The South African clenched and unclenched his fist. If Nwosu had been in the same room he’d be a dead man by now. Take your time, he told himself, be patient. There’ll be time for revenge. There always is. He gritted his teeth, thinking frantically. “I’m listening,” he said.
“Look, Marius. This couldn’t be simpler. You have something I want; Leo, and I have something that you want; your wife and daughter. The easiest and safest thing to do is just swap them over and everyone will be safe and happy.”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
“Well, we don’t want to make a public spectacle of ourselves, so it has to be done in a nice, quiet, private place. As a matter of fact, this house is perfect. Bring Leo here and I leave with him and you stay with Karen and Abby. Job done!”
He missed out the bit about killing me, he reflected. “And what happens to Leo?”
“I take him to Beitbridge and he’ll be released when the ransom gets paid. It’s what we agreed to do, but for some reason you screwed it up and ran off with Leo. You’ve been paid for your work, so just give him up and get on with your life.”
He doesn’t know about the Zimbabweans, realised Coetzee. Nor about the story I told the Voice. He hasn’t spoken to him because he’s lost the boy. What happens when he gets Leo and calls him back? Even if I survive I’m a dead man and probably so is Leo, that’s what happens.
“What do you say, Marius? You don’t want to risk anything happening to your family, do you? I don’t think they’d appreciate being put second to a kid you didn’t even know a few days ago.”
Nwosu put the phone to Karen’s mouth again. Both she and Abby were sitting on a window bench, hands bound behind them. The dogs were upstairs, barking intermittently behind the locked bedroom door. “Please, Marius.” She cried. “Please come to get us. Abby is frightened to death and you know why. She can’t go through this again. You have to come to help us.”
Coetzee’s heart sank. Karen was right, there was no turning back. “Has he hurt you or Abby?”
“No. We’re OK, but we can’t take any more of this. Promise me you’’ll do what he wants.”
“Don’t worry, Karen. I’ll be there.”
“I heard that, Marius. A very sensible decision if I may say so. Where are you? How long will it take you to get here?”
Coetzee quickly calculated distances and time.
“We’re a long way away. It’s about a six hour drive, so we’ll be there in the early hours. Meanwhile, just remember, if you lay a finger on my family, you won’t live long enough to regret it.”
“Don’t worry, Coetzee. I promise to treat them as I would my own loved ones. By the way,” he added, “don’t forget to bring Leo, will you?”
Coetzee sat for several minutes, thinking about the call. He blamed himself entirely for the crisis Karen and Abby were in. If only I hadn’t humiliated Nwosu and left him behind, if only I hadn’t tried to cut him out of the deal, if only…
He took the book he’d shoved into his bag and removed the photo of Karen and Abby. I was an idiot to lose you last time. It’s not going to happen again.
Coetzee stopped thinking about the past and switched to the present, his military training taking over. Nwosu was probably armed but his shoulder couldn’t have healed by now. The advantage would be with him, but he would be surrounded by three vulnerable people, his wife, daughter and Leo. He started to work out the strategy that had come to his mind a few moments ago. A strategy to turn the tables on Sergeant Jonathon Nwosu.
London, England
“Coetzee and the boy are still at the lodge in Phalaborwa.” The Voice read the text from his mobile. “It seems they haven’t moved at all. They’re presumably staying there for the night, so I think we can rely on the Zimbabweans to take control of the situation very shortly.”
“And what about Sergeant Nwosu. Are we just going to forget about him?”
“At the moment, I’m afraid there is absolutely nothing we can do about the good sergeant. Until Coetzee can be interrogated we won’t know his whereabouts, nor the circumstances of their separation, although one can hardly imagine that it was an amicable divorce.”
Delmas, Mpumalanga, South Africa
“There. That wasn’t too dificult was it?” Nwosu laughed. “I see there’s still some warm food left. It looks delicious. You don’t mind if I help myself? I’ve been driving for quite a while and it’s going to be a long night.”
He brought a stacked plate and sat at the table, gobbling the food and ignoring them.
Karen sat close against her daughter, hoping to bring some comfort from the warmth of her body, whispering positive and reassuring messages, trying to help her forget the memories which she knew would be invading the girl’s mind. Memories of her school in Alexandra, on a Thursday in March, three years ago.
ALEXANDRA
JOHANNESBURG, 2007
FORTY-NINE
March 2007
Alexandra, Johannesburg, South Africa
Alexandra is one of South Africa’s poorest and most dangerous townships, about sixteen kilometres north east of central Johannesburg. Ironically, it is close to Sandton, one of the wealthiest suburbs of the city. It was 17th March 2007, a warm, sultry morning and a cloudy sky threatening rain and probably thunderstorms. Karen was visiting the school to interview students, parents and teachers as part of a report commissioned by her newspaper. A devastating exposé of the poverty gap and treatment of blacks in wealthy areas, which still continued despite the accession of the African National Congress government under Nelson Mandela. Several parents had agreed to attend the session and there were nineteen people sitting with her on the floor of the large, windowless room at the rear of the building that served as an assembly hall and gymnasium; twelve teenage children, their teacher and six parents.
Thirty minutes after the start of the interviews, the alarm bell rang. There was no other noise and thinking it was a fire drill the teacher led everyone out into the corridor to take them outside. The corridor was already thronged with screaming children, the staff attempting vainly to evacuate the building in an orderly fashion.
They tried to make their way to the main entrance, but couldn’t fight through the crowd of panicking children. Karen’s heart jumped when she heard a noise like thunder coming from outside. She suddenly had a premonition of trouble. The sound came closer and she realised with horror it was gunfire. An armed attack.
The teacher shouted, “This way,” and they turned and ran back along the corridor towards the rear entrance, struggling through the chaotic melee that surrounded them. They turned right at a sign marked Emergency Exit. As the three leaders turned the corner the sound of a fusillade of shots rang out. They had run in the wrong direction. They were blown backwards, their lifeless bodies thrown into the path of the others, blood gushing from their gunshot wounds and running across the filthy wooden floor. Screams erupted from the remaining parents and children as they ran back around the corridor and flung themselves to the ground. They clung to each other, terrified, wailing, and huddling together on the unexposed side of the passage.
Karen made sure no one else was hurt. “Wait here and don’t move. Don’t try to run or they’ll shoot again. Just stay still and quiet,” she said. Then steeling herself, she walked slowly forward with her hands in the air, looking in disbelief at the lifeless corpses of the people she had been talking to only minutes before.
As she approached the corner, she called, “Don’t shoot! We have children here. Show mercy, we can’t hurt you.” There was no reply and she walked forward with her hands in the air, alone and frightened to death. In front of her stood eight men carrying an assortment of rifles and hand guns. To her astonishment she saw they were all white men. They had no insignia of any kind on their clothing.
“Please.” she called again, “We have children with us.”
“Who are you?” A slim, fair haired man with a wispy beard stepped forward. She noticed he had a squint, one of his eyes w
as looking straight at her but the other looked to the side.
“My name is Karen Spellman.” She gave her maiden name, somehow sensing it could be important.
He gestured with his pistol towards the passageway. “How many people with you?”
“Twelve children and four adults. There are three people dead in the corridor.”
He gestured again with the gun. “Tell them to come forward.”
Karen noticed that his bad eye twitched nervously from time to time. “Do you promise not to hurt them?”
“If they come forward quietly they won’t be harmed.” He said to the other gunmen, in Afrikaans, “Don’t touch them. We need them alive. This is our lucky day.”
Karen signaled to the others to come forward. They were shaking with fear, the parents herding the crying children between them.
The man looked at the terrified group and spat on the floor. “Why is a white woman co-mingling with this black trash?”
“I’m visiting the school to write a story about education in the townships.” She didn’t dare tell them the truth about her mission. Karen had already realised that these men were members of a right-wing pro-apartheid militia. She didn’t know which, perhaps the Boeremag, the Farmer Force, or the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, but it didn’t matter. She knew they would kill her along with the others without a second thought if they knew she was there to try to sway public opinion in favor of the blacks
“So you’re a journalist? What paper?”
“The Johannesburg Sun. I live in Joburg, not Sandton.” She wanted to dispel any impression of wealth that could make her a hostage target.
“That’s your bad luck and our good luck,” he replied. “You should have stayed where you were. You came to the wrong school on the wrong day. You’re going to regret that.”
There was no one else in the corridor and an eerie silence now pervaded the atmosphere. It seemed that the school had been successfully evacuated, apart from them. The man pointed to a classroom on the corner of the corridor. Like the rest of the classrooms, there was no glass in the windows. “In there!” He ordered.
The children went to the back and Karen and the four remaining parents sat in the front. A man was posted in the corridor at each end of the classroom, so they could cover both approaches. The other men took the mobile phones from those who were carrying them then pulled seats up by the teacher’s desk and sat facing them. None of them spoke and two men with rifles held them at the ready, waiting for an order from the leader.
He sat on the teacher’s desk with the pistol in his hand, smoking and looking over the bedraggled group of blacks. His eye twitched more frequently as though he was becoming angry.
Karen tried to defuse the mounting tension. “What’s this about? Can you tell me what’s happening?” Now she could hear sirens outside. The police response had been rapid, considering Alexandra’s reputation. Often the authorities waited until any disturbance had been settled between the protagonists before arriving on the scene to sort out the dead and wounded.
The man looked at his watch and placed his mobile on the desk. “You’re now officially hostages, that’s what it’s about. Sixteen niggers and a white nigger lover. Shut that row up,” he shouted at the crying children, brandishing his rifle. They clung to each other, weeping quietly. The adults were afraid to turn and comfort them, the women also trying to stifle their sobbing.
Hostages? What do they expect to get in return for a group of black, penniless families? Karen’s mind was whirling, trying to fathom the reason for the attack. “I don’t think you’re going to get much of a ransom for us,” she said.
“You hear that, Jan?” The youngest of the group laughed. “She thinks we want money. Stupid bitch.”
“Don’t use names! I told you not to use names. Fucking arsehole. Shut the fuck up!”
“Shit! I fucked up there. It won’t happen again.” The man sat back on his chair, suitably chastised.
“So what is it you’re after, Jan? If it’s not money, what is it?” Karen was now convinced that they were not about to be killed, at least not yet. These men wanted them alive so they could barter them for something.
The man looked past her with his unsettling squint. “You’ll find out soon enough. The police already know, that’s why they got here so quick. We sent a message at eleven o’clock. It took them just ten minutes, so we’ve got their attention all right.”
His mobile vibrated on the desk. After the third ring he picked it up. “Who’s this?”
He listened for a while then said. “There are sixteen niggers and a white woman from Joburg. None of them are hurt. You’ve got until four o‘clock to agree to our demands. If you don’t, we’ll start killing them one by one. Starting with the children,” he finished menacingly. He hadn’t mentioned the three dead blacks lying in the corridor. He closed the phone and sat back on the desk, looking pleased with himself.
“What did they say?” The same man asked, he must have been in his early twenties. He seems nervous, Karen thought. That’s why he’s talking so much.
“It was the police chief from Sandton. He said they’re examining our demands. They’ll get back within the hour.”
Karen shivered. That doesn’t sound good, she thought. It’s usually the precursor of an assault where the gunmen and most of the hostages get slaughtered. She sat silent, looking the men over. Four of them were typical middle aged Afrikaans; two were bald, two had moustaches, one had a beard and they all carried comfortable paunches behind their belts. They looked as if they spent a lot of time watching television and drinking beer. The leader, Jan, carried himself with some panache, despite his affliction, whilst the sixth, the youngest was short, skinny and uncomfortable, nervously moving about the room and sniffing.
Trying to ignore the sound of the crying children and parents, she attempted to assess the situation pragmatically. Over the years she had covered a lot of stories about the white pro-apartheid movements. Three of the leaders of the Boeremag, Mike du Toit, Herman van Rooyen and Rudi Gouws, were amongst twenty-six men arrested in 2002 for the Soweto bombings and for plotting to assassinate Nelson Mandela and overthrow the National African Congress. They had been in prison in Pretoria since then and likely to remain there for the rest of their days.
But she didn’t think these men were part of that organisation. More likely some crazy splinter group that was trying to turn the clock back against all the odds and world opinion. Karen wasn’t optimistic about the chances of a happy ending to this nightmare unless there was some way she could intervene and affect the outcome. She forced herself to think laterally, outside the box. Coetzee’s in Joburg today. He can be here in thirty minutes. I need a pretext to get him here.
“Can I ask a question?”
“Depends what it is.” The man called Jan lit up a cigarette.
“Are you hoping to swap us for someone?”
“Smart! She’s smart.” It was the younger man again.
“Will you shut your fucking mouth up! What did I tell you?”
Karen waited a moment until the men quietened down. “Are you trying to get du Toit and the others released?”
Jan took a drag on his cigarette. “Why would that be of interest to you? You’re a hostage now, we’re the ones negotiating and we’re the ones with the guns.”
“I told you. I’m a well-known journalist. My paper is the second biggest in the country and I’m on TV regularly. I know a lot of people and I can reach them easier than you can.” She paused to let her words sink in. “Maybe I can help you get what you want and get what I want at the same time.”
“Which is?”
“It should be fairly obvious. I want to get out of this alive. I don’t really care about the blacks, but I care about my own life.”
There was a long, pregnant pause, the men looking at each other, at Jan and at her. The black families huddled even closer together, whimpering miserably. This white woman had just
announced their death sentence.
Finally, Jan said, “We’re not the Boeremag. They’re a bunch of incompetent arseholes and they’re all going to snuff it in jail. Their plans were completely insane. Fucking idiots, they deserved to get caught.” He dropped his cigarette and ground it out on the floor with his silver-buckled boot. “We,” he waved his hand around the group, “are members of the Wit Heerskappy Vegters, The White Supremacy Fighters.” He stared expectantly at her with his good eye. Was this woman whom she claimed to be, a well-known journalist who would know about his organisation?
“So it’s Julian Sumerschmidt that you want to get out?”
The men looked around at each other, impressed by her knowledge and by the extent of their reputation.
Now, Karen was very afraid. Sumerschmidt had been imprisoned the previous year for leading a frenzied attack on another school in Soweto. He and his followers had set the building on fire, causing the deaths of more than a dozen teachers and children. His extremist right-wing militia group had pledged to eradicate schools and education from the reach of the black population of the country. The man was a monster. If these apparently moderate group members were anything like him, no one would escape alive.
“You know your business.” Jan nodded his agreement. “How come you’re writing about educating niggers? Are you for it or one of the thousands who agree with our anti-education agenda?”
“My personal politics aren’t important here. I want to save my life, that’s my only agenda.”
“What can you do for us that we can’t do ourselves?”
“You need a bigger platform to get your message across than a crappy little school in Alexandra. This is just a little local upset, it won’t get an inch of newspaper space or any of the TV exposure that you need for such a campaign. You have to be seen by those thousands of supporters that you’re talking about. I can arrange that for you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I think I could arrange a TV interview. You could state your case and ask your supporters to help you in demanding Sumerschmidt’s release against the liberation of me and the others here.”
The Rwandan Hostage Page 29
