Dark Oceans

by Mark Macrossan

  And then there was movement: footsteps on gravel, into the truck and doors slamming. Then the sound of the engine squealing and turning over, igniting and noisily roaring and revving into life, the whole truck shuddering and shaking like a wet dog. And then, at last, they were off .

  It turned out to be harder than she thought – agony in fact, trying to hold on as the truck clattered and bounced and thudded its way back along the dirt road. No view this time, just a close-up of a permanent cloud of blinding dust and sand, and a spray of small stones. The first minute felt like an hour. And it went on. Ishiko would have died if she’d let go or fallen, so she had no choice and kept imagining she was that eel, wrapped around some pylon of a pier deep underwater.

  The only factor in her favour was that they were travelling more slowly than they otherwise might have been. They were, in all probability, keeping an eye out for her (lending some support for the well-worn adage that what you’re looking for is often right under your nose). She worked out that she’d have to hold on for at least half an hour, and she was counting the seconds in her head, she’d always had a stopwatch in her brain. Half an hour until they reached the bitumen highway and another ten minutes or less into Lüderitz. Which would be tempting (ten minutes versus maybe a cold, dark, two hour walk), except they might not be turning left and going back to Lüderitz but turning right instead. And when the vehicle starting moving into the turn it would be too late to get off – it would be hard enough as it was, getting clear of the vehicle with its large tyres and wide girth when it stopped momentarily (assuming it stopped at all). And hard enough to avoid being seen. In addition, getting off when they stopped in Lüderitz would be almost as hazardous – she didn’t want to be anywhere near them when they got out.

  It turned out to be academic. By the time they arrived at the critical point, the highway, Ishiko virtually fell off anyway, from exhaustion. The truck almost stopped but not quite – there was no traffic coming – so she had to be quick. She dropped straight to the ground, scraping her bare skin on the gravel but she hardly felt it, such was the pain of having to hold on for so long. As it happened, the truck turned right, to the south and away from Lüderitz. When it rolled on again, she didn’t move, just lay there, hoping firstly that the wheels would miss her – which they did, but only just – and then that her skin colour would blend in sufficiently with the dirt of the road, in case either of the men checked their side mirror. She didn’t look up again until the truck was at least a couple of hundred metres down the highway, heading off into the night.

  She figured it was too risky to hitchhike into town. She would only see headlights and there’d be no way of knowing it wasn’t the tow truck returning, still looking for her. And again, there was the fact she was naked, and even more generally, there was the range of types – people and weapons – she could expect to encounter. Even though she was confident she could look after herself in most situations, Namibia wasn’t most situations.

  With the desert night came the cold. Covered in cuts and scratches, she started walking, and keeping an eye out for headlights. The turn-off where they left her wasn’t far from Lüderitz airport – a solitary landing strip but nevertheless capable of generating some traffic. And sure enough, a pair of headlights soon charged over the hill at her and she had to dive into the nearest depression to avoid being seen. It was a sports car as it happened, and what she wouldn’t have given for a lift in a car. With a kind man. Or any kind of a man, or woman, other than the kind in that tow truck.

  This pattern continued for the next couple of hours: walking briskly, composing music and poems in her head to keep her mind off her aching feet, headlights, diving for cover, watching the disappearing red dots, brushing off the gravel and setting off again.

  Eventually she reached the outskirts of Lüderitz. It was only a small town (population 13,000), but she still had an interesting time of it, making her way past warehouses, and then houses and streets and cars, avoiding being seen and creating too much of a sensation.

  Luckily the hotel was on the near side of the town. In the final tally only a couple of cars witnessed the extraordinary sight of her, and to her relief neither of the drivers so much as hit their horn, let alone caused her any trouble. And the only people in reception were a speechless couple in their sixties from Stuttgart and the receptionist who immediately handed her a towel to wrap herself in. The receptionist was an understandably concerned-looking white Namibian woman in her forties who Ishiko was able to keep from worrying too much by explaining that she’d been swimming and someone had stolen her clothes and then, of course, she’d managed to trip over in the dark… And yes, the water had been freezing, she had no idea what she’d been thinking.

  The feelings of deliverance she felt when she entered her room, at last, were almost overwhelming, and certainly confusing, especially for someone in the habit of reducing everything to a calculation.

  Furthermore, nothing was disturbed and the Decagon was still in its hiding place. They obviously hadn’t tracked her there – hadn’t known where she’d been staying. So if they hadn’t decided to ransack every hotel room in town by now, she figured they probably weren’t about to start. Even so, she took full precautions and kept the lights in her room off. Except for the light in the bathroom after she’d closed the door and where she had the longest bath of her life.

  As she lay back in the warm, life-giving water – she could feel it soaking into her skin, her fish skin – she thought about the narrowness of her escape (so far) and for the first time since her breakout from the shed in the bay and that last look from him, she thought about Arnaud. She’d always sensed he was on the boat with another purpose – like herself – and she felt a strange, almost troubling sympathy for him. It wasn’t enough to affect her plans or disrupt her mission, and even though she decided he was most likely dead by now, for a tiny hesitant moment in time, she wondered what his story was. She pushed it all out of her head though. Because sympathy and empathy were energy and time-wasting emotions. And, of course, she was still in danger.

  How to get to Cape Town? She was thinking this time she should fly (via Windhoek), partly because a change in her modus operandi seemed a good idea, and partly because she could barely stomach the idea of travelling back along that exposed highway, the chances of being intercepted in the desert were too high. And a plane, a beautiful, sleek, sky-borne machine, banking and soaring like a bird, lifting off and away from that place, Lüderitz, was too wonderful a prospect.

  Which was exactly why she decided to go by road. It was too obvious, the flying option, and there could be no more mistakes. Like visiting that church, for instance. (At least she hadn’t gone with her initial instinct and brought her things with her, that would have been the end of the Decagon.) As it happened, Ula, the receptionist, who was of German stock and whose parents had moved to Namibia in the seventies, had a relative who could help. Her cousin, forty-three year old Helmut Martin, who ran a tea room in Ula’s birthplace, Düsseldorf, was driving to Cape Town the next day, so a bus wouldn’t be necessary.

  29. 26° 41' 32" S 15° 14' 43" E

  (B4 highway, Namibia)

  Saturday, 17 August

  They were on the road just after 8am the next morning, the powerful sun rising over the parched hills and distant mountains lining the eastern horizon.

  The way Helmut had been looking at her when they packed the car, and the way he still was, when he shot her glances, Ishiko could tell he was attracted to her. She wondered if he’d seen her arriving the previous night, naked. He was powerful-looking and handsome, just what she imagined a dashing U-boat commander might look like. She deserved a little downtime, a little reward, she told herself. Perhaps, she dared to wonder, it might actually be an interesting trip.

  As they shot along the bitumen highway though, in Helmut’s hire car – a silver Nissan X Trail – back along the path of Ishiko’s travails the previous night, a certain level of anxiety on her part was predictabl
e. As was her relief when they passed the turnoff to the airport and she spotted, parked off the airport road and hidden from view to anyone approaching from Lüderitz – clearly positioned to catch her had she decided to leave by plane – the yellow tow truck.

  She’d beaten them.

  Misinterpreting her facial expression, Helmut asked her what was wrong. Did she wish she was flying to Cape Town? Ishiko smiled – something she rarely did – and it felt like her eyes were sparkling like diamonds when she said no, definitely not. Helmut gave her a grateful look, but said he didn’t believe her and set about reassuring her: the desert roads of Namibia were not safe, it was true, but she shouldn’t worry, she was safe with him, he’d drive carefully and did she know what the name “Helmut” meant?

  ‘Protector!’ he said (in English, for that was the language they were using).

  Ishiko frowned, and her sparkling mood left her.

  ‘A name cannot protect anyone out here.’

  ‘Maybe not a name, but a person can. And…’ He patted the side of his checked, loose-fitting, short-sleeved shirt. ‘… a gun can as well.’

  ‘A gun. Can I see?’

  But Helmut kept his eyes on the road, saying nothing for a moment. ‘That may not be a good idea,’ he said eventually.

  ‘You do not trust me?’

  ‘Sure, of course. But it’s not a toy.’

  ‘I know guns―’

  ‘And anyway, it’s a concealed weapon. The idea is you never get to see it. Not unless my shirt gets ripped off me for some reason.’

  He smiled sheepishly. Ishiko was touched by his ‘uncool’. So, not so dashing after all perhaps, but he reminded her of her.

  ‘OK. So… what is the make,’ she asked, although it was spoken like a statement.

  ‘The make,’ he repeated. Playing for time, as if it were a trick question. ‘It’s a Glock,’ he said finally, not without a certain degree of pride.

  ‘Model.’

  ‘It’s a… seventeen I think.’

  ‘Second… third generation.’

  ‘I’m … not really sure…’

  ‘Staggered column, or double stack magazine.’

  ‘It’s um…’

  ‘How many rounds. In the magazine.’

  ‘Ten. It’s a ten round magazine. Hey. Ishiko. You really seem to know your―’

  ‘The holster. It is too sweaty?’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘You must be careful. Glocks have no… on-off safety.’

  Helmut frowned and smiled at the same time. Looked at her. ‘No. They don’t.’ Eyes on the road.

  ‘Which is also… advantage. You can fire…. quickly… without… need to… take off the safety.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Helmut said and they both stared straight ahead, with strange, crooked smiles on their faces. Ishiko’s eyes were sparkling again.

  Her contentment proved short-lived however. She developed an itch on her ankle and she bent down to scratch it. When she straightened up again, her eye caught a glimpse of something yellow in her side mirror. It was the tow truck, about two hundred metres behind them, This time Helmut wouldn’t have been wrong about her facial expression, if he’d seen it. This time, it was fear.

  She wondered how long it had been there for and whether it was gaining on them. She cursed herself. She must have been careless when they’d passed the airport turn-off. They must have spotted her with binoculars. The highway was straightening out after the earlier curves. The tow truck was growing in size in the mirror at an alarming rate. One hundred and fifty metres.

  ‘You like driving fast?’ she asked.

  ‘Are we going too fast?’

  ‘No. Out here, it is OK. You can go… fast. As you want.’

  ‘The police―’

  ‘No problem. Not out here.’

  ‘Why not.’

  As they picked up speed and the truck stopped growing – for the moment, although it wasn’t shrinking yet either – Ishiko made another one of her quick calculations: her best strategy would be to make sure they stayed ahead of the truck until the next town – it was slightly uphill all the way, so this would be possible – and then slip away from Helmut at a petrol station stop (she’d tell him she needed to use the toilet) and steal a car, get back to Lüderitz… but she didn’t have the heart to do it, they would kill or torture Helmut, it was a certainty. If he wasn’t aware they were after him, he wouldn’t stand a chance.

  ‘Helmut. You see the… yellow truck? Behind us?’

  He nodded. ‘Mm-hm.’

  ‘The men in that truck want to catch us. To hurt me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They tried to kill me. In Lüderitz.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You cannot let them catch up. You must stay ahead until the next town and leave the car there.’

  ‘But―’

  ‘Maybe change clothes too. And split up. We should split up. If they do not see us together maybe they will not hurt you.’

  ‘But what is this?’

  ‘There is no time. I am very sorry. I am trying to help you. But you must go faster. Please.’

  Helmut appeared to consider the situation for a few moments and then applied more accelerator. He remained like this, staring at the long, arcing road ahead and looking in his rear-view mirror every few seconds.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Ishiko said again.

  ‘It’s all right. I’ve got a gun, remember.’

  ‘And they have at least two.’

  He thought about this. ‘All right. Maybe we can outrun them. All the way.’

  ‘Not after it levels out. Their truck is very powerful.’

  Helmut breathed heavily, in and then out, through his nose. He didn’t speak again for about a kilometre.

  ‘I’m not deserting you,’ he said.

  ‘You must do this. Or they will kill you.’

  Another kilometre flashed by. Helmut nodded to himself before he spoke.

  ‘I have a better idea. Next time we get to a bend where we’re hidden from view… we do a quick u-turn. They won’t be expecting us travelling at them in the opposite direction. Not until it’s too late.’

  ‘No. It will not work―’

  ‘We’ll make it back to Lüderitz ahead of them. Don’t worry, I’m a good driver. In Germany, I do rally driving. I’m a rally driver. Off-road. In the mud, on mountains.’

  ‘No―’

  ‘These roads? By comparison? Easy… what is it? easy peasy.’

  ‘No! Helmut. You must not do this.’ Ishiko was animated now. And she was never animated, as a rule. ‘These men. They are smarter, much smarter than you think.’

  ‘We’ll see, won’t we. We’ll see how smart these jackasses are.’

  Ishiko realised she’d made a mistake. She should never have told him. She’d broken her own rule. “Whatever it took”. Always. To eliminate all potential threats.

  But she’d allowed herself to feel. To feel emotion.

  It served her right. She deserved whatever was coming.

  They sped on in silence. Helmut, a picture of tight-jawed concentration, extracted every bit of speed he could. They pulled away, the incline was enough. And then, when the truck was about a kilometre behind, he found his corner, where the road curved more sharply around a low hillock of rock and sand. Low, but cover enough.

  Just before the road straightened out again he slammed on the brakes and slid to a halt on the gravel shoulder, throwing up a cloud of dust, and then threw a quick u-turn across the bitumen and onto the gravel on the opposite side of the road (and almost leaving it altogether) and they were away again. Back around the hillock. By the time the yellow truck came into view, thundering towards them, the two vehicles were maybe four hundred metres apart and closing fast, the Nissan picking up speed as each critical second ticked by.

  ‘Now, let’s see if they’re paying attention.’

  But they were. The truck hit its own brakes and made an unexpected move: it slid to a skidding halt i
n the middle of the highway, at the last moment turning side-on to the flow of traffic, so it covered both lanes, all of the bitumen, leaving only the gravel shoulders on either side. Helmut’s reflexes were good and he swung the wheel to avoid a collision – just enough to miss the truck but not enough to lose control. They flew past the truck on the shoulder and kept going. Helmut whooped with delight and triumph, and with a look of joyful confidence on his face, said something to Ishiko about how it was a common mistake for drivers to try to get off a soft shoulder too quickly, leading to a loss of control and…

  ‘Watch out!’

  Ishiko saw it before Helmut, a trench-like depression in the gravel shoulder in front of them. They were still going fast, maybe a hundred and twenty k’s and when Helmut swung the wheel to get them back on the road again, the rest happened like a foregone conclusion and seemed to take an eternity: the rear wheels caught the ditch, bounced up and the back of the Nissan slid out and fishtailed and then snapped back in the opposite direction, but on the bitumen this time, and the whole vehicle flipped. Into the air. It was a long, airy somersault… it felt like a triple, but was probably one and a half… before they landed on the road, upside down, and slid off onto the gravel again, right off this time, clipped something, flipped again and then slammed against something impossibly hard.

  Ishiko had blacked out. When she came to, they were upright but off the road in a ditch. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Helmut had already undone his seatbelt. His shirt was ripped almost completely off and he was struggling with his holster, which had twisted around him awkwardly. He finally managed to release the fastener and produce his second generation Glock 17 with its ten round single stack magazine, and just as he twisted his body around and lifted his arm in the general direction of the yellow tow truck which had stopped about fifty metres away, their front windscreen exploded – red and white – as a departing bullet passed through it after crashing through Helmut’s skull.