Treasonous

by David Hickson

  “They will check the room,” said the guard who had been in conversation with Chandler.

  “Good idea,” said Chandler, and he nodded with approval. The tension eased a little, and the guards lowered their guns. It took them a few minutes, but they called the all-clear when they had checked that the master’s private study was undisturbed.

  “All good then,” said Chandler, and he tried to produce a warm smile, but there was a little too much tension in his cheeks. “We’re nearly done, but probably best that you disable the alarm. Just until we’re done with the drilling.”

  Chandler’s new friend suggested this over his radio to the control room and was rewarded with a scornful, foul-mouthed response. “They’ll disable it for a few minutes only,” he interpreted for Chandler. The other guards passed by on the way back to their stations, and Chandler called out that we’d try not to do that again, and produced a sound that I think was meant to be a laugh, but sounded more like a cough to me. Mind you, my adrenalin levels were mounting, and my perception was probably distorted. Chandler turned to Fat-Boy and me and barked at us to get the job finished.

  He turned and walked towards the panel van, leaving his chaperone undecided as to where he should be concentrating. At the panel van Chandler would discover that what he needed was in the Jeep and he would walk calmly down to that vehicle, and out of sight of the chaperone. We had calculated ninety seconds for that and doubled it for safety. Three minutes was all it would take. Fat-Boy started the countdown timer attached to the circuit breaker and then went back outside, gesturing vaguely to the panel van. Our chaperone did his best to keep an eye on him as he climbed into the van, then glanced back warily towards the dark doorway where I moved some tools around to draw his attention and watched the countdown carefully.

  Fat-Boy shed his overalls in the van, climbed through it and exited on the far side where we couldn’t see him. I dropped a drill bit, which made a loud clatter, and Fat-Boy used the distraction to follow Chandler down the hill.

  We had sixty seconds on the clock.

  At thirty seconds I heard a fresh voice, one that sounded familiar. Another guard had joined our chaperone. But my time was up, I needed to be clear of the place before the circuit breaker triggered. The sunlight blinded me momentarily as I came out of the room into the yard.

  “All done here,” I said and held my hand up to my eyes. It took me a moment to recognise the man with his back to me, but when I did the surge of adrenalin was like an explosion in my chest.

  He turned to face me. Pale, almost white skin, and cold blue eyes. Then the hard ridge of the red scar running down his cheek came into view.

  He recognised me with a shock. He dropped the cigarette he was bringing up to his mouth, and his hands went for his R5. He started to raise it, but I wasn’t waiting to see how quick he was on the draw. I dropped into a crouch and leapt straight towards him. I caught him on the chest just as he was swinging the gun around and hit him with enough force to push him over backwards. I kept moving, sprinting the thirty metres to the van, which lurched away from the road edge as I approached, the passenger door swinging open. I grabbed the stanchion and pulled myself in. Robyn was at the wheel and as I hit the seat, she kicked the pedal and the van bucked like a wild horse and kicked up a cloud of dust before shooting forwards and along the track towards the gate.

  In the side mirror I could see Scarface and the chaperone firing at us. Our panel van had extra sheets of steel in the panelling to protect us, but a bullet struck the mirror and their two figures splintered into myriad repeated slivers.

  The small charge attached to the circuit-breaker sounded like the popping of a cork out of a bottle over the whining engine of the van. The only indication that the complex had lost power was in the strangled wail that came from the manually triggered alarm as it tried to start up but then lost power.

  We had two hundred metres to go, and Robyn accelerated all the way, shifting gears like a professional. She sat behind the wheel in a relaxed way, well back against the seat so that her head was not exposed, and she held the wheel loosely, allowing the tyres to bounce on the rough track, but keeping our path steady all the way to the gate.

  Breytenbach’s private army did all the right things in the eight seconds that it took us to cover the distance to the gate. They didn’t stand in front of us. Only complete idiots stand in front of a fleeing vehicle. And they opened the gates for us, which was a relief because I wasn’t looking forward to discovering which was stronger, the front of the van or the steel ribbing of the gate. They raised the spikes, and Robyn gunned us over them, doing almost a hundred.

  The tyres exploded with sharp bangs and I could see the rubber flying off into the bush at the side of the road. Robyn almost lost control of the van, but she held the wheel steady and let the rims carry us like the blades of ice skates across the rocky surface. She’d stopped accelerating and focused all her attention on bringing us to a smooth stop without rolling. Another series of bangs told us the guards were firing on us and doing their best to take out the rear doors of the van. I was grateful for Chandler’s obsession with detail and the three steel plates that were leaning up against the back of our seats.

  The van ground to a halt amidst an awful screeching of the metal rims against the rock substrate. Eventually it shuddered, and we were stationary. A cloud of dust caught up with us and billowed past the windows. Robyn turned to me. Her eyes were dancing, and her nostrils were wide.

  “Convinced?” she asked.

  “More than convincing,” I said. “I was regretting not having written my will.”

  Robyn smiled. I don’t think she had ever looked so beautiful. She kissed me, then kicked open her door, and held out a white handkerchief that she’d brought for the purpose. It fluttered in the wind, and the popping sound of the shots being fired into the back of the van slowed reluctantly, then stopped altogether. We waited, then heard a loud voice.

  “Step out of the vehicle,” it said, finding more syllables in the word ‘vehicle’ than I would have thought possible. Robyn raised her hands and stepped out. I opened my door and did the same. A team of twelve guards faced us, their guns raised.

  “Don’t move,” called the voice, and then realising that they needed us to move amended that to “Turn and face the vehicle with your hands behind your heads.”

  I did as instructed and assumed that Robyn did the same. Rough hands searched me, then I was pushed to the ground, and the two men assigned to me gave a few determined kicks to show me how angry they were. Then they rolled me over onto my stomach with their feet, and one of them knelt on my back and used his gun barrel to check that nothing I was carrying was made of metal. He stepped away from me and let me struggle to my feet.

  I joined Robyn at the back of the van where the guards were trying to get the rear doors open and having a difficult time of it because of the buckling caused by their gunfire. We waited and watched until eventually one of the doors came away and dropped to the ground with a crash.

  The metal box glinted in the sunlight. It had stood up well to the many bullets that had struck it, sustaining only some buckles and dents in the burnished aluminium edges.

  “What the fuck?” said the leader of the troop. “What is this?” he demanded of me.

  “It’s a box,” I said, and was rewarded with the butt of his rifle on my jaw.

  “What’s in it, fucker?”

  I shrugged. Not in a defiant way, but in a friendly, we’re-all-confused-together kind of way. “We’ll have to open it,” I said.

  The man considered applying the butt of his rifle again, but the inclusive “we” won him over. Instead, he stepped forward to look more closely at the box. He twisted the clasps and confirmed they were locked.

  “We’ll take it back to the boss,” he pronounced.

  Twenty-Nine

  The Breytenbach residence was designed to provide the optimum environment for just about every conceivable circumstance. But the one contin
gency that didn’t seem to have been planned for was the necessity for conducting an unfriendly interrogation. There were no rooms with raw concrete and tiled floors for easy cleaning of the blood and no rooms with ceiling-mounted hooks for suspending the guests. This shortcoming bothered the leader of our squadron, who engaged in frustrated conversation over his radio about where we should be taken. He wanted to take us to their barracks, but the boss wouldn’t stoop that low and so eventually Robyn and I were ushered into one of the smaller reception rooms like we were weekend guests.

  The room had a hunting theme, from the zebra skin rugs on the floor to the old-fashioned shotguns displayed in racks on the walls interspersed with original paintings of wild animals. There was a wall-mounted animal head which was an angular metal sculpture of a surprised deer with gold-plated horns. But the most dominant feature of the room was the wall of glass that looked out over the African bush with not a building, telephone pole or other man-made object in sight.

  The two men who had carried the metal box placed it in front of the glass wall like a sparse piece of set dressing, and then we all waited.

  Riaan Breytenbach came into the room like a bull being released into the fighting ring. Short and stocky with a reserve of energy that seemed to force him into continuous movement, his legs moving in quick snappy strides. He glared at the two of us in fury, spending a moment on each of our faces. He lingered on my face and nodded to himself as if I’d just answered a question that he had guessed the correct answer to.

  “Where are the others?” he asked of the room, in a voice taut with anger.

  Nobody said anything and so Breytenbach swung around to the guards, still pointing their R5’s at us.

  “Find the others,” he roared. “There were four of them, you incompetent idiots. The others must be running about the place looking for a way out. Find them. Hunt them down. Kill them if you have to.”

  The final sentence was a bellow from Breytenbach which gave them the motivation they needed to get moving. A moment after the last one left, another black-clad figure stepped into the room. Tall and emaciated, his face was a familiar one. Black hollows for eyes, sharp ridges as cheeks. It was the man I had last seen getting to his feet off a wet road as our ambulance fled away. In his hand Sidekick was holding a small ring which held a single key. He showed it to Breytenbach, who nodded with approval.

  We waited in silence. Breytenbach strode back and forth a bit as if he was waiting for the arrival of our colleagues before starting with the kangaroo court. Then he came to a stop in front of me.

  “Your friend’s a killing machine, did you know that?” he said, his voice raised to make it clear he was addressing Robyn, even though he was looking at me. “A killing machine,” he repeated with admiration. “You dealt with those pesky villagers for me, didn’t you? Just killed the lot of them. Fuck … it was a sight to behold.” Breytenbach had the polished eloquence of a man used to being quoted in the media, naturally structuring everything he said into convenient sound bites. The profanity was out of place and he knew it, using it for shock effect.

  “Killing is clearly your greatest talent. I should have known you scum were making notes and dreaming up ways of taking your cut. But it was only when you walked into my office that I finally cottoned on. All that drivel about the Khayelitsha fire was an excuse. You’d come to get my gold. You’ve fucked it up though, haven’t you?”

  Breytenbach stepped up to Robyn and stared at her.

  “The real psycho,” he said, “was your friend’s call-sign leader. Now there was a killer if ever I saw one. Was it him that stepped on a mine after the terrorists shot down that plane? I’m sure I heard some story along those lines. The candle-maker, they called him. And then one day he lit up that candle in a big way.” Breytenbach allowed himself an amused smile. “Anyway, a killing machine is what your friend is. Did you know that?”

  Robyn said nothing.

  I said, “It takes one to know one.”

  Breytenbach turned back to me with surprise. “You think so?” he said. “You think I’m a killer? Coming from you, I consider that a compliment.” He paused as if this had given him something to think about, then said, “Oh, I see what you are saying. It’s your justification for stealing from me.” He gave me a patronising smile.

  “We have no justification,” I said. “As you had no justification for killing Lindiwe Dlomo and Wandile Mbuyo.”

  Breytenbach covered his surprise with a smile that showed us what money can buy in terms of dental work.

  “That train has left the station,” he said. “Didn’t you hear? Mbuyo’s lying in a hospital bed with a bullet in his brain. There’s not much you can do for him now.”

  “He told his story before your hired buffoon put that bullet there,” I said. “Told me the whole story. All about you helping him light the fire.”

  Breytenbach gave me another smile.

  “And you think I care?”

  “No, I don’t think you do,” I said.

  “We were fighting a war,” he said. “That’s what everyone forgets.”

  “But you weren’t. You personally were not fighting a war, were you? You’d been kept far away from the action, posted to an insignificant section of military intelligence. Did you want to feel the power? Did you create your own action by killing some people you thought nobody would bother too much about?”

  Breytenbach turned away from me with a scoffing laugh and stood at the window.

  “What are they doing out there?” he asked. “How long can it take to chase down these bungling fools?”

  “They are wearing our uniforms,” pointed out Sidekick in his surprisingly high-pitched voice.

  Breytenbach nodded and looked at Sidekick as if suddenly remembering why we were all here.

  “You got yourselves one of my little boxes,” he said with another scoffing laugh. “One box … how pathetic is that? One little box, and for that I would have hunted you down for the rest of your lives.”

  “Only for the rest of your life though,” I said.

  “Is that meant to be a threat?”

  “I wouldn’t bother to threaten you. You’re untouchable, aren’t you, Mister Breytenbach? That’s why you don’t care that Mbuyo told his story to me before you had him shot. You don’t care who knows about what you did. Because you have someone looking after your best interests.”

  Breytenbach gave the smile that I remembered from the mines on Uganda. The conceited look of a man who knew he would win.

  “A senior government official is covering for you, isn’t he?” I said.

  Breytenbach brought his hands up and clapped them together in mock applause.

  “Well done, you brave little soldier,” he said. “Did you work that all out yourself?”

  “Don Fehrson knows your nasty little secret,” I said. “And he is making sure that it stays hidden.”

  Breytenbach’s smile grew a little wider and became a smug grimace.

  “It’s a mutual relationship,” he said. “I scratch his back and he scratches mine.”

  “It must have been a surprise to discover that he’d been lying to you all those years about his daughter. And to learn that he had helped Lindiwe disappear and made it look like she’d died.”

  “Water under the bridge,” said Breytenbach. “It’s been so many years, and Don Fehrson’s been a wonderful ally, I’ll allow him some sentiment.”

  “You’re not worried that killing his daughter has broken his trust?”

  Breytenbach shrugged.

  “It was either or, wasn’t it? He knew that. His son has a drug problem. Killed a man, but the case was dropped. Dropping a case like that takes influence, and a lot of money. Fehrson knew it was either the daughter or the son. I explained that to him.”

  “You bought his protection by buying his son’s freedom?”

  “Among other things. Do you think that journalist fell into the sea all on his own? If I wanted I could have your Father Fehrson put away fo
r a long time. Or worse.”

  “That’s the power of the killer, isn’t it?” I said. “There is always that ultimate threat.”

  Breytenbach’s smile had grown weary. He let it fade.

  “I think you might have made the mistake of underestimating my influence,” he said.

  “I might,” I admitted. “But you have made mistakes too.”

  Breytenbach gave his scoffing laugh again. “I have? Such as?”

  “Such as thinking that we’re here for the gold.”

  Breytenbach’s laugh morphed into a mocking snarl.

  “There it is,” he said, indicating the metal box. “Your one little box of my gold. Why else are you here?”

  “Why do you think?” I said.

  “You wanted to talk about those people? You wanted to frighten me with your threats?”

  I didn’t say anything. Robyn did.

  “He’s here to do what he does best,” she said.

  Breytenbach’s confidence wavered. He turned to the cadaverous Sidekick.

  “Open the box,” he said.

  Sidekick knelt before the box and used his key to unlock the clasps. It turned easily because we’d rigged the locks to open with any key. Then he lifted the top of the box and moved aside so we could all see what it contained.

  A jumble of steel washers, nuts and bolts.

  The sight had a dramatic effect on Breytenbach.

  His confidence slipped from him like the shedding of a skin. He looked at us in confusion, then back at the scrap metal in the box.

  “There’s no gold,” he complained.

  I said nothing. Breytenbach looked at me, and the blood drained from his face.

  “You’re not armed,” he said as if that objection could change the course of events.

  “Who needs weapons?” I said.

  But Breytenbach clearly did, and he was not going to wait around to see whether his suspicions were well founded. He took action and did so fast. It was our bad luck that the room happened to contain many weapons, hanging invitingly on the walls. He strode over to a side wall and wrenched an antique Winchester shotgun from its bracket. Displayed conveniently below it was a box of cartridges in the original cardboard packaging. He looked up at Sidekick, who was still gazing with confusion at the contents of the box.