by Reapers
“Sir.”
“Very well, that’s a lot for you to chew on. Just get up there and take one thing at a time. And good luck.”
***
Modise returned to his desk and opened the first folder, a green-jacketed one, and read the report the director had handed him. It was taken from the government’s communications director.
With reference to a front-page Sunday Standard story, please find below insightful Mozambique Information Agency (AIM) Report. If the report is correct, the four men arrested in Mozambique, including one Tino Phutego, were on a mission to place orgonite into the Zambezi River via the dam’s lake. This is part of a wider mission, dubbed Operation Paradise, by a group called Orgonize Africa to place orgonite throughout the region acting on their belief that by doing so they are restoring Africa’s natural beauty, healing the earth, inducing rainfall, curing AIDs, etc.
Orgonize Africa is part of a global network—one might term it a new age cult—that is carrying on in the footsteps of Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957), a prominent, but in the end mentally suspect, Austrian psychoanalyst who in the thirties believed that the path to a Communist Utopia lay in the release of “Orgone Energy” originally through sexual free expression. Reich thereafter came to describe orgone as a universal bio-energetic force lying behind and causing much, if not all, observable phenomena. This resulted in his creation of orgonite as a substance supposedly containing the energy force.
Reich’s New Age followers have since come to claim that orgone or orgonite was the creative substratum in all of nature.
Modise shook his head. Who in the world believes this foolishness? But, someone most certainly did and so it was necessary he do so, too—not believe the silliness, but that others did so and would try to bring the stuff into the country. The people who would facilitate the movement of this orgonite across the border would be opening the same gates for smugglers and terrorists as well. As long as there was pula to be made, there would be people who would take the risks. These fanatics, however, would more likely be less disingenuous and if apprehended, might be persuaded to lead Modise and the authorities to the real threats.
He turned the last page of the stack he’d been given.
Orgonite is a mixture of fiber-glass resin, metal shavings (iron, steel, copper or any other metal), and quartz crystals. This stuff is mixed into cone shaped moulds. In water the orgonite cones soon dissolve—but there is nothing corrosive about any of the components.
The truck that had made the run to Mozambique, he read, had been equipped with state of the art communications equipment, including satellite phones and a global positioning system. They had very sophisticated equipment, it seemed, the sort one needs to move across borders and national parks safely and undetected. Perhaps it is not all it seems. Were they fanatics, or very clever people with some other agenda hiding behind this clowning? How easy it would be to plant a bomb in the stuff.
Modise put the file aside.
Chapter Nine
Sanderson waved at the miscellany of cameras, cables, and cartons scattered across the floor of her office. “So, Charles, what do we do with all this now?”
“I think these things here,” Charles held up a small plug-in transformer with a cord attached, “are used to charge up the batteries. I think we should start there. You didn’t see any instructional manuals, did you?”
“Nothing is ever that easy, Charles. So, we charge up these batteries and then? I do not have even a small notion as to what we must do with these things. Do we turn them on and point them at the fence. Surely the batteries will die before midnight.”
Charles scratched his head. “You present me with a great puzzle, Sanderson. There must be somebody around this place who knows about these things.”
“Yes, that would be very nice. I am sure you are right, but I do not know of such a person.” The two game rangers sat and stared at the equipment. “Wait, I do know someone who could help us, perhaps. Yes, and he will want to know of the break in the fence.”
“Who?”
“He is a policeman in Gaborone. I know him from before. You remember the business with the American and the lion? I think he will know what to do with these things. If he doesn’t, well then, he will know someone who does.” She went to the phone, found the business card she kept in her desk drawer, and called Kgabo Modise.
***
Rra Botlhokwa had many men in his employ. He used them as different situations developed. He made a point of keeping a certain distance between himself and them. He was not one to dirty his hands. He had learned the word “deniability” from the American newspapers. Politicians needed it, it seemed. He liked the concept. He wished also to have deniability. That was the reason the government in its many permutations had never been able to touch him, and though they would never admit it, occasionally had use of his services, but with deniability, of course. He intended to keep it that way. But this last problem caused him some annoyance.
He had guaranteed passage into the country and thence into the park, undetected passage, and there had been the shooting. The group who paid for the transit, those men came up from South Africa they claimed, but he doubted it. Congo more likely, and they were not happy. They thought he had played them off against another group. They accused him of deceit. They said he had betrayed them. They did not like that. And then there were the locals who set the whole business up. They wanted an explanation and restitution of the funds they’d paid him. That, of course, was out of the question. How would this be taken if he were to do such a thing? A sign of weakness and then…nothing good could come from that. No, there would be no restitution. He must find out how the men doing the shooting knew the time and location of the other man’s arrival in the park. Someone in his employment was telling things he should not have been. He would soon regret that.
His closest assistant, a man called Noga, the snake, knocked and then entered.
Botlhokwa shifted in his chair. “You have news for me?”
“Not about the shooting, but about some things of interest to us in other ways.”
“Why do I not hear about the shooting? It is not good for us, this killing. The people who depend on us for our services, who pay us, will find others to do their work. And then there is a need to have a talk with the game ranger. What does he know of this?”
“I will talk to the ranger soon. He is frightened and lying low. He will surface soon enough, him or one of his fellows. As for our people, I have talked to the most likely, the ones who would know. I must now determine who they might have spoken to. There is a weakness in the system but we will find it. But the news that you will want to hear is better.”
Botlhokwa motioned him to a chair. Noga nodded and sat. He accepted the Cuban cigar offered and the two men lit up. Soon the room was filled with the strong aroma of tobacco. If a visitor were a cigar smoker, he would have been ecstatic. A non-smoker, a reformed smoker, would have staggered from the room gasping for air.
“Several important visitors will soon be with us,” Noga said between puffs. “The American Secretary of State and her entourage, including the husband, will arrive during the matches.”
“And?”
“There will be emissaries from some Near Eastern nations as well. They will talk politics, settle issues of sovereignty over lands they do not own, and make deals with other people’s resources. It is politics as usual. And there are the rumors about the Okavango.”
“And that concerns me, how? I have no interest in the Machiavellian movements of the rich and powerful. If I had, I would be president by now.”
“You could be still, if you were willing to create the illusion of incorruptibility. However, the arrival of these people is important to us for several reasons. The Emirs will be in the market for some of the things and activities we can supply. The Americans may wish to confer in private with certain parties across the border in Zimbabwe. They cannot go openly. They may use their CIA people to approach us to help them, I
think.”
“There is no money in those transaction.”
“There is good will, indebtedness, you can say, that may be useful to us in the future. It is not a bad thing to be on the CIA’s list of preferred providers.”
Botlhokwa flicked the ash from his cigar and stared out the window. He would be in Cape Town now except for this business at the borders. He needed to keep a tight rein on his people. He would be happy when these football matches were over and he could enjoy his wine estate again. And then, there had been the call from Gaborone earlier. He would have to spend some scarce political currency to muzzle the attorney general. Politicians!
“The Koreans, I am told, will find their way to the Okavango. The North Koreans, that is. The South will locate in one of the local lodges. Who knows what sort of business that is about. Besides wanting to meet with the Americans or perhaps the Russians who will also be here, informally of course, they will be anxious to procure hides, horns, and ivory, perhaps other things. They have peculiar tastes, I hear. Perhaps we should stock up on Snake Wine.”
“And compliant women?” Noga shrugged. Some things, he reasoned, were self evident.
“You realize,” Botlhokwa said between puffs, “the BDF will be out in force. They will not permit poaching of any of these things and will be patrolling the borders. They can be very difficult.”
“You mean unapproachable for the sort of inducements you might offer. Of course they are. We can manage them. What we need is a supply of merchandise from Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, and possibly Kenya. Who knows what the West African people might do for us? They are all in need of negotiable currencies. And there is coltan, easy to move, hard to detect, good return on investment, you could say. It is a big continent and the borders are wide. We will be the middle men, as the American movies say. We collect fees, expedite commerce, and remain safely in the dark.”
Botlhokwa nodded his approval. He did not deal in drugs, arms, or any of the illicit human traffic that coursed in and out of his country, his continent. He merely facilitated its passage from seller to buyer remaining, as Noga put it, safely in the dark. This careful positioning had kept him in place for years. It would be so in the future. Let others reap the big profits and take the risks, he’d settle for a fat fee.
***
Patriarche heard the men approaching. They did not move quietly like the poachers he knew in his youth. These men crashed through the bush like elephants. That was good. He could keep his family safe and away. He picked up a stick and snapped off the remaining branches from it. A stick was a handy thing to have, He could pry roots out of the earth and if a branch with fruit or succulent leaves hung too high for him to reach, he could use it to pull the branch within his grasp. He did not think of this thing in his hand as a weapon. Such a concept had no resonance for this gentle giant.
The men moved closer. He grunted—not loudly—and the gorillas slipped deeper into the forest.
Chapter Ten
Kgabo Modise had an overnight bag packed, a flight booked to Kasane, and was in his car on the way to the airport when he received Sanderson’s call. His face creased into a frown as he listened to what she had to say. At one point, he pulled to the side of the road to jot details in the notebook he always carried with him. All the police he’d met in Quantico had notebooks like this one. He made a habit to write things down whether they seemed important or not.
“I am coming to Kasane today, Sanderson. I will visit you after I have talked with the lodge owners and local police. If the people who owned cameras were shooting at night, they will have the equipment you will need, I think. We will see.”
He rang off and continued to the terminal for his Air Botswana flight north. He wondered about a film crew that never returned to retrieve their equipment. Were they stupidly wealthy, or had they leased it and skipped, or…or what? Perhaps they had come back but had been sent away again by someone else. Perhaps they were not what they seemed. Another puzzle for him to think about. He would need the particulars. He thought to call Sanderson back and discover their names. His flight was called and he left the building. Plenty of time to do these things when he arrived at Kasane later that morning.
***
Noga left Botlhokwa’s office and stepped out into the afternoon sun. He dropped the butt of his cigar and ground it beneath his heel. His mouth tasted terrible. He did not like cigars, Cuban or otherwise. He smoked them with his boss because it was a necessary ritual when dealing with him. Not everyone who sat across the desk from Botlhokwa was offered a cigar. If you were, it meant something. You had status. Botlhokwa had funny notions about some things. Noga spat and placed a breath mint on his tongue. What to do? In his world one took advantage of opportunities that often came by like a herd of antelope. If you were a lion, you took care of the antelope. You did not wait for another day, a bigger herd, a fatter prey, or, in this case, permission from the boss. You ran them down, or in his case, struck like the snake, like the noga.
But it required discretion. One must never bite the hand that feeds you. A side deal for some drugs, a theft of some things that just happened your way was okay. But to cross the boss was not acceptable. Well, to cross him and be caught was not. Botlhokwa wanted him to discover the man who played at both ends. No problem there. If he wanted to end up in a ditch somewhere, he could turn himself in and finish the job. Not going to happen.
He did not want to be a Botlhokwa man forever. He knew the ropes, knew the people; had dealt with them for over a year now. He’d spent months studying his man, his habits, his strengths, and especially his weaknesses. Now, he had to think about his future. The man with the tattoos, the Russian, had approached him. He made the deal. He seized the moment. He would manage Botlhokwa later. With the Finals of the Cup matches beginning soon, there would be many new opportunities…who knew? How was he to know that the carrier had rubbish in the boot? How could he guess the men would shoot him? Were they stupid? Idiots.
But first there were loose ends to tie up. He needed to find a likely candidate for Botlhokwa. He’d find a fall guy. That should not be too difficult. There were many big, slow, men in his employ. He just needed to choose one and set him up. Perhaps Cunningham would fit the bill. That would surely shake up the boss. Then he would see to the Russian and other opportunities that might become available.
***
Sanderson returned to her house for lunch. Ordinarily, she would have packed something in the battered tin box with the picture of the Royal Family on it. Her grandmother had stood with thousands of others in the late forties to observe this great Kgosi, King George the Sixth, his queen, and two young daughters. She spoke as if she had somehow known them personally.
“You know,” she would say looking closely at her three year old granddaughter, “That Group Captain Peter Townsend, he was a fine catch for sure. I see him moving around in the background with the royal people. He is like a leopard that can’t get to the antelope because of the lion. That Princess Margaret, she should have made her parents see that.” She shook her head. “So sad.”
Sanderson’s grandmother was a romantic but wholly ignorant of the ins and outs of English royal politics. But she had her souvenir of that momentous visit, a square tin box that came with hard candy in it originally. She later gave it to Sanderson to use as a lunch pail on her first day of school. Sanderson had used it through her school days to carry her noon meal and later, as an adult, a place to put her meager luncheon. But today, running late and in a hurry, she had left home without it. Besides, she wished to check on her son, Michael, who lingered on, his pneumonia held at bay by antibiotics. She wrestled again with the dark notion that surfaced from the depths of her subconscious and plagued her; the idea, that perhaps these antibiotics were not such a good thing after all; that wouldn’t it be better if Michael’s long struggle with the effects of HIV/AIDs were to end now, quietly, peaceably? She flushed with guilt at the thought and pushed the notion back down in the recesses of her brain where it
had come from. She would like to have it erased but it seemed that once an idea planted itself in your mind, it received a permanent residence permit and would stay forever.
She parked next to her red pickup, her bakkie, and smiled. Restoring the old Toyota HiLux had been Michael’s last project. If he died, it would be his memorial.
Not if.
She wiped her eyes and stepped down from the Land Rover she now drove as the new superintendent of her game ranger station and turned to enter her house.
“You…woman.”
She spun to see who called to her. It was neither a voice nor a face she recognized.
“Who is it?”
“You do not know me and you will forget you have seen me, you see, but I bring a message of importance to you.”
“A message? What sort of message, and who are you that you bring me messages?”
The man stepped forward and stood very close to her. Too close for comfort, much too close for propriety.
“You are wanting to trace the vehicle that might be related to the death at the game park. Is that not so? It is advisable that you no longer do this. There might be consequences.”
“I do not accept messages from strangers unless they identify themselves, and I do not accept threats from anybody, and I do not know what you are talking about.”
Her words startled her even as she spoke them. She wondered what was happening to her. She did not consider herself a particularly brave person and yet she had just stood up to this stranger who, she now realized, was a foot taller than she, much heavier, and considerably larger than anyone she’d known except, perhaps, Inspector Mwambe. But Mwambe’s size came from too much eating, not strength building and exercise. This man who threatened her looked like one of those athletes she’d seen on the telly who fought in cages and had tattoos on their bodies.