The Soldier who Said No

by Chris Marnewick

  The Commissioner leaned forward and shut the partition between the driver and the passenger compartment. ‘Those two you saw this morning, Henderson and Kupenga. The case of the arrow. ‘I’m going to have to stay here,’ the Commissioner said. ‘I need to see them immediately for a full briefing.’

  ‘Shouldn’t I stay too?’ the Prime Minister asked. ‘There may be enough for an announcement, just in time for the six o’clock news.’

  She motioned to the driver to turn around.

  Exfiltration 41

  At twelve o’clock De Villiers took his seat and waited. The members of the panel were in deep discussion, those on the outside having turned their chairs inwards so that they formed a semicircle with Laurence Mason QC in the centre. From De Villiers’s position it looked as if Mason was reading them the riot act, but he was relieved to see that Hotene and Guttenbeil were shaking their heads, disagreeing with something Mason had said. Mrs Tan was as inscrutable as ever and Smith gave nothing away.

  When they turned their attention back to him, De Villiers dealt in detail with the remaining charges against him. He refused to answer questions about his health or his treatment. The members of the panel looked bored.

  ‘That completes my submissions,’ he said and closed his file.

  ‘You haven’t dealt with the immigration issue,’ Mason reminded him.

  De Villiers opened his file and closed it again when he remembered that he had not prepared for this angle. It was not included in the charges and he had never planned a response. He berated himself for having lost sight of it and wondered whether the time spent at the Hotel du Vin could not have been spent more productively looking into this aspect of the matter. The composition of the panel gave him little confort. Mason and Hotene were native New Zealanders and Smith, by virtue of his Australian citizenship, was entitled as of right to work and live in New Zealand. Only Guttenbeil and Tan would understand the anxiety and frustrations suffered by an immigrant, De Villiers thought, the sense of not being wanted, the feeling of inadequacy when standing before an unsympathetic Immigration Officer in a hall filled with other immigrants, waiting for the officer to make a decision and to put the life-changing visa in your passport.

  ‘I don’t know what the problem is,’ he began cautiously.

  ‘You’ve been trained as sniper,’ Mason said. ‘The Immigration Service has advised that you withheld that information in your applications for residency and citizenship.’

  De Villiers became defensive. ‘I was a soldier and I received the standard basic training and also special training for a number of tasks soldiers have to perform. I do recall dealing in some detail with that in my application.’ De Villiers could not recall what he had said in the application nearly ten years before.

  ‘It’s the sniper angle that troubles Mr Mason,’ Hotene said.

  ‘I have a sharpshooter’s badge,’ De Villiers admitted, ‘but that is just one of many.’

  ‘Question is,’ Mason said with slow deliberation, ‘did you shoot anybody?’ He sat back with his arms folded across his chest.

  ‘Sir,’ De Villiers said and spoke softly and slowly. ‘I was a soldier. I gave full details of my training, the units I served in, and where I served …’

  ‘But no details of the operations, I see,’ Hotene said. He flicked through a file. ‘No details at all.’

  ‘We were at war, Sir. How could I divulge what happened there? No soldier can do that.’

  De Villiers kept his eyes on Hotene. The thought crossed his mind that he had more in common with the Maori than with the chairman. He also remembered that he must have concealed far more from the Immigration Service than he had disclosed to them.

  ‘I don’t need to pursue this part of the enquiry further,’ Hotene said and closed his file.

  The chairman looked at his watch and turned to look at Henderson and Kupenga’s empty table. ‘We might as well break for lunch now. We’ll resume as soon as DI Henderson and DS Kupenga have arrived.’

  De Villiers met Emma and Zoë in the foyer. They had more than an hour and walked a full round of the food court on the floor below the hotel before they decided what to eat. The food court was buzzing with activity and De Villiers marvelled, not for the first time, at the variety of races and nationalities represented by the patrons and the food styles. They had started at the Dragon Boat, which was Chinese, and had stopped in front of each of the other outlets, Thai Cuisine, Banana Leaf Malaysian Cuisine, Spice of India, Mexicana, Vietnamese Delight, Wonder Wok, Umi Sushi, Yoon’s Korean Cuisine, Atrium Kebabs, Italiano and finally, Hollywood Bakery. But Zoë wanted a Wendy’s children’s meal and they were forced to walk to Queen Street to find the nearest franchise. Her meal came with a plastic whistle. They stopped at Starbucks for coffee and walked up to Albert Park and sat on one of the benches. The park was nearly deserted. The tranquillity of the park belied the fact that it was in the heart of the city with business district on three sides and Auckland University on the other.

  De Villiers waited at the door until he was sure the panellists had entered. The constable stood aside and allowed De Villiers to lead Emma and Zoë into the room. Henderson and Kupenga were at their table.

  The procession made its way slowly towards De Villiers’s table. When they were opposite Henderson and Kupenga, Henderson half rose and nodded an acknowledgement to Emma.

  She responded with a terse, ‘Afternoon.’

  Zoë broke ranks and rushed to Kupenga’s side of the table. ‘Hello Uncle. When are you coming to visit so that I can make tea for you again? We can have cup cakes.’

  Emma stopped to retrieve Zoë, but De Villiers squeezed her hand twice and firmly steered her to his table. When he looked back, Zoë had clambered onto Kupenga’s lap and was showing him the Wendy’s whistle. De Villiers walked back slowly to fetch Zoë. Without a word, Kupenga stood up and handed the girl to De Villiers across the table. De Villiers set Zoë on her feet and extended his hand to Kupenga. Their handshake was neither perfunctory, nor extended. They didn’t speak, but their eyes affirmed the message in their handshake.

  De Villiers sat down with Emma and Zoë on either side of him and faced the panel.

  The members of the panel stared at Emma in open surprise.

  Emma de Villiers was unmistakably brown with the delicate features and dark hair and eyes of a native Indonesian. Zoë was a shade or so lighter in skin tone than her mother, but not quite as fair as her father.

  ‘What is the purpose of this?’ the chairman asked. ‘I thought I had made it plain that this was a confidential enquiry.’

  ‘I’ve made my point,’ De Villiers said. ‘You can work it out for yourself from here.’

  He stood up and led Emma and Zoë to the door. Zoë again headed for Kupenga, but De Villiers held her back. She waved at Kupenga and he returned her greeting with a smile. At the door De Villiers told Emma that he would be no more than ten minutes and asked her to bring her car around to the front of the hotel.

  ‘One last thing,’ the chairman said when De Villiers had taken his place again. ‘You haven’t dealt satisfactorily with the incident with the taggers, in my view. You’ve given no explanation for not following police procedure.’

  De Villiers was about to answer when Henderson cleared his throat and stood up. He held a buff envelope in his hand and addressed the panel. ‘I apologise for interrupting, Mr Mason, but I have an instruction from the Commissioner to you.’

  The chairman motioned to De Villiers to wait. Henderson continued, ‘I believe it has to be read before the matter goes any further.’

  The envelope went from hand to hand until it reached the chairman.

  All eyes watched as Mason opened the envelope and extracted a single sheet of paper. After reading it, Mason first turned to his right and held the document up for the members on that side to read it, and then showed it to Hotene and Guttenbeil on his left. De Villiers felt that for the first time during the enquiry all five members of the panel were loo
king directly at him.

  ‘I should read for the record what this letter says,’ Mason said. ‘It is a letter from the Commissioner carrying today’s date and it reads as follows: The charges against Detective Constable Pierre de Villiers are withdrawn. The Enquiry is hereby terminated and its members discharged from further duty.’

  De Villiers looked at the list of witnesses he wanted to call. ‘You may go, Mr de Villiers. The enquiry is over,’ Mason said.

  De Villiers immediately stood up and walked away. On the way out he stopped in front of Henderson. The plan had been to demand his backpack, but he found himself digging in his briefcase and handing a copy of his dossier to Henderson.

  ‘Here’s the report you asked for, Sir,’ he said. ‘I delivered the original to the Commissioner this morning.’

  ‘I know,’ Henderson said. ‘The Armed Offenders Squad and the Anti-Terror Unit are making arrests as we speak.’

  De Villiers considered the implications. ‘All of them?’ he asked.

  ‘All of them, in the Ureweras and on the North Shore.’

  ‘Can I have my backpack?’ De Villiers asked.

  Henderson nodded.

  On the escalator down De Villiers fingered the shoulder straps of the backpack. There, deeply embedded in the webbing, his secret bow was again in its hiding place.

  Ten time zones away in Durban it was just after midnight. Johann Weber had been working late. A movement at his door combined with the rattle of a teacup in its saucer caught his attention. Liesl stood in the door with a tray.

  ‘What?’ Weber asked. He folded his reading glasses and placed them on the desk.

  ‘What, what?’ she mocked him.

  ‘What are you doing up at this hour?’

  Liesl Weber put the tray on the desk. ‘I couldn’t sleep. I’ve been worrying about Pierre.’

  ‘What’s there to worry about? Pierre’s a survivor. They couldn’t kill him in Angola, they couldn’t break him in Pretoria, and the cancer is now under control. People don’t die of cancer any more, you know.’

  Liesl Weber studied her husband. ‘It’s not the cancer I’m concerned about,’ she said. ‘It’s that disciplinary enquiry. And what was he doing in Pretoria with your car? And why did your car come back with a girl and a bottle of champagne?’

  ‘Oh,’ Weber remembered. ‘He said there’s a note in the glove box.’ He stood up. ‘Pour the tea and I’ll be back in a minute.’

  He went to his garage and rummaged in the glove box until he found the envelope under his car’s service record and instruction manual. Liesl was still in his study when he returned. ‘You read it,’ he said and handed the envelope to her. He picked up his tea. She read aloud.

  Johann

  A war is not over until both sides agree that it is over. And retaliation is a legitimate tactic to pursue in war.

  The place and time were fixed when I was with you in your car and the announcement came on the radio that they had been employed as security guards by Sibusiso Sibisi and that they would be at Loftus for a soccer game. I chose the method of the tsotsis who used to ride the trains from Soweto with sharpened bicycle spokes in their pockets, paralysing their victims with a short jab in the spine before lifting their wallets. I had six spokes, two for each killer.

  As arranged with Sibisi’s secretary, I picked up the pass for entry to the corporate suites at the main security office at the entrance behind the main stand. They let me into the suite and introduced me to Mr Sibisi. He told me to wait until half-time. I took my time to find the best seat for my purposes. The three killers sat together in the row in front of me. There were three more rows sloping down, each row with plastic seats bolted to the concrete floor, altogether five rows.

  It was easy to pick them off, one after the other, all before the game on the pitch below reached half-time.

  I tricked the first one into showing me where the toilets were. I tapped him on the shoulder and he looked me in the eye and said he had to go too, but he didn’t recognise me immediately. He had lost weight in prison, but the bloodshot eyes with brown growths between the iris and the tear ducts were the same eyes that had been behind the AK47 held against my head in my driveway, and when I jerked my head back, shot Annelise instead.

  And then they had all started shooting before I could reach my pistol.

  He went in ahead of me. The game was evenly poised and the men’s room was deserted. He went to the urinal and I followed him. I waited for him to open his fly and to get a good stream going and measured the spot just below his left shoulder blade between two ribs. He coughed and I hesitated a split second before I drove the spoke in hard using the hard web of my palm an inch from the wrist. He immediately straightened up and clutched his chest. His face was contorted with pain and he stepped back towards me.

  I took his arm and asked him if he was alright. He couldn’t speak and I said I would help him to sit down. I led him into one of the toilet cubicles and helped him sit on the toilet. He started convulsing and kicking. He coughed blood. I locked the door from the inside after wrapping toilet paper around both my hands and lifted myself up and over the partition into the next cubicle.

  A sharpened bicycle spoke works like a charm if you want to kill someone in a crowd. You slam it through the ribcage from behind. It will go through a rib if you put enough force behind it. It causes the heart muscle to go into a spasm – an instant heart attack. The spoke sits flush with the skin and there is no external bleeding. Whoever comes to help will turn the thrashing victim on his back and they’ll only find the spoke at the autopsy.

  I eliminated the second killer in much the same way, except that I slammed the spoke home when he bent over to try and unlock the door to his colleague’s cubicle. I left the two of them, each in his own cubicle, and returned to the corporate suite.

  There I slipped the third spoke in when a penalty was awarded and the Swallows supporters went wild, jumping on the seats, screaming at the referee and pouring beer on the spectators in the main stand below. I gave him a firm push at the same time and he toppled onto two other guests in the tier immediately below his, and they took another four people down with them before they landed in a tangle of arms and legs against the front parapet.

  In the chaos I slipped out of the suite and left.

  Liesl Weber started shivering and then broke down sobbing.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said.

  Johann Weber took the letter from her and pulled her close to his chest. He could feel her shaking against him and her tears wetting his shirt. He held the letter as far as he could and strained to read the unfamiliar handwriting without his reading glasses. She pushed him away.

  ‘You were part of this, weren’t you?’

  Weber shook his head but she was having none of that. ‘You knew and you lent him your car for this.’

  She leaned forward and rested her head on his chest. He picked up his glasses and read the rest of the letter aloud over her shoulder.

  That was my fantasy, how I dreamed and planned to kill them once I had been given permission to interview Sibisi at the game. Even as I sat there watching them from behind, I believed I could eliminate them in that fashion. It wouldn’t have been difficult. But I changed my mind while the killer stood coughing at the urinal.

  What really happened was that I saw his blood splattering against the white tiles above the stainless steel and dribble down. He zipped up his fly and went to the washbasin. A rambling coughing fit overcame him and he spewed more blood into the basin.

  I came up behind him and asked him if he was alright. He had TB, probably AIDS as well. I think in that moment when we locked eyes he recognised me and realised that I had come to kill him. At the same time I saw in his eyes the same look of resignation I had seen every day in the eyes of the patients at the oncology centre. He knew he was dying.

  I pulled him into the first toilet cubicle and latched the door behind me. He was weak and limp and offered no resistance. I sat him down on the seat
and said to him, ‘You know me?’

  He nodded. I held the sharp point of the spoke against his throat.

  ‘Then you’ll know why I’m here.’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘To kill me,’ he said.

  ‘Who sent you?’ I asked.

  He started coughing again and sprayed blood on the front of my trousers.

  ‘Who sent you?’ I asked a second time. ‘I’m not going to ask again.’

  I pushed the spoke in, just a little, so that he could feel it.

  ‘Mlungu,’ he said.

  ‘A white man?’ I asked. ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Angazi,’ he said. I don’t know.

  ‘What did he look like?’ I asked.

  It took some time to get the full description from him. At one point I had to cover his mouth with my hand when someone came into the room, but the details did come out eventually, one by one.

  White man, Afrikaans. He never gave his name. Completely bald, between 45 and 50 years old. Pink eyes with white eyelashes. Said a general had sent him.

  Johann, I think you’ll be able to work out who it was.

  So I didn’t kill him, Johann, when I could so easily have done so. But it does mean that I have unfinished business with the major and the general.

  I left him there and washed my hands and cleaned my trousers as best I could. Then I went back to the suite. The other two ran to his aid when I told them that he was sick and I lifted a bottle of champagne on the way out. But I didn’t kill them.

  Killing them would have been too easy.

  And they are just the foot soldiers.

  I hope you won’t mind, Johann, that I let them go.

  I enclose the visitor’s pass for the corporate suite. You may have it as a souvenir. And Marissa will deliver the champagne to you.

  PdeV

  Pretoria

  28 June 2008

  Weber sat down and lit a cigar. He put his feet on the desk. His wife pulled a face but sat down on his lap. ‘I think he’ll be okay now,’ she said.

  ‘For sure,’ Weber said. He blew a smoke ring towards the ceiling.