by Tony Park
He laughed and she thought her heart would turn to molten honey when he smiled and winked at her.
‘Hey, you’re wearing the locket,’ he said, and reached out to the screen of his iPad to try and touch her.
With one hand she’d met his fingertips, with the other she had clasped the locket. ‘I’m embarrassed now,’ she had said.
‘Don’t be, it’s OK to love.’
And there was the problem. The Thai flight attendant stopped beside her. Sonja paused the video and removed a bud. ‘Vodka and tonic, double.’ It was her third. Fuck it, Sonja thought. Drink wasn’t the answer, but it was a good short-term alternative.
Sonja closed her eyes and rested her head back against the seat. She needed to sleep. She had gone from Tran’s in a cab direct to Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Son Nhat Airport, arriving in time, as planned, to catch a flight to Bangkok. Still pumped when she got off the plane, she had tried to level out with a couple of drinks in the lounge while she killed the more than two hours before the flight to Johannesburg, which left at a quarter past one in the morning. The flight was ten-and-a-half hours, plenty of time to sleep if she could stop the thoughts that were whirling through her mind on an endless loop.
Killing Tran was never supposed to bring closure, a stupid word invented by soft people who couldn’t face reality. The only thing she had closed was the door on one gangster’s life. Her mission had been payback, nothing more, but it had gone horribly wrong with the death of Ross. Sonja knew that if Sam had been alive he would not have approved of her taking out a kingpin in the wildlife trade, no matter how passionate he was about saving rhinos. But she didn’t come from the same world as Sam.
They had met in Botswana. He had been hopelessly lost in the Okavango Delta, stuck on the real-life set of an absurd reality TV show that had gone wrong. He had been dropped in the bush like some survival expert, but in reality Sam was a scientist, not an SAS operative. She had saved his life and then had become embroiled in a plan to blow up a dam. They had made an unlikely pair, the mercenary and the television pretty boy, but she had loved him.
Emma, unlike Sonja, had actually heard of Sam Chapman and she had been over the moon when Sonja had announced that she would be going to Los Angeles to live with Sam. Emma had been on the cusp of finishing her schooling and Sonja had given her the option of staying at boarding school in England or coming to America with them. Emma had finished high school in California.
Sam had doted on Emma and her daughter had adored him. For a time Sonja had recognised her own pangs of jealousy. She and her mother had raised Emma, but the truth was that Emma’s grandmother had done most of the work while Sonja was away earning money in the worst places on earth. Sonja had been through a trying time with Emma and had only just reconnected with her when Sam had come into their life. But Sonja had got over her need to be over-protective and revelled, if only for a short time, in being able to share the trials and tribulations of a teenage girl’s transition to adulthood with someone else.
The flight attendant returned with the drink. As she leaned across Sonja to place the drink on the small table between Sonja and the next empty seat, she saw Sam’s face, frozen on the small screen.
‘Oh, I loved him so much.’
Sonja nodded, tipped a splash of tonic into the vodka, and took a deep sip. ‘So did I.’
‘He made advertisements, in Thailand and other countries in Asia, telling people not to buy products from elephants or rhinos that had been killed. He was a very good man.’
The woman left and Sonja touched the screen again, remembering how soft his skin had been. She closed her eyes and fancied she could almost smell him, almost feel his touch. When she opened her eyes the screen had gone to sleep. She switched the phone off. A flush of anger replaced her indulgent reminiscing. Her mission had cost the life of a good man, tortured to death, and God alone knew what horrors Irina would be subjected to as payback for her complicity in getting Sonja across Tran Van Ngo’s threshold.
Sonja’s anger, in turn, morphed into self-loathing. It was the same as it had been in the aftermath of Sam’s death. She knew he had signed on to make Wildlife Frontline, a series of documentaries about national parks rangers around the world who were involved in the deadly business of counter-poaching operations, because of her. He had denied it, but she’d known he was trying to impress her, trying to prove he could be as brave as she had been.
In fact, as she’d tried to tell him, she didn’t consider herself brave. She was no more than a tradesperson, doing the only job she had been trained for. She did not put herself in harm’s way in war zones because she was brave or noble, or fighting for some cause or other. ‘It’s just bloody money, Sam,’ she had tried to tell him.
‘And it’s money for me, for us, if I make Wildlife Frontline,’ he’d countered. A second later, though, he’d recanted. ‘No, I’ll tell you the truth, it’s more than money; you and I both know that the men and women who are trying to stop rhino poaching in Africa, trying to stop people killing tigers in Asia and orangutans in Borneo and Sumatra are good people doing a valuable job. I want to tell their story.’
She had envied him his idealism, but when he had told her he planned on going on patrol with rangers in the Kruger Park as part of a filming trip to South Africa she had said she would come with him, to provide security.
He’d been mad, telling her that he could look after himself.
Sonja drained her drink and pushed the call button for the flight attendant. No, Sam, you couldn’t look after yourself, and I should have been there to protect you.
She’d been with Sam long enough to know that shooting a documentary involved long days of work for Sam and that she wouldn’t have had much time with him even if she had tagged along, so she had decided to stay in the States – a decision she knew she would regret forever. She had imagined, hoped, the night-time anti-poaching patrol would be set up and filmed in some safe area of the reserve; so much of reality television was anything but. However, as bad luck would have it the real patrol Sam and his crew were filming had heard shots in the night, near the Stolsnek rangers’ post in the south of the park, and they had been first on the scene. Rangers had opened fire on the poachers and the Mozambican criminals had returned fire with an AK-47. Sam had been hit in the chest.
A helicopter had been called and Sam had died in the air over White River on the way to the Nelspruit Mediclinic.
Death followed her, always. She knew that depression would come hard on its heels and that she would keep it at bay, through alcohol, until she ended up as she had last time, after the funeral, with the barrel of her Glock in her mouth in the middle of the night. Perhaps, this time, she would have the guts to go through with it. If she believed in the hereafter, or in any form of religion, she might take solace in the thought that she might be reunited with her beautiful Sam, floating with him on a fucking cloud or, better yet, roaming some dry golden savannah with him for eternity, arm in arm, kissing as they wandered amid the animals he had given his life for.
But that was just bullshit. Even if it were true – and she had no problem with people believing in God – she, Sonja Kurtz, had led a life that would end in only one place.
Hell.
*
As Alex and Emma approached Namutoni Camp, the white tower of the fort now visible, Emma checked her phone and saw she finally had a signal. She tapped out a message: ‘Hi Mum, where are you? I need your help’, but before she could finish the sentence with ‘identifying a military uniform’, her finger slipped and hit send.
‘Damn,’ she said.
‘What is it?’ Alex asked.
‘Just tried to send my mum a message and I’ve lost the signal again.’ It was more than an inconvenience; Emma re-read the fragment she had been able to send and realised her mother would probably freak out. She hoped the signal returned soon.
Alex had driven h
er into Etosha National Park and they were approaching the northernmost rest camp, Namutoni, the closest place to the dig site that had mobile phone coverage. They had entered the park through the King Nehale Gate, crossing open grasslands where cattle ranged, before coming to the fence that stretched to the left and right as far as she could see, and marked the border of the game reserve.
‘This is the Andoni Plain,’ Alex had told her on the drive in, ‘part of the same ecosystem as your dig site, but this area is protected.’
‘It’s beautiful.’ The vast expanse of pale green grass waved in the light breeze under a cloudless sky tinged blue-grey by a layer of dust that hung permanently just above the horizon. This was wild, empty Africa, just as Emma had imagined it.
‘It’s fantastic cheetah country; despite the fence they still get through, into the cattle lands. Also, there are populations of cheetah living in the communal lands, where the local people graze their cows and goats.’
Alex slowed as they passed a waterhole on their left. It was full from the recent rains and Emma was surprised to see a flock of a hundred or more pink flamingos wading in the shallows, searching with their beaks for food. ‘Gosh, they’re beautiful, I wouldn’t have expected to see them here now. Isn’t this the beginning of your winter?’
He nodded. ‘The summer rains lasted a long time this year, so Etosha is still very green, but by the end of our winter many of these pans dry out and the ground is just white limestone rock and dirt.’ They left the flamingos and drove the rest of the way to the camp.
Emma had seen this part of Etosha before, but only briefly. She, Natangwe and Professor Sutton had driven to the dig site via the park, but it had been a quick one-day transit. Professor Sutton had taken the time, though, to give them a lecture at Namutoni, in the whitewashed fort, about the battle that had been fought here in 1904, as it was central to the theory that they could possibly find human remains at their dig site. Fort Namutoni, along with another garrison at Sesfontein to the west, in Damaraland, marked the northernmost extent of German military occupation of the colony at the time, Sutton had explained by way of introduction.
‘I know there was a battle here during the Herero War,’ Alex said as they drove through the gates of the camp, ‘but not many details. But from what I learned at school, I believe most of the fighting was further south of here.’
‘You’re right,’ Emma said, secretly pleased that she knew more about this part of his country’s history than Alex did. It would be a chance to dazzle him with what she had read, and learned from Professor Sutton. ‘Samuel Maherero, leader of the Herero, rebelled against the Germans in central Namibia and tried to get your other peoples, the Owambo, the Damara and the Nama to join him.’
‘The Nama and the Witbooi did, eventually,’ Alex said.
‘Yes,’ Emma replied. She had been intrigued by the politics of the time; the Witbooi, under Hendrik Witbooi, had originally fought with the Germans, but he and his men were shocked into changing sides after the Germans ordered them to shoot Herero prisoners of war. ‘But initially only the Ndonga, part of the Owambo, joined Maherero.’
Alex nodded. ‘They’re from near here; the gate we entered through is named after their King Nehale.’
‘Exactly,’ Emma said, enjoying playing teacher. ‘King Nehale attacked the fort here, but seven Schutztruppen fought off hundreds of the king’s warriors then slipped away to safety. King Nehale took the fort and destroyed it, but it was eventually rebuilt.’
‘I’m impressed,’ Alex said. ‘I wish I’d known you in high school; I might have got a better mark in history with you as a tutor.’ Alex parked his truck near reception and they got out and wandered towards the imposing building that dominated the flat landscape around it. ‘So this fort isn’t the original?’
Emma shook her head. ‘No, it’s a rebuild. The Germans apparently planned a punitive mission against King Nehale, but according to the history books the German military decided against this as they were tied up further south, fighting the Herero and the Nama, who’d joined the fight by then.’
‘But isn’t your dig trying to find evidence of some mass grave of victims from the war? They couldn’t be the men killed here at the fort as you’re more than seventy kilometres away.’
‘You’re right. There’s a strong tradition in local oral history that Ndonga women and children were killed and their village destroyed some time during the war. Professor Sutton thinks it might have been an unauthorised revenge raid by a rogue element of German soldiers when they went back to start rebuilding the fort. It’s something we just don’t know much about, but if it’s on the site of the proposed new mine it’s worth investigating.’
Emma checked her phone as they walked through an archway into the courtyard inside the fort. ‘Still no signal. This is so frustrating.’
Alex smiled at her. ‘No, this is Africa. You can’t expect things to work out here like they do in LA or Glasgow,’ he said.
He was right. ‘Believe me, things don’t always work in Glasgow, and if you think African bureaucracy is bad you should try applying for a Green Card.’
‘Did your message get through to your mom?’
She nodded. ‘I think so, but I’ve lost signal again so I can’t get a reply. My mum is going to freak. She’ll think I’m in some kind of trouble based on what I was able to send her.’
He pulled the brim of his bush hat down lower over his eyes. ‘There’s not much trouble you can get into out here; believe me, I know. I’ve tried.’
Emma laughed. She decided she loved her chosen field of study, even if the work on the dig site was punishing. It had all been madly exciting since she’d found the body, but it was also nice to get away from the dirt and the dust for a couple of hours, and even better to be able to do so with Alex.
Emma felt a thrill course through her body every time she remembered that it was she who had found the mysterious dead man. They were now trying to work out who he was and what he was doing north of Etosha. Professor Sutton had, reluctantly, agreed to her suggestion that she try and contact her mother. Sutton had asked, full of arrogance, how Emma’s mother could possibly help identify a man in what appeared to be a military uniform, and then had raised his bushy grey eyebrows in surprise when she had whispered to him that her mother was a mercenary who had served in various African countries with military types of all nationalities.
‘So, how come your mother is an expert on military uniforms?’ Alex asked. She had told him she needed to talk to her mother to help identify the body’s clothing and Alex had offered to drive her to Namutoni as the camp usually had a good phone signal and was the nearest supply of fuel; he also needed diesel for his truck.
‘She joined the British Army when she was very young, then worked as a military contractor and sometimes as a bodyguard around the world. She has contacts all over.’
‘Cool,’ Alex said. They wandered slowly around the interior of the fort. Instead of soldiers’ quarters it now housed a bar, two curio shops, a small store selling drinks and basic foodstuffs for tourists staying in the camp, and a restaurant.
Emma frowned. ‘Not really. She was away more than she was home and, honestly, I think the whole bitch of war thing screwed with her head a bit. She gets bad nightmares and sometimes goes on benders. It’s been worse since her boyfriend was killed.’
‘Bitch of war?’
Emma felt bad having used the nickname; she didn’t hate her mother any more. Their relatively brief time together in LA, with Sam as part of their little family, had been great, but she’d seen her mother unravel and withdraw into herself. ‘Like “dog of war” – mercenary – except she’s a woman.’
They walked into one of the curio shops and Emma idly inspected some carved wooden bowls.
‘My father served in the north during the bush war,’ Alex said. ‘Like most of the whites he was in the SWATF – the South W
est Africa Territorial Force. He was a part-time soldier, but he saw plenty of action. He has nightmares as well.’
Emma checked her phone again; still no reply from her mother. She didn’t even know what country Sonja was in, though she carried a satellite phone for her work so she should be able to pick up Emma’s message anywhere. ‘War sucks.’
‘I don’t know,’ Alex said.
‘What do you mean? Nothing good ever comes out of it.’
Alex shrugged. ‘I just know that despite all the bad stuff he must have seen, when my father gets together with his boets – his old army friends, who are like brothers to him – they only talk about the good stuff. Everyone was conscripted and they all, like, have this shared experience.’
Boys, was all Emma could think. She shook her head.
‘Are you all right?’ Alex asked.
‘I’m fine.’ She wanted to change the subject. ‘The dog tag on the body said “Brand, H”. That’s not a common name, is it?’
‘Brand means fire in Afrikaans. I don’t know. We could google it, except we have no phone signal, no computer, and I haven’t got a data bundle on my phone.’
‘Me neither,’ Emma said. ‘I’m still on roaming and I need to get a Namibian SIM card and load some data. Do you think they’ll sell them here?’
Alex just laughed. ‘Come on, I think I should get you back to the dig after I refuel the truck.’
Emma didn’t want to go back just yet. Not only did she want to wait, no matter how forlornly, to see if she could regain signal so that her mother could call her back, but she also wanted to spend more time with Alex.
They walked out of the curio shop into the courtyard. Tourists milled about taking photos. ‘Hey,’ she said, nodding to the bar in the corner, ‘we’ve come all this way, why don’t we have a beer?’
He pushed back his hat. ‘Sure, why not?’
It was cool and dark and the long narrow room inside the fort’s walls was divided by a bar faced with rough-sawn half-round slabs of tree trunk. The barman said hello and asked what they would like.