The First Rule of Survival

by Paul Mendelson

  ‘You will not walk away from me.’

  Just after midnight, de Vries drives carefully up the sharp incline that takes him from Vineyard Street onto Vineyard Heights. The street-lights are out again and, still dazed, he knows that he should not be driving at all, but no Cape Town policeman will dare pull him over. For a few days, he is a hero to all but himself. Alone, he has talked himself hoarse, yet he has no answer, no insight as to how he might ease the pressure that contorts him from within. He is unfit for public consumption, his cheeks scarred, eye-sockets blue and scalp still swollen.

  He parks under the tall blue gum opposite Marantz’s front wall and leans on the video entryphone. The front gate buzzes, clicks open and he pushes through, crunches across the gravel courtyard and opens the front door. He slams it behind him and begins to descend the steep wooden staircase. He hobbles down the main flight to the mezzanine level, looks down on Marantz’s big sitting room, sees the fire lit and the tall windows closed and curtained. It is not home, but it is a sanctuary.

  ‘So,’ he says as he shakes Marantz’s hand. ‘Is this early or late?’

  ‘I was just sitting up reading. Why?’

  ‘No poker?’

  ‘No . . . No stomach for the fight. Luck is a tireless enemy.’

  De Vries chooses the position nearest the fire, sits heavily.

  ‘Drinking?’ Marantz asks.

  ‘Wine – better be wine.’

  Marantz fetches a bottle of Merlot and a saucer of biltong, places them at de Vries’ elbow. For a few minutes, they sit silently, almost in meditation, listening to the fire crackle, the wind in the line of trees outside the windows.

  Marantz looks up. ‘You saw the papers today?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll paraphrase; they like you. Admire how you saved the kid and killed the bad guy.’

  De Vries sighs. ‘I don’t care, John.’

  ‘I know you don’t. I wouldn’t have told you if you did.’

  De Vries empties his glass and refills it to the brim.

  ‘You read all the docket reports?’ he asks Marantz.

  ‘Yes. All of them. Several times.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, tell me I missed something. Tell me we fucked up completely and there’s a simple way we can make it all come together.’

  ‘Look – if there’s no forensics, there’s no forensics.’

  ‘There’s nothing. Never has been.’

  ‘Unless you make some up.’

  De Vries looks up at Marantz, searches his expression for irony, for evidence that he is joking; sees none.

  ‘There are nations,’ Marantz continues, ‘who build DNA databases, promise to destroy stuff after a few years, never to obtain it illegally, do the opposite, and there’s still never a match. It’s the way it is, especially with these people. You ask yourself: if you are going to cheat one way, why not cheat in another?’

  ‘Meaning . . . ?’

  ‘Steinhauer will walk. I guess if you can match hubris with ability, you’re pretty safe. And he has a sponsor somewhere, because just about everyone but you seems to be giving him a free ride.’

  ‘What do you mean, a sponsor?’

  ‘Someone powerful who watches out for him, perhaps? Influence can flow in both directions.’

  De Vries murmurs, ‘There’s at least one leak; those above wanted to stop the inquiry.’

  ‘These people operate on a different plane from you and me. But we have one advantage: we know they’re there.’

  De Vries frowns. ‘You always talk in riddles.’

  Marantz meets de Vries’ eye. ‘I’m not the one being disingenuous, Vaughn. You’re not here for no reason. You want to know what to do, but you’d better understand something: if you’ve come here, to me, knowing me as you do, then you already know what you want.’

  ‘I don’t understand that sentence either.’

  ‘Re-check your motives: coming to me before you decide your reaction?’

  De Vries drains his glass and tips the bottle again. Says, ‘I came for company.’

  ‘Get a cat.’

  ‘A sounding board.’

  ‘Sound off then.’

  ‘I’m drunk.’

  ‘No mitigation accepted,’ Marantz says. ‘I know what you want to do, and I agree. You just have to admit it to yourself and comprehend the consequences.’

  ‘And how,’ de Vries says bitterly, ‘do you know what I want to do?’

  Marantz stares at him.

  ‘Because it is what I have dreamed of, awake and asleep, for five long years.’

  ‘You know, after all this time, I quite like the name.’

  ‘It is my work name.’

  ‘You don’t want me to be Mrs February?’

  ‘No.’

  She sits up and leans over the foot-stool, blocking his view of the muted television. ‘Because as it is, only our friends know that I am the attractive wife of the hero in the newspapers, Warrant Officer Donald February.’

  ‘There is only one picture, and it is very dark so that you can hardly see me.’

  She squeezes herself onto the ottoman and begins to massage his shoulders from the front.

  ‘I can see you.’

  ‘But only because you know that I am there.’ He kisses her quickly on the cheek. ‘Anyway, it is safer for me, and it is safer for you, that people do not know me and do not see me. It is best that way.’

  ‘Safer?’

  ‘Safer, and easier. It means they can say my name. Sometimes, in the SAPS, it is better not to reveal everything about yourself. Most of them do not know who I am.’

  ‘Even your Colonel?’

  ‘Even him.’

  ‘But why would you not want to take credit for what you did?’

  Don turns away from her, leans back on the sofa, searches for a magazine on the side-table shelf.

  ‘You hate those magazines,’ she says, scolding. ‘What are you doing?’

  He turns back to her fast, sitting forward, holding her by her shoulders. He speaks slowly and marks out the sentences with his grip on her.

  ‘I killed a man. I killed him to save my boss. He is the first man I have killed and I never want to kill another. I am not a hero. There are things to boast about and show off to your friends about, and there are things never to be discussed. You hear me?’

  In the time it takes de Vries to shuffle to the bathroom, Marantz descends into melancholy. He feels charged by his involvement with de Vries’ case, but it cannot patch over the pain he suffers. It is the men who took his family against whom he should be plotting: the group in the Russian underworld who planned the destruction of his life – his family, his career, his mind. Dreams of vengeance dominate him; he seeks anything which might mitigate their intensity.

  De Vries slumps back into his chair, belches.

  ‘Welcome back.’ Marantz stands, fetches a second uncorked bottle of Merlot, places it beside de Vries; forgets his memories and immerses himself in another world, less agonizing.

  ‘You have eliminated going to the press, releasing what you know on the Internet?’ he asks.

  ‘Could prejudice later action, that’s the official line. It would probably just work as a lonely hearts ad for him.’

  ‘I agree. He outplayed everyone this time. No reason he won’t next time too.’

  ‘If there is a next time. Maybe this is the end?’

  ‘Don’t be naive,Vaughn. If there’s one thing your Dr Matimba should have told you: these people never stop. Especially if they think they’re God.’

  ‘He has answers for everything, then no answers for anything. He and his kak lawyer, Hopkins, they worked it perfectly. Then they close it down from above. Police Ministry, no less. SAPS brass couldn’t be happier. They’re still licking their wounds because it was one of their own who took those boys in the first place. Who’ll trust those kind, helpful bobbies ever again?’

  ‘Did you ever have those in South Africa?’

  ‘Maybe
not.’

  The fire spits, sends embers flying onto the flagstones. Marantz gets up, stamps them out, toes them back against the hearth.

  ‘So,’ he says. ‘What else have you thought?’

  ‘I’ve thought . . . How justice is an inexact science. How it sickens me to see Steinhauer walk away. I spent most of yesterday daydreaming of ways to trap him, hurt him, maim him, force him into confession, kill him. Pathetic, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s what happens when you rely only on twelve good men and true.’

  ‘Three judges for us.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘I’ve always believed that if you give up on that, you’re finished,’ de Vries states. ‘It’s stipulated and mandated and it forms the core of what you and I might call civilized society.’

  ‘A reporter asked Mahatma Gandhi what he thought of Western civilization. Do you know what he said?’ Marantz smiles.

  ‘What?’

  ‘“I think it would be a very good idea”. Structures and laws – what are they for? What purpose does it serve to revere them when they patently fail?’ Marantz goes on. ‘The evening we first met, in Bishopscourt, at that party, the only interesting thing you revealed is something you didn’t even tell me, something I read from you. A determination to get to the end. You see the end here, but you can’t reach it. How will you ever concentrate on anything else until you do?’

  ‘Your view of the end may be different from mine.’

  Marantz looks at him. ‘But it isn’t, is it,Vaughn?’

  De Vries listens to the crackle of the fire echo around tall walls and hard stone floor, feels a pocket of heat waft over him.

  ‘You cannot always rely on luck,’ Marantz says. ‘If you believe that what will be will be, then you are no more than flotsam. You have relinquished all control over your life.’ He looks at de Vries’ face, meets his eye. ‘I had control taken from me, and I drifted for five years. That was a mistake. Now I know what I have to do if I am to make headway. And I think you know that you cannot be passive any more. This is the time in your life you have waited for.’

  ‘I understand your motives, given what you have been through,’ de Vries says quietly. ‘If you could know, could find those responsible, if there were no other justice . . . But here – how can I know that?’

  ‘But you do know – you are only afraid to admit it. You are at a crossroads. I’m at your side,Vaughn, but I will not help you to make the first step. Once you have made it, whatever you decide, you need not be alone.’

  ‘I’m too tired and too drunk for this conversation.’

  ‘Men like us, we are haunted by injustice,’ Marantz says passionately. ‘The men who destroyed me loom over me in the dark and they are always out of my reach. Present, but untouchable.’

  De Vries looks up at him, wonders how one man’s delusion can be so like another’s.

  ‘And it leads – where?’ de Vries asks slowly.

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘And I can’t contemplate it. Not in the middle of the night.’

  ‘Frightening, isn’t it?’

  De Vries rocks forward, rising on the third arc.

  ‘I’m too pissed to be frightened and too tired to think. I’m going home while I can still focus.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,Vaughn. You’ll crash your fucking car before you get to the freeway.’

  ‘I’ve had practice.’

  ‘Just take the spare room and drive home tomorrow.’

  ‘No.’ He looks up at Marantz. ‘I have my house all to myself now. Going home is a pleasure I savour.’

  ‘If you get home.’

  ‘When,’ de Vries says, as he walks proudly to the staircase, ‘have you ever known me incapable?’

  De Vries wakes to hear his cellphone ringing. He is sitting upright, his neck locked; spasms shoot down his back. He reaches sideways to fumble on his bedside table, but his hand hits glass. He peels open sticky eyelids and realizes that he is still in his car. He feels in his pocket and pulls out the phone.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘In the morning, take a look at the email I just sent you. Transcript of an interview Steinhauer gave tonight. Tell me what you think.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Two thirty. Where are you?’

  ‘In my car.’

  ‘Still?’

  ‘Ja.’

  ‘Close to home?’

  De Vries looks out of the driver’s side window and sees his lawn under his tyres and his front door about five metres away.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, take care.’

  ‘I’ll make it.’

  De Vries, bleary-eyed, furry-mouthed, stares agape at his laptop screen, at the frozen picture of Nicholas Steinhauer smiling at the camera. He sits back in his study chair. His head throbs so hard, he feels the blood being sucked from behind his eyes. Only sporadic sleep has obliterated the incessant drumming, the increased heart-rate, the adrenalin of possibility. He has felt his mind reprogrammed so that what seemed impossible to him has become a likelihood. He stretches for his cellphone, just out of reach, fumbles with the small buttons, presses the speed-dial, notices the device shaking in his grip. The ring-tone stops. De Vries waits and hears nothing. He says: ‘A walk on the Mountain. I need the exercise.’

  He listens to a suggested rendezvous, replies: ‘Yes,’ and then, ‘Conversation . . . and resolution.’

  He disconnects and places the cellphone neatly at his right hand, contemplates returning to bed, considers a beer. Instead, he sits back in the chair, watches the screensaver send stars. Then he closes his eyes, concentrates only on the pain, feels it coursing through his body to his extremities; understands that the pain charges him, knows that if it leaves him at any time this day, he will lose all resolve.

  After the weekend, early on Monday morning, his cellphone rings by his ear. He had debated turning it off, disconnecting the home line, waiting until they came for him, but he has been awake for hours already, is grateful for something happening which is outside his brain.

  ‘Vaughn?’

  ‘Ja.’

  ‘Henrik. You need to get in here now.’

  ‘Thought I was on leave. What is it?’

  ‘Not on the phone. Just obey an order, for once. And quickly.’

  De Vries hangs up, swings out of bed, takes a long shower. He drives via his local Engen garage, fills up with petrol, buys a large, strong coffee and takes the high road into town. The morning is grey and dark and, although there are streaks of dirty sunshine on the water beyond the harbour, there is cloud over Lion’s Head – a sure sign of rain to come. He cuts across the southern end of town, drives in off the main drag and parks under the building in his usual spot, takes the elevator straight up to his floor. He walks towards his office, sees Don standing at his door.

  ‘We have to go up,’ Don tells him.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Steinhauer. Nicholas Steinhauer is dead. His house was burned down. Body in the wreckage. They’ve just identified him.’

  De Vries tilts his head, deep in thought.

  ‘When?’

  Don starts walking towards the stairs.

  ‘Let the Director tell us. I am probably not supposed to know.’

  De Vries follows him silently, each step an effort.

  Thulani’s office is busy. Seated behind his desk, General Thulani is attended by Julius Mngomezulu. Du Toit stands by the door, and behind him, de Vries can see two black men, sharply dressed. Du Toit beckons them in, gestures for them to stand with the be-suited men. As de Vries passes through the doorway, he hears the elevator bell announce its arrival on the top floor. He looks around to see Norman Classon striding up the corridor towards the office. He shakes du Toit’s hand and comes in.

  Thulani says: ‘To those of you standing, this will not take long. We have a serious problem. The body of Dr Nicholas Steinhauer was found in the early hours of this morning in his house in
Constantia. His body is seriously burnt and almost beyond recognition, and we must wait for a more detailed post-mortem to establish the actual cause of death. However, we have positive identification now, and the scene is entirely under our control. His house has been razed to the ground, presumed arson. It took the locals several hours to get the situation established and to work out why we should be contacted but, once we knew who the property belonged to, we hastened to establish ID and close down the scene from the press. The time of death has not been established, but the fire was reported at two thirty a.m. by neighbours.’

  ‘Accident?’ du Toit asks.

  ‘That,’Thulani pronounces gravely, ‘is the question which I will be asked. We need to be able to provide answers.’

  ‘And, if not, what motive?’ du Toit says.

  Thulani frowns at him.

  ‘The inquiry is just beginning. Until we can speak to others who knew the property, it is difficult to ascertain what might be missing. If robbery was the motive, doubtless we will find high-value items missing. This is why we have closed the scene tightly and we are making access to the public – and the press – impossible. Besides, access to the property is difficult even for the professionals as the structure has partially collapsed.’

  ‘Was he alone?’

  Thulani looks over to de Vries.

  ‘It appears so, Colonel. Did you expect otherwise?’

  ‘Nicholas Steinhauer kept his lawyers close.’

  Thulani smiles fleetingly. ‘You may be disappointed to hear that no lawyers have been found on site.’

  De Vries widens his jaw on reflex, checks himself, coughs.

  Thulani lowers his voice. ‘Let me be clear: I am separating this enquiry from your department, from this building entirely. In the light of the media interest there will be, I have asked Major Mhlawuli and Warrant Officer Qhwalela to be present here this morning’ – he indicates the suited duo – ‘to speak to each of you: Brigadier du Toit, Colonel de Vries and Warrant Officer February. When we are asked the inevitable questions, I want everything covered. You understand?’ He looks to du Toit and de Vries. They remain impassive. ‘I want total deniability,’ Thulani continues. ‘To be able to say that we have talked to the officers in charge of the Steinhauer inquiry and that they have no part in this – in any way.’