I struggled back above the surface to find Scarface kicking at me with his boot. I was lying on my back and could see a nightmarish red light painting the ceiling above him. On the other side of me stood Lategan, a phone pressed to his ear.
“You Gabriel?” he shouted, as if I was lying at the bottom of a deep well. I didn’t respond, and so Scarface kicked me again. “Johansson’s friend Gabriel?” shouted Lategan, and when I still didn’t respond Lategan turned away from me and said something into his phone about the man bleeding all over his parking lot. Scarface gave me another kick and then I felt myself floating upwards and heard Chandler’s voice saying “Gently now” and hoped that he’d stayed out of sight of Lategan. I found his face, and he had a mask and full personal protection on. Lategan wouldn’t have recognised him. Chandler pushed my stretcher into the back of the ambulance where Fat-Boy was sitting with a drip and looking as if he too had been wounded. His face was drooping, almost blue in colour, and shining with sweat.
There was an altercation at the door. I heard Chandler say only one guard could ride with us, and she was already sitting up front. The door slammed closed and the grotesque skull of Sidekick settled beside me as the ambulance lurched forward.
Engines throbbed and echoed around us as we waited to leave the underground parking. Then we accelerated and the drumming of rain sounded on the roof. I focused hard on pushing the pain to the back of my mind. I needed to hold onto the thin thread of consciousness. Sidekick’s skull face was looming over me as if he was trying to say something. I breathed the acrid smell of his breath. Then his face moved away from me and I realised that he had turned to Fat-Boy. I twisted my head to see what he was doing as the ambulance turned abruptly onto the road and the siren moaned itself up into key, and we accelerated. Sidekick stumbled against my stretcher, and I saw the flash of the long blade in his hand.
A burst of adrenalin surged through me, riding a wave of unstoppable rage. I found the strength to roll onto my feet and grabbed the bony hand that held the knife. The skull face turned back to me in shock, and I twisted the hand and felt the bones crack. Sidekick screamed, but still held the knife in his crippled hand. The ambulance jerked to the side as Chandler mounted a pavement, and I felt the long blade penetrate my side with a fresh burst of pain. The skull face grimaced and he tried to twist the knife, but I had my elbow up and struck his exposed windpipe. He gasped and fell back into Fat-Boy. I considered using the knife for a moment, but the energy the rage had produced was beginning to drain and knew that killing him with a knife would take too long. I turned away from him and kicked at the back door of the ambulance. It burst open and the glass in the windows shattered into small fragments which rained onto the road rushing away beneath us. I felt Sidekick’s arm come up around my throat and I twisted under it, using his momentum to push him towards the open door and the fleeing road. He realised too late what I was doing and panic twisted his face as he grabbed onto the edge of the rim above the door. He hung there like an enormous spider trying to cling on. I used all the force I had left and kicked him.
His hands gave way, and he dropped back and collapsed in a heap on the wet road. The headlights of the car behind us swerved abruptly and narrowly missed striking him, but in swerving it struck a car going the other way and there was a dreadful crunching bang and the sound of skidding as other cars tried to stop on the wet road.
“What the fuck?” said Fat-Boy. “He was a security guard. You killed him. What the fuck?”
As I pulled the door closed, I saw Sidekick stumble to his feet. The headlights of cars behind him silhouetted his narrow body and cast his shadow towards us through the rain like a monster rising from the deep.
“I didn’t kill him,” I said. “I should have.”
“Who are you?” said Fat-Boy. “Who the fuck are you? How the fuck did you do that?”
I didn’t answer him because I felt the tug of the unconscious. I felt no pain, only a nagging regret. It would be some time before I realised the cost of having spared Sidekick’s life. I dropped back onto the stretcher, and my consciousness floated up and away.
Nineteen
Robyn was sitting under a wooden sash window with light coming in at a shallow angle and catching the steam rising from her mug. Her hair was pinned back, and she looked stern. The nurse on duty. She had a book in her lap and both hands around the mug as if she was trying to warm herself up. Like an advert for cocoa, the girl next door relaxing in the mountain hut before a night of unexpected intimacy. Mountain hut because the walls were stone, and the chair was made of natural branches like some kind of DIY craft project. Robyn looked up at me and found my eyes on her. She didn’t burst into song or jump up and down with joy. She sat there and looked at me.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Franschhoek,” she replied. “Up the Franschhoek pass.” She didn’t sound overwhelmingly happy about it. “I’ll call Colonel.”
The Franschhoek pass ran through the Hottentots Holland Mountains, which formed a protective arc separating the Cape Peninsula from the rest of Africa. We would be about an hour’s drive from the city, depending how high up the pass we were. I had just got around to wondering whether I was smelling breakfast or dinner, when Chandler came into the room wiping his hands on a dishcloth with pictures of wildflowers on it.
“You had us worried,” he said in an accusatory way.
“I had it under control,” I said.
“Sure you did. The bullet ricocheted off the concrete. That guy with the scar can’t shoot for shit. Didn’t even get all the way through you. The doc pulled it out, and said there was a knife wound too, but I said that was none of our business so he left that.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Chandler allowed himself a small smile.
“Fat-Boy said you frightened him.”
“I’ll be sure to apologise.”
“Damn right you will. The doc pumped you full of drugs and said it would be eighteen hours before you’d surface.” He consulted his watch. “You beat him to it by twelve minutes. Excellent.” He beamed another flat-line smile in my direction. “Now get some clothes on and join us on the veranda for supper. That’s enough lying around feeling sorry for yourself.”
The little getaway retreat Chandler had rented was snuggled into the folds of the Hottentots Holland Mountain, and from the terrace we had a view over the lush vineyards of Franschhoek where Chandler claimed some of the world’s best wines were made. He even had some of that wine for us to drink with the lamb chops he’d cooked on the outside fire, although everyone agreed I shouldn’t have any, what with the amount of drugs I had in my system. And although the lamb smelt delicious and Fat-Boy said it was the best he’d ever tasted, I couldn’t bring myself to have any. I nibbled on a slice of bread that Chandler called bruschetta because he’d toasted it on the fire, and I wondered whether I should get a second opinion on the fact that my internal organs were undamaged. For all I knew, the ‘doc’ Chandler kept mentioning could have been his vet.
Chandler placed a bent and stained cardboard file on the table before me.
“Robyn picked it up,” he said, “and Fat-Boy cleaned the blood off.”
They could see my surprise. I thanked them, but Chandler held up a hand. “Less said about it the better,” he said. “But we got something out of the archives after all.”
Fat-Boy was chewing a lamb rib. He finished it and put it down. “Not the gold, though,” he said, and stared glumly at the clean bones on his plate. “I couldn’t breathe. That fucking vest.”
“We got out with our lives,” said Chandler. “That’s what counts.”
Fat-Boy looked up at me. “There was a knife,” he said. “In the ambulance. When we got you out of it, we found a knife.”
“That man didn’t intend for us to reach the hospital,” I said. Fat-Boy nodded and forced his lazy eye a little wider to get a good look at me.
“You not eating that?” asked Fat-Boy, indicating my untouche
d lamb. I pushed the plate over to him. He picked up a rib but hesitated before biting into it. “I didn’t mean that stuff,” he said. “What I said in the ambulance. I couldn’t breathe, I was all confused.”
I said I understood, and Chandler poured more wine for us. He raised his glass.
“May you have the hindsight to know where you've been,” he said, “the foresight to know where you are going, and the insight to know when you have gone too far.”
“What the fuck you talking about, Colonel?” said Fat-Boy.
“It means that we’re done,” said Robyn, whose eyes were smouldering angrily from the dark corner seat.
“It does,” said Chandler. “We’re going our separate ways as soon as we finish dinner.” He turned to me. “That man Lategan has been scanning hospitals and clinics for a man with gunshot and knife wounds. He knows your name, and he’s watching your apartment. So you stay here a few days. The doctor insists you need bed rest. Think you can do that?”
I said I thought I could.
“I’ve asked Robyn to stay on and act the nursemaid. She’s agreed.” He turned to her for confirmation.
“I have,” said Robyn without enthusiasm.
Chandler and Fat-Boy left after dinner. Chandler shook my hand and told me not to call him if I had any other hare-brained ideas, and Fat-Boy tried a few new grips on my right hand and said he hoped we’d not meet again. I found Robyn sitting on the terrace gazing out at the vineyards. Puffy clouds were glowing orange underneath, like alien spaceships being heated by the lights of Franschhoek. Robyn was holding a cup of cocoa in both hands and blowing into it like a breathing meditation. She had made me some, and I sat beside her on the cane couch, sighing with relief as the foam cushions supported me and eased the pain.
“You didn’t tell the Colonel about the wine,” said Robyn, as if we were resuming a conversation, although she had not said more than a few words to me since our disagreement on the roof of the match factory two days earlier. Even now she did not look at me, but kept gazing out at the alien clouds.
“I didn’t.”
“You should have.” Robyn turned to me, and her eyes were full of anger. “We’re a team, and that’s how it works. You should have told him.”
“It didn’t affect us. Nothing would have been gained by telling him.”
Robyn said nothing, and we sat in silence for a few minutes.
“That last operation,” Robyn said suddenly, “on the mines. Brian told you about what we’d decided?”
“Was it something about your wedding?” I said, casting my mind back reluctantly.
“No,” said Robyn.
I thought back again. I remembered the night we’d celebrated their decision to marry. The meal at the steakhouse, Brian drinking too much red wine, and Robyn’s laughing face lit by candles. A table full of the candles Brian had insisted the management bring in order to better see his bride-to-be.
“We didn’t talk about those kinds of things when we were in the field.”
“No?” Robyn looked at me with cool eyes through the steam from her cocoa. “What did you talk about?”
I shrugged. “Meaningless things. Things that wouldn’t distract. Things we wouldn’t find ourselves thinking about when we had an ADF fanatic pointing an AK-47 in our faces.”
Robyn sipped her cocoa and nodded. “I remember that. I had to promise never to call or write. Brian was obsessive about keeping his focus.”
She put her cocoa aside, and lay back on the couch, her arms folded tightly about her. I could smell the scent that was uniquely hers. The combination of soap and shampoo and freshly washed clothes. It was not so much a smell, but the absence of a smell, a fragrance that sneaked in between breaths.
“What had you decided?” I asked.
“We had decided not to get married. To end it. We had separated.”
“I had no idea. He said nothing about it.”
Robyn was biting her lip, looking as if there was anger building up inside her.
“I have wondered so often whether Brian told you,” she said.
“Why? I mean, why had you decided to split up? I thought … it sounds trite, but you two were happy.”
Robyn turned to me. Her eyes were brimming with tears. One of them ran down her cheek, and I felt a familiar punch of guilt.
“You’re such an arsehole, Ben, you know that?”
“You’ve already told me that part of it.”
Robyn’s mouth opened and for a moment I thought she was going to shout, but it was a laugh that came out.
“You know why we decided not to marry,” she said.
The evening went suddenly quiet. Robyn’s face was close to mine, her eyes dancing slightly as she looked from one of my eyes to the other. The silence was filled with a rush of memories. Moments that I had misunderstood, actions I had misinterpreted, foolish mistakes crowding in on me.
“You need to stop doing this to me, Ben,” she said.
“Stop what?” I asked, but I wasn’t that stupid. I said it so that the moment would linger. Being that close to her, feeling her breath on my lips. But she pulled away and snuggled up to her cocoa mug.
“Brian could see it,” she said. “The way you looked at me. The way you avoided us. You stopped coming around. Avoided places we used to hang out. It was Brian who pointed it out. He could see how you felt. You need to stop looking at me like that, Ben. Stop thinking about me like that. Just stop.”
“I didn’t realise I was that transparent,” I said. “Why didn’t Brian just tell me to bugger off? I would have done that for him. Travelled to the other side of the world.”
“Brian didn’t tell you to bugger off because he didn’t blame you.”
My cocoa was strong and sweet. Robyn had probably put twice the recommended amount of everything into the mug.
“Didn’t blame me? Who did he blame? He had nothing to blame you for,” I said.
“Didn’t he?” Robyn turned away from me and her cheek was damp. “Sometimes you seem fairly bright, Ben. Perceptive even. But most of the time you’re just dense. It isn’t only our actions we’re responsible for. Our thoughts and feelings are ours to own as well.”
Robyn finished her cocoa and put down her mug. She turned to me.
“You’re such a fool, Ben,” she said, and rose from the couch and went inside, leaving me to read between the lines and figure out what it all meant.
I didn’t sleep that night. Chandler had been right about my having spent enough time lying around, although it was not true that I felt sorry for myself. I sat on the terrace and smoked too many cigarettes and paged through the file we’d stolen from the archives. It answered some of the questions I’d been asking about the death of Lindiwe Dlomo, but it raised many more.
I ran out of cigarettes as the eastern horizon started to glow. That was when an absurd idea occurred to me. One question I had the answer to was the one Du Toit himself had suggested I ask: what personal reason had kept Fehrson away from the operation? The absurd idea came to me because there was something else that was bothering me. And as the sun poked its head above the parapet, it came back to me. Lategan is shouting angrily into his phone after identifying me as the friend of the journalist Johansson. He listens to the response of the person on the other end of the line, says a couple of “yessirs” and “no-sirs”, and finally he says what sounds like a name. I am being lifted into the air. Scarface has given me a last kick, and is it my imagination, or does Lategan say “Fehrson”?
Twenty
A northwesterly wind was blowing over Cape Town the next evening. When that happens, the clouds roll down the front of Table Mountain and spill themselves as soon as they strike the big houses at the top. A little further down, in among some of the older buildings of the city, is a late-night coffee house called Roxy’s that charges too much for an Irish coffee, and an outrageous amount for their mud pie. The theme is old movies, and everything that doesn't move is plastered with posters. Vivien Leigh swoons in
the corner while Cary Grant watches the exits. I sat at a table next to the big windows and stared out at the rain. Not a gentle apologetic drizzle, but an aggressive, defiant rain. A couple scurried across the square with a coat over their heads, and arrived at the restaurant across from Roxy’s, dripping with water. They were swallowed up into the warmth, and the square was deserted again. In Roxy’s the music changed from Edith Piaf to a collection of Italian arias and Khanyi arrived, folding an umbrella and hesitating at the door like a frightened buck, her big eyes scanning the room. African print trousers hugged her thighs and splayed out to give breathing space to the four-inch heels of her clogs. A tight-fitting top had a ruff of artificial fur like a lion’s mane, which balanced itself precariously on top of her breasts, deceiving the beholder as to the amount of breast she was actually displaying. It all had the desired effect. Eyes followed her as she moved over to my table.
“If I’d known we were dressing up, I would have put on my cowboy suit,” I said.
Khanyi showed me two rows of exquisite teeth. She would not spoil the entrance with a scowl.
“And I was going to try to be nice to you,” she said with a mock sigh.
A waitress arrived at our table. Khanyi ordered espresso coffee and a glass of ice without looking at the menu, or taking her eyes from me. It was all part of the performance, and I’ve got to say it was pretty effective.
“You had a question,” she said when the waitress had left.
“Is the name Lategan familiar to you?”
Khanyi wrinkled her brow and stared over my shoulder as if the answer was in one of the movie posters.
“Lategan,” she repeated. “I don’t think so. Should it be?”
“He’s a big cheese at the Gold Archives.”
“Oh, Gabriel,” Khanyi sighed. “You’re not still going on about those files in the archives? They don’t have them. I told you to drop the whole thing.”
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