by Deon Meyer
I once nurtured a beard for four months without Mona noticing. I had to ask her whether she saw something new. It took her five minutes to say, oh, you’ve a beard.
Invisible.
Defined by one incident in my life. The road-rage murder. That’s what the media called it. In the single photo that appeared in the papers I was between my legal representatives, and Gus Kemp mercifully hid my face with his file. Invisible.
Forty-two years old and what am I?
My head complained: you’re tired. It was the lack of sleep talking.
It wasn’t important.
Today I was going down there alone because I wanted to be something.
Like what?
Something. Anything. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to stop the injustice. For once I wanted to gallop on the white horse of righteousness.
I stood up, not wanting to argue with myself any more. I took out the Glock and checked it. Then I went carefully down the mountain in the deep afternoon shadows.
On Sunday, 5 October 1986, Jacobus le Roux’s commanding officer called the teams together and told them they must all be out of the bush and back at base on Monday, 13 October. They were due a week of R…R, no passes would be issued, but they could relax at base.
That was all. No explanation. As though it was something to look forward to.
They suspected a snake in the grass, because all around them the recces of Five Reconnaissance Battalion were abuzz over a possible operation. Rumours were rife. Renamo, the pro-Western faction in the civil war, was apparently advancing on Frelimo in two northern provinces of Mozambique. The recces might be sent to assist them. There was also something going on with the 7 SAI, judging by the traffic of Bedford trucks in and out of base.
The Environmental Services Unit didn’t really care about whatever was going on. It didn’t affect them, and in the army if something doesn’t affect you, you ignore it.
But on Monday, 13 October, he and Pego were not back at base. To tell the truth, they never saw the inside of the base again.
The trouble began on the twelfth, a Sunday. They planned to be back in time. They had completed the last leg of their patrol, beside the two-wheel track that ran parallel to the Mozambique border in the south-eastern corner of the reserve. At one in the afternoon they were trying to sleep deep in the reeds of the Kangadjane stream, four kilometres from the border between the Lindanda-Wolhuter Memorial and the Shishengedzim guard post. They woke at the sound of a small aeroplane. They crawled out of the reeds and looked up. The plane circled west of them around the hill called Ka-Nwamuri. Very odd, because civilian planes hadn’t been allowed here for over a year. They weren’t even allowed to fly over it at altitude. This one was low, scarcely five hundred metres, and only a hundred metres above the koppie, a hill towards the west.
It made a wide turn and came their way and they crept back into the reeds. Jacobus took out his binoculars to have a look. There were no identifying letters or marks on the wings. Just a plain white aeroplane. It descended as it approached and then suddenly swung north. Jacobus saw two or three faces looking down and one of them seemed familiar, but he thought he must be mistaken.
It looked like one of the government ministers. A well-known one. But the plane turned again and he couldn’t see the people any more as it droned away to the north-west, dwindling in the distance until they could no longer see it.
He and Pego looked at each other and shook their heads. What was it doing here? Why had it flown over Ka-Nwamuri? They ought to take a look tonight, so they could report back the next day.
They waited till sundown, cleared up their camp and made preparations. It was just over five kilometres to the koppie. They wouldn’t make quick time through the thickets, but the cover was good.
Two hours later they saw the lights for the first time, halfway up Ka-Nwamuri hill, moving lights, which blinked like fireflies in the night.
Poachers didn’t behave like this. What was going on?
Jacobus tried to raise the base over the radio, but there was just the hiss of static over the ether. Pego and he whispered about the best route to take to the lights.
The area directly east of Ka-Nwamuri was too flat and open. But close by ran the Nwaswitsonstso stream, the one that made a wide curve from the west around the Ka-Nwamuri koppie. It formed the Eileen Orpen Dam before carving out a small canyon that ran towards the border. They could follow the stream to the rear of the hill – and then climb over to see what was happening on the eastern side.
It took more than an hour. At the Orpen Dam they ran into to a pride of angry lions roaring their hunger and frustration into the night after a failed zebra hunt. At last, after nine o’clock they peeped over the edge of the crest of Ka-Nwamuri koppie and saw the people below.
The lights were off, but a large campfire burned at the foot of the hill. A group of people sat around the fire. Behind them, camouflage nets covered bulky shapes.
Pego hissed softly through his teeth and said befa, this is bad. Jacobus directed his binoculars at the group beside the fire. They were white. In civilian clothes.
He saw the carcass hanging from the tree near the fire. Impala ram.
He and Pego whispered. They must get closer. No, said Pego, he would go, he was as dark as the night and they wouldn’t see him. There was a moshuta, a thicket, near their camp, he would crawl into the cover of that and take a look and come back. Jacobus should stay here and try the radio again. It might work better on the koppie.
‘But you will come back to me?’
‘Of course, because I’m leaving the bushwa with you,’ and Pego grinned in the dark at their old joke. He would come back because Jacobus was the one carrying the food.
‘Tshetshisa,’ said Jacobus, one of the few words he knew in Mapuleng. Hurry.
Pego disappeared into the darkness and Jacobus shifted below the crest and tried the radio again. He pressed the knob and whispered, ‘Bravo One, come in, this is Juliet Papa.’ He listened and suddenly there was a voice, loud and clear, so that he had to turn the volume down quickly.
‘Juliet Papa, identify yourself,’ but it was an unfamiliar voice, not one of the ESU radio operators.
He hesitated, because this was new. There was no procedure for this. ‘Bravo One, this is Juliet Papa.’
‘I hear you, Juliet Papa, but identify yourself. What are you doing on this frequency?’
That gave him a fright. Had he made a mistake? He checked the radio again, set it back on the frequency they were supposed to use and repeated, ‘Bravo One, this is Juliet Papa, come in.’
The same voice replied clear as day, ‘Juliet Papa, this is a reserved frequency. Identify yourself.’
He felt like throwing the radio down the hill. It worked only when it wanted to and now it was confused. He switched it off and crept back to the crest. He focused the binoculars on the thicket Pego had indicated and waited.
He saw a light moving at the bottom of the slope. They were barely three hundred metres from him. Two men with a torch. They were inspecting something on the ground. They picked it up. A rope? No, through the binoculars he could see that it was a smooth black cable.
Then he heard shouts below and he swung the binoculars towards the fire and saw figures running, armed men, uniformed men. Where had they been? Where had they come from?
Shots cracked, he jerked the binoculars away from his face, searching for the flashes of the shots in the night, but he couldn’t see any.
Pego, where are you?
Down there people scurried around, away from the fire. He used the binoculars again. Everything was suddenly quiet, nobody in sight. He swung back to where the two men with the torch had been. The torch was off.
Minutes ticked past.
He keep watching the fire and trying to see something in the thicket where Pego was planning to hide, but it was too dark.
There was movement at the fire. He focused the binoculars. Two soldiers with someone between them that
they were half carrying, half dragging. Others crowded around. He saw the man they had was Pego and his heart leapt in his chest because there was blood on his friend’s leg, at the knee.
They dropped Pego on the ground and stood around him. Someone kicked the black man and Jacobus’s heart thumped in his throat. This was trouble, big trouble, he wanted to charge down the slope and shout, ‘What are you doing, what are you doing? Leave him, he’s my buddy,’ but he lay frozen and not knowing what to do.
42
My path down the mountain was steep and overgrown – branches, tree roots, spiderwebs. Here and there were small erosion gullies and rocks that I had to clamber down step by step while the sweat poured down me in rivers.
Above all I had to be quiet, even though I didn’t expect them on this side of the river. They would have someone watching the piece of ground between the forest and the farmhouse.
I guessed the distance and knew I had come close. The house ought to be within a few hundred metres. I would have to turn south, but I had to be very careful.
Jacobus saw them drag Pego away from the circle of firelight and then come back to confer. He made up his mind. He would rescue Pego first and then they would go for help. His friend was wounded and it didn’t seem as though anyone was treating him.
He crept down the western slope and switched the radio on again just to listen. He was too scared to call.
Nothing.
He crept closer around the koppie, very cautiously. How had they spotted Pego? How had they caught him, the man of maPulana, Tau, the Lion, who could stalk as silently as a cat?
Jacobus was lucky. He saw the electronic device by accident. It was attached to a steel peg knocked into the ground and its thin wire was nearly invisible in the night. It had an eye facing east and he guessed what it must be: a sensor of some kind, casting an invisible beam that must not be broken.
He leopard-crawled past it and did not stand up again, staying down and moving slowly and noiselessly with a great deal of effort, carrying his rifle in his hands, ever closer, until he could hear their voices and spotted one of the sentries under a tree with an R4 in his arms. Then he knew they were army and that Pego would be safe, it had been an accident. He was going to stand up and thought, thank God, it’s all a misunderstanding, when Pego screamed.
I could see them.
They were sitting on my veranda, two of them. One had been driving the jeep at the hospital, the other was the man behind the Galil, the big blond one who had shot Emma.
Blondie sat on a kitchen chair, legs stretched out and his heels propped on the veranda wall. He wore the same baseball cap on his head. Jeep man was just sitting. They were talking, but I was too far away to hear what they were saying.
They were waiting for me. There would be others too. One or two watching the road, surely.
Would that be all of them?
Jacobus continued crawling in the direction of the scream, until he could see them and smell the odour of Pego’s burning flesh. Four men had tied Pego to a tree. One pressed a red glowing object against his chest and said, ‘Talk to me, kaffertjie.’ Pego screamed again and then said, ‘It’s the truth, baas, it’s the truth.’
The man turned around. He was in civilian clothes, broad and strong with a bushy moustache and hair just covering his ears and collar. He said to the others, ‘I believe him and that means we’ve got big kak.’
‘Ask him what his name is,’ the other one said, older, leaner, with a slight pot belly and gold-rimmed spectacles.
‘You heard the boss. What’s his name?’ The man with the moustache brought the glowing iron closer.
‘Jacobus.’
‘Jacobus?’
‘Jacobus le Roux.’
The strong man turned to the older one and said, ‘I’ll have to find out. I think they work out of the recce base. We must stay sharp, he might be out there in the dark somewhere.’
‘I swear it was him on the radio just now,’ another man said.
The older man held up a hand. ‘Listen, it’s manageable. Let’s make sure first, then we’ll take it from there.’
They walked away, back to the fire, and left Pego hanging against the tree, alone.
In mid-afternoon, I lay four metres from the babbling stream, among verdant green ferns, knowing that I would have to wait until it was dark. At least it gave me time to work out a plan, observe them and find out how many there were.
I had the upper hand. They couldn’t surprise me now. They would have to sit and wait, hide and worry whether I would come, from which direction and when?
I turned carefully and retreated a few metres. I wanted to make myself comfortable. Rest and relax.
That’s when I spotted the skull. It lay between two big round river rocks. It was overgrown with moss, stained brown and weathered. The jawbone was missing. I picked it up and turned it over. The eye sockets stared back at me like an omen.
Jacobus crept up from behind and first whispered in Pego’s ear to be quiet before cutting him loose and catching him before he dropped to the ground. Then he dragged his friend into the shadows and pressed his lips to Pego’s ear and said, ‘Can you crawl? They’ve got alarms; that’s how they caught you. We’ll have to crawl. Can you do it?’
‘Yes.’
With his hand he showed Pego the way to go and whispered, ‘You go first, I’ll look out behind.’ They struggled along like that, Pego needing frequent rests, because the bullet had broken his right leg and he was tired and weak. Eventually, they reached the river and he got Pego up and supported him on his shoulder. They half ran like that, limping, and suddenly there were shots fired and flares cleaved the sky. They stumbled into the river and lay down in the shallow water under the protection of the bank.
Time is forgotten when you are afraid. They lay quietly and after a while they heard footsteps and voices, people who were not at home in the veld and who made too much noise. Then it was quiet again.
Jacobus gave Pego water from his canteen and said they had to get going again, to the Nwaswitsontso canyon near the border. They would be safe there; there was a place to hide and only one easy access below the upper dam.
Pego nodded. ‘My leg. Go etsela. It’s asleep.’
‘I’ll carry you.’
He did, the last kilometre and a bit. They followed the Nwaswitsontso, but near the dams he veered away with Pego on his shoulder to avoid the crocodiles.
I fell asleep in the deep hollow between rocks. I woke with a start when the sun was behind the mountain and a small neon-green frog sat centimetres from my nose, staring at me with cold, red eyes.
They found a hiding place in the Nwaswitsontso gorge where ancient waters had carved out an overhang just big enough for the two of them.
‘What are we going to do?’ Pego asked.
‘I don’t know.’
He inspected Pego’s wound. It looked ugly, but had stopped bleeding. He asked his friend what the men had asked him and Pego said, ‘They thought I was a terrorist. They didn’t want to believe I was ESU. They said they would have to kill us both, Jacobus, I heard them.’
Pego was quiet for a long time and then he said, ‘Why would the boere do that?’ but Jacobus didn’t know how to answer him.
They lay there and Pego slept like a sick man; his breathing was quick and his body jerked involuntarily. The maPulane groaned in his fever, and muttered strange words. Jacobus lay awake thinking until he couldn’t think any more. What were those people doing here?
In the early hours he heard someone. There were footsteps barely six metres above them on the edge of the gorge. He held his hand over Pego’s mouth and saw his friend’s eyes open and slowly register the action overhead. His head nodded slowly. He understood.
A voice spoke in Afrikaans above them. ‘Shit! I nearly didn’t see the fucking cliff here.’
‘It’s not a fucking cliff.’
‘What do you call it? Look. It’s fifty foot, easy.’
‘How the fuck ca
n you tell? It’s pitch dark, man.’
‘Well, you tell me how far down that is.’
‘It doesn’t matter. We’ll have to go around.’
‘Fuck that. They could never get down here. Look, do you see any way down?’
‘We’ll have to find a spot. We can’t keep walking for ever. They’re doing the radio call at four o’clock. We have to be ready with that thing.’
‘OK. That way. If they came past here, they would have gone that way.’
‘I don’t think they can be this far. They say the kaffir’s leg is shot to hell’
‘Why did they have to come and fuck around here tonight?’
‘I haven’t even eaten yet.’
‘Me neither. The civvies did. Fucking impala steaks.’
One of them kicked a stone into the canyon.
‘Hear that. It’s deep.’
Silence.
‘Would you be able to shoot the white one?’
The other one didn’t answer immediately. Boots shifted. ‘In the dark it won’t matter. You won’t be able to see which is which. What the fuck, first I want to see how they get a guy’s position just because he’s talking on the radio. Come on, let’s get this mast up.’
They walked away.
* * *
I sat watching the house as it grew dark, but there was no one on the veranda now. The big blond man came out and walked towards the river, not straight towards me, but at an angle. He was carrying the Galil.
He was heading for a tongue of trees. He could cover the whole yard on this side of the house from there. Clever spot. As long as no one saw you.
Make yourself at home, big fellow. Dig yourself in. Lemmer of Loxton sees you. And Lemmer of Brandvlei Maximum Security learned in prison how to wait.