Treasonous

by David Hickson

  Khanyi shook her head, but I could see she was too tired to argue. She contented herself with telling me I was a fool. I agreed with her. And I left her and Fehrson to write the report and close the file.

  I limped out of the stadium. The cut in my side had opened up again, and I was pretty sure the entry wound from Scarface’s bullet was infected. Fortunately, I knew someone who would dress the wounds and feed me some lamb stew. Robyn was a felon, but then so was I. It had just taken me longer to realise it. I was crossing back over Chandler’s line, travelling further down Fehrson’s spiral, and my rusty old Fiat couldn’t get me there fast enough.

  Twenty-Six

  Robyn and I ate dinner well after midnight on the terrace of our Franschhoek hideaway. Robyn had kept the stew warm and chilled the wine to just above frozen which was the way Brian had told me she liked it when I had questioned the slivers of ice in my glass on an evening years before.

  “I’m thinking I will just stay here,” she said after I had complimented the stew, and asked for a second helping.

  “You like it that much?”

  “I went into the village today and bought groceries. It’s so peaceful and quiet. Beats the city.” She sipped her wine. “You could stay on a bit too if you need to. You’re less likely to have people coming at you with their knives.”

  Robyn had dressed my wounds and thrown away the clothes ruined by the bloodstains. Violence was on her mind.

  “It would be very cosy,” she said, and her dark eyes did that thing which made me feel as if she was about to kiss me, despite the heavy oak table, candles, wine cooler and plates of food between us. I wondered whether the cosy plan included me in a leading role, or whether I was cast as a bit-part player. The latter seemed more likely.

  “We could rob the quiet little village bank when we run low,” I said, testing sensitive waters.

  “Or just when we get bored,” said Robyn. “If we have to wait until we run low it might take a while.”

  “Business with Chandler has been that good?”

  Robyn smiled and sipped her wine coyly. “No,” she said, but her eyes told the truth.

  “I had no idea. I’ve obviously been playing for the wrong team.”

  “There’s no right team, or wrong team, Ben. You know that. It’s every man and woman for themself.”

  “When did you and Chandler start this?” I asked.

  “After Brian was killed, when you two came back and it had all just happened. We buried Brian and then you went into a hole in the ground because you felt so sorry for yourself. Steven was good to me. He supported me. Nothing inappropriate. You know that, but I have to say it, even if only to myself because I’ve fallen into that trap before. Doing inappropriate things.” She sipped her wine, and I said nothing.

  “Anyway, there was nothing inappropriate. Steven is the only man I know that I can say is a real gentleman. And a gentle man.” Robyn laughed, and the sound was genuinely uplifting. “Don’t look at me with those puppy-dog eyes,” she said and took another mouthful, then spoke through it in the way my mother had always said I shouldn’t.

  “We talked about my time in prison. About the boy I’d been so stupid about. The one they killed. I’m sure Brian told you.”

  I nodded.

  “Steven was trying to put his life together again. What happened in the Congo killed Brian, and it nearly destroyed Steven. It did the same to you. I could see it happening to Steven like an accident playing out in slow motion. He was getting calls from old army buddies. They were doing jobs for security companies, the kind of companies that send people into the nasty parts of Africa and dress them in Armani suits instead of uniforms. Steven did a few of those jobs, but mostly they just depressed him even more. He did some things he didn’t like and found himself rubbing shoulders with people he liked even less. Then one day he was complaining about a job he was doing for one of those companies. They’d protected some guy who was carrying a lot of cash, flying into the Congo by private jet. He was convinced it was money for an arms deal, and he said it was all wrong. Why was he protecting the people who were causing the trouble? The money would be for weapons that would be turned against innocent people. All that kind of nonsense. He got into quite a state about it. Ranted on and on. So I said he should just take the money for himself and put it to better use. It was a joke, but all the best things in life start as a joke, don’t they?”

  “So you put him up to it?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” she said with false modesty and her eyes did that thing again. “It was just the two of us at first, and it was very clever. It was all his ideas. It did him the world of good. He found himself again. You know how he is now, he’s found his balance, or his mojo, or whatever they call it.”

  “And you?”

  “My problems turned out to be harder to fix.”

  “You couldn’t bring Brian back,” I said.

  “It wasn’t that. And you know it. Do I have to remind you every day, Ben?” Robyn’s eyes flashed with anger. “I didn’t want Brian back, you know that.”

  We fell into silence. It had been stupid of me to mention Brian.

  “Staying here would be lovely, you should do it,” I said in a feeble attempt to clear the air, but the good moment between us was dead. Robyn kept her head down and ate her stew. I felt a sense of regret creep over me. Not since Sandy’s disappearance had I allowed myself to feel like this. Not since long before I’d even met Sandy. I’d grown accustomed to my safe bubble of isolation. But Robyn had inadvertently broken that, and it had been so subtle that I’d not noticed it happening. Looking at her now, I realised how deep my feelings for her were. And it wasn’t just her beauty, although there was that, no doubt about it. But there was more. It was as Mona had described Lindiwe with that hand on her chest. Not physical beauty, but something that she gave me to carry around in my heart. Robyn looked up as if she’d felt my eyes on her, and she saw something in them.

  “Lighten up a little, Ben, it’s not that bad.” She smiled, and I knew I was done for. You can go through life putting up walls against anything or anyone that could hurt you, but it’s the people inside those walls that do the worst damage.

  We shared a cigarette on the couch with the view after dinner. The candles were still burning on the table, casting a warm glow over my half-full glass of wine. Robyn was making a comfortable nest with her duvet. The moon poked through the clouds and cast a cool light over her marble face as she looked out over the lights of Franschhoek. Then the moon skipped back behind the clouds, and the valley was all ours.

  “I still cannot believe Brian said nothing,” said Robyn, picking at the wound and bringing back the ghost of our past. “I suppose it was because he was angry with me, and not with you.”

  “You had a big row about it?”

  “Did we ever. But Brian was kind. He was angry but never violent. I know what your squad did, and when he told me it surprised me, because he never showed his anger. I guess the army had taught him to control it. Not control it perhaps, but direct it. I honestly feared that he might take some of that anger out on you.”

  “He didn’t.”

  Robyn drew on the cigarette and let the smoke drift out of her mouth as if she had stopped breathing.

  “Did I kill him, Ben? That thing about focus. No letters from home, all of that.”

  “Don’t be absurd. There was nothing wrong with his focus. His death had nothing to do with you.”

  “But if I’d waited until you returned from that operation. His mind wouldn’t have been clouded by all that anger.”

  “It wasn’t clouded by anything. Believe me, he showed no anger, no lack of focus. He was a good soldier, and no different on that operation.”

  “But he might have noticed that mine.”

  “No.”

  “They wouldn’t tell me how he died. Did you know that? ‘In the course of active duty’, they said. Military procedure prevented them from telling me anything. Why, for fuck’s sak
e, I asked. Why can’t I know how it happened? It’s not like I will breach national security by knowing how he died.”

  “It’s just how they do things.”

  “Well, it’s ridiculous. Do you know how often I wake up in the night, thinking about that mine? That fucking mine? That was the only word they would give me. One word … it was a mine. Not a bullet, not a grenade, not a bomb, not a terrorist, not an enemy soldier. A mine.”

  I said nothing. Was every moment that I spent with Robyn going to be marred by the presence of Brian?

  “And then you and Steven returned like zombies. Like someone had taken your brains and turned them inside out. You’d seen people killed before, not just the people you killed, but colleagues you knew and loved. I know you had because Brian certainly had. But this was different. And don’t tell me it was just because Brian was your close friend. Steven was the same, and Brian wasn’t his friend.”

  “We were unprepared for what happened,” I said, and felt the tightening of my chest that came whenever I thought back to it.

  “Because it was a plane crash?”

  “Not because of that. Because of what happened after the crash.”

  “Steven said it was a civilian plane. Is that why it was different? Normal people, not soldiers.”

  “It was a private charter flight that flew over the North Kivu region. There were lots of gooks there, and they used to shoot at the planes that went overhead, but it was like pissing in the rain. The planes were usually so high it was just a waste of their ammo. But this plane was hit. It had engine trouble, and no one knows whether the engine trouble happened first or whether it was shot down. Anyway, it went down late afternoon the thirteenth October. There were forty holidaymakers on board, honeymoon couples, families, pensioners. They’d been on safari in the Okapi, flying back to Jo’burg.”

  “Why were you there?”

  “The plane went down in the Virunga mountains, the heart of the terrorist encampments. We were the closest because we were on the mines in the northwestern corner of Uganda. We were near the end of a rough tour. We were worn out, frazzled, but we were there. The South Africans weren’t about to send in their aviation inspectors with their nice linen suits and umbrellas. Someone had to get there to see if there were survivors. We took off at first light on the fourteenth and spent hours flying over the area looking for the wreckage. Back and forth in a grid pattern, guessing how far the plane had travelled since the last radar track. Then Brian saw it, the metal body of the fuselage. The weather was nasty, really turbulent, and high winds. We wouldn’t have jumped in normal circumstances, but Chandler didn’t hesitate. He had the pilot circle the area and climb to find smoother air, then they dropped us. Honestly, we were lucky we all made it down to the ground. Chandler broke his foot when he came in. There was so much wind we might as well have left the chutes in the plane.”

  “I remember he was on crutches for months. Or it seemed like it. Were there no survivors of the crash?” Robyn lit us another cigarette. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “At first we didn’t think there were any survivors. It was dead quiet on the ground. The five of us gathered around the fuselage which was twisted and broken into sections. The copilot was still in his seat. Dead. The pilot’s seat was empty, but we found him not far away, also dead. There were passengers still in their seats in the body of the plane. I guess about half of them were killed on impact. But there were signs that some had survived, the tracks of people moving away from the craft. Then a woman came out of the bush. In her underwear, streaked with blood and mud. She came rushing at us, and Chandler caught her. She couldn’t speak, she was just gasping for air. Couldn’t tell us anything, couldn’t bring herself to say any words, just pointed into the bush. Chandler settled her and left two men with her. Brian, Chandler and I went looking for the others. Their tracks were clear, but then we found other tracks. People in heavy boots moving back to the plane, roaming over the ground, searching.”

  “The ADF? Brian told me about the ADF”

  “The African Defence Force, yes.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” said Robyn again. “Don’t bring it all back.” She could probably sense my dread at what was to come. But I’d started on the path into the dark heart of it all, and it was too late for me to stop now. I continued with the story. Robyn lay her head down on my shoulder, and the warmth of her kept me grounded. Perhaps with her the telling of this story would be cathartic, and not just a flagellation of old wounds.

  “The tracks led us to a clearing where we found the people who had survived the crash.”

  Robyn’s breath was hot on my cheek. I remembered moving into that clearing. There had been fifteen people in a line, men, women and three children. They had been arranged in that line and had been shot as if by a firing squad. Not single shots, but a hail of them. And then the murderers had fitted bayonets onto their guns and finished their work by stabbing them. The moment that we entered the clearing and saw what they had done to the survivors of that plane crash was the moment my life changed. I’d seen death before. Too often. But never anything like this. It was the surreal transposition of holidaymakers, in their bright colourful clothes, into the setting of a war. Seeing a uniformed soldier lying dead in the bush is one thing. A line of fifteen holidaymakers is another. Holidaymakers who have survived a plane crash, and are trying to find help, wounded and desperate, supporting each other and struggling through the African bush without water or food, leaving behind their dead brothers, parents and children, trying to make their way to find help and escape from the horror of the crash. Only to stumble into a war zone and have their lives taken from them in a brutal massacre.

  “They were alive?” asked Robyn, and I realised I’d stopped talking.

  “No, they weren’t alive.”

  The three of us had stopped at the entrance of the clearing and it had taken a moment for the scene to imprint itself onto our memories. Brian swore. He took a step forward, but Chandler held him back. Chandler’s face was white. He said nothing, just held Brian back. Then we heard the crying.

  “The ADF killed them?” asked Robyn because I’d not spoken out loud again.

  “There was a young child who was still alive. A four-year-old boy, we learned later. He’d spent the night beside the dead body of his father, his legs trapped under the weight of his father’s body. At least that’s what we thought when we saw him.”

  Brian had stepped forward, and the boy’s head turned towards us. He’d been shot and probably also stabbed, his face was covered in blood, but he was alive. Chandler called Brian back, ordered him to stop. But the boy was looking at Brian now and begging for help. Brian kept going.

  “Brian went to him,” I said aloud. They’d found a way of trapping the boy there, we realised later, because he didn’t move. Chandler and I discussed it many weeks later. When our memories had been coaxed back by therapists and drugs. Probably a bayonet through a leg or an arm. I think Brian could see there was no chance that he would live. That is why he stepped up to him, didn’t hold back. I heard the click as Brian stepped on a jerry-rigged tripwire. It’s a clear, latching kind of click that those homemade tripwires made, like a spring lock finding its home. Brian heard it, and he half turned to us. He looked at me, and at Chandler. Held our eyes. Then he turned back to the boy who was within reaching distance. Brian stooped down and reached out to touch the boy and hold him. Chandler called out to him not to move.

  “That’s when he stepped on the mine?” asked Robyn.

  “Yes, that’s when he stepped on the mine.”

  We were silent for a long time then. Me sitting, half-lying on the couch, and Robyn’s hot tears running down my chest and soaking my shirt. Probably some tears of my own too. Eventually she asked, “Did any of them survive?”

  “Three escaped the ADF search. We lifted them out the next day.” A night spent among the dead, splattered with the blood of my friend, not moving for fear of other booby traps. It had
been the longest night of my life.

  Robyn sat up and emerged from her duvet cocoon. Her red moist eyes were so close I couldn’t focus on them.

  “Thank you for telling me,” she said. “Now Brian must leave us alone. We’ve lost him, but we have a friendship that still lives.”

  She leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. It was like a powerful current passing through my body, as if her mouth was electrically charged. And at that moment, and for some time after that, I believed we really had put Brian behind us.

  “Don’t go getting any ideas though,” she said. “We’ve been through this, Ben, and you need to stop your shit. Find your journalist. Stop trailing after me like a ghoul. It won’t work. You know that.”

  I wasn’t sure that I did know that. Had we been through it? But I didn’t say anything. Robyn placed her head back onto my shoulder and we gazed out at the lights and I settled for the memory of the kiss.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” said Brian on the last night of his life. “We are going to find that underground vault in sunny South Africa, and we’re going to take ourselves some of that gold.”

  “That’s called stealing,” said our captain. “Common thievery.”

  “It is,” agreed Brian. “And it’s what we’re going to do.”

  We were in the messroom of the temporary barracks at the Kigesi Gold mining complex. Bleak prefabricated cardboard walls, which did nothing to mute the snores of our chopper pilot in the next room. The orders had come through for the drop into the Virunga mountains to find survivors of a civilian plane crash, and Brian was feeling irritable. Not because of the orders, which had a sense of purpose about them. Finding civilians who might have survived a plane crash had a touch of the heroic: the possibility of saving lives, not taking them. But that sense of purpose had triggered Brian’s discontent. Because of the contrast with the orders we were currently executing, in a posting that we were only two days from completing.