Cobra

by Deon Meyer

The nurse had Nadia’s big book bag over her shoulder. ‘The girl is in a ward now,’ she said. ‘The doctor said she will be able to talk to you. But only for a half an hour, and the child must give permission first.’

  He didn’t tell her that Nadia had no choice. They followed her, into the hospital. In the lift, Sister Malgas said, ‘They still don’t know what those people drugged her with, but it doesn’t seem to be something serious.’

  She made them wait outside the door to the ward, and disappeared behind the cream-coloured curtains that were drawn around the bed.

  45

  ‘So what did you do then?’ asked Cupido.

  ‘I tried to call Professor Adair, but he didn’t answer. So I left a message, and I sent a text—’

  ‘What was the message?’

  ‘I just said . . . things didn’t work out like I expected, I’m sorry . . .’

  ‘Can I take a look at the text message?’

  ‘I . . . uh, sorry, I’ve deleted it.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘I started walking. I mean, what could I do? I couldn’t go to the police. This was about the professor’s security work, he said I shouldn’t talk to anybody, I mean, I couldn’t just go to the police and say, look, this is . . . You know, I couldn’t tell them everything, so what’s the use of telling them anything?’

  ‘You’re telling us now.’

  ‘Sure, but you guys know, right. About Professor Adair, and the pickpocket. I mean, this morning, I was . . . confused. And scared. And it all happened so fast, and the guy who wanted the card just ran off, and I did not have the card any more, and I thought, the professor will call, eventually, and I could tell him.’

  ‘OK. Where did you go?’

  ‘I walked to the hotel. This guy had stolen my purse, and all my cash. Thank God my bank cards were in my suitcase, with my passport. But I had no money for a cab, so I asked directions, and I walked to the hotel, and it rained a little, and I was damn cold, and my jacket was in my suitcase because I had to wear something red. And it was much further than I thought, I got very tired. And all the time I was so very worried that I had fucked the whole thing up, if you’ll pardon my French.’

  ‘Wasn’t your fault,’ said Bones.

  ‘I know, right?’

  ‘I just want to make sure, when you talk about “his security work”, you mean the algorithm – for finding terrorists?’ asked Cupido.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You said you work with him on some of his projects. The algorithm project too?’

  ‘Oh, no, nobody worked with him on that.’

  ‘How many research assistants work with him?’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘So why did he choose you?’ asked Cupido.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Why did David Adair choose you to bring the card to Cape Town?’

  ‘Because . . . I suppose he thought he could trust me? Or he knew I love travelling, and I wanted to come to Africa . . .’

  ‘When he transferred money to your account, why did he not ask for your account details?’

  ‘I . . .He . . .I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Did he ask for your details? During that second call, yesterday at ten. Did he ask for your account details to transfer the money?’

  ‘Well, I . . . Yes, I think so.’

  ‘But you specifically said it wasn’t from his usual account. It was from a bank in Zurich.’

  ‘Yes, but I . . .’ she realised she had talked herself into a corner.

  ‘Do you get paid for your work at the university?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘By David Adair?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So how did you know it wasn’t from his usual account?’

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘You’re not telling us the whole truth, are you?’

  With fearful eyes, Nadia Kleinbooi looked from Griessel to Mbali, and back at him again.

  They stood beside her bed, both on one side.

  ‘You don’t have to be scared,’ said Mbali.

  ‘We’re here to help,’ said Griessel.

  ‘Do you know where my brother is?’ She was pale and tired, her voice was hoarse.

  ‘No. But we know that he brought you here.’

  ‘Is he OK?’

  ‘How do you feel?’ asked Mbali.

  ‘It hurts,’ said Nadia, and touched her side.

  ‘Is it OK if we ask you a few questions?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t . . . They injected me, in my arm. With something. I was very sleepy, so I can’t remember everything that happened . . .’

  ‘You can just tell us what you remember,’ said Griessel.

  ‘And if you get tired, just tell us.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘We would love to hear everything. About the . . .’ And then Griessel stopped, because a cellphone was ringing. He thought it was his, because it had the same ringtone, but he touched his pocket, and realised his iPhone was off.

  ‘It’s my phone,’ said Nadia, and looked at her bag on the chair beside Griessel.

  He bent, opened the bag, saw the light from the screen of the ringing phone. He took it out. ‘Do you know this number?’ he asked as he passed the phone to her.

  ‘No.’ She took the phone, answered it. ‘Hello?’

  She listened for a moment, then they saw her face brighten as she said, ‘Boetie! Are you OK?’

  Tyrone had showered and changed into clean clothes. He pushed the pistol into the back of his belt, under the jacket. He put the stolen wallet, where the original memory card was still stored, in the inside pocket of his jacket. After that he took cellphones One and Two, put them in the side pockets, and walked to the Cape Quarter Lifestyle Village on Somerset Road.

  He shouldn’t have pondered everything that happened that morning, because that’s what caused him to make the mistake. But he couldn’t help it, it was so close to the Waterfront, and the Schotsche Kloof, and he recalled everything so vividly – how he had been shot, how he had run for his life, the dog that nearly bit him. He relived the fear, and that moment at Bellville Station, when he realised they had drugged his sister. And the heart-wrenching moment when they shot her. It all made him so angry, a fierce anger coiled in his brain, the thirst for revenge overpowering everything.

  His mind was still full of it when he switched on the cellphone at the entrance to the Food Spar and phoned Nadia’s number.

  Nadia’s number? What was he thinking, he thought later, get a grip you fool, because he’d actually meant to phone the hospital’s number and ask for Sister Abigail, but his head was filled with vengeance, and he was tired, finished, done in, klaar. A kwaai crazy day, big lapse of concentration. The phone rang and rang, and suddenly his sister answered, startling him. His heart thumped and he wondered, was she alone?

  ‘I’m fine, sussie. Are you OK?’

  ‘Where are you? Why aren’t you here?’

  ‘Sussie, are you OK? What do the doctors say?’

  ‘They say I was lucky. Two broken ribs, and I bled a bit . . .’

  ‘What did those bastards give you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Something that made me very dof. I got so sleepy. They injected me in my arm . . . Where are you, boetie?’ He heard fear in her voice.

  ‘I am busy sorting things out. I’ll come and get you, as soon as I’m done.’

  ‘What things? Done with what? Didn’t you give them what they wanted? I can’t remember that well, boetie . . . The polieste are here now. You must come and talk.’

  He had thought as much, that’s why he had phoned from here. Thought he was smart and clever and alert. He must finish this call, but he didn’t want to leave her like this. ‘Don’t you worry, versta’ jy? Everything is going to be all right. You must just get better now. Just tell me, how many of those ouens were there that kidnapped you?’

  ‘What things must you sort out,Tyrone?’

  She only said Tyrone when she was angry. It was a go
od sign, that she could be angry at him. ‘Don’t worry. How many were there?’

  ‘I think four. But you can’t say I mustn’t worry. What card were they looking for? How did you get mixed up with such people,Tyrone?’

  ‘I will explain everything, sussie. I just tried to help someone, then there was this massive misunderstanding . . .’ He stopped talking, it wasn’t the time for explanation, he didn’t even know what she knew. The cops were sitting there, maybe listening. He must finish up. ‘Just get better. Do you need anything?’

  ‘What I need is to know what you mean by “As soon as I’m done”.’ And he could hear, there wasn’t too much wrong with her, she would be OK after all.

  Then he made his second mistake, out of sheer relief, and because the anger and revenge still clung to every fibre of his being: ‘Nobody touches my sister. I’ve got something they want. Now I’m a player. And they’re going to pay.’ It just came out, and he was immediately sorry that he’d said it.

  ‘No! Boetie, no! Those are annerlike people. Let the polieste deal with it.’

  ‘Keep that phone with you. I have to go. And remember one thing: I love you very much.’

  He pressed the button to kill the call before he could hear her reaction, then he switched the phone off completely. ‘Shit,’ he said out loud. He began walking immediately, purposefully, out of the shopping centre.

  Fifty metres on, he said quietly to himself: ‘Jirre,Tyrone, you didn’t handle that well. Get a grip.’

  46

  Lillian Alvarez wept.

  Bones sat and glared at Cupido.

  Cupido knew that his colleague clearly did not understand the very first defence mechanism of a woman caught out in a lie. ‘I know you’re trying to protect him,’ he said with great compassion. ‘But if you want us to find him, you will have to tell us the truth.’

  Bones stood up, took a snow-white handkerchief out of his pocket, and held it out to her.

  ‘There really isn’t anything to tell.’ She took the handkerchief, dabbed beneath her eyes, then at her nose, and looked at Cupido, pleading.

  Bones sat down again.

  ‘It’s not like we’re going to call the university and tell them the good professor was having an affair with his beautiful young student.’

  She stared at the carpet.

  ‘Maybe that’s not the case,Vaughn,’ said Bones.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Cupido, but the word was loaded with irony.

  ‘I know what you’re doing,’ said Lillian Alvarez.

  ‘We’re trying to save your lover.’

  ‘I watch TV. You’re playing good cop, bad . . . Save him? What do you mean, save him?’

  ‘David Adair was kidnapped, Miss Alvarez. By the people who wanted to get their hands on that memory card. So the sooner you start telling us everything, the sooner we can try and save him.’

  Her mouth was half open, her tearful eyes expressed shock and reproach. She fought against emotions, and eventually she said, ‘I knew it.’

  Then she began weeping again.

  ‘My brother,’ said Nadia Kleinbooi to Griessel, distress in her voice. ‘He’s mixed up in something ugly.’ She pressed call-back on the number that Tyrone had phoned her from, but a recorded message said: ‘The subscriber you have dialled is not available. Please try again later.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Griessel.

  ‘Tyrone said they are going to pay, because he has something they want. And he wanted to know how many they were. Those people are going to kill him.’

  ‘Your brother has something they want? A card?’

  ‘Yes. He says he’s a player now.’

  ‘A player?’ asked Mbali.

  ‘Whatever that means,’ said Nadia. ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘The people who are looking for the card are the same ones who kidnapped you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He still has something that they want?’

  She nodded anxiously.

  ‘Do you know what it is?’ asked Griessel.

  ‘I thought . . . I don’t know. It must be the card. But I thought . . . I was very confused . . .’

  ‘What kind of card? A credit card, a bank card?’

  ‘The one Frenchman, he phoned Tyrone after they grabbed me. And he said Tyrone had stolen a wallet, and there was a memory card in the wallet, and he would exchange the card for me . . .’

  ‘A memory card? What memory card?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But . . . Hang on . . .’ Griessel struggled to understand the new angle.‘We thought that was what happened at Bellville Station. Tyrone gave them something, and he got you back.’

  ‘I was very confused. I also thought . . .’

  ‘Nadia, this is very important: What can you remember from the station?’

  She closed her eyes, shook her head. ‘I don’t know . . . The guy held me so tight, we first went to a man in a blue jacket. He handed over something. I couldn’t see exactly, something small . . .’

  ‘Wait, slowly. What guy held you?’

  Nadia opened her eyes. ‘I’m not even sure that things really happened this way.’

  ‘Just tell us exactly what you think happened,’ said Mbali.

  ‘OK,’ she said, with conviction.

  ‘When did you start having an affair with Adair?’ asked Cupido.

  Lillian Alvarez looked towards the entrance of the hotel, wiped away tears, and blew her nose. She kept looking out ahead of her as though they weren’t there.

  ‘Bones, if she doesn’t want to save him, perhaps we should just abandon the search. He’s not a South African citizen. Let the British Consulate look for him.’

  Bones realised what he was doing.‘But they don’t have the resources, Vaughn. And his life is in real danger,’ he said.

  Cupido stood up. ‘If she doesn’t care, why should we?’

  Bones hesitated before he got up. ‘Good day, Miss Alvarez,’ he said.

  ‘Happy holiday,’ said Cupido, and began walking towards the door, and Bones followed suit.

  ‘Wait,’ said Lillian Alvarez, before they had taken four paces.

  Nadia Kleinbooi told them everything, as she remembered it. They had shoved her down in the Nissan X-Trail, two of them. Frenchmen, she thought. That was the language they spoke to each other. One was white and blond. He looked like a surfer. The other one was bald. Also white. Of the driver, she could only see the back of a head in a cap. The blond one phoned Tyrone and right after that one of them injected her in the arm with something. Then she became very drowsy, and everything was as vague as a dream.

  She could remember driving down Durban Road later, the effect of the drug was not so strong then. But then there was another man in the car. Left front. Coloured she thought.

  Four, then?

  Yes, four.

  One was on the phone all the time. He talked about the card. They stopped. Blondie made her get out. Her knees buckled. He swore at her and dragged her with him. To the station, she could remember the stalls, the colours of the stalls. Then they stopped for a while. It was like she was slowly waking up. Then they walked up to a scruffy man in a blue jacket, a workman’s jacket, ‘with a zip’. She wasn’t sure if the man in the blue jacket had handed over the card. He did give Blondie something. She had to hold a laptop. But then Blondie said she must walk until she saw Tyrone. She walked a long way, it felt very long, then Tyrone was there with her. Then she got very confused. There was a black man who said she was drunk. She wanted to protest, but the words wouldn’t come out, it frustrated her so much. She remembered the other coloured one who shot her. It was the other man, who hadn’t been in Stellenbosch in the Nissan.

  Perhaps, she said, he shot her because Tyrone hadn’t given him the card. But that was all she could remember. Except for Tyrone’s arms around her in a lorry, on the way to hospital.

  ‘Your brother definitely said he has something they want?’ asked Griessel.

  ‘Yes.’ />
  ‘And that they are going to pay?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nadia, if you show me the number, we can see if we can trace him.’

  She held the phone against her breast. She asked, ‘Do you know who these people are?’

  ‘We think so.’

  ‘Do you know how Tyrone got mixed up in this?’

  ‘What does your brother do for a living?’ Mbali asked before Griessel could say anything.

  ‘He’s a painter. A house painter. He works so hard . . .’

  ‘We think he got into this by accident,’ said Mbali. ‘That is why we want to help him.’

  Griessel knew why Mbali told this white lie. To upset Nadia now with the truth about her brother the pickpocket might cost them her cooperation.

  ‘Yes, that’s what I thought. He’s a very gentle person. They will kill him.’

  ‘We can help him. If you just show me the number.’

  ‘But he turned the phone off.’

  ‘If we have the number, we can find out where he phoned from.’

  ‘He lives in Schotsche Kloof. I can give you his address.’

  ‘He’s not there any more. We went to look.’

  She thought for a moment, then nodded and held out the phone to him.

  Cupido and Bones sat down again.

  The lovely Lillian Alvarez put her feet on the stool and pulled her knees up under her chin. She wrapped her arms around her legs, as if she was embracing herself, and didn’t look at them. She said something, but so quietly that they could not hear.

  ‘I’m sorry, but we can’t hear you.’

  ‘We didn’t have an affair.’

  They said nothing.

  ‘An affair is when one person is married. An affair is something . . . fl eeting. It’s not like that.’

  ‘What is it like?’ asked Cupido.

  ‘You will do a lot of damage,’ she said.

  ‘We don’t need to tell anybody,’ said Bones, and he shot a pleading look at Cupido.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Cupido. ‘All we want to do is to find him.’ He got up, shifted his chair closer to her, and sat down again. Bones followed his example.

  She waited until they were settled, looked from one to the other. ‘Do you promise?’

  ‘Yes,’ they said almost in unison.