Bad Seeds

by Jassy Mackenzie

  There was silence for a moment. Then a man’s voice asked, “Who is this?”

  It was not Botha who spoke. The voice was not as deep as his. It was strongly accented and filled with suspicion.

  Jade stabbed the disconnect button.

  Then she shoved her gun back into the holster and her phone into her pocket, picked up her bag and ran out of the penthouse suite, slamming the door behind her.

  As she sprinted through the lobby, her phone started ringing again. She dragged it out of her pocket, unreasonable hope lifting her heart that it might be Botha calling her back, but cold logic telling her it was David.

  As it turned out, it was neither of the two.

  To Jade’s surprise, she found herself speaking to Sbusiso.

  “I thought I had better tell you,” he said.

  “Sorry, what was that?” The cell reception was terrible. She could barely make out what he was saying.

  “I thought I had better tell you I had a parcel delivered to me today.” Jade pressed the cell phone to her ear, willing the connection to improve, and for a few moments, it did. “It was sent to my house while I was at work. My neighbor took it for me. He only just got back from his shift at Spur. It is from Miss Lisa.”

  “From Lisa?” Jade said. This must be the information she had sent from the motel right before she disappeared.

  “I am sorry to phone you so late, but I thought it might be important. It was sent via Speed Services, but I know the post office has been on a go-slow, so even priority packages have been delayed by many days. And maybe my house was difficult to find.”

  Jade stepped out of the lobby. There was no sign of David yet. The city center was quiet; she heard music coming from far away and watched a minibus taxi bump its way down the road. “Can you open the package and tell me what’s inside?” she asked Sbusiso.

  “I have opened it. But I cannot tell you much,” Sbusiso said. “It is a USB drive, I think they are called. But I do not have a computer here.” He sounded regretful. “There is a note with it which says, ‘Sbusiso, please keep this for me. It is a backup. If I go missing, please give it to Mr. Carlos Botha.’ And there is a phone number there for Mr. Botha. But I have not phoned it yet.”

  Headlights approached, fast and bright. Was this David?

  No. It was a cab, slowing outside the hotel’s entrance while four well-dressed occupants climbed out. They were talking and laughing among themselves as the cab driver unloaded their shopping bags from the trunk, handing them over to the waiting concierge who followed the guests into the lobby.

  In a split second, Jade made her decision.

  David was frantically busy, and there was no way he’d allow her to follow a hunch that led straight into the path of trouble just after he’d snatched her out of it. If she climbed into his unmarked, she’d be out of action for the rest of the night. And by then, who knew? It might be too late to stop whatever disastrous sequence of events had been set into motion.

  “Don’t phone Botha yet,” she told Sbusiso. “I’ll be there in an hour. Please wait up for me.”

  Sprinting over to the sidewalk, Jade waved her arms and yelled, running after the departing cab until its brake lights flashed red.

  A minute later, she was sitting in the backseat, giving the driver rather breathless directions to Atteridgeville.

  As they rounded the corner, she passed David’s unmarked speeding toward the hotel. She saw him at the wheel, grim-faced, and wished she’d called him earlier to explain, instead of wasting his time when every moment was precious.

  But then, he would never have listened to her. David could be ridiculously stubborn. She ducked down in her seat so that he wouldn’t notice her. When she straightened up again, he was safely past, and shortly afterward, Jade’s cab had reached the highway and was heading west.

  Once she was on the highway she sent David a short text message. I’m okay. Following a lead.

  Then she put her phone on silent. If he called back, she wouldn’t answer—not until she had a clearer picture of this situation, which she was hoping Sbusiso’s information would provide.

  At night, the lack of infrastructure in Atteridgeville became apparent. Much of the township was swathed in darkness, thickened by a hanging veil of smoke. With electricity unavailable for some people and unaffordable for others, those who were not brave or foolish enough to steal it were relying on burning wood, coal fires and paraffin lamps.

  “I can’t go too much farther into here,” the cab driver told her. “We aren’t allowed to drive into the settlements at night.”

  “It’s just down here. No, no, damn it, it isn’t.” At night, the place was unfamiliar to her and so confusingly dark, and she had told him to turn too early.

  “I can’t carry on,” the cab driver said in a tone that brooked no argument. “I’m really sorry, but I’ll be in trouble with the control room if I do. You must get out here, or I can take you back to the main road.”

  From here, she could find the house on foot, but the delay was frustrating. Still, at least she was most of the way there. After paying the driver, she climbed out, breathing in the harsh tinge of smoky air, and watched the cab depart. Then she shouldered her bag and set off on foot down the potholed road, toward the next turning, which she recognized, thanks to the pile of old car tires on the right-hand side of the road. Someone had been sitting on them last time she’d been there, using them as a makeshift chair.

  She jogged down the dirt road until she reached Sbusiso’s house. “Sbusiso?” she called softly.

  The shack was in darkness. No lights went on as she approached.

  “Sbusiso?” she said again.

  As she reached the front door, it was opened suddenly, causing Jade’s heart to jump into her mouth. Sbusiso hustled her inside. “I didn’t hear you arrive. I was listening out for a car,” he said.

  He turned on a lamp. It shone into a space that was neatly arranged. The large single room contained a cooker, a table with two chairs, a bed, a small cupboard and a bookcase which was being used as a storage shelf, piled with pots and plates, cleaning utensils and groceries, with the topmost level stacked with scores of dog-eared paperbacks.

  From among the books, Sbusiso carefully lifted down the small package.

  He placed it on the table, and Jade took her laptop out of her bag and plugged in the device. As she waited for the machine to power up, she read the note. Lisa’s handwriting was small, neat and cramped. It looked like she’d written it in a hurry on a plain piece of notepaper from the motel. And the phone number she had given Sbusiso for Botha was the same one that Jade had tried, just an hour ago, to be met by that unfamiliar voice.

  What accent had it been? Mediterranean? Middle Eastern? Had it sounded familiar? She hadn’t heard enough to be sure, and she wasn’t going to call it again.

  The USB drive had loaded. Eagerly, Jade clicked on it, leaning forward to stare intently at the screen.

  The notes were concise, if rather erratically laid out. Lisa was obviously not a linear thinker and had been working in a hurry.

  Botha, this is a backup for you, the note began. I know you said no emails, but I’m going to get the receptionist here to post it to somebody I trust, just in case. My house has been burned down, so I’m hiding out in a motel, but I have the feeling I’m being followed. We knew when we started this that we were in over our heads, but I just didn’t know how deep. I don’t want anything to mess up what happens at Inkomfe on the first of November. That operation goes ahead regardless. Hopefully you can use this info! It’s not complete, but it’s a start.

  Thank you again and speak soon, I hope.

  Lisa.

  Jade let out a deep breath. The mention of the first of November troubled her. That was last Friday, when the sabotage had occurred.

  She was so sure that Lisa and Botha hadn’t been i
nvolved, that they were innocent. But she’d been wrong. Lisa’s note served as a confession that the two had at least known something about it.

  Perplexed, she opened the file and read through the contents carefully.

  She read them a second time, involuntarily chewing on one of her nails.

  Then she checked to see if her data connection was working.

  Out here in the middle of nowhere, she had virtually no phone signal, and there was no way to send an email right now—there wasn’t enough bandwidth available.

  Jade grimaced in frustration. Lisa had left behind dynamite, the key to everything, and she needed to get it to David immediately. She’d have to call him and explain, but in the meantime, she needed to get to Inkomfe as fast as possible. Much more than the plant was now at risk. She had to get somebody to sound the alarm, to put the red zones into lockdown.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Quickly Jade scribbled her own notes on the back of the page Lisa had used, adding David’s phone number and work address.

  “Please keep this, Sbusiso. I’ll tell David you have it, and where you are. He can come and collect it from you. If for any reason he doesn’t, will you deliver it to his office? They’ll know it’s important.”

  She put the note and USB drive back into the envelope, and Sbusiso replaced it on the top shelf. “What’s the quickest way to get to Inkomfe?” she asked him.

  “What do you need to do there?” he said with a puzzled frown.

  “I need to somehow put the place into lockdown. There’s no time to lose. Every minute represents a huge security risk.”

  Sbusiso nodded, his face stony. “This is exactly what Miss Lisa thought would happen one day,” he said. “Let me come with you. I can speak to the security at the turnstile gate. Perhaps they will understand and let us in together. My friend Abel is on shift now. And at this hour, the turnstile is closed, so there will only be him on duty.”

  “How can we get there fastest?”

  “Two streets down, there is a minibus taxi stand.” Sbusiso grasped the edge of the table and stood up, putting on his jacket. “Come, Jade. I will walk there with you. One of them, I am sure, will agree to drive us to Inkomfe.”

  Jade had to contain her seething impatience and allow herself to walk at Sbusiso’s slower pace, instead of sprinting there as she would have done on her own.

  On the way, she called David’s cell phone, but wasn’t surprised when it went straight through to voice mail. She had ditched their meeting, and he was probably on a call as this latest crisis hit the fan.

  The taxi stand was nearly empty. The first driver they approached refused to take them. He’d worked double shift and was starting again early tomorrow morning; he was too tired for that route, and no amount of money could change his mind.

  The next driver, washing dirt off the battered wheel arches of his minibus, was more agreeable to doubling his income for the day in exchange for a thirty-minute round-trip.

  The air was thick with smoke and mist; the headlights cut it with difficulty. The taxi driver sped along the rough surface, the houses and shacks seeming to press toward them on either side of the narrow road. The only place for pedestrians was an uneven pathway on the left-hand side.

  Jade had expected to go back the way she had come, but instead, the taxi driver took a right turn before they were out of the township. They were taking a shortcut.

  The headlights dipped and bobbed, illuminating the angled roofs and blank windows of dilapidated shacks that became sparser as they drove. The road was terrible and grew increasingly worse until it became nothing more than overgrown track. Jade wondered whether any vehicle, even a taxi, had driven down it in the past few years, but then saw that the grass was crushed in places. People used this road, then, but not often.

  She looked ahead, hoping to see the glow of the lighting that signaled Inkomfe’s perimeter fencing, but all she saw were the headlights reflecting on grass. Jade winced as the transmission banged against another large rock. She prayed that the taxi wouldn’t sustain any permanent damage. If they were stranded here, it would be an endless walk to anywhere.

  She tried to call David again. No luck. She’d just have to hope that he would get back to her before her fears materialized.

  Then the taxi veered to the right, inched its way up a steep, rocky road and rounded a small cluster of trees. There, to Jade’s utter relief, was the main road, with Inkomfe’s floodlights in the distance. Another minute, and the driver was pulling up outside gate one, waiting just long enough for Jade and Sbusiso to scramble out before pulling his vehicle into a tight U-turn and heading back the way he had come.

  Jade walked across the paved sidewalk and up to the gate. A narrow, high gap in the double fencing, it was fitted with two steel turnstiles painted in the same dull yellow that she remembered from Inkomfe’s interior.

  Between the two fences, she saw a small building with its deeply tinted glass windows. This was where the guard would be.

  But there seemed to be no guard on duty now. The cubicle’s door remained closed, even when Jade shouted hello and grabbed onto the cold steel to rattle the turnstile loudly.

  “What’s going on?” she asked Sbusiso.

  He shrugged, looking worried. “The gate is never left unguarded.” But then he cupped a hand to his ear and listened. “You hear that?” he asked.

  Jade didn’t know what she was listening for. A breeze sent a paper cup tumbling down the tarmac, making a hollow banging noise. A car drove past, perhaps coming from another of Inkomfe’s gates. She heard the click and growl as it shifted gears. And then she heard the noise Sbusiso had picked up on: a high, faint droning sound that seemed to come from far away.

  “It’s the fence alarm,” Sbusiso told her.

  “Does that mean the perimeter’s been breached?” Jade glanced wildly to her left and right, as if she actually might spot somebody breaking through.

  Sbusiso shrugged. “It could be the wind. But maybe that is where Abel has gone. When the alarm goes off, guards are called from their stations to check the fence.”

  “Maybe we should try another gate,” Jade said in desperation, but Sbusiso raised his hand.

  “You can get through here if you are quick.”

  “How?” Jade stared at him, frowning.

  “While the alarm is sounding, the electricity to the fence is cut. It takes a few seconds after the alarm has stopped to be restored again.”

  “Oh.” Jade looked again at the turnstiles. They were narrow and tall, a formidable barrier to entry, if that was what you were looking for. But see them with different eyes, and they became a ladder, which could be climbed to reach the concrete shelf that topped them. Scramble onto that, and you would then be faced with six electrical wires carrying a shock of ten thousand volts. Enough to kill.

  “What about the second turnstile?” she asked. “Same thing?”

  “It will be even easier for you. You can open it from inside the guardhouse. There is a red button you press.”

  “Is there a button to open this one, so I can let you in, too?”

  “No. The outer gate requires a magnetic card to be swiped, which only authorized guards carry on them. If Abel comes back, he can let me in.”

  “On second thought, it will be better if you stay outside,” Jade said. Being anywhere near Inkomfe could shortly prove to be very dangerous.

  There was no time for delay. She was on her own from here.

  Jade grasped the cold steel turnstile and pulled herself up. Hand over hand, like a ladder. The paint felt smooth and slick under her hands. It was difficult to grip, and the blowing wind didn’t allow her to hear the faraway sound of the alarm clearly. A few seconds after it stopped, the fence would have its power restored. If she was touching it, then . . .

  Jade’s foot slipped, and she banged her ankle painfully agai
nst the metal. With a curse, she suppressed her fear and focused on the job at hand. This was the hard part. The solid shelf above the turnstile jutted out. It was too wide for her to get her arm over. She’d have to grasp one of the metal supports that held the electric wires in place, supports that were not made to take the full weight of a human being.

  She grasped it carefully, testing it. It seemed secure enough. The rim of the shelf was rough. It grazed her skin as she put her weight onto the metal and pulled, kicking her legs hard to try and boost herself up and over.

  “Can you still hear the alarm?” she shouted down.

  “I think so,” Sbusiso said.

  And then, with an ugly grinding sound, the metal strut worked loose from its moorings, and she felt the electric fence support start to give.

  Praying that the wires weren’t electrified, Jade pushed her weight against them, shoved her arm through the bottom two, made a desperate grab for the other side of the concrete rim and got hold of it. She pulled herself onto the rim, cursing the electric wires. They were like a spider web. Her arm was through two of them, her leg through another two, and for all the entanglement they were providing her with, their fragile, bendable nature offered nothing in the way of support.

  Grasping the metal strut carefully, pushing down rather than pulling out, she managed to ease her arms and legs into line and stand upright, staring at the fence line stretching far ahead, lit at intervals by the glowing spotlights. She was aware of Sbusiso watching her a long way below. The wind tugged at her hair, teasing a rivulet of sweat down her cheek. She’d have to step over the electric wires with care. They were thigh-high, solid and ropy to the touch, and the concrete on top was uneven. She stepped over. One leg. Now for the other.

  “I think the alarm has stopped,” Sbusiso shouted up, panic in his voice.

  Jade jackknifed her other leg over the fence. Grabbing hold of the steel support, she tried to lower herself down, her legs flailing blindly as she prayed to find the turnstile’s steel.