by Deon Meyer
‘I am Olivier,’ he said, his eyes still scanning the market.
‘I had hoped you were Dr Inhlanhla,’ she said in Zulu, her voice strained by tension.
She’s an amateur, he thought. They sent an amateur. How would she know she wasn’t being watched? He tried to take in the entire market, get a feeling if someone was taking an interest in them. ‘I am,’ he said in the same language. ‘But only on weekends.’
She laughed, a forced bark. In French she said: ‘It’s better that you don’t know my name.’
‘Of course.’
She gestured with her eyes that it was their turn to order. He turned back to the counter, asked for two tagine keftas, paid. The man who had chased him off beckoned him to a table.
‘Shall we eat together?’ he asked the woman in the beret.
‘Please,’ she said.
They walked to the designated table and sat down. She pushed the shopping bag under the table, visibly tenser now. She reverted to Zulu. ‘You must take it with you, when you go. Please be very careful. There are incriminating articles in it. If you think it will land in the wrong hands, try your best to destroy it.’ Mechanical words, as though she was reciting them by heart.
He slid his hand across the table, took hers and held it. His voice was relaxed and soothing: ‘You’re Sesotho,’ he said, because he could tell from her accent and the careful Zulu word choices.
‘Yes.’
‘You’re not used to this sort of thing.’
‘Is it that obvious?’
He squeezed her hand gently. ‘Take a deep breath.’
She nodded, sighed slowly. He could feel from her hand that she was starting to relax a little.
‘Do you think anyone followed you?’ he asked.
‘No. I really don’t think so. Nobody knows about me!’ she said anxiously. And then, more quietly: ‘And I spent half an hour in the Galeries Lafayette, the department store, the really big one . . .’
‘On the boulevard Haussmann?’
‘Yes. I was up and down, and in the fitting rooms and out and in again . . . I’m sure there was nobody.’
‘That was a good place to slip away. But it doesn’t matter. When we leave here, I’ll make sure neither of us is being watched. You don’t have to worry.’
The waiter brought two plates of food, with little containers of chilli sauce on the side.
‘It smells delicious,’ he said, picking up the plastic knife and fork.
She smiled bravely. ‘Bon appétit,’ she said, and began to eat.
‘How long have you been here in France?’ he asked, but then realised she might not want to talk much about herself. ‘You don’t have to answer.’
‘I think it’ll be okay. Seven months. On a culture-exchange project.’
‘Are you with the Department of Arts and Culture?’
‘Oh, no. I’m a writer, a playwright,’ she said, as if it was a relief to talk of things she knew. Then a self-critical frown. ‘I’m talking too much.’
‘You’re safe, don’t worry.’
They ate in a moment of silence. He asked: ‘Why are you doing this? This dangerous game?’
She looked at him with a sudden passion. ‘Gugu. She is like a sister to me. I’m doing it for Gugu.’
Chapter 48
Her plate of food was half eaten and she was more relaxed. ‘There is information I must give you,’ she said.
‘Whenever you’re ready,’ Daniel answered.
She put her hands on the table and shut her eyes, as if trying to be sure to remember everything, get it all right. Her eyes opened. ‘In the bag there are four cell phones. They are all secure, but don’t use any of them for more than two days. Then you must break and discard it.’
‘All right.’
‘They have already installed the application that you use for email on each of the phones. You must just register with your own details. Keep a regular watch on your email, because the programme of the man you must meet here in Paris is not yet finalised. They will send information.’
‘Okay.’
‘I can tell you now that he’ll arrive in Paris on Thursday. On the thirty-first of August. On Friday he will be at Versailles. On no account should you meet him there.’
‘I understand.’ That was most likely the meeting with the French president, where security would be very strict and the possibility of a diplomatic storm that much greater.
‘He’ll be in the South African embassy for meetings all of Saturday. His movements on Saturday night and Sunday are still unknown. He flies back Sunday night or early Monday morning. You’ll receive more information by email as soon as it is available.’
He nodded.
‘I have to ask – is your financial position still bearable?’
He smiled. ‘Bearable? Is that the word they told you to use?’
‘Yes.’ She surprised them both by giggling. He thought she also sounded relieved, because she had done everything required thus far.
‘Yes, thank you, my financial position is still most bearable.’
‘The final item. There are five passports in the bag from various countries. You can use them in any sequence if you need a passport. They are all genuine, the Schengen visas too.’
‘Right.’
‘When you suspect a passport or identity is no longer usable, please ensure that the document is burned.’
‘Right.’
‘That’s all.’
He could see she was lighter, a burden lifted. ‘You did very well. Eat your food. It’s too good to waste.’
‘Yes, Daddy,’ she said, with a smile.
When she was ready to go, he told her just to keep walking, not to look like somebody worrying about being followed. He would make sure she was safe.
They stood up. She gave him a hug, looked deep into his eyes. ‘I’m praying for you,’ she said.
He picked up the big white Galeries Lafayette shopping bag she had left under the table. He kept his distance from her. At the place des Vosges he was satisfied that no one was tailing either of them.
She kept walking, towards Bastille. He watched her go, feeling a surge of compassion for her, and a heavy responsibility to make sure she didn’t become collateral damage. When he could no longer see her, he turned west. He wanted to go to the Île Saint-Louis and eat ice-cream, for old times’ sake, and prolong the pleasure of her company, enjoy the calm before the imminent storm.
‘Yes, Daddy,’ she’d said.
He’d smiled with her. ‘You’re a brave woman. If I were your father, I would be very proud of you.’
‘Thank you.’ She’d looked at him in a peculiar way. ‘This whole thing has been surreal, meeting you here. I – I was so nervous, they gave me so many dos and don’ts, I was scared I would . . . ruin everything. But then they sent your passports, and I looked at the photo, and it was like . . . I just knew everything would be okay.’
‘Oh?’
She laughed, embarrassed. ‘The play I’m writing is about Christophle le More.’ Her voice rose at the end, querying whether he knew of Le More.
He shook his head.
Her face lit up with enthusiasm. ‘Few people do. His portrait’s hanging in the Rijksmuseum. It’s the earliest known stand-alone portrait of a black man in Western painting history. It was made somewhere between 1520 and 1530. They think the artist was the Dutchman Jan Mostaert. In any case, when the passports arrived, and I looked at your photo, I thought you looked like him. Like Christophle le More. Without the beard, of course – he had a beard. And I thought it was a good sign, an omen. That everything would be all right.’
‘Who was he, Le More?’
‘A bodyguard and archer in the court of Emperor Charles the Fifth. He started as a stable lad so he must have been an impressive man to advance that far.’ She expressed a great deal of admiration.
‘What is your play about?’
‘Le More’s pilgrimage from Brussels to Brabant. To see the Black Madonna. It�
��s . . . They think he was there, because in the painting he had the pilgrim’s badge in his hat. My play is fiction – we know nothing about his journey. I just thought he must have been lonely. As a black man in white Europe. There were no other Africans in the emperor’s service so he must have missed the company of his people. Imagine him hearing about the Black Madonna of Brabant and thinking she must have come from Africa, and then he goes to – to connect with something . . . The play isn’t finished.’
‘I hope I shall see it one day. The play. And the portrait.’
‘I hope so.’
‘Do I look like him in real life?’
‘Yes, quite. But . . . you’re different from what I imagined.’
‘Oh?’
‘You’re gentler. I . . .’ She waved a hand shyly. ‘I don’t know if you’re the one who is going to do it. I don’t want to know. I expected a harder man . . . You know, someone who . . . Maybe I should just shut up.’
Daniel Darret didn’t want her to shut up. He was enjoying listening to her speak Zulu, even if it was not quite correct. In it he could feel the rhythm, hear the music of his fatherland. He liked looking at her, at her youth and beauty, her courage, knowing she was part of this operation, that she believed in it too. It made him feel better about what lay ahead.
In his room in the Hôtel le Sénat that afternoon he read the email he’d downloaded on the first of the four LG smartphones in the shopping bag. The TV was tuned to the dedicated news channel, volume turned low. He was lying on the bed.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Medical apparatus
To: [email protected]
Dear Dr Inhlanhla
We are relieved and overjoyed that you have taken the package into your possession and remain in good financial standing.
That meant his anonymous young contact in the yellow dress had informed them that the meeting had been a success. He hoped it was the last task she was asked to perform. He suspected they had used her because she had no connection with them, would be under no suspicion. He could understand that. But she was an amateur: she shouldn’t be exposed to further risk.
The other phones were lying on the small desk beside the five passports, arranged in a tidy row. The travel documents each had an identical photo of him inside, one from ten years ago, the last one he’d had taken in South Africa for his driver’s licence, before Pakamile’s death. There were two South African passports, with Xhosa names. The others were from Swaziland, Botswana and Namibia respectively. When he saw the countries of origin, he suspected they were each procured by an old Struggle contact, well placed in the various neighbouring country governments. Clever.
You should now be in an excellent position to travel and to stay in contact.
The next step of the treatment: you will be in need of medical apparatus for the procedure that awaits.
We would like to suggest Ditmir’s Trading, 82D Oudezijds Achterburgwal in Amsterdam, an Albanian import/export company. He has a wide range of surgical instruments at reasonable prices. Please make sure you ask for Ditmir personally at this address as he is known to provide significant discount. (We haven’t had the opportunity to purchase supplies from him ourselves and a credit rating for his company is unavailable at this stage.)
We hope to have the patient’s detailed medical records soon, and will inform you the moment we receive them.
You are most welcome to share your progress with us via email.
Very best wishes,
Vula
Chapter 49
He wondered who the people behind the message were. Did he know them? Were they former members of the South African Intelligence Service, like Lonnie? The cell phones, the passports, the Amsterdam recommendation showed they were informed, still had contacts in that netherworld.
The emails said a lot. Ditmir was a black-market arms dealer; import/export suggested Albanian Mafia. The address would house another business; he would have to ask for Ditmir specifically and most likely be escorted to another site to view and buy the weapons. Implicit in their suggestion of a specialist arms dealer was that MK43 thought he would need a long-distance sniper rifle, because it would be impossible to get close to the president. And that had always been his modus operandi when he was in the service of the KGB and Stasi.
But it left him with a huge dilemma: it would be a considerable challenge to move anything larger than a pistol through Europe. Law enforcement across the continent was on a permanent alert, prepared for the risk of terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists. There was a network of informants, roadblocks and CCTV cameras. Soldiers and the police patrolled everywhere in cities, airports and large tourist attractions. Good military-grade rifles were large, usually a metre or more. Not the sort of thing you could pack in a small suitcase. He would need to move a weapon like that from Amsterdam to Paris.
There was only one solution: he had to acquire a vehicle.
He tapped a reply on the cell phone:
Dear Vula
Thank you for the info. Will have to do research before deciding on final type of medical apparatus and means of transport. Medical records would help a lot, as soon as you receive them. Will keep you posted.
Dr Inhlanhla
He plugged the phone into a charger on the desk. He had to plan: reconnoitre the embassy, the trip to Amsterdam. Purchase a vehicle without registering it. He was deep in thought, but something peripheral was drawing his attention, out of the corner of his eye. He looked at the phones, the passports, the window. What was it?
Then it registered: the newsreader on TV was talking about La Rochelle. He looked at the screen. It was an aerial view of the harbour from a helicopter. A dense, dark plume of smoke was rising from a small boat. Two police cars, a fire engine and an ambulance on the quay. He quickly picked up the remote and increased the volume.
‘ . . . as soon as the port authority releases information.’
Then it switched back to the newsreader, who said: ‘Air France personnel plan to go on strike again in September . . .’
Daniel stood frozen, staring at the image. He’d caught only a glimpse of the harbour scene. Too little to be sure that L’Ange Fou was on fire. But he could swear it was more or less where Chérain had moored.
He searched the internet with the phone, but could not find more information. He sat down in front of the TV because he knew they repeated news items. He would have to wait. Was it possible that they had tracked him from Arcachon and found Oliver Chérain’s boat? But how?
The Russians were masters of technology, of electronic espionage, that he knew. The media were full of that daily, how the cyber unit of the Kremlin’s Federal Security Bureau digitally hacked, spied on, stole data, placed fake news, disrupted systems, wherever and whenever they wished, if it was important enough to devote bandwidth, manpower, time and trouble to it. It would have been possible to obtain his motorbike registration number from a French database. Cameras beside the French highways could be used to determine that he must have turned off in the direction of Arcachon.
It was a relatively easy leap then to assume that he would continue his travels by sea. If they had sent the team from Bordeaux to ask questions, the father and son at Arcachon harbour would have remembered him and would have been able to supply information about L’Ange Fou.
Chérain had paid for the diesel in La Rochelle with a bank card, another breadcrumb trail for them to follow.
All possible. If they were prepared to supply technology and manpower on a large scale.
How important was the South African nuclear-energy deal? The president in the pocket of the Kremlin?
Apparently just as important as Lonnie May had said. And therein lay his mistake. He had underestimated Ubu, the Meerkat. He had thought Lonnie had been exaggerating the facts, to be more persuasive.
He waited an hour before the news report ran again on the TV. There was new footage, filmed from closer, the fire was out, the smoke dispersing, L’Ange
Fou a smouldering wreck. And the figure on the stretcher being carried across the quay was completely covered with a green blanket.
The newsreader’s sombre voice: ‘The vessel was registered in the name of Monsieur Olivier Chérain, a small-boat operator from Arcachon. The deceased has not yet been identified and Monsieur Chérain or his next of kin are urgently requested to get in touch with the authorities. The fire resulted from a small explosion just after twelve noon, according to witnesses. The cause is not yet known.’
Daniel Darret got up, gathered the cell phones and passports and packed them in his bag.
He booked out of the hotel hurriedly, saying: ‘I’m very sorry, I have to get to Marseille urgently.’ He wanted to get away fast, and considered telling them to keep the money he had paid up front for an extra night, but that might also attract the wrong kind of attention. He waited patiently while the cash was collected from the safe in the manager’s office, thanked them for their hospitality, and left.
The Russians would be able to use the cameras in the Gare de La Rochelle as well. They would know what train he had taken. It would take time to examine taxi records in Paris, but they would be able to trace him to this hotel.
He couldn’t risk taking another taxi.
He carried his bag down the boulevard Saint-Germain. He was on high alert, feeling exposed, as if he was being watched, as if they were everywhere, could see everything. He used all his knowledge and skill, did a rapid about-face, lingered in quiet places, but nobody was following him. He forced himself not to act paranoid, to focus on the next step. His new accommodation had to be random, picked without a logical sequence. He followed a meaningless route of twists and turns, until he stopped in the rue Jacob at the Hôtel Millésime reception and proffered the Botswana passport. He hoped the young man wouldn’t notice the perspiration on his forehead. He used the my-wallet-has-been-stolen excuse for paying cash.
It would not be easy to reconnoitre the South African embassy. He remembered the building on the quai d’Orsay, number fifty-nine. In diplomatic circles it was known as the ugliest building in Paris, despite having been designed by French architects in the seventies. It crouched like a beast in the magnificent wide boulevard, between the much older, classic, cream sandstone buildings of the neighbourhood. Daniel had sometimes walked past it, three decades ago, staring at it with hatred. It embodied all the stolid apathy and bourgeois lack of taste of the apartheid government.