact distance as given to him by his spotter, Jacques Verster. One thousand four hundred and sixty-eight metres.

  His eyes drifted south. There was the army camp built by the Portuguese fifty or more years ago, shelter for SWAPO and FAPLA in 1985.

  Behind him Johann Weber blew cigar smoke over De Villiers’s shoulder. ‘That’s what you call a significant item of circumstantial evidence. How could you possibly know the name of a town which doesn’t appear on the road atlas and is situated in an area where you’ve never been.’

  De Villiers found the spot where he and Jacques Verster had set up the weapon, where he had lain on the ground and had looked through the scope at the ribbons on the target’s chest. His eyes slowly traced the path the bullet would have traversed if he had pulled the trigger.

  Would have traversed.

  But he had said no. This is where my life was set on a different course, he thought, with all the consequences of a significant alteration in direction.

  ‘Annelise would still be alive,’ he said aloud without realising that he had spoken.

  ‘What?’ Johann Weber asked. ‘Are you feeling alright?’

  De Villiers lowered his face into his hands. ‘Your sister would still be alive, if it wasn’t for that place,’ he said. ‘And Marcel and Jeandré would be alive too.’

  Weber sighed. ‘Linking Annelise’s death to this place is a bit farfetched.’

  De Villiers shook his head, too overcome to answer. His mind was racing ahead, his thoughts not quite coherent. I refused to obey an order and look what happened. Everything leads back to this place, Vila Nova Armada – rio e quartel fusileiros.

  Liesl squeezed De Villiers’s shoulder and pointed at the name on the screen. ‘That’s not an implanted memory, Pierre. What you see there is real.’

  The significance of the name on the screen coupled with !Xau’s existence might have emboldened De Villiers and Liesl, but Weber poured cold water on their hope. ‘They’ll pooh-pooh this too,’ he said. ‘It’s a significant piece of evidence for Pierre’s peace of mind, but it doesn’t prove that he’s ever been there on a secret mission, as he claims,’ he told Liesl. ‘There has to be more, something which is compatible only with the truth of his version.

  ‘What was the most secret part of your operation?’ he asked De Villiers. ‘What was the most unique aspect of the operation?’

  ‘Trying to shoot
Mugabe,’ De Villiers ventured.

  ‘No,’ Liesl said, ‘that can’t be. You said that there had been at least three prior attempts and there must have been many since, the way he has made a mess of his country.’

  ‘And what a blessing it would have been to the people of Zimbabwe if any one of them had been successful.’ Johann Weber blew smoke rings towards Liesl and she pulled a face. ‘No, we need something unique to that operation,’ Weber said as he returned to the subject at hand.

  ‘What about !Xau, wasn’t that unique? The Recce’s making use of a Bushman tracker?’ Liesl suggested.

  ‘No, we used them all the time.’

  ‘The distance of the shot must be unique, one thousand four hundred and sixty-eight metres.’ Johann Weber said. ‘Surely.’

  It was De Villiers’s turn to play devil’s advocate. ‘But they will say it never happened, so it’s of no use to us.’

  ‘Oh you men!’ Liesl exclaimed. ‘It’s right in front of your eyes.’

  The two men looked at each other. Liesl waved away the cigar smoke in front of her. ‘It’s got to be the weapon. What other weapon could ever be accurate at that distance?’

  ‘Seach Wikipedia,’ Weber directed. ‘Look for sniper rifles.’

  Wikipedia listed the details of a large number of sniper rifles, by name, country of origin, calibre, action, year of first manufacture and a host of other details. They found what they were looking for under Denel NTW 14.5 with the South African flag in the country of origin column.

  Weight 29 kg

  Length 2.015 mm

  Bolt action

  3-round detachable magazine

  Magazine protrudes from the left side of the receiver

  Disassembled, carried in two backpacks of 15kg each

  Cartridge 14.5×114 mm Russian

  Interchangeable barrels

  Range 2300 metres

  Year of manufacture mid-1990s

  ‘It fits,’ De Villiers said. ‘The one we had in 1985 was the first prototype ARMSCOR had made from the original. They would have started manufacturing their own. We still had sanctions, so they could only bring them out into the open after 1994 and by then Denel had taken over from ARMSCOR. The one Verster and I had was the first copy. It really does fit.’

  ‘So we have three significant pieces of circumstantial evidence. !Xau, the name of the town and the details of the rifle. That should be enough,’ Liesl said.

  ‘We have four pieces,’ Johann Weber said. ‘We also have Pierre’s memory. That’s the most significant piece of evidence in all of this. And it’s all the more valuable because he’s given the same version of events from the beginning, in the face of torture and mind-altering drugs and procedures.

  ‘You’re computer literate,’ Weber said to De Villiers. ‘I’m a little surprised that you haven’t found this out yourself.’

  Liesl Weber leaned across her husband and moved the ashtray closer to him. ‘Johann, work it out for yourself.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Weber asked, but she ignored him and walked out of his study.

  ‘I’m going to bed.’

  ‘Women,’ Weber said, shaking his head.

  De Villiers came to her defence. ‘She means I’ve been too afraid to look. All these years I’ve been too afraid.’

  Loftus

  June 2008 36

  De Villiers drove up to Pretoria with Marissa.

  She was waiting in the front reception room and came out when she heard the Porsche. As promised, she only had a small weekend bag and it fitted into the small boot space in the front. De Villiers’s canvas bag filled the whole of the back seat, large enough to fit only two small children at best. The temperature was in the mid-twenties and they started with the top down. Halfway to Pietermaritzburg the vegetation turned from green to various shades of khaki and brown. De Villiers stopped under an overpass and pressed the button to bring the top back up.

  ‘So much for having fun driving a Porsche,’ he said.

  Weber had REM in the glove box and Marissa put some music on.

  At the top of Town Hill Marissa interrupted ‘Everybody Hurts’. ‘If we take the old road we won’t have the noise and fumes of the trucks and the heavy traffic. We’ll have to go slower and we can take the top down again. That would be fun.’

  De Villiers looked sideways at Marissa. That was a lot of argument, he thought. ‘And we won’t have to pay the tolls at all the toll plazas,’ Marissa added, rounding off the argument.

  De Villiers could see other advantages. There were closed circuit television cameras at all the toll booths. And the traffic police patrolled the main route. The chances of the Porsche being traced to and from the operation he had planned for Loftus increased if he took the main road and diminished to almost zero if they were to take the lesser roads.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s a really good idea.’

  ‘We can leave the highway at Midmar Dam and take the Midlands Meander route from there,’ Marissa pointed out.

  Once the decision had been made and the ops site chosen, the strategic planning had been uneventful. De Villiers had found himself in familiar territory, in his element, and strangely calm and content, despite the risks. The final details of the operation could only be determined once he had completed the infiltration and had the killers in the sights. That he knew from his training and experience. But in broad outline his plans were made well in advance.

  After he had learnt that Sibusiso Stars were to play at Loftus, it had been easy to bluff his way into the corporate suite owned by Sibisi’s company.

  ‘Good morning, Madam, my name is Dawie Botha and I’m a journalist at SA Rugby. My boss wants me to do an interview with Mr Sibisi at Loftus this weekend,’ he had begun the conversation with Sibisi’s assistant.

  The girl had laughed. ‘Mr Sibisi is not interested in rugby,’ the young voice had said. An exile, probably, De Villiers had thought. She sounded English.

  ‘No, no, no,’ he had backtracked quickly. ‘I know that. But that is why I want to do an interview. I want to give Mr Sibisi the opportunity to tell the rugby public how it feels to own a corporate suite at Loftus and watch his team play football when, during the apartheid years, he was a cleaner and an ice cream vendor there.’

  The PA had chuckled. ‘I think he might like that. Yes,’ she had said, ‘I think he might just like that.’ After a pause during which De Villiers could hear the pages of a book being turned, she had spoken again. ‘Give me your cellphone number and I’ll come back to you.’

  When she later phoned De Villiers on his new cellphone, she told him that if the interview could be conducted during the game on Saturday, there would be a photo opportunity and Mr Sibisi would be prepared to give De Villiers fifteen minutes during the half-time break for his interview. ‘He’s a very busy man, you know,’ she had added. ‘Are you bringing your own photographer or should we arrange for one?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll bring my own camera,’ De Villiers hastily improvised. ‘I work alone.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘What’s your name again?’

  ‘Danie Botha,’ he said.

  ‘Spell that please. I know the Botha bit, but not the first name.’

  De Villiers decided to stick to Danie.

  ‘You can pick up the pass at the security office behind the main stand.’

  De Villiers thanked her and finalised his plans.

  He would have to buy his own ticket to get into the grounds, but a visitor’s pass for the corporate suites would be waiting for him at the stadium. He had the equipment needed for the operation. In his mind he ticked it off one by one: wrap-around sunglasses, untraceable cellphone, journalist’s notebook, the spokes concealed in the wire-bound spine of the notebook, and his Olympus SP-55 digital camera with image stabilisation and eighteen times optical zoom.

  They took the Midmar turn-off and stopped to take the roof down again. De Villiers glanced at himself in the rear-view mirror. With the beard he had been cultivati
ng for the last eight weeks and the sunglasses, he hardly recognised himself. It had been easier to make the arrangements than he had anticipated.

  They headed into a sun dropping towards the horizon, travelling much slower now along the winding roads that used to be the main road between the Reef and Durban, through small towns, now in deep decay with abandoned houses in varying degrees of dilapidation and potholed streets no one cared to repair. The roadside near the towns was strewn with litter. Plastic bags clung to fences and shrubs. Further away from the towns the degree of littering decreased, but the landscape was bleak. In mid-winter, there were no crops on the lands. The sky was a hazy grey rather than blue, and the earth brown and covered in khaki vegetation burnt black in large patches. The evergreens were covered in brown dust.

  He decided that it was time for Marissa to get used to driving the car.

  The gearbox objected a few times, but she quickly got the hang of it. She had to be reminded that there were an extra two gears to use, fifth and sixth, but De Villiers was soon sufficiently at ease to pull his cap over his eyes and drift off to sleep. The small towns of the Midlands came and went – Mooi River, Estcourt, Colenso, Ladysmith – all with the blue of the Drakensberg dominating the western horizon. This is the Africa I used to love, De Villiers said to himself. Africa is like the Hotel California, you can check out but you can never leave.

  They were trapped in the late afternoon traffic at the Gillooly’s Interchange. The road to the airport had four lanes, two moving at a snail’s pace and the far right lane at a hundred and forty or more. The only drivers keen to overtake the Porsche were the minibus taxi drivers.

  Marissa’s grandmother had a small unit in a retirement home near Menlo Park High School. De Villiers had to have tea and cake before he was allowed to leave. He stopped at the cemetery before he drove to his mother’s three-roomed unit in the frail-care centre near the cemetery. The evening with his mother passed uneventfully. They talked about De Villiers’s childhood and his father. His mother’s memory was as clear as a bell about those events, but when the talk shifted to more recent events, she became confused. She called him by his brother’s name and asked him why he hadn’t been to visit more regularly.