The Cuban

by Paul Eksteen

  “Yes, please Kwinz, open a docket and carry on with the bank’s fraud department. The sooner we report it, the better.”

  I raced through the traffic to get out of Gauteng before the rush hour. Only when I reached the first toll gate to the north of Pretoria, did my grip on the steering wheel relax a bit.

  Shit, these bloody Nigerians were always one step ahead. We were doing well with our panel beating business, but we couldn’t afford a loss like this.

  I had paid the money over to the government department for fifteen scrapped vehicles which was part of a tender that was awarded to us on Monday and sent the proof of payment through to the procurement officer in charge.

  She told me that she would inform me when the payment showed in their account, and when the vehicles would be ready for collection. Their finance department needed to sign off first, after which she would finalise the collection documents.

  Now, according to Kwinzee, the money was paid into the wrong account. I received an email which I believed to be from the government’s finance department with the relevant banking details. I immediately deposited close to half a million rand for the vehicles into the account to get the process of collecting the vehicles underway as fast as possible.

  The sooner we could get hold of the vehicles, the sooner we could fix and resell them, and hopefully make a handsome profit. That was our game.

  Now it seemed that the money had disappeared. I hope that it was a bank error, but a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach told me that there was more to it.

  These things happen more and more often in the new ‘Land with no Borders’.

  Kwinzee and I started the business with Kwinzee as the major shareholder. In the new South Africa, all government tenders are forced to look at the Black Economic Empowerment status of any companies they dealt with.

  Even though he has more shares in the company, we earn similar monthly salaries, and our profit sharing was done as a percentage of our loans to the company in our individual loan accounts.

  We had come a long way and were working together as a well-oiled team.

  I would have to talk to Nic at some stage about these bloody Nigerians.

  CHAPTER 5

  Vivo, Limpopo — Saturday, 28 February

  Jan Steyn was driving his Toyota bakkie on a winding dirt road on his farm towards a cattle watering hole. The watering hole was situated in a kraal about one kilometre from his farmhouse. His farm was situated in the northern part of the Limpopo Province close to the town of Vivo.

  There was a problem with the water supply from a wind pump next to the kraal, and he instructed his workers the previous day to see if they could fix it.

  It was just after six in the morning and an hour before his workers would start their working day. He had sold some weaners at a cattle auction the previous day, and was awarded with a trophy for the best weight group of weaners.

  This led to him having a few beers with some of the other farmers from the district after the end of the auction, and he only got home well after dark. It was too late to inspect his workers’ efforts, so he decided to do it early the following morning.

  He didn’t feel at his best this morning, but he had to make sure there was water in the trough for his cattle to drink.

  Jan stopped at the gate to the kraal and got out of the bakkie. The wind pump was on the other side of the kraal with a corrugated steel reservoir next to it. The drinking trough was inside the kraal and seemed to be full of water.

  Jan thought about his friend Tom Allen Coetzee with his love for wind pumps. If not for Tom Allen, he would have replaced this old wind pump with a solar pump and panels long ago.

  Solar pumps are much lower on maintenance and with an abundance of sun in the northern part of South Africa, were a wise option. The only problem with solar panels was that they were high in demand in the rural areas.

  Although, he had to admit to himself, this wind pump was one of the first Aermotor wind pumps installed in the far northern part of South Africa by his great-grandfather in the early 1900s.

  The wind pump had been rebuilt so many times that there might not be a single part of the original Aermotor left on it. But it worked, and it was the idea of a hundred-year-old wind pump that served four generations of Steyns that counted.

  A serious problem with a solar-powered pump was theft. The pump and the two solar panels, used to power the pump, could easily be stolen overnight.

  It was much more difficult for the perpetrators to steal a wind pump than to steal two panels from a pole six metres high. And this kraal was situated within one kilometre of the tar road. Easy pickings indeed.

  Tom had lectured him on the different models and political connotations of the different brands of wind pumps. Wind pumps were one of Tom’s favourite subjects.

  The Aermotor wind pump was imported by Lloyds of Cape Town from Chicago in the United States, where it was manufactured.

  Most of the Afrikaans-speaking farmers supported companies selling wind pumps from the USA. There was severe friction between the Afrikaners and the British due to the Anglo Boer War, which ended in 1902. The pro-British farmers would install British made wind pumps such as Climax, built under licence by Thomas and Son of Worcester. The Afrikaners would not support the British and, therefore, would buy American.

  This did not only stop with wind pumps. The die-hard Afrikaners would drive Ford bakkies whilst the pro-Smuts (pro-British) farmers would drive Chevrolets. You would seldom see Ford and Chev bakkies at the same party.

  Jan smiled as he thought about the old days and ways and opened the gate to the kraal. He walked up to the trough and inspected the ball valve and the feed of water to the crib. Everything seemed to be working perfectly.

  He decided to inspect the wind pump and to check that the suction rod had been properly greased. The old Aermotor was a direct-stroke wind pump which required lubrication every few months and this necessitated climbing the tower periodically.

  He remembered his dad’s words to him, ages ago: “Son, if you can hear the wheel of the wind pump turning, it is in need of lubrication.”

  He walked through the opposite gate and around the corrugated steel reservoir towards the wind pump. The wheel of the wind pump was turning noiselessly.

  He saw a sudden movement to his left, and his heart missed a beat. He started lifting his hands to try and stop whatever was coming, but it could not stop the shotgun pellets already travelling through the air in his direction. His mind never even registered the noise of the shot that had just been fired by one of his attackers.

  ***

  Elardus Park, Pretoria

  I was lying on the roof of a half-finished building in Elardus Park in Pretoria.

  I never knew what jobs the SSA would come up with next, but the one Nic handed me a week ago was a weird one. It was about a series of cult murders in the Elardus Park area of Pretoria.

  The first page of the file had only one sentence written on it:

  Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.

  Friedrich Nietzsche.

  Scary.

  I was expecting the next job to be in Nelspruit where a key witness to a fraud and corruption case relating to tender irregularities for one of the 2010 FIFA World Cup stadiums, was murdered earlier in the year. His murder was linked to four other murders, supposedly committed by a Mozambican gangster.

  That was more in my line of specialty. But not to be. My instructions were to take out some devil worshipper. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand upright.

  According to the SSA file, there would be a satanic ritual in this building sometime tonight.

  I arrived in Pretoria the previous day and used most of my time to study the layout of the abandoned building. I met with Nic for lunch and slept on the roof of the building when it was dark, leaving my car two street blocks away at a strip mall with a garage, pub and grocery store.

  I cautiously inve
stigated each floor of the building in turn from six until eight on Saturday morning and walked back to the strip mall for a well-deserved Wimpy breakfast and to retrieve my car. It was a huge building consisting of two floors for parking and another three floors on top of that, as part of a future retail centre. It was only half built when the developers were declared insolvent.

  The security of the building was almost non-existent — it was surrounded by a six-foot-high security fence, cladded in corrugated iron sheets.

  A dangerous part of the mission was to enter the building unobserved by nosey passers-by. I therefore tried to act as nonchalantly as possible when I strolled up to the site on Saturday afternoon, and entered the premises through the contractors’ gate in Benfleur Avenue on the north-eastern side. I had found two loose galvanized sheets the previous night during my investigation where someone else had also gained access to the site, and I used the same entrance today.

  I spent the day shopping and watching a movie at Menlyn Shopping Centre not too far away, and returned to the building at two in the afternoon. There was another strip mall almost a kilometre to the north of the site, and I decided to park my car there and walk all the way to my target.

  I was dressed in black security pants, a black T-shirt and a faded navy denim jacket. I was carrying a backpacker’s rucksack on my back and hoped to give the impression of a hiker. No one stopped to offer me a lift even though I was walking right next to the main road to Delmas.

  I had to walk right around the building to reach the gate in Benfleur Avenue. Once there, I pushed the corrugated sheeting apart and slid through the opening, covering the hole to make sure that it was left the way I found it.

  I then made my way to the fifth floor by using internal concrete staircases and eventually to the roof using an unfinished fire escape.

  In my rucksack I had all the tools of my trade — tonight I have to be a devil worshipper at my best.

  The plan was to wait until after the rituals and then to decide how to get rid of the high priest. Hopefully he would wait until last to leave the building, cleaning up after them as per the SSA folder.

  I was thinking of Nic and the reason I was lying here. As a young soldier I had never had any qualms about ending the life of anyone who was trying to terminate mine or that of my fellow soldiers. War was Darwinism at its best, with the rules fairly straightforward — kill or be killed. It didn’t matter who I killed; dead was dead.

  However, what I had to do after leaving the military had been slightly different. Now there was a price tag attached to each killing too.

  And this last task was the worst. I could clearly recall my conversation with Nic when we met the previous day. I had more questions for Nic, and he had supplied more information. Nowadays I am starting to think about who I am killing.

  “I can understand why you would want me to eliminate the man, Nic,” I said. “But no man is an island, and cold-blooded killing is unacceptable in a civilised world.”

  “Unless it’s been authorised by the appropriate parties,” Nic pointed out.

  “By someone sitting in the chair in which you now sit,” I remarked, not in the least amused. “This is personal, Nic. And I am not very comfortable with it.”

  “This will clear your mess in Cape Town, Tom. This and nothing else. Do it, or we will both go our own ways.”

  Nic’s son attended a secondary school in Elardus Park, the suburb where the ritual will take place tonight. I am not sure how much his son is involved with the satanists, but Nic was very worried.

  By day they practised normality. By night they roamed the dark alleys, cloaked in long coats under which they carried knives or axes, and punished and murdered by ritual. These are people of madness, with audacity, power and arrogance. They worship the God of Evil.

  Quinten Fraser was at school with Nic’s son. This made him a very worried father. He did not know how far this evil had spread. His son was seventeen years old and very susceptible to bad influence.

  I told Nic that his son had a proper upbringing and he shouldn’t be too worried. But I could see that Nic was a worried parent. He knew that I’d never met his son and my opinion, therefore, did not count for much. Quinten Fraser also had a good upbringing. But somewhere, something went wrong.

  Nic left with, “There is something else that we must discuss, but it will have to wait for next time.”

  What was going on? I don’t like surprises. I’ve known Nic several years and I knew that he was not the kind of person who would withhold important information from me. Information involving me, that is.

  I was feeling slightly irritated by his departing sentence, but what could I do? Focus on the job at hand, and don’t fuck up again, Coetzee!

  The city was quieting down. It was Saturday afternoon and the choking from the exhaust fumes of the cars was being dissolved into the thin night air. The silence before the storm. I could sense something was about to happen. I could even smell it. The building smelled like the damp underside of a rock covered in moss.

  I get a shiver down my spine when I think about my matric prescribed English literature:

  When shall we three meet again, in thunder lightning, or in rain?

  When the hurly-burly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won.

  That will be ere the set of sun.

  Fair is foul and foul is fair: hover through the fog and filthy air.

  It was after seven and the sun had died a blood red death on the foggy western horizon. The city was dead still after a fun-filled Saturday. No rugby at Loftus today though. Maybe that was why the city simmered down a tad earlier than on a Blue Bulls-at-Loftus weekend. The Bulls were playing the Lions at Ellispark today, and I was unable to watch. Nic owes me a lot.

  Just after eight in the evening I heard a scraping sound from the direction of the gate, and a few minutes later it creaked open. A car with headlights turned off rolled quietly into the yard, crunching over the gravel. The driver must have a key to the lock on the gate, I realised. The gate was pushed closed but not locked.

  The car was driven right into the ground floor of the building and the engine switched off.

  I grabbed hold of my rucksack and moved back to the rear staircase. My moves were very slow and meticulous to make sure that I would not make a noise by stepping on some of the loose rubble lying around.

  I am exactly six feet tall in my bare feet. I weigh one hundred and eight kilograms. On the height-to-weight-to-age standards I would be deemed, at forty-two, to be about five kilograms overweight. But no one looking at me would have thought that.

  During my military training ages ago, I learned the skill of moving like a cat, and the training still stuck. I noiselessly moved down the staircase and stopped in a crouch behind one of the columns, about forty metres away from the car which I now identified as a dark grey Volkswagen Jetta sedan.

  A grey-haired man in his early sixties got out from behind the steering wheel of the Jetta. He had a young black boy of about sixteen as his passenger, and I presumed it was the boy who had opened and closed the gate. The boy joined the older man, who in the meantime had opened the trunk of the car.

  Together they started removing objects from the trunk and placing them against the southern wall of the building, about twenty metres in front of the vehicle. I could identify the man as Armin Dernwill from the SSA file. He had sunken eyes, bushy brows, wild hair and an angry beard. He was a man of vitriolic and fanatical zeal and was the leader of the clan.

  After removing what seemed to be needed, Armin got in behind the steering wheel and the young boy pushed the Jetta backwards and out of the building.

  Part of the pile of equipment on the ground were four foldable tables. Each table was two and a half foot by two and a half foot in size. They unfolded the tables and placed them together to form one table of five foot by five foot. Five was the sacred number of the beast.

  They unfolded a hessian-type tablecloth embroidered with a five-pointed star. On the
two corners of the table closest to the wall they placed two Coleman lamps which the boy lit and turned down to provide just a flickering of light. Armin removed two small stone figurines of squatting creatures with wings on their backs from a wooden box and placed them on the front two corners of the table.

  Next, he took a heavily carved wooden box of about three hundred millimetres long and placed it on the table. He slid the box open to reveal a heavily ornated dagger with a curved blade.

  From another wooden box he removed a silver goblet wrapped in black velvet and also a silver five-point star on a pedestal wrapped in the same black velvet. He carefully unwrapped and placed the ornaments in the middle at the back of the table.

  He extracted a silk cloth from a Ziplock bag and placed the dagger on it in front of the wooden box. A malachite bowl followed and was filled with water from a glass bottle with the five-pointed star logo on it. The bowl was placed on the other side of the knife. Three silver saucers were removed from their black velvet pouches and two were placed beside the silver star on the pedestal. Two candles were positioned on the spikes in the saucers. The third saucer did not have a spike and was placed in front of the dagger on the table.

  In the meantime, the black boy was carrying the empty boxes and containers back to the vehicle and placed them in the trunk. As Armin placed the saucer in front of the dagger, I could hear the gate to the yard opening for the second time that evening.

  Four people entered through the gate and walked to the Jetta. They removed two duffel bags from the rear seat and entered the building. They all started walking towards the north-western corner of the building in single file, passing just two metres in front of the column I was hiding behind.

  They formed a circle and a few minutes later walked past me again, now dressed in long black robes. Armin was leading the procession, dressed in a red robe covering him from head to toe. A five-pointed star was embroidered in fine golden thread on the back of the red velvety robe. Joseph’s dream coat, I thought.