Whether Q decided to speak the truth was not something we ever discovered.
Nqobeni Nyambawu, or “Q” to his close friends and linguistically challenged people, had not been dealt a lucky hand in life. At least that was what the article in the newspaper explained after the tenth day of his detention passed and he had been driven to court in the back of a caged police vehicle.
Things had not started badly for Q. The poverty of his parents had not prevented them from loving him. But before the age of three, his mother had died when giving birth to his younger brother, and the signs of the unfortunate life ahead of him began to show. Xolani was the one everyone said would be cursed. But he turned out to be a child full of sunshine, perhaps the only positive aspect of Nqobeni’s doomed existence.
The next blow for Nqobeni came on the Sunday evening that he had watched his father driving a tractor along the edge of a field; a field into which his father had poured most of his life. Nqobeni had seen his father’s head explode from the bullet of the long-range rifle held by the twitchy security guard whose recognition of the farm’s most trusted worker was confounded by the angle of the sun, the late hour, and the brandy consumed with his lunch.
The exploding of his father’s head was a turning point in Nqobeni’s life, but not his worst moment. There was the unfortunate business of the murder of the security guard who had shot his father. A messy affair because of Nqobeni’s choice of screwdriver as a weapon, and his difficulty in locating the jugular.
Things looked up briefly when a benefactor appeared in the guise of a media mogul who wanted to show the world what a good person he was and who chose Nqobeni as the vessel for this message.
But the damage had been done, suggested the writer of the article. The horrors would not be exorcised by the media mogul’s money, good intentions, or religion. The brother, Xolani, accepted Christ into his heart, but Nqobeni developed epilepsy.
And so it must have been the build-up of an unbearable racial resentment, claimed the writer, arriving at the climax of his piece, that caused Nqobeni to pick up an AK-47, walk for hours through the bush, along dusty roads leading to the town of Minhoop one Sunday morning, enter the church, and kill thirty-three white worshippers.
The culmination to the sad tale of Nqobeni Nyambawu’s life came when he failed to emerge from the cage in which he had been transported to court. A vast crowd had gathered on the pavement outside the courthouse where he was expected to confess his guilt. Their hateful chanting built to a climax as the prison guards opened the door of the vehicle, but it gradually petered out as the most hated man in the country failed to appear.
The pathologists said it had been something in his food. A slow-acting poison, one that would have caused him unimaginable pain and suffering in his final half hour. An investigation was launched and officials looked worried, but the nation breathed a deep sigh of relief.
The article concluded with an undertone of smug satisfaction. Several banal conclusions were drawn about the dangers of past wounds, and how we should all get together like the survivors of an epic accident and talk about the things that bothered us, and pay closer attention to those who mentioned their father’s heads exploding or similar worrying events. Those people should be reported to the authorities on the number provided by the newspaper editor. But it could be agreed that, as tragic as the story of Nqobeni’s life had been, it was a huge relief to everyone that the alleged Minhoop shooter was dead.
The police captain, Andile Dlamini, was not asked for his comment, although his tireless work in ‘uncovering the truth’ of the matter was mentioned and a haunting photograph was shown of Andile looking like the product of a sleep deprivation experiment.
They made no mention of the possibility of an even greater tragedy. That Nqobeni had died as he had lived. Protecting his brother.
Fourteen
The airstrip at Ukuthula Lodge was a thin line etched into the bush. Long enough for small jets, but not much leeway if a crosswind pushed you to the side. Our pilot crabbed the hired jet towards the runway and Chandler gave me that look he always did before we jumped. Like he was daring me to show my nerves. That we could see the thin strip of tar through our side windows was a little disconcerting, but Chandler reminded me it was safer to stay in the plane than jump out, which was the joke he liked to make whenever we flew together. But I noticed his hands gripping the leather armrests, and I knew he would rather have a pack strapped to his back and be coming down without the aid of engines.
Our pilot touched down on the right wheel and swung the body of the plane with a kick of the rudder to line it up with the runway which brought the left wheel down with a bump, and finally the nose-wheel dropped and he reversed the thrust on the engines. Chandler gave a tight laugh at my absurd nervousness, but his smile was more relief than scorn.
Fat-Boy gave a shuddering sigh.
“I think I pissed my pants,” he said. “Didn’t think we were going to make it. This is a small-ass airport.”
“Snap out of it,” said Chandler. “This is where it gets real.”
“Yes, colonel,” said Fat Boy.
“No more colonel. I told you that.”
“Colchester,” said Fat-Boy. “Get my bags for me, Colchester.”
“Of course, Mr Mabele,” said Colonel Colchester, and he opened the door, lowered the stairs and stepped out into the cold afternoon. Fat-Boy winked at me, which did not fill me with confidence. He was wearing a dark linen suit that had been tailored to his substantial bulk, and heavy gold chains to match the style of Piet van Rensburg. Chandler had insisted on that detail, hoping it would increase the chance of acceptance. “Dress like someone and they’ll take an instant liking to you,” he had said. But we were not sure that would be enough.
Robyn sat beside Fat-Boy, a stone maiden behind widescreen dark glasses. It was her job to keep Fat-Boy on point, keep him in the part. I looked at her and wondered if she would manage. I couldn’t see her eyes behind the glasses and couldn’t tell if she was looking back at me, or even if her eyes were open. Looking at her now, I wasn’t sure that she would be capable of playing any role.
Through my window, I could see the terminal building emanating a warm tungsten light into the late afternoon. Roelof was finishing a mug of something hot as he stepped forward to greet the colonel. I could see from Chandler’s gesticulations that he was explaining that we would need to travel in separate vehicles because Mister Mabele insisted on travelling alone with his girlfriend and their box of samples. Chandler wanted Fat-Boy kept away from him as much as possible, lest Fat-Boy forget his role and do anything subservient. “It has to be pitch-perfect,” he had insisted, and Fat-Boy had said it would be. Robyn had assured us the same. But that had been when she was mostly sober. I felt the anxiety build in me as I watched Chandler stride back to the jet and Roelof lift his phone to his ear.
Hendrik van Rensburg arrived at the airfield in a cloud of dust. The open-topped jeep he was driving was military green, as Q had described it, and Hendrik’s face was a contrasting red as if there was a fire burning inside him. He had made us wait an hour, despite Roelof’s assurances that he would be only twenty minutes. Colonel Colchester’s stern face was a steel box of disdain.
“Bitch kept me waiting,” said Hendrik in what might have been intended as an apology and his anxious blue eyes gazed out of his red face at the colonel.
“Not a problem,” I said as the colonel climbed into the back seat. Colonel Colchester was in country weekend mode, with an off-white linen suit, soft cotton shirt, no tie, and ochre sunglasses to give him a warmer view of his surroundings. He ignored Hendrik, whose face turned more to the beetroot end of the scale. Hendrik swung himself into the jeep and let a little of his anger out on the starter motor. I lifted our matching chrome-rimmed bags into the passenger seat with me. Colonel Colchester did not share his ride with the luggage.
“Melissa,” said Hendrik clarifying the identity of the aforementioned bitch. “My fiancée.�
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“How have you all been?” I asked as he released the clutch and the jeep leapt forward like it was going to vault the fence at the end of the runway.
“Good,” said Hendrik, and he tried to press the accelerator through the floor to show me just how good.
“Your family has been in the news. All that business with the church killings and that man Q.”
Hendrik gave me a sideways glance.
“Bullshit,” he said resentfully, “all a load of bullshit.”
“You don’t think it was him?”
“What the fuck do I know?” he said and turned his red face to me as if he expected a reply. The whine of the engine penetrated, and he changed from second to fourth gear with an angry shove of his hairy left hand.
The dirt road that meandered through the bush from the airfield to the luxury lodge started off with some enthusiasm where the excavators and graders had managed to travel without danger of capsizing, but as the road descended into a steep valley, it dwindled in size and eventually became little more than an animal path through the low scrub. The late afternoon sun crept in beneath the bank of cloud that was trying to clamber over the escarpment from the coast but failing miserably as it spilt rain all over the ridge. Up on the Van Rensburg farm there was a surprisingly warm wind rushing in to defend against the encroaching Cape winter. The road struggled up a rocky hill and provided us with a view into a valley. High in the sky ahead of us I could see vultures hanging in the air, gliding around in wide circles with hardly a flap of their wings, like mobiles hanging above a baby’s cot. A mobile that would give nightmares.
“Been a kill,” said Hendrik, and he shifted his accelerator foot onto the brake pedal so abruptly that we skidded to a halt and sent a cloud of dust into the air. The circling vultures reappeared as the dust drifted down the valley.
“I didn’t know you had predators on the farm,” I said.
Hendrik lifted his heavy rugby player’s shoulders and then dropped them again in an extravagant shrug.
“Animals die,” he said. “It’s what they do. They eat, they fuck, they die.” His face distorted into something that could have been mistaken for a smile, and he shoved the jeep into gear again.
Beyond the circling vultures was a cluster of buildings arranged in a grid pattern like a miniature model of a Roman town. In the centre of the cluster, was an open space with the clearly distinguishable church spire beside it.
“Is that the village?” I asked.
“The village,” confirmed Hendrik, and he kept his eyes on the road as if he was willing it to turn away and hide the village from view.
We descended into the valley and water gurgled about the tyres as we forged a shallow river.
“The colonel want to see our guns?” Hendrik asked me.
“You have guns?” I said. “I didn’t realise you had any. Roelof gave the impression you were just starting your club. Is it a club?”
Hendrik scowled at me. “I’ll show you guns,” he said.
We drove along a dry riverbed, which when it rained became a tributary of the wider river we had forged. It tested the four-wheel-drive ability of the jeep as we crawled over loose boulders and fallen logs. We reached a point where the double tracks of vehicles climbed up and over a ridge above the riverbed. We mounted the ridge and found ourselves in a clearing between the trees. Beyond the clearing were dusty green tents of the sort that served as barracks in the bush camps that sprouted wherever military groups found themselves a bit of Africa for honing their skills. Men loitered about the tents, some smoking and others busy with the preparations for an evening in camp. Hendrik killed the jeep’s engine and said again, “I’ll show you guns.”
In the centre of the clearing, a man in khaki clothes crouched beside a small fire. He must have been burning eucalyptus because there was a powerful scent in the air. He removed a battered metal kettle from above the flames and lifted an AK-47 to his shoulder and walked towards us.
“Boet,” said Hendrik in greeting, the Afrikaans word for brother, and he shook hands with the man. Then Hendrik pointed at me, said “Moss,” pointed at Chandler and said “Colonel”.
The man said “Hansie,” and we shook hands. He had pale blue eyes and dark hair above a face weathered beyond his years. He had a fresh, naïve friendliness.
“Showing them the wagon,” said Hendrik.
“Okay, boss,” said the young man. “I’ll make extra tea. The men are on a break.”
“No time,” said Hendrik. “Hansie’s in command today,” he explained to us. “We’re doing shifts out here.”
“Since the killings,” said Hansie, and he and Hendrik both looked down as if they were about to pray together.
“The war has started,” said Hendrik, then he looked up at us and added with some bitterness: “I’ll show you the guns.”
Hendrik strode away from the fire. A row of old-fashioned wagons defined the outer rim of the clearing across from the riverbed. They were in the style of the wagons found in museums showing how the Afrikaans Voortrekkers had travelled north two hundred years ago in search of better pastures, and better lives. Hendrik opened the canvas flap at the back of a wagon and waited for us to join him.
“It’s our laager,” he said as Chandler and I reached the wagon. “Know what a laager is, colonel?”
“I do,” said Chandler, finally deigning to speak. “Your forebears formed laagers by arranging their wagons in a defensive circle. Who are you defending against out here?”
Hendrik stooped to the ground and picked up a handful of dirt. He stood and let the dirt run through his fingers. “We’re defending my land,” he said. “It’s mine. No one is going to take it from me.”
“Not in a hurry at any rate,” said Chandler who was looking past Hendrik into the wagon.
It was filled to bursting with weapons. Neatly stacked piles of AK-47s, spare magazines, crates of ammunition and boxes with hazmat labels.
“Our guns,” said Hendrik unnecessarily.
There must have been close to a hundred of them. Not only AK-47s; I noticed several Vektor R5s and boxes of ammunition for larger calibres.
“This the full collection?” I asked.
“Only a small part of it,” said Hendrik.
“Where do you keep the rest?”
“Somewhere safe. Concrete bunker.”
I noticed that there were also boxes marked with the skull-and-crossbones hazmat labels indicating class A explosives.
“Some fireworks too,” I said.
“Not enough,” said Hendrik. “We need more.”
“You could do more than defend your farm with all this,” said Chandler. “Impressive.”
Hendrik pulled the canvas covering of the wagon closed.
“It’s a war,” said Hendrik. “That’s what it is. We’re fighting a war for our land.”
It took us ten minutes from Hendrik’s laager to the lodge, which stood high on a rocky hill like a fairy-tale fortress. As if inspired by the Sydney Opera House, it was a series of triple volume A-frame wood and thatch structures that reached out over the scrub like something sprouted naturally from the dry earth. The triangular shapes glowed with the reflected orange of the setting sun, and on an upper floor of the leading triangle Melissa posed at the glass balcony with a glass in her hand, a slim green highlight to draw our eyes. She raised a hand in greeting as Hendrik gunned the engine up the last fifty metres of track like he was bringing the jeep in for an emergency landing. The sight of Melissa didn’t improve Hendrik’s mood, and he gave the pedals a hard time about it, so we nearly catapulted through the front windscreen and over the bonnet of the car as we came to a halt in front of the reception area. Melissa dropped her hand and gazed down at us like she was thinking of letting her hair down and have us climb up to rescue her.
“Bitch,” said Hendrik under his breath, and he clambered out of the jeep and strode into the entrance as if forgetting he had passengers.
Two men in matching shirt
s with blocks of colour like patchwork quilts came out to greet us with wide smiles and they took a chrome-edged bag each as Chandler climbed out of the jeep and stood up with his hands behind his back and stretched as if his vertebrae had been displaced on the journey.
“Welcome to Ukuthula,” said the man with the broader smile. “The Place of Peace in Africa.”
“Let us hope so,” said Chandler, and the man laughed.
Fifteen
The uniformed men showed Chandler and me to our adjoining rooms with shared lounge area on the second floor of the main accommodation building, pointed to the side table of alcohol, waved at the panoramic view of wild African bush, and said our hosts would receive us on the upper terrace. Chandler gave them a large denomination note to double the size of their smiles. After they had departed, backing out of the room so as not to be rude and turn their backs on us, Chandler turned to me and his eyes narrowed.
“On my way, colonel,” I said. Chandler was in operational mode. He was Colonel Colchester, I was Freddy Moss and there wasn’t a glimpse of the real Steven Chandler, no flicker of conspiratorial collusion or relaxing in the wings between scenes.
“Before you go, Mr Moss.” Chandler’s eyes were grey with suspicion. “Mr Mabele’s young girlfriend. Has she been drinking?”
“I think she has,” I said.
“I had no idea it was that bad.”
“Neither did I,” I admitted.
We stood in silence for a moment.
“She won’t let us down,” I said.
Colonel Colchester did not look convinced.
Melissa was alone on the upper terrace when I arrived, standing silhouetted against the early evening panorama of wild bush. The sun was giving her a last poke before it disappeared, and she stood with her legs crossed because she knew how transparent her dress was. With her glass in the right hand, her left breast was outlined with a rim of gold which reached up over her blonde hair to crown her like a princess.
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