by Blake Banner
The restaurant was a long, oblong wooden box with a terrace, perched on the edge of the rocks, overlooking the waves that belched and crashed through the narrow opening from the Indian Ocean, erupting in explosions of spray a mere twenty feet below. The chill air coming in off the sea made it too cold to sit outside among the flaming torches that illuminated the terrace, so we went inside where it was warm, there was a powerful smell of char grilled meat, and a pleasant buzz of conversation. We found a table by the window and sat opposite each other. A waiter in a black and white apron down to his ankles brought us a couple of plastic-coated menus and I ordered an Irish, straight up. Janine nodded at the waiter.
“I’ll have the same, then tell Jaqui to find me your two tenderest sirloins. She knows how I like them, and we’ll have a mixed salad in the middle, no vinegar, just olive oil and sea salt. Bottle of Alto Cabernet Sauvignon, make it a 2014 if you’ve still got some. Open it now, Greg, would you?”
“You got it, Janine. Coming right up.”
He withdrew and she fixed me with her eye. “OK, Mr. Richard Sinclair, let’s hear it.”
“I told you, that’s not my name.”
“It’s what it says on your passport and your driver’s license.”
“My name is Lacklan. I’m not going to tell you my surname, so you needn’t ask. I am from Boston, in the U.S.A., and I am sorry I tried to play you.”
“Sounds like more BS.”
I shrugged. “Well, it happens to be the truth. I am not flirting with you and I am not lying to you. If there is something I can’t, or don’t want to tell you, then I won’t. I’m done lying to you.”
“You want me to believe you’re CIA or NSA or some crap like that.” She said it without malice, just as though she were stating a fact.
I shook my head. “The NSA only deal with electronic surveillance. I am not a member of the CIA. I’m not a member of anything. I’m retired.”
“So what are you doing in Knysna, snooping on the van Dreivers? I have a good mind to alert them to the fact that you’re here.”
I shook my head and spoke quietly, remembering Ameya Dabir’s head jerking at the impact of the 9mm round. “Don’t do that.” I leaned forward on the table with my elbows. Greg appeared and deposited two glasses of Irish whiskey in front of us and withdrew again.
“Janine, I can’t tell you everything. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. It would be irresponsible and dangerous. But I am going to tell you that the van Dreivers are not good people, and the reunion they are having this week is not just an innocent gathering of friends. I can’t tell you any more than that, but take it from me that many, many people have died for them to get where they are, and many more will die to keep them there.”
She sighed and sagged back in her chair. “Have you any idea how that sounds?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“You know, I am really tempted to cancel dinner and just go home.”
“I understand. I don’t blame you. But tell me, what can I do to stop you from doing that?”
She sighed again. “I’m not sure there is anything.”
I smiled like she was being unreasonable. “Come on, don’t be like that. Give me a chance. I am telling you the truth. Ask me anything.”
“What’s your real name—your full real name?”
I weighed up the benefits of having her on side against the risk of her knowing who I was, and made a decision. “Lacklan Walker. My father was an associate of Ruud van Dreiver’s. Janine, I am putting you at risk by telling you this, but I need you to believe me and trust me.”
“Oh God…” She sounded almost bored. “Where to begin? A: how do I know this name is for real? B: why on Earth do you need me to believe you? You know what this reeks of? It stinks of a confidence trick or, much worse, a guy who is having an early midlife crisis and is building up a fantasy about being some kind of spy.”
“Are you done?”
“I’m not sure. It depends on what comes out of your mouth next.”
I reached into my jacket and pulled out my passport and my driver’s license and dropped them in front of her. She looked at them and shrugged. “They look as real as the other ones.”
Then I searched through the photographs on my phone and found pictures of my house, me in the kitchen garden with Rosalia, me, Abi and the kids before we divorced, the four of us with Kenny and Rosalia, celebrating our engagement, and the sunset over the trees to the east, over Weston. I handed the cell to her and she scrolled through them.
“That’s my house in Boston, and those are my cook, my butler, my ex-wife and my ex-stepchildren.” I watched her a moment and added, “And you can google Bob Walker, of Weston, Massachusetts. You’ll find my father. He was a financier. And that really is all you need to know about me.”
She handed the passport and the driver’s license back, but kept the phone and gazed a little longer at the photographs. “They seem to like you,” she said at last. I didn’t answer and she looked up, like she was asking me to confirm it.
“We’re family.”
She handed me the phone and took a deep breath. “Lacklan, with all due respect, you don’t get to decide what I need to know. You can decide what you’re willing to tell me, but that is not the same thing.”
“Point taken.”
“Why are you nosing around the van Dreivers?”
I drew breath to tell her that was something I wasn’t willing to tell her, but instead I said, “He owes me something. Don’t ask me what. I won’t tell you.”
“Do you plan to hurt him?”
“I don’t plan to hurt him, no, but I can’t promise he won’t get hurt. All I can tell you is that that is not my intention.”
“He hurt you?”
“He has hurt a lot of people, Janine, he and his consortium.”
“What about you? Have you hurt a lot of people you didn’t directly intend to hurt?”
I took a while to answer. Our steaks arrived, and the bottle of wine. The waiter poured her a drop, she swirled it, sniffed it, tasted it and after a moment gave him the nod. He poured us a glass each and withdrew. When he was gone, I said:
“I was in the army, the British army.”
“The British army?”
“Long story. My mother is English. I was in a special operations regiment. I was in Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia…” I shook my head. “Many places. So I would have to say yes, I have hurt a lot of people; some I intended to hurt, others I didn’t.”
“And now you’re on some kind of vendetta, on behalf of your father, as a way of trying to find peace for a soul that has too much blood on its hands.”
She had come so close to the truth I wondered for a moment if she was Omega, but discarded the idea and tried to inject conviction into my expression when I shook my head.
“It’s not a vendetta, and you should be careful about making assumptions and jumping to conclusions based on stereotypes. I am looking for justice, Janine, which I believe every person is morally entitled to do. But I am not out for revenge.”
“Good, because I don’t want you to use me or my resort as a platform from which to launch a campaign of vengeance. I don’t want that karma, understood?”
“Understood.”
She cut into her steak and I was transfixed for a moment, watching the blood ooze out onto her plate. She put a piece in her mouth and we watched each other across the table while she chewed. She spoke suddenly, with her mouth full.
“I want to like you.” She shook her head. “Don’t say any of the shit people say to comments like that. I’m not asking for you to reciprocate.” She pulled off half her glass of wine and smacked her lips. “I haven’t got a problem with you being a badass, uncompromising or even violent. I’ve seen enough in my time to know that sometimes that’s necessary. I like a man who has a pair of balls between his legs he can call on when he needs them. But I can’t abide injustice, or inhumanity.”
I gave a small snort of a laugh, cut into my st
eak and said, “Well, I don’t want to like you, Janine. I do like you. You’re cool, and I apologize for having used you and lied to you.” I held her eye a moment, with a chunk of steak halfway to my mouth. “But it would be a lie if I said I am sorry I did it. I didn’t know you, I knew nothing about you, and I did what I had to do.”
She reached across the table and held out her hand. I was a little surprised and took it in mine. We shook rather seriously and formally. “Friends,” she said, “and we move on. If you want to talk and tell me about it, I’ll be happy to listen.”
She released my hand and carried on eating. I thought about it, chewed and swallowed a chunk of steak. Then I drained my wine and refilled both our glasses.
“Thank you.” I tried to speak several times after that, but found the words sticking in my throat. Finally, I said, “Actually, talking would probably be a relief, but it’s just not possible.” I shook my head. “I can’t do it.”
She ate in silence for a while, like she hadn’t heard me. Eventually, she leaned back in her chair and picked up her glass, swirling the wine slowly around. “So what’s next?”
“Next?” I shrugged. “Ideally, I would like to have a talk with George da Silva, one on one.”
“Da Silva, the president of King Felipe?”
“Mh-hm. He’s one of the guests this weekend…”
“I know.”
“But I can’t exactly stumble into him while playing golf, can I?”
“No. He doesn’t play golf, but he does go hunting. I’m not sure...” She reached in her purse and pulled out her phone. “This is a small community and we all know each other. A friend of my dad’s…”
She held the phone to her ear a moment and started speaking suddenly: “Clem? You remember uncle Winny was talking to van Dreivers’ secretary…” She nodded a few times, then said, “Did he book it?” Another pause and, “When for…? And he booked the whole day? …Only I have somebody who’d like to tag along… Oh, OK, thanks, pet. See you in a bit.”
“‘See you in a bit’?”
“It’s a manner of speech. My uncle Winston has an estate a little to the east of here, about fifty thousand acres…”
“Fifty thousand acres? That’s about the size of Brooklyn.”
“I wouldn’t know, but he keeps it as a game reserve and charges billionaires extortionate prices to let them go and hunt there. Normally he takes parties, but apparently President da Silva has booked the day for himself and his cronies. I was hoping to get you in as part of the party, but it seems he was emphatic. He wanted it exclusively for himself.”
“Thanks for trying, Janine. Where is this reserve?”
She grinned and then started laughing quietly. “You’re not going to, are you? This is Africa. You could get shot, your body would get eaten and nobody would ever know what happened to you.”
“Of course not. When is it, tomorrow?”
She nodded.
“Tomorrow I was planning on going to visit Port Elizabeth.”
“Right.”
“So, where is it, for maybe some other day.”
“I’ll give you a map when we get back. You hunt?”
“Only for food.”
“That happen a lot in Boston? You have to go and hunt for your food?”
“Sometimes, if it snows a lot.”
“What’s the motto…?” She closed her eyes. “Who dares wins, isn’t that it?”
I looked at the black glass in the window, at our ghosts looking back in at us. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The Special Air Service, the British special ops unit. Who Dares Wins.”
“Yeah. That’s the motto.”
“You’re a fucking psycho, aren’t you.” It was a statement, not a question, but she was smiling.
I shrugged. “I try not to be, but sometimes you have to be.”
She signaled Greg and told him to bring over two more whiskeys. When he’d delivered them, she leaned her elbow on the table and touched my glass with hers. She took a swig and as she set down the glass, she said, “It’s in the Bracken Hills, about ten miles northeast of here on the N2. It’s mainly dense forest, steep hills and occasional savannah. There are no lions or anything of that sort, it’s mainly gazelles. The big attraction is that you can go hunting with bows and arrows. People are really turned on by that.”
“Primal.”
“I guess.”
“So does he provide the bows and the arrows or do you have to bring your own?”
“He has a whole selection, so you can rent one from him, or you can bring your own if you prefer.” We looked at each other for a long moment. She was starting to smile. “Do you travel around with a bow in the boot of your car, Lacklan?”
I shook my head. “What kind of man would travel around with an arsenal in his trunk?”
“You’re a dangerous son of a bitch, aren’t you.”
I nodded. “Yes.”
She drained her whiskey. “Come on, let’s go back to your cabin and I’ll get you that map. We’ll pick up a bottle of Bushmills on the way.”
The rest of the evening seemed to take a course of its own and there was nothing much I could do, or wanted to do, to stop it. I knew it was a bad idea, I knew it couldn’t lead anywhere good, but my hunger for human warmth, for a woman who was hot and alive and loving, a woman who could counter the black, enveloping images of death in my mind, was too strong to resist.
She stopped at reception for the map, collected a bottle of Bushmills from the bar and we walked arm in arm to my cabin. There I unlocked the door and she went in ahead of me. I closed it behind us and she didn’t wait. She came to me, holding the bottle by the neck, and dropped the map on the floor. After that it was a fumbling, stumbling struggle against our clothes as we staggered across the living room to the bedroom. And once there, in the bed, I sank gratefully into warm oblivion, where the whole world, the whole universe, was her arms and her legs and her skin.
I rose at six and showered. When I stepped out of the shower, she was still asleep. I made coffee and toast and carried it out to the veranda, where I studied the map. All I could see was the boundaries of the reserve and the main gate, the highlands, to some extent, the forests and the areas of what she had called savannah. Nothing else was clear, and as for his plans, I had no way of knowing what those would be.
I left Janine a note thanking her for the evening and telling her I was going to Port Elizabeth for the day. Then I walked to the parking lot, got in my car and drove out, north and east, following the N2 along the coast, as though I was indeed going to Port Elizabeth. Just after Hornlee, about half an hour into the journey, the landscape began to change. It became more hilly, more green and fertile, and dense forests of tall, straight pines began to appear, thick and massive on either side of the road, swarming up into the hills.
Eventually I came to the tiny village of Bracken, and shortly after that to an intersection where two broad, dirt tracks led off to right and left. The one on the right had no signposts and gave no indication of where it led, but the one on the left had a large, wooden sign that read: ‘Uncle Winny’s Hunting Reserve,’ and beneath it, ‘Please report to the Lodge.’
I pulled over to the right, followed the road down for a hundred yards until I was secluded by the trees, killed the engine and settled to wait.
ELEVEN
It was a long wait. Morning became noon and then early afternoon, and it wasn’t until one thirty PM that the small procession of four cars appeared, slowed at the entrance of the park and turned onto the long dirt track that wound its way through the thick pinewoods which sprawled up and over the hills.
I watched them and waited till they were out of view, then climbed out of the Audi and opened the trunk. From it, I took my rucksack with the orange osage takedown bow and six aluminum hunting arrows, three inserted into the canvas on each side. I waited till the road was empty, sprinted across, vaulted the fence and ran fast across the open ground for t
he cover of the trees. After that, it was an uphill run through trees and ferns that grew ever thicker and taller, and harder to negotiate. The canopy overhead blocked out the sky completely, the light turned a deep green and all the sounds, including the tread of my boots, acquired a muffled echo. The ferns, as high as five feet, were like a jungle within the forest and eventually the only directional guide I had was the incline of the hill.
Finally, I reached the top of the hill, dropped to the ground and took Janine’s map and my compass from my rucksack. I found my bearing and set off at a steady run for another quarter of a mile. After fifteen or twenty minutes, the trees started to thin out and I began to see sunlight ahead. Then I slowed to a walk and pretty soon I could see a broad stretch of lawn surrounding a colonial style lodge with a broad, gravel parking lot out front, bordered by gardens of geraniums and tall palm trees. In the parking lot, there were four Land Rovers and the four cars I had seen pull in earlier, down at the intersection.
There was also a large group of men out front. A small knot stood at the double, plate-glass doors, talking. The guy doing most of the talking was white, wearing jeans and a pale linen jacket. On his head he had a broad-brimmed, flat-crowned, leather hat. He was talking mainly to a giant of a man dressed in camouflage. He was easily six-six or seven feet, his skin was a deep, almost purple black, his shoulders were massive and his legs were like tree trunks. He was laughing a lot and his voice was deep and resonant. It carried across the open space in snatches to where I was lying and listening, but I could not make out what he was saying.
With these two men were a couple of others, both black and dressed in suits. They wore sunglasses and didn’t speak, but kept their eyes on the surrounding territory. These were his bodyguards.
Around this cluster of four were half a dozen men and women in Italian designer safari clothes. They were groupies, smoking long cigarettes and sipping from silver flasks. And circling around them were still more men, loading things into the Land Rovers: trestle tables, foldable chairs, cool boxes, a mobile barbeque and a couple of canisters of propane. There were also rifles and several bows of varying shapes and sizes, and boxes of arrows.
