An Empty Coast

by Tony Park

  ‘So you think he was on Gareth’s aircraft?’

  Helen walked into the office carrying a tray with two cups and a teapot on it.

  ‘Matthew, I’m sure he was on that flight, but there’s something else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was just making some calls before you rang. I did a search online this morning and found out that unless there are two half-American, half-Portuguese guys called Hudson Brand, then this guy is not dead – he’s very much alive.’

  *

  Hudson Brand ended the call and looked out over the waters of the Sabie River, which swirled around the bulbous, smooth, pink granite rock that gave Hippo Rock wildlife estate its name.

  Across the river was the Kruger Park, the happy place he could go to, mentally and physically, when the past reared up to try and devour him, as it was doing right now. He hadn’t known the name of either of the pilots on that aircraft, and had made it his business, when he’d made it out safely, never to ask.

  Now he knew a little about the younger man, the co-pilot. Gareth Allchurch, aged twenty-one, son of Matthew and Helen. Matthew had spoken with the familiar grasping, heart-wrenching tones of the bereaved who will never understand why their son had to be taken from them at such an age. That was war for you.

  No.

  He corrected himself: Gareth was not killed in a war, he was killed in the commission of a crime. So, too, did the others die not for a country or an ideology, but for cold, hard, dirty cash. Brand felt sick to his stomach, and for a change it was not the drink.

  He had turned his back on that business decades ago, but he knew, always, somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind, that he would have to confront the deaths of those pilots one day, and that he would be found accountable. Brand had been brash, cocky, a young field officer on his first posting in the actual field. He had returned to the country of his mother’s birth and he had thought he was there to do good, to fight communism, and to support gallant freedom fighters.

  It was almost inconceivable to him now, all these years later, how foolishly naïve he had been, how ready to swallow his own government’s propaganda. Angola had not been a noble crusade; there was nothing good about the country, the politics or the war on either side of the political divide.

  Allchurch had told him about the discovery of the body in Namibia and Brand had googled the article on his phone. ‘Are they your dog tags on that body, and if so, whose body is it?’ the man had asked him.

  ‘I don’t have to answer any of your questions,’ Brand had replied, tempted to end the call there and then.

  ‘Please,’ Allchurch had begged, and the guilt rose up in Brand, not over the body he had left in the middle of Namibia somewhere – that was Jacobus Venter and he’d been a prick of note – but over the fate of the two pilots. Brand didn’t know how complicit they’d been in that mission, whether they were just blindly following orders, or whether they were crooked as well and stood to make a cut from the flight.

  ‘Are you still there?’ Allchurch had said.

  ‘Yes.’ Barely, he thought to himself.

  ‘Look, I don’t care about the body they found in Namibia – unless it’s my son with your dog tags on him, of course.’

  ‘It’s not,’ Brand had assured him.

  Brand had heard the man exhale loudly – a mix of relief and despair, probably. ‘This is the closest anyone has come to locating any trace of my son’s flight. Even if I can’t find him I do want to know what my son was doing and what happened to his aircraft. I want to meet you, as soon as possible.’

  Brand, to add to the shame he already felt, tried, in a cowardly manner, to talk him out of it. ‘You don’t want to know what happened to that flight,’ he had told Allchurch.

  ‘You don’t understand, Mr Brand,’ Allchurch had said. It had been easy for the man to track Brand down – his cell phone number was on his personal website which advertised his services as a safari guide. ‘I need to know everything about my son’s last flight. I want to find out what happened to him and his aircraft – I know it was a civilian registered DC-3 Dakota and that it was some sort of hush-hush mission – but there’s no excuse after all these years for the truth not to be known. I read online you’re also a private investigator, and you were on my son’s last flight. Please, Mr Brand, I need to know what he was up to.’

  ‘Up to?’ Brand said. ‘He was just the co-pilot.’ At least Brand hoped that Allchurch Junior hadn’t been involved in what was going on that night.

  ‘I need to know, though, if he was a party to the cold-blooded murder of prisoners of war.’

  Brand was momentarily confused, but he knew enough of the dark deeds of those days to put two and two together. ‘No, Mr Allchurch, Gareth didn’t kill any innocent men. If you’re talking about people being dumped at sea then that’s not the sort of mission your son was flying. He didn’t kill anyone.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No, he didn’t kill any innocent people,’ Brand said.

  ‘That’s something of a relief, but I still want to meet you. You’re in the Lowveld, yes? Where exactly?’

  Brand had not been eager to give out his address, but if Allchurch had found him via the web it wouldn’t take him long to track him down.

  ‘On the edge of the Kruger Park, near Kruger Gate.’

  ‘I can be on a flight to Skukuza tomorrow,’ Allchurch said.

  Brand had reluctantly agreed to meet him. He tried to remember what the two pilots looked like, but it had been dark and his only memory of them was of ghostly faces illuminated at first by the muted glow of their cockpit instruments and, later, by the fire.

  Gareth Allchurch hadn’t killed any innocents, but Hudson Brand had, including Matthew Allchurch’s son.

  Chapter 9

  Sonja was pissed off and not even the lions could lift her mood.

  She motored slowly along the dirt road that followed the course of the Auob River as the two magnificent black-maned Kalahari lions ambled their way towards the Montrose waterhole.

  Normally the sight of their rippling muscles, their luxuriant manes and their chilling golden eyes would have pleased her. As a child, visiting Etosha National Park with her parents, lions had always been her favourite animal. Here in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park she was as close as she would get to wildlife on this trip, but even having one of the big boys just a couple of metres from her car, close enough to smell his musky scent through the open window, was not enough to distract her from her thoughts about her daughter.

  The lion on the other side of the road stopped, lifted his tail and aimed a high-pressure jet of urine at a small thornbush as he marked his turf. He moved on a few paces and curled his lips back from his teeth, inhaling the scent of another cat. Sonja had no territory any more, no mate either; all she had was Emma.

  When she reached Mata Mata, she checked in then drove to a row of connected chalets. The front of each room looked depressingly narrow, but once inside she found the rooms were quite long. Her room was also enticingly cool; she dropped her rucksack on one of the single beds and flopped down on the other on her back and checked her phone. There was still no message from Emma and the worry nibbled away at her common sense.

  It was part of coming down, as well. She was still wired from the mission in Vietnam, and from taking on the morons in the bar. She couldn’t sit still in a rest camp in the desert.

  Sonja got up off the bed and went to the small kitchen at the front of the chalet. Her bottle of brandy was nearly empty and she was almost out of Coke Light. At least drinking gave her something to do. It was a short walk to the camp’s small shop, which sold basic provisions for campers and self-catering visitors.

  Sonja walked past the reception building, which doubled as the border post with Namibia. The new flag of the country of her birth – red, white, blue and green with a yellow sun in the
upper left corner – snapped in the breeze across a token expanse of no man’s land between two gates. She was a little surprised to see two white women on the far side nod their thanks to a Namibian policeman in a mottled brown camouflage uniform then walk through to the South African side of the border. They each carried a pair of white plastic shopping bags.

  The women chatted to themselves and, noticing Sonja said, ‘Hi, howzit?’

  ‘Fine. And you?’ Sonja replied.

  ‘Fine. You’re not on your way to the camp shop, are you?’ one asked. They looked like Johannesburg housewives on holiday – blow-dried hair, painted nails and jewellery, bling in the bush.

  ‘Ja.’

  ‘Oh, no, no, no,’ said the other. ‘You really must visit the little padstal just across the border on the Namibian side. It is simply divine. We just took the last of the springbok wors, but their biltong is to die for and there’s the loveliest selection of homemade jams and preserves.’

  Padstal was Afrikaans for a roadside stall or farm store. Sonja had imagined there was nothing but desert on the other side of the border. ‘How did you go about crossing the border? Did you need a passport?’

  ‘No,’ said the first woman. ‘We’re from Joburg, we’re not crossing into Namibia with our vehicles so we didn’t even bring our passports. Just say hi to the policeman on the gate and tell him you’re going to the little shop and he’ll let you through.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Sonja said, experiencing a jolt of adrenaline. ‘I might just do that.’

  The women walked down the hill to the camping ground and Sonja turned and went back to her chalet. As well as her large military-style rucksack she had a small daypack that she used as carry-on luggage. Into the smaller bag she stuffed her wallet, lightweight US Army quilted nylon sleeping bag liner, a pair of compact binoculars, a spare pair of cargo pants and a T-shirt, some underpants and a second sports bra. Her Leatherman multi-tool had been in her check-in bag for the flight, so she took it out and threaded its pouch onto her belt. From her wash bag she took soap, toothpaste and toothbrush. She took off her sandals and put on socks and her hiking boots. She was wearing short khaki shorts and a tank top, so she liberally smeared her arms and legs with sunblock and tossed the bottle in her daypack.

  She unwrapped the Glock pistol she’d taken from the hunters from the towel in the bottom of her rucksack. Pulling back the slide she chambered a round and gently eased the cocked hammer back into position. She put the spare magazine in her pocket and stuffed the pistol in the waistband of her shorts, nestled in the small of her back.

  Sonja quickly packed the rest of her things in her rucksack and put it in the boot of her rented car. She drove the X-Trail the short distance to the Mata Mata camp store and parked it under the shady tree out the front. It would be a few days, she reckoned, before anyone thought to check why the car was still there, and where she had gone. Sonja locked the car and put the keys in the exhaust pipe, then walked to the border of South Africa and Namibia.

  As she approached the first gate she waved to a South African policeman sitting on a chair in the shade of the overhanging roof of the reception and border control office. ‘Howzit,’ she chirped brightly to the man. ‘I’m just going across the border to the shop, is that fine?’

  The man gave her a thumbs-up and waved her on.

  Sonja felt a buzz as she walked through the no man’s land area. The policeman in camouflage touched the brim of his cap as she approached. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have a passport, but is it all right if I just pop across to the shop?’

  The policeman smiled. ‘Welcome to Namibia.’

  *

  Alex Bahler thought about Emma Kurtz as he drove the white dusty road through Etosha National Park. He was driving from Halali Camp, where he’d spent the night, his sleep disturbed by honey badgers raiding the dust bins in the camping ground.

  He believed strongly in his work; in fact it was more of a calling than merely the subject of his postgraduate thesis. He received a basic allowance from the overseas charity that raised money in Europe and America, but he did not feel like this was his job. It was a way of life, and he wondered if he would ever find a woman who would share not only his passion for wildlife, but the privations that came as part of a life lived in the bush on a shoestring budget.

  Emma clearly had at least a superficial love of the wild, judging by her reaction to their brief drive through Etosha from the King Nehale Gate to Namutoni, but what foreigner didn’t think they’d fallen in love with Africa after their first visit to a national park or a game reserve? He’d seen girls, foreign students and volunteers, who’d visited his camp and accompanied him on drives, burst into tears at the sight of their first elephant. In the end, though, they all went back to Munich or Melbourne or Milwaukee or wherever they came from.

  As he drove, instinctively scanning the grasslands for the silhouette of a cheetah sitting upright, surveying its surrounds, his mind turned over their conversations about recent military history and the army.

  He didn’t take war lightly, but he did know that when his father and his uncles, and just about every man over the age of fifty in Namibia or neighbouring South Africa got together over a beer, they started talking about their army days and the war in South West Africa and Angola. They were never stories of death or sorrow or trauma, they were tales of mischief and drinking and flouting the regulations.

  He was smart enough to know that Namibia’s war of independence had caused nothing but grief and hardship for most of the people caught up in it. There had been no crushing victory by SWAPO, and while the white population and their African conscripts had held the line against Sam Nujoma’s People’s Liberation Army of Namibia, when South Africa finally agreed to pull out of Angola and South West, then free and democratic elections were always going to deliver the country to the black majority. Emma knew the history of his country, better than he did, and she didn’t seem hung up on politics, even though her family had lived through the war. She intrigued him.

  Perhaps his one hope of impressing Emma would be to help her find the identity of the man they had discovered, the one they had taken to calling Harry. Their visits to local villages had so far turned up nothing.

  If there was one person who knew everything that had ever happened in and around Etosha and the surrounding area, it was Oom Otto Stapf. Oom, the Afrikaans word for uncle, was not just a customary term of respect for an elder but also Otto’s enduring nickname. He had been a head warden of the park back in the 1980s and he and his wife, Ria, now owned a small private lodge and campsite just outside Andersson Gate, near Okaukuejo.

  Alex checked his phone as he drove and saw that he had signal. He pulled over, selected Oom Otto’s number and dialled.

  ‘Alex, how are you, my boy?’ Oom Otto said as soon as he answered.

  ‘Fine, dankie, Oom, and you?’

  ‘Ja, fine thanks, but busy. I’ve got a party of German guests I’m taking for a drive in the park today.’

  ‘Sorry, Oom, I can call back later if that’s better.’

  ‘No, no. It’s fine. I’ve just sent them into the restaurant at Okaukuejo for lunch. I’m heading to the waterhole now, so I can talk.’

  ‘I’m going to be in the camp in about ten minutes, can I meet you there by the waterhole, Oom?’

  ‘Sure, man.’

  Alex ended the call and drove the rest of the way to Okaukuejo, Etosha’s largest rest camp and its administrative hub. The reception and restaurant area was dominated by a tall round watchtower that was visible for miles around. Tourists were browsing in the curio shop and the camp store and filing into the restaurant for lunch. It was busy, as always. Alex preferred to stay in the quieter camps, especially Halali, but Okaukuejo and this part of the park were justifiably popular with tourists and tour guides because of the densities of game. Each camp in Etosha had a floodlit waterhole on its perimeter, and wh
ile all of them attracted game, Okaukuejo’s was literally teeming with animals twenty-four hours a day.

  As he navigated his way between the bungalows that overlooked the waterhole Alex caught sight of half a dozen elephants plodding in single file across the white stony ground on the far side of the oval-shaped waterhole. An electric fence set in front of a stone wall, both about waist height, were all that separated the awe-struck tourists sitting on park benches from the giant pachyderms. To make the encounter even more memorable the elephants, all bulls, walked around to the camp side of the waterhole and pointed their ample behinds at the tourists as they lowered their trunks into the water and greedily started to drink, just thirty metres from the nearest onlookers.

  Alex raised a hand to shield his eyes from the midday glare that bounced off the limestone rocks and dusty lands beyond, where thousands of hooves and pads had worn down the remnants of dry, golden grass. He scanned the people sitting around the wall until he saw the distinctive, unkempt silver mane and long bushy beard he was looking for. ‘Howzit, Oom?’

  Otto looked up, put down a sandwich he’d been eating, stood and clasped Alex’s hand in a meaty paw, squeezing so hard that Alex could barely reciprocate the handshake. ‘Fine, fine. How are you, my boy?’

  ‘Lekker, dankie, Oom. Thanks for your time.’

  ‘For you, always. You know how interested I am in your predator research.’

  Alex explained about the archaeological team finding the body outside the northern boundary of the park.

  ‘Yes, I’d heard about that.’

  ‘You had?’ Alex was surprised.

  ‘Yes, it’s been in the news. I knew the dig was going on, a friend of mine in the local community told me about it. There were a lot of rumours about the siege of Namutoni and what did and didn’t happen there during and after the battle. Not all of it went into the official history.’