Sandy, who had walked out of that new life. Who had staged her own disappearance.
The phone records printed beneath the garish pink highlight started a little over three months ago. A list of numbers covered a period of a few weeks, some of which I recognised. My number was there, helpfully annotated by Khanyi in case I missed it. Or perhaps she had done the annotation for Fehrson in order to better explain her cunning plan. Abruptly the calls ceased. I recognised the date of Sandy’s disappearance. And wondered, again, how that had worked. Had she decided on a specific time at which she would stop using her old phone, her old passport, her old identity? Did the minute hand of the Breguet watch I had given her on her birthday roll past the chosen hour, and the switch happened? Did she walk into a public bathroom where she changed clothes, dyed her hair, and tossed the old sim card down the drain? Or knowing Sandy as I thought I had, it would not have been a public bathroom, but a boutique hotel. Had she arrived wearing a high-collared overcoat and dark glasses, undergone a transformation in the night, and left the next morning with blonde hair and a mini-skirt to distract the male staff? But that was not Sandy. It would have been too attention-grabbing. Sandy’s family was ‘coloured’, of mixed race, and blonde hair against her toffee-coloured skin would have stood out. That wasn’t Sandy at all.
On the other hand, who was I to say what Sandy was and what she was not? I had clearly not known her at all.
But the interesting thing about Khanyi’s list of phone calls was what came after that last call on the day that Sandy disappeared. There was one other number. A call had been made from Sandy’s phone several weeks after the moment she had disappeared. A single call that had lasted almost twenty minutes. Khanyi had highlighted the number, and in the process rendered it illegible.
Khanyi had me, and she knew it. I thought back to that morning’s expedition, and Khanyi’s bright teeth and big eyes showing me how much she wanted me to help the Department on this one. But she knew that even Dirk’s depressing role in the drama wouldn’t motivate me in the way that 10-digit number would. The deal was sealed and Khanyi was probably toasting her success at this moment with a glass of sparkling mineral water.
“There’s only one place I know of that still has stock of those old khaki folders,” said a voice behind me.
I turned to find Chandler’s cool, grey eyes on me. To be standing behind me, he must have come into the restaurant through the kitchens because he had certainly not come in through the front doors. Chandler rarely used front doors. He was wearing an ankle length black overcoat with raised wing collars so he looked as if he was starring in a Dracula remake. The overcoat was open and beneath it were his standard black paramilitary clothes. Tight black top that revealed each of the muscle groups, and pants with extra pockets for spare ammunition. His white hair was cropped short like a futuristic helmet, and his face was sculpted with the clearly etched lines of a life spent squinting through the battlefield smoke.
“I said to meet at the Apostles,” I said.
Chandler stretched his mouth into a perfectly horizontal line, which was what he deemed a smile.
“And you said that on your mobile phone,” he said. “Everyone else on the line will be putting on their finery and applying their make-up so as not to be late for our meeting.”
Chandler removed his overcoat and handed it to Aldo, who had magically appeared at his side as if they had choreographed the entrance. Everything that Chandler did left you with the feeling that it had been planned in advance like a military operation. It was mildly irritating. Sometimes not so mildly.
“An ice bucket for you, colonel,” said Aldo and he placed a fresh bottle of Verdicchio into it. I might be an old and favourite customer, but Chandler had the red carpet rolled out for him.
“He’s a captain,” I said to Aldo, “not a colonel.”
Aldo gave me a sympathetic smile. He’d heard Robyn call Chandler ‘colonel’ and that meant that he was a colonel, even if I persisted in my delusional, and frankly rather pathetic denial.
“And I know what nasty little secrets they put in those khaki folders,” said Chandler once Aldo had departed and Chandler had arranged his seat so he could monitor the exits by means of the mirrors behind the bar. Only dullard juniors like me actually needed to face the doors.
“You don’t need to work with those goons, Gabriel, you know you don’t. That nonsense is all over.”
“My creditors haven’t found the stories of my unrealised future as convincing as you seem to think,” I said.
“Your stories?” said Chandler, and his eyes sharpened. Everything about Chandler was hard and cold, like chiselled stone, but his eyes gave him away. They were kind; windows into a soul that was caring. I knew that because I’d had those eyes hold mine at moments I had not believed I would survive. Even now I felt the icy chill of the hull of the plane behind me as Chandler held me back from going in after Brian and stumbling over the dead bodies and the mines placed around them as booby-traps.
“Oh,” Chandler stretched his mouth again, “you’re teasing me. You wouldn’t be foolish enough to tell stories. I can tide you over, you know that.”
“Thank you,” I said, but we both knew that I would accept no ‘tiding over’ from him.
“It’s a purely logistical problem,” said Chandler. “A temporary delay.”
“It might be time to un-logistical the problem. Breytenbach will have discovered by now that I am still in the country.”
“Why on earth did you hand them your genuine ID?”
“It’s complicated.”
Chandler sniffed at his wine, then sipped it and did the mouthwash routine, then swallowed and allowed the full thirty seconds for the aftertaste to strike.
“Not as good as the last one,” he pronounced.
“I told Aldo I thought it was better.”
Chandler smiled in dismissal of that idea.
“He knows you’ve got no taste,” he said, and held up his glass and shook his head at the mirror behind me.
Aldo bustled over as if he had nothing better to do but wait for Chandler’s summons.
“You’ve given us the cheap stuff, Aldo,” said Chandler accusingly. “How could you?”
Aldo gave a big Mediterranean shrug, and his face split into the biggest smile I’d ever seen him produce.
“This colonel of yours,” he said to me with pride, “he is just the best. Is it not true?”
I smiled to show that I thought Chandler was the best.
“It must have been such an honour to serve with him.”
“It was an honour,” I said, because that was my scripted line. “But he was only a captain in those days.”
Aldo thought that was hilarious, as he always did, removed the offending bottle of wine, and promised to return with the real thing.
“It was inevitable,” said Chandler. “We knew that ruse wouldn’t last. Didn’t I tell you BB would realise you were still here? Just a matter of time.”
“From my apartment I can see his gorillas coming,” I said. “Better the enemy you can see.”
Chandler shook his head. “You need to disappear. Robyn too. Both of you must disappear. I’ve spoken to her; she put up a fight but agreed, eventually. It is for the best.”
Aldo returned and poured from a fresh bottle for Chandler to taste. Chandler gave him the full encore performance and finally proclaimed that Aldo had done us proud. Aldo gave Chandler some more praise, and the two of them looked very pleased with each other. Aldo even remembered to give me some wine before he left us to our business.
“How’s that going by the way?” asked Chandler. “With Robyn. All OK?” I knew that his mind had been on Robyn all the while. After Brian’s death he had supported her in the way a good friend or perhaps a family member would. He had been there when I hadn’t.
“Never better,” I said.
Chandler nodded and took a small sip of wine, which contrasted with my large gulp. I was sure Robyn would have called
him and explained the truth of our situation. Chandler was like a surrogate father to Robyn.
“I told you she’s damaged,” he said.
“You did.”
“You know what her stepfather did to her.”
“I do.”
“There are some kinds of damage that cannot be repaired. She was only eleven when it started.”
“I know.”
Chandler sighed and took another sip of his wine. But he couldn’t lay off the older brother routine that easily.
“I know you don’t want to talk about it, Gabriel, but I cannot have your lovers’ tiffs jeopardising everything. You need to disappear, both of you, and you are going to have to do it together.”
“We can do that,” I said.
“You need to get over your infatuation. Robyn is damaged. Just because you’re so damaged yourself doesn’t mean it will work. I know you, and I know Robyn. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
“But three left turns do.”
“Make your jokes if you must,” said Chandler. “You’ve never taken any of my advice. I don’t know why I bother.” He sighed again and regarded me with disappointment. I did not jump in to explain why he should bother because that was unnecessary. Chandler had been an extraordinary man to serve with; the kind of leader that engenders in his squad a dedication that goes beyond trust and respect. We would have followed him anywhere, and we did. Wherever Her Majesty’s Government saw fit to send us. Even when that meant travelling to northern Uganda to defend gold mines from terrorists from the Congo. And we did it without asking why the British government would have any interest in protecting privately owned gold mines. That had been the power of Chandler’s leadership. He had gone in first, and we had followed without question. The questions came later, after things had gone wrong. After Brian had been killed. After my discharge from the army because of my failure to see things their way.
Chandler was shaking his head now, preparing to cease offering me his unsolicited advice. I should have said I was grateful. Or said something about what his friendship meant to me, but that was not how our relationship worked.
“I have an idea,” I said. “A possible solution to our logistical problem.”
“An idea that has to do with that khaki folder? Something you’re doing for the government goons?”
“Yes.”
“They’ve employed you to find BB’s gold for him?”
“Not quite.”
“You didn’t tell them that nobody has taken BB’s gold?”
“What they’ve asked me to do has nothing to do with BB’s gold.” I said, but I knew that Chandler wanted to say his piece.
“As long as the gold is still on BB’s property,” said Chandler, who loved to repeat the good bits, “it hasn’t been stolen.” He beamed with satisfaction.
“I know.”
Chandler poured us both some more wine. He liked to be the person who didn’t need to have his ego stroked, but my two word response didn’t do it for him. He raised his glass to me and flattened his lips. He knew I would not congratulate him on the brilliant idea behind the crime of the decade. Particularly not when that brilliant idea had some large holes in it, and a few crucial unanswered questions.
“Drink up then,” he said. “You can tell us all your idea. The others are waiting.”
Five
I told Chandler my idea as he drove us to the Cape Town docks in his custom Jaguar XJR, with matte bronze finish and working heater. It was a good deal more comfortable than my Fiat. And it had eight hidden speakers that played us a Dvořák cello concerto with such clarity that it felt as if we had front row seats. Chandler tutted when a woman in row H coughed, and he blinked when the climactic notes faded before the applause. The rain clouds were still not spent, and as we nosed our way over the broken road and rusty steel tracks leading down the quay, the rain hid the city behind us. We were on one of the outer quays of the old Cape Town docks, a quay that had survived demolition because it provided a useful barrier against the chilly Benguela current, recently spawned from the Agulhas current, churned up in the Agulhas retroflection region to the south. Certainly the sea on the eastern side of the quay was looking pretty angry about the whole thing. Chandler pointed out, after explaining the currents, that he was not an oceanographer, just in case he had confused me with this information, but explained that it was helpful to know these things if you were planning to bring a ship in from the east coast in order to transfer items of value into the warehouse at the far end of the quay.
We parked outside the warehouse, the nose of Chandler’s Jaguar nestled in between the waist-high concrete bollards, then splashed our way across the tracks and through a small steel door to which Chandler had the key.
The lights were on, which pleased Chandler. They were fluorescent strips mounted ten metres up on the beams of the pitched corrugated steel roof. They lit the echoing space of the warehouse, which was the size of a small sports field, highlighting the decrepit state of the three ships’ hulls that occupied that space. About each hull was scattered the detritus of the shipbuilder’s craft. Brushes, paint tins, sanding machines, drills and rusty toolboxes that looked as if they had accidentally burst and coughed up their tools.
“Good job,” said Chandler, and he patted Fat-Boy’s large shoulder as a reward. “Fat-Boy got us hooked back into the grid,” Chandler explained to me. “It’s better than stumbling about with torches, isn’t it?”
Fat-Boy did not look as if he thought it was. He stared glumly at the warehouse.
“It’s big,” he said.
“It is,” said Chandler, and tried to make that sound like a good thing, but Fat-Boy was not impressed. His face drooped naturally, having a pear shape to it beneath the flared Xhosa nostrils. The face integrated well with the rest of his body, which extended the pear-shape down to a sizable belly. His left eye was lazy and drooped, enhancing the impression that he was disappointed by all that he saw. He turned to me and his face twitched with displeasure; a slight lifting of the droopy eye, and the edges of his mouth turned down.
“Angel,” he said with little enthusiasm. I was the most recent addition to Chandler’s small team, and Fat-Boy was not convinced that I deserved to be there.
“Hello, Fat-Boy,” I said and opened my arms to embrace him. He allowed the embrace in the way a stuffed toy allows a child to squeeze it. Fat-Boy’s actual name was Stanley, but we used Fat-Boy because he preferred it, and it suited his self-deprecating view of himself. Just as my name was not Angel, but attributable to my namesake. And ‘Colonel’ was in honour of the power of our great leader. Only Robyn had no nickname, unless you counted sex bomb, which was how Fat-Boy described her, although that was mostly outside of her hearing.
Sex bomb was perched on a workman’s table beside the nearest hull, her shoulders thrust forward, her weight resting on her arms with her hands beneath her thighs on the table. She had watched our approach with cold, dark eyes. She afforded Chandler the briefest smile and greeted my premature return into her life with an impenetrable gaze.
Chandler rubbed his hands together like he was trying to light a fire with them and beamed at us with an enthusiasm that was undiminished by our lack of response.
“We’ll get straight to it, shall we?” he said and stepped over to the ship’s hull. Chandler liked to do things by the book, and that meant an opening speech from him; the rest of us arranged on hard chairs in an obedient line. The shortage of furniture deprived him of this scenario, but he did his best to make up for it by standing on a small wooden step, the rusty hull providing a suitable distraction-free backdrop.
“It has been a few weeks since we were all together,” he said. “Now it is time for us to move forward.”
He paused for the applause but was disappointed. Robyn shifted her weight and Fat-Boy shuffled over to lean against a barrel of oil.
“We have a plan?” asked Fat-Boy.
“Broad strokes,” said Chandler, and Fat-Boy sighed. He prefe
rred action, not all the standing around talking.
“The Angel and I discussed a few ideas on the way over here. But first both he and Robyn need to disappear. Breytenbach will not waste any time hunting them both down. You fixed the beds?” He looked about the warehouse as if realising there was something missing.
“Back room,” said Fat-Boy. “All done, colonel. I did everything you said.” He turned to me with resentment. “Two beds, push them together if you like. I chose the sunflowers. Matching yellow pillows.”
“Sounds lovely,” I said, because he looked as if he expected some gratitude.
“Car all sorted?” Chandler asked Robyn. She nodded. She did not look at me.
“It’s a rental,” Chandler said to me, “so don’t go breaking the rules. If the cops pull you over, you’d better believe BB will know about it. Don’t go getting stuck in one of those road blocks again. Take the scenic route. Phones too?” he asked Robyn and received another nod. “You both have new phones. Burn the old ones. You don’t go back to your apartment until this is over, understood?”
I nodded, but Chandler waited for the verbal acknowledgement. “Understood,” I said, and nearly added a sharp ‘captain’ and a salute. It was the tragedy of Chandler’s life that the military would no longer have him. His military approach to life entirely defined him. The way he spoke, the way he expected others to speak to him, the way he thought, the way he acted. Inevitably, he would end up with some kind of squad to lead no matter what he did. It must have been a source of great disappointment to him that the squad was this assorted collection of misfits.
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