Those Who Love Night

by Wessel Ebersohn

  “Arrested? What the hell are you talking about?”

  The anxiety in Johanna’s face was so intense that she might have been the one who had been arrested. “The police were here; a lot of them, ten minutes ago. They took him away.”

  “Where to?”

  “I don’t know. There were plenty of them. I saw one body-search him, right up between his legs. Then they marched him away, three or four in front and three or four behind. But I demanded to know what they were doing. I went right up to the head one and said, “What do you think you’re doing?” It was a habit of Johanna’s, when retelling an incident, to spend far more time on what she had done or said than on the other parties involved.

  “So what did they say to that?” Abigail wanted to know.

  “They said I should mind my business and go back to my work.”

  “Sound advice,” Abigail said.

  “But I didn’t let them get away with that. I told them when my boss, Abigail Bukula, got back they would be in trouble.”

  “Thank you, Johanna, but I’d rather you didn’t try to build my reputation in quite that way.”

  “But you should have seen them. The one behind even pushed Gert as they went to the lift.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Abigail muttered. Seeing Johanna’s crestfallen look, she corrected herself. “Coming from you, I know it’s true, but I still have difficulty believing it.” She was already on her way down the passage in the direction of the director general’s office.

  The director general’s PA reacted as if she had been expecting Abigail’s storming entrance. “He’s not here,” she said, as she rose from her chair. “He’s out, holding high-level…”

  But Abigail was already past her and had thrown open the door to the director general’s office. One step into the office revealed that it was indeed empty. The PA, a middle-aged woman of Indian extraction, had not moved from behind her desk. “Abigail, I told you he’s not there,” she said. “I’m not one of those who lie about such things. You should know that by now.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I believe he’s with the minister of police, trying to negotiate for Gert’s release.”

  “Negotiate?” Abigail said the word as if it had just developed a repulsive new meaning. “You don’t negotiate for the release of innocent people. You demand it.”

  “I’m just telling you what my boss told me.”

  Abigail studied the other woman’s face for a moment longer, then turned abruptly to leave.

  “Wait. The minister is, in any event, the right one to deal with this,” she called after Abigail. “He’s gone to the same meeting. There’s no point in trying to see the DG.” Abigail had stopped in the doorway. “It’s true. They’re trying to free Gert.”

  Abigail passed Johanna without saying anything. “What did they say?” Johanna was following close behind her.

  “They say the minister and the DG are talking to the police.”

  “But why…?”

  Abigail waved her away. “Johanna, I don’t know the answer to any of these questions. Don’t ask me. And I want no calls this morning. None. Do you understand?”

  Johanna retreated, closing the door behind her. After working with Abigail for some years, she knew when avoiding her boss was the best course of action.

  Abigail hated the feeling of helplessness. She was not one to let the winds of fate decide her course. She felt that she was in charge of her own destiny and was determined to have an effect, wherever it was needed, on the destinies of everyone who crossed her path. And this was one of those occasions. She could not bear the thought that the DG and the minister were going to pretend to be defending the rights of one of their senior officers, arguably their best officer. Neither man, in her opinion, possessed the inclination to stand up to those in authority on matters of principle, or any other sort of matter.

  She thought of calling Freek Jordaan, the deputy commissioner of police for the province, who had had helped her in the past. When she had first been given the job as Gert’s junior, she had asked Freek for his opinion of her new boss. She remembered that Freek had thought about it for a while before answering. Eventually he had said: “You have to understand that in the old days I often had problems with the system, but Gert seemed to be all right with it. He seemed to like prosecuting, as long as he was prosecuting some wrongdoer. The system never seemed to matter to him.”

  “I don’t think he’s that uncomplicated,” she had told Freek.

  Working had become almost impossible. And if Gert was vulnerable, who else was? There were other staffers, including herself, working on the same set of cases. Or will my party membership card protect me? she wondered. And is that the sort of protection I want? Thank God for Robert, she thought. He was the rock she had always been able to rely on. For the moment, she had forgotten the petite, blond PA.

  They had pushed Gert as they went toward the lift, Johanna had said. She got to her feet so suddenly that her chair crashed to the floor. Before she reached the door, Johanna had opened it. “What happened?” It was a standard Johanna question. Just as she loved to recount her role in any crisis, she always had to know what was happening.

  “It was my chair.”

  “Is it broken?”

  Abigail took her by the arm. “Forget the chair, Johanna. You mind the shop. I’m going out.”

  “Where to?”

  Abigail stopped and looked at her. There were times that the younger woman’s insistence on being informed was a little too much for her. But this was not one of those times, she told herself, not with everything that was happening around them. “Police headquarters,” she said.

  “Should you?” Johanna’s eyes had grown to twice their normal size.

  “Do I only do what I should? Do you know me that way?”

  “No,” Johanna said. “But the DG won’t like it.”

  “Never mind the DG. I’ll probably be back in an hour or so.”

  “What if Mr. Patel from Zimbabwe phones again?”

  “Tell him he’s wrong. Tell him I have no male cousin in his country.”

  5

  Freek Jordaan would usually have been pleased to see Abigail. This was not the case today. He had cursed silently when he heard she was downstairs in reception, but sent for her immediately. When she entered his office, she was wearing that superficially restrained, determined look he knew well.

  Christ, she looked fabulous, Freek acknowledged. He found it interesting that in the days of apartheid South Africa he had never found any black woman attractive, but now there were some who could stop him in his tracks.

  “Abby, I’m delighted to see you, but to what do I owe the pleasure?” Now that he saw her in front of him, the question held more pleasure than irritation.

  “As if you don’t know.”

  “Of course I know. Come any time, but right now you can do nothing. After forty-eight hours, Gert Pienaar has to be either charged or released.”

  “I just came to deliver a message,” Abigail said.

  “A message?” They were still standing, Freek still considering whether the pleasure of her company was worth the accompanying aggravation. “Your presence here is a message to everyone in the building. You won’t be out of the door before the national commissioner will want me to explain what you were doing in my office on this day of all possible days.”

  Abigail ignored Freek’s speech. “I want you to tell everyone all day that, if Gert is not out of here in twenty-four hours, I’ll be seeking an urgent interdict against the minister of police.”

  “You want me to tell everyone that. Why?” Freek waved her to a seat. He had given up the idea of being rid of her soon. “Sit down, you foolish woman,” he said.

  “I want the minister to know what sort of fight he’s going to be involved in.”

  “And what will your minister say about it?”

  “I’m an officer of the court. I don’t need his permission.”

  “Ye
s, you are an officer of the court,” Freek said. “But you are also an employee of the government. Even I can see that there’s a conflict of interest there.” She had accepted the offered seat and was looking steadily into his eyes. Seeing her this way, as he had on other occasions in the past, Freek thought she was magnificent. He had no doubt that she would try to do what she threatened to. “Don’t do this, Abigail,” he said. “It just won’t fly, not with you representing Gert.” They were seated at a round table in a corner of Freek’s spacious office. “Tea or coffee?” he asked gently.

  “Coffee will do. Thank you.”

  Freek crossed the room and opened the door into the passage. Five senior officers were scattered along the length of the passage, all looking in the direction of his office. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said. “I’m sure you all have work to do.” Then he raised his voice half-a-dozen decibels. “Miss Mofokeng!” He had spotted the tea lady peeping out from her cubicle. “I have a guest. Coffee please.” When the passage had been emptied, Miss Mofokeng to make the coffee and the officers to phone other officers, no doubt to tell them who was visiting Deputy Commissioner Jordaan, he returned to Abigail.

  “Gentlemen, I’m sure you all have work to do?” Abigail asked, as Freek sat down. “How many gentlemen were there?”

  “Enough to spread the word through this building in the next ten minutes. Your minister will know about your visit to me before you get back to the office.”

  For the first time since arriving in Freek’s office, Abigail both looked and felt apologetic. “I’ve embarrassed you,” she said.

  “Your timing could have been better.”

  “Will you forgive me?”

  He looked at the smooth skin of her face, more like that of a twenty-year-old than a woman in her late thirties, the trim figure and the natural poise. “There’s nothing to forgive,” he said, acknowledging to himself that this may not be altogether true. “I will tell everyone that you came here to protest Gert’s arrest, no more than that,” he said. “I will even tell the national commissioner himself.”

  “Thank you, Deputy Commissioner,” she said sweetly.

  * * *

  When she got back to the office, Abigail was relieved to find that both the minister and the director general were out for the afternoon. She had been careful not to advertise her presence, taking the longer route to her office and coming up the fire escape from the floor below. That way she did not pass the door of either the minister, the director general or the deputy director general.

  The tactic was not perfect. A message from the deputy director general was waiting for her on Johanna’s desk, a politely worded order to see him as soon as she came in. But Abigail reasoned that as an officer in the Scorpions she did not report to him yet, and that although that agency had been disbanded, she had not yet been redeployed. She could argue that there was no reason to believe that she was obliged to report to him now. He phoned once during the afternoon to see if she was in, but Johanna told him only that Abigail had gone to police headquarters that morning.

  One message Johanna did pass on correctly came from Krisj Patel. He had eventually gotten through on a better line and left his number, asking that Abigail call back.

  He answered on the first ring. “Smythe, Patel and Associates.” This time the connection was good.

  The boss operating the switchboard? Abigail wondered. “Krisj,” she said, “Abigail Bukula here. You’ve been trying to reach me again.”

  “Oh, Abigail, I’m so glad I found you. May I call you Abigail?”

  “Of course, but I…”

  Patel, who sounded more like an English schoolteacher than an Indian settler in Africa, was eager to tell his story before listening to objections. “I’ve been phoning one number after the other for two days, trying to track you down. I tried the Law Society, a few law schools and almost everyone else I could think of.”

  Abigail interrupted him. “My mother told me that my aunt was killed by soldiers of Five Brigade during the Gukurahundi massacres. She had a daughter. I don’t know what became of her husband and daughter. But you’re wrong about there having been a son. My mother never mentioned a son.”

  “Perhaps she knew nothing about him,” said Patel. “I believe that Tony Makumbe is your cousin, and he is one of those abducted on Tuesday night. And he is such a talented boy, a writer of international potential. My clients hoped…”

  Abigail had heard enough. “Mr. Patel … Krisj … there are two issues here. First, I am not in private practice. I am a government prosecutor and therefore not free to take on private work.”

  “Oh.” Patel was silent, probably looking for a way round this new revelation. “Apparently you were in private practice while you were here in Zimbabwe.”

  “That was fifteen years ago. I’m sorry, Krisj. And second, you’re wrong about the family connection.”

  “I don’t think so.” Patel, it seemed, was as persistent as Abigail herself. “We know the woman who brought up the children of Janice Makumbe. And we know that Janice died in the Gukurahundi killings in 1982, as you said, in a village called Bizana, near Plumtree in Matabeleland. Her husband was a man called Wally. He was also killed. Two children survived, a girl called Katy and a boy called Anthony.”

  It was Abigail’s turn to be surprised into silence. The names of her aunt and uncle were correct. Long before, she had heard the name of the village. Patel had that right too.

  “I’m sure they’re your family.” He had sensed a weakness in her defenses. “They need you now.”

  “Don’t try that emotional blackmail on me. It won’t work.”

  “No, I meant…”

  “Listen, you have plenty of advocates in Zimbabwe. Use one of them.” Abigail was angry. The problem, she knew, was that his emotional blackmail was already working.

  “The good ones won’t touch it. The pro-government ones don’t dare upset their bosses. That’s not surprising, I suppose. But the opposition is in a coalition with the regime now. They also don’t want to upset the government. They say that maybe the seven just fled the country. But we know they were taken by the CIO, the Central Intelligence Organization. You may have heard of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, they took them. The only advocates we can get are either scared or useless…”

  “… or both,” Abigail added thoughtfully.

  “Exactly, exactly,” Patel said. “They’re both scared and useless and they require lots of money, in American dollars.”

  So this is strictly pro bono, Abigail told herself. And the real problem is one of payment.

  “And we’ve heard about your reputation. I am sure with your help we can get the government to hand them over to us.”

  Abigail knew there was no point in the conversation continuing. “Whatever the truth, I am not a free operator. I am in full-time employment. I work for a salary. I’m sorry.”

  “Will you think about it?”

  “No, Mr. Patel.” The more formal note seemed appropriate now. “You’re not listening to me. The conditions of my employment don’t allow me to think about it. I’m sorry.”

  “Before you go, before you go…” His voice for the first time took on an anxious tone. “It is so important. Those young people were just taken away. If we don’t act, they may never be seen again. You don’t know what our prisons are like, especially Chikurubi, where they are. And Tony’s not strong.”

  6

  Abigail waited twenty minutes after the usual knock-off time. She told herself that this way she avoided the possibility of being killed in the afternoon stampede out of the building. But, more important, she would avoid running into the deputy director general who usually led the four-thirty charge.

  Robert was not at home when she got there. That was not unusual. She was tired, with a tiredness of the soul that had overcome her with the arrest of Gert Pienaar and the disappearance of seven apparently young dissidents in a country she knew and loved. And what about Ka
ty and Tony … her cousins, according to Krisj Patel? Her mother had told her about Janice and Janice’s daughter. If Patel was even halfway right, that would have been Katy. But Tony was news to her. Her mother had never spoken about him.

  She went upstairs to the master bedroom she shared with Robert and lay down. It made no difference what Patel said. And, as for the fuss she may have caused in police headquarters this morning, that probably made no difference either. The newspaper had been delivered, but she had left it downstairs. She wanted to read no more speculation about Gert Pienaar and no more reporting on the Harare Seven, as the media had started calling them.

  She had lived in Zimbabwe for half a year before she heard about the Gukurahundi killings for the first time. A Ndebele woman who had been crippled in one of Five Brigade’s attacks had told her what had happened in their village. In the months that followed she learned that the incident the woman had told her about had been one of many. Very few people of the Shona majority had ever agreed to talk about it. Only a few admitted even hearing about it. Everything she had learned had been from the Ndebele victims.

  She had worked hard during her year in Harare. The signs that the country was coming apart were already visible. The leader was becoming increasingly paranoid and seemed to have convinced himself that he was the only answer to Zimbabwe’s problems. Already his policies of political patronage disguised as Marxism were resulting in the country’s economy shrinking by the year.

  Apart from an ordinary caseload, Abigail had agreed to take two pro bono cases of political dissidents who had been disabled under the CIO’s torture. One had a leg that had been damaged by CIO agents. Doctors had never been able to repair it fully, and now he had to wear calipers to walk at all. The other, a woman who had led resistance to the government in one of their strongholds, had developed a respiratory problem after a month in which she had been held under water too long and too often. Abigail had won substantial compensation for her clients in both cases, but the government had simply ignored the court orders and her clients had never received their money. The woman whose lungs were damaged had died the next year, and she had lost contact with the man.