Blood Safari

by Deon Meyer

  ‘The risk is considerably reduced. I wanted to let you know. Not completely eliminated, but I don’t imagine you’ll be bothered tonight.’

  ‘You got them.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Thanks for inviting your friends to the party.’

  ‘I know you’re not a party animal. You look so domestic’

  ‘Oh, the masks that we wear. What are you going to do now?’

  ‘I’m going to have a sleep on the VIP couch. I just want to …’I gestured at Emma’s room.

  He said nothing, just grinned.

  The black night nurse recognised me. She nodded. I could go in.

  I opened the door and went over to her bed. She lay there just the same as ever. I looked at her and felt a great wearines corne over me. I sat down and stretched out my hand to rest on hers.

  ‘Emma, I found Jacobus.’

  Her breathing was deep and peaceful.

  ‘He misses you terribly. He’s going to come here, maybe tomorrow. When you’re better, you can see him. So you have to get better.’

  You can’t trust yourself when you haven’t slept for forty hours. Your head is a maelstrom, your senses betray you, and you live in a world where dreams and reality are indistinguishable.

  So, when I imagined that Emma’s hand moved almost imperceptibly under mine, I knew that I was deluding myself.

  Vincent ‘Pego’ Mashego took a course at the Mogale rehabilitation centre in the summer of 2003. One afternoon he was walking between the buildings and he saw a figure in the lammergeier’s cage that made his heart stand still.

  The man was on his haunches scraping manure off the floor and Pego stared wordlessly. It was like a dream, unreal and incomprehensible.

  The man looked up and he knew it was Jacobus le Roux.

  Jacobus charged out, making the lammergeier flap her giant wings. They embraced fiercely, without speaking, seventeen years after they had parted ways in a nameless hamlet in Mozambique. Jacobus took him to his little house out of fear that someone would see them and that the evil would return to claim Pego, too.

  They swapped stories. In 1986 Pego had stayed in Mozambique for six months and then went home to his people. Yes, there were white men who came asking for him, twice. But that was some months ago.

  He had been frightened. He couldn’t tell the whole story to his family out of fear that someone would say the wrong thing somewhere. As far as they were concerned, there had just been some big trouble between him and the boere, trouble that necessitated that they should never know he had returned, trouble that dictated that he would not be Pego again, they would call him only Vincent, so he could begin a new life.

  The boere hadn’t kept looking for him. Maybe they thought he wasn’t a danger to them. Who would believe a simple maPulana man’s stories about lights and cables in the game reserve, about people shooting at him and burning him?

  Only late in 1987 did he get work in a private game reserve as a waiter. The owner soon spotted his knowledge of the veld and transferred him to assistant to the field guides.

  In 1990 he married Venolia Lebyane and in 1995 he saw an advertisement put out by the Limpopo Parks Board. They wanted black people with Matric who aspired to become game wardens in the provincial game reserves. He didn’t have the schooling, but he went to see them in Polokwane anyway. He explained that his knowledge lay in the bush, not books. He didn’t have paper qualifications, but wouldn’t they give him a chance?

  They had, because there were few applications. The people of Limpopo wanted work in the city, not the veld. So Vincent Mashego became a game ranger, and now he was the head of the Talamati Bushveld Camp in the Manyeleti Game Reserve alongside Kruger.

  Then Jacobus told his story to Pego and the black man held him when he wept. He said he owed Jacobus his life. He would help.

  Jacobus said there was nothing he could do.

  There would be. Some time or other.

  They had seen each other afterwards. From time to time Jacobus would travel to Manyeleti surreptitiously and sit beside a campfire with Pego. It was most like old times when they used to talk about the veld and animals. Nowadays they talked about the pressure on the environment that kept increasing, the threats, the white property developments, the black land claims, the poachers going after rhino horns and vulture heads, the greed across the spectrum of colour and race.

  One more poisoning after all the others pushed Jacobus le Roux over the edge. He told me it felt as though twenty years of fear, frustration and death became too much for him in that instant. He stood among the carcasses in the veld and he couldn’t carry all those burdens any more. Those magnificent creatures that he had come to know so well at Mogale, those beautiful birds that had stretched out their great wings in the winds only hours before, became the symbol of his life’s futility. Inside him something broke at last. He fetched his rifle and followed the spoor to the sangoma’s hut. He found them there, the vultures and the blunt knives they used to cut up the carcasses, the little piles of money and the plastic bags and those four people. So he shot them. In his madness and rage and hatred.

  Only three hours later, somewhere in the veld, had he come to his senses. He realised what he had done. He fled to Pego, who hid him and told him he would help, because his wife, Venolia, worked for the police at Hoedspruit. She would tell them if they were looking for Jacobus.

  Venolia Mashego had been there in the office with Jack Phatudi when a woman phoned from Cape Town asking whether Jacobus le Roux might not be Cobie de Villiers. Pego knew it was the sister. He had found Emma’s number and phoned her because he wanted to repay his debt to Jacobus by saving his sister. But in the bush at Manyeleti the cell phone signal was weak and he didn’t know how much Emma heard.

  Jacobus had been angry with him when he heard about it. So angry that he left in the night and went to Stef Moller. But after the death of Frank Wolhuter, Jacobus phoned Pego and said he had been wrong. They must warn Emma and get her away.

  It was Pego who wrote the letter and had it delivered to the gate guard, Edwin Dibakwane.

  But it had been too late.

  46

  I was dreaming of skulls on the mountain at Motlasedi when Jeanette phoned just after eight.

  ‘I’ve got you on the only direct flight. Departs fourteen thirty-five, arrives five o’clock in the Cape.’

  ‘That’s a pity.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Wernich will be waiting for news from his gang of killers. He will be very worried by now. I hope he doesn’t feel a sudden yearning to travel.’

  ‘Do you want me to keep an eye on him?’

  ‘That would help a lot.’

  ‘Consider it done.’

  ‘Thanks, Jeanette.’

  ‘Don’t get ideas, Lemmer. I’m doing it for our client.’

  I told Dr Eleanor Taljaard that hopefully there would be a family member visiting Emma that afternoon, someone whose voice she had waited a long time to hear.

  ‘We need a miracle, Lemmer. You know what I told you; the longer they are in a coma …’

  ‘Miracles do happen,’ I said, but neither of us believed it.

  I drove to the airport and waited until twenty minutes before my flight left for Cape Town. Then I phoned Jack Phatudi. They said he was busy, but I said it was an emergency and I wanted his cell phone number.

  What kind of emergency?

  I had found the people who had tortured and murdered Edwin Dibakwane.

  They gave me Phatudi’s cell phone number. He was morose and aggressive until I told him where he could find the murderers of Wolhuter and Dibakwane, the people who had shot Emma le Roux. I told him that most of them were dead, but that one, maybe two, were still alive. They were injured, but could stand up in court.

  ‘They won’t talk, Jack, but they are the people you’re looking for. Do the forensics, the evidence is there.’

  ‘Did you kill them?’

  ‘Self-defence, Jack.’

&nb
sp; He said something in sePedi that clearly meant he didn’t believe me.

  ‘Goodbye, Jack.’

  ‘Wait. Where’s Cobie de Villiers?’

  ‘I’m still looking. But you can recall your men at the hospital. There’s no more danger to her.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In Johannesburg,’ I lied. ‘At the airport.’

  ‘I’m coming to get you, Lemmer, if you’re lying to me.’

  ‘Ooh, I’m so scared I’ll have to ring off, Jack.’

  He got angry and cut me off first. Another opportunity to build bridges between races lost.

  I found Stef Moller’s number on the dialled calls list on Emma’s phone. When they made the first call to board, I phoned him. It rang for a long time and then Moller himself answered.

  ‘Stef, it’s Lemmer.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘How is Jacobus?’

  ‘Cobie.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘What do you want me to say? That he’s well? After all you did?’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘He’s not talking. Just sitting there.’

  ‘Stef, I want you to give him a message.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just listen. Tell him I got them. Six of them. Four are dead, two will have to go to hospital, but they will be under police guard. Tell him I’m on my way to the Cape to chop the head off the beast.’

  I listened to Stef Moller’s breathing for a long time before he said in his steady, measured way, ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Tell Cobie to phone Pego’s wife for confirmation.’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Then, Stef, tell him the doctors say there is only one thing that can save Emma. Jacobus must go and talk to her.’

  ‘Talk to her?’

  ‘That’s right. He must talk to her. Take him, Stef. Take him to Emma.’

  ‘This is the final boarding call for flight double eight oh one to Cape Town,’ I heard in the background.

  ‘Take him, Stef. Promise me.’

  ‘What about Hb?’ he asked.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Hb.’

  ‘Never heard of them, Stef. Isn’t an HB a kind of pencil?’

  On the plane I thought about Stef Moller. The man who didn’t want to say where his money came from. The man who sought absolution behind a locked gate by trying to compensate for his crimes against nature.

  To each his own way.

  I slept for two hours solid on the flight and woke when the Canadair jet touched down hard at Cape Town International. Jeanette was waiting for me in the arrivals hall. Black Armani suit, white shirt and a tie with the South African flag on it. She fell into step with me and we walked outside, shoulder to shoulder, where the south-easter blew at gale force.

  ‘He’s at their head office in Century City,’ she said over the bluster of the wind.

  ‘How many offices do they have?’

  ‘One in Johannesburg, and the plant outside Stellenbosch. I brought you the material from my previous research. You can read it in the car.’

  ‘The car’ was a Porsche with classic lines and a small spoiler over the rear. She got in, leaned over and unlocked the passenger door for me. I pushed my bag over the back of the seat into the small space behind and got in.

  ‘Great wheels,’ I said.

  She just smiled and turned the key. There were impressive sounds from the back.

  ‘What do you call this thing?’

  ‘Babe magnet,’ she said and pulled away. ‘I mean what model is it?’

  She gave me a look, as though I ought to know. ‘It’s a nine eleven turbo, Lemmer.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Jissis, you ignorant Loxton country folk. It’s the nine thirty series, 1984 model. She was the fastest thing on the road in her day.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Naturally, a “she”. Beautiful, sexy …’

  We drove over a speed bump. Slowly.

  ‘… and without suspension?’

  ‘Fuck off, Lemmer. Your homework is behind you.’

  I turned around and picked up the small pile of documents. There was a company prospectus on top: Southern Cross Avionics. Innovation. Dedication. Quality. A photo of a Mirage fighter plane in flight decorated the cover. It was printed in full colour, on thick, expensive glossy paper. I began to read.

  Southern Cross Avionics is Africa’s foremost developer of aerospace systems, a world-class competitor driven by constant innovation, total dedication to client satisfaction, and a passion for absolute quality in our products.

  ‘Modest people,’ I said.

  ‘Propaganda,’ said Jeanette.

  I turned the page. The heading read ‘Our Heritage’.

  In 1983, two brilliant South African electronic engineers had a dream – a dream of starting their own company based on their unwavering belief that innovative research and daring design were the cornerstones of developing aerospace systems for the future. They resigned from their jobs with a parastatal weapons manufacturer, and founded the company in a tiny warehouse in their hometown of Stellenbosch.

  From these humble beginnings, and despite the tragic loss of one of the founding members in a 1986 mountaineering accident, Southern Cross has grown into a multimillion-rand concern, employing more than five hundred dedicated staff members, of which more than fifty are internationally trained world-class engineers.

  On their way to success, the company had a major hand in developing a laser-based rangefinder for the Dassault Mirage F1AZ fighter plane, which permitted highly accurate fusing and aiming of unguided munitions. The success of this system was acknowledged by Jane’s Defence Weekly, which concluded that the FlAZ’s proven accuracies were within the order disclosed by the USAF for their F-15E Strike Eagle.

  While much of the work done in the early years was of a classified nature, the invaluable experience of developing cutting-edge technology led to the products that can truly be called world class today.

  Amongst them are the XV-700 ‘Black Eagle’ surface-to-air missile guidance system, the XV-715 ‘Bateleur’ air-to-air guided missile, and the revolutionary XZ-1 ‘Lämmergeier’ heavy, long-range anti-armour missile.

  On the third page there was a photograph of Quintus Wernich under the heading ‘Founding Father and Managing Director’. He did not smile, but there was a benevolent air to the face behind rimless glasses, a kindly paterfamilias with his short steel-grey hair.

  ‘I thought he was chairman of the board.’

  Jeanette glanced down at the document on my lap. ‘He is. That thing is two years old. Look at the cuttings.’

  I paged through the pile. A Business Day newspaper cutting read ‘Black MD just the first BEE step for Southern Cross’.

  The appointment of Mr Philani Lungile as managing director is just the first step in a comprehensive process of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), says Mr Quintus Wernich, former MD and now chairman of the privately owned Stellenbosch weapons systems developer Southern Cross Avionics.

  ‘Bloody traffic,’ said Jeanette. I looked up. She wanted to turn off the N2 on to the N7 but it wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

  ‘We never have this trouble in Loxton,’ I said.

  ‘Read the one about the missile programme. I found it on the Internet,’ she ordered, and lit a Gauloise.

  I rolled the window down and searched through the documents. The printout came from the International Centre for Strategic Research.

  South African Ballistic Missile Programme

  Even today, little is known about South Africa’s short-lived ballistic missile programme.

  The country had been developing short-range tactical missiles and rockets since the 1960s, but only became the focus of international attention after a test launch of what the apartheid regime called a ‘booster rocket’ in July 1989.

  Western intelligence agencies soon pointed out similarities between the South African capabilities and Israel’s Jericho II
missile, prompting speculation that Israel had supplied crucial technology to South Africa’s development effort.

  This claim was substantiated by the fact that the two countries also shared knowledge and expertise in developing electronic weapons systems for the Dassault Mirage jet fighter in the seventies and eighties – through government owned ARMS-COR and privately held companies such as Southern Cross Avionics.

  I looked up, because more pieces began to fall into place.

  ‘When I read that, I knew where the rifle came from,’ Jeanette said.

  I nodded.

  ‘OK, Lemmer, tell me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Everything. What the fuck has Southern Cross to do with Emma le Roux?’

  ‘How long will it be before we get there?’

  ‘At this rate? Half an hour.’

  ‘What else is in this pile?’ I rifled my fingers through her cuttings.

  ‘Do you know how the big arms deal works? The one for the new Gripen fighter plane?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Saab of Sweden and BAE in the UK won the contract to supply twenty-eight Gripens to South Africa. But part of the deal was that they must invest and develop locally. Southern Cross was part of that – they are also going to build systems for BAE. And there’s a report that Wernich and company are courting Airbus passionately.’

  ‘That’s why they still want to keep it quiet,’ I said. ‘That and the black economic empowerment.’

  ‘What, Lemmer? What do they want to keep quiet?’

  ‘Did you bring me a firearm?’

  She flicked the Gauloise out of the window and pulled the left flap of her jacket open. There was a pistol in a leather holster under her arm. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Today I am your bodyguard, Lemmer. Now tell me everything.’

  47

  I didn’t find the new office buildings at Century City attractive. I don’t know how you would describe them. Neo-Roman? Corporate-Tuscan? Overdone, outsized pillars, sharp triangular roofs, glass and concrete, as un-African as it could be. Southern Cross was on the top storey of a five-storey block. The reception room was large and clinical.