by Tony Park
Fortunately, the box of matches in his backpack had not been tampered with and he was able to light a fire in a modest pile of dead wood he’d been able to scrounge without venturing too far from his camp site. This part of the documentary was being filmed in a privately managed concession outside the Moremi Game Reserve, on the southern fringe of the reserve.
‘I wouldn’t be allowed out at night by myself inside the game reserve, on the other side of the river, or to light a fire like I’ve just done, in the middle of nowhere. But these flames will keep the lions away – so the theory goes.’
‘Poor bugger. He didn’t look too happy,’ said John Little, the New Zealand pilot of the helicopter as they lifted away from the lone man on the ground. Little was the antithesis of his name; he was tall and broad shouldered and very easy on the eye, Cheryl-Ann thought.
‘He’ll be fine,’ Cheryl-Ann said. ‘He’s done this sort of thing before.’
‘Better him than me,’ John said. ‘If the lions don’t get him the crocs will. Fancy taking the scenic route back to Xakanaxa?’
‘Sure,’ Cheryl-Ann said. She could play the hard arse until the cows came home – she had to be tough to get along in the cutthroat world of television – but in truth she was dreading the confrontation with Stirling and Tracey. This had all the elements of a class-A fuck-up. Most stars she knew screwed around when on tour, but she’d believed Sam up until now when he’d said that he only went for single girls. What had he been thinking going off into the dark with Tracey?
‘Nice giraffe down there,’ John said, pointing off to the right.
‘Really?’ She had a shot list a mile long to get through in the next three days so she and Ray and Gerry would not be sitting on their backsides while Coyote Sam lazed around his camp site, starving. ‘Light’s pretty good now. Let’s get some giraffe shots, Ray.’
‘Yes ma’am,’ replied the cameraman.
‘Can you take us lower?’
‘Not a problem. You’re the guys with the greenbacks,’ John grinned.
Cheryl-Ann felt her stomach lurch as the Kiwi – she liked the sound of that – brought the chopper around the giraffes in a wide arc, losing altitude as he set them up for the shot, with the sun behind them. He was professional and courteous, and had obviously worked with film crews and professional photographers before. Plus, he had a nice arse in those shorts.
‘Nice,’ she said into her microphone.
‘Thanks,’ John said, glancing back over his shoulder at her again. ‘Shit!’
A warning siren blared loudly above the background hum of the engines, filling the helicopter’s passengers with instant fear.
‘What’s that?’ Cheryl-Ann asked.
Little ignored them, his fingers roving across the panel in front of him. ‘Mayday, mayday, mayday …’
Sam checked his watch for the fourth time in twelve minutes. It was still three minutes to go until seven o’clock. It wasn’t that he was scared of the lion – it still sounded a long way off – but the hyena seemed much closer.
Woooo-oooop, it called again. Another replied. Sam stoked the fire and tossed on another undersized piece of wood. The bundle he had collected had diminished quickly, as much of it was rotten, reduced to the weight of cardboard by termites. He doubted there would be enough to keep the fire going all night. Tomorrow he would have to look for a log, and remember to check for snakes. Stirling had stopped the Land Rover on the first day beside a fallen tree and they had all wondered what he was looking at, until the rock python raised its huge head and tested the air with its tongue. ‘We often stop here for sundowners and some of the tourists sit on that tree,’ he’d said, not attempting to hide his patronising tone.
Sam unzipped the tent, which he had kept closed since he erected it, in case anything wanted to slither or crawl inside. He knew that during the night he should keep the flap zipped closed, no matter how hot it got, or what he heard going on outside. He checked his watch again, sighed, then pressed the record button on the camera.
‘As long as I stay zipped inside my tent tonight I should be OK.’ He could see his face in the flip-out LED screen, which was reversible so that he could check his image while the camera recorded. The camera had a night-vision function and his features were captured in atmospheric but slightly blurry lime-green light. ‘That’s a hyena you can hear in the distance, and they’ve been known to rip into tents if they smell food inside. Luckily,’ he laughed for effect, ‘my crew hasn’t left me any food to eat, so I should be safe from the hyenas. As for those lions you heard earlier, they hunt by sight and sound, much the same way as your house cat does. If they see something moving, they’ll investigate and pounce on it. However, they don’t have great depth perception so when they see my tent, the theory is they’ll think it’s a solid object, like an anthill or a rock. If I unzip and stick my head out to take a peek at them, they might just jump on me, like a cat pouncing on a mouse. Difference is, these cats can weigh in at around six hundred pounds. Now I know how a mouse feels.’
He switched off the camera and checked his watch. He wondered if his monologues would look as lame on TV as they sounded to him now. One thing about Cheryl-Ann, she had a good eye for editing and timing. She’d make him look good, even if she made him feel like shit for the rest of the trip. It was finally seven o’clock. He rummaged in his rucksack for the satellite phone and slipped it out of its black nylon case. Cheryl-Ann’s number was pre-set, so he scrolled down and pressed send.
The phone rang.
Outside the lion called and was answered by another. Great, Sam thought, stereophonic death.
The phone rang.
‘Come on,’ he said, checking his watch.
‘The service you are calling is not responding. Please try again later,’ a transcontinental-accented female voice echoed from the other end of the line.
Having drinks by the river, he presumed. He wondered what the mood was like between Cheryl-Ann and Stirling and Tracey. Perhaps they were locked in a heated debate right now about whether to hang, draw or quarter him. Sam dialled the number again.
He drummed his fingers on the plastic-coated floor of the tent while he waited for Cheryl-Ann to answer. Nothing.
FIVE
Sonja clapped her hands. ‘Shoo!’ she commanded the trio of tancoloured mangy African dogs. The heavily pregnant wart-hog didn’t pause to acknowledge her intervention, and continued snuffling in the overturned rubbish bin as she had been when the dogs were nipping at her hindquarters.
‘Eish, you must be eating for four or five, my girl,’ Sonja said to the grunting, farting creature as she passed it.
Sonja walked on, through the dusty car park of the small shopping centre near the entrance to the Chobe Safari Lodge. Chipchase had done a good job of cleaning and stitching the holes in her thigh. The skin was pink, there was no blood, and while her leg still ached she had been well enough to walk on it by the second day. She still hadn’t confirmed to him that it was she who had tried to assassinate the President of Zimbabwe, although she hadn’t denied it and he had stopped probing her for more information for the time being.
She wanted to buy some food for the road, and to cook a meal for him in part payment for his kindness. Also, despite his offering her the use of his laptop and mobile phone to check emails, she wanted to do that in privacy, from an anonymous computer.
Near the Choppies supermarket was a bureau de change with half a dozen internet computers. ‘Fifteen pula fifteen minutes,’ the bored African woman behind the counter said to her. Sonja sat down on a buckled plastic chair and opened the browser. She went to her Hotmail account and logged in as sallytravelling. Apart from the usual spam there was one message from steeleman1043@yahoo.
Where are you? read the subject line of the email. She clicked on it and the full message was equally brief and to the point. No answer on your satphone. Advise locstat asap. Too bad about the job, but I have another. M.
‘Too bad?’ she said out loud. An Afr
ican man two terminals down looked at her and she smiled an apology. She wasn’t sure she wanted her locstat – her location – posted anywhere on the internet. She doubted the Zimbabwean CIO possessed state-of-the-art cyber monitoring equipment, but perhaps they had friends in North Korea or China who did. She hit the reply button and typed: Satphone US. I’m heading for home. You know where to find me.
Her satellite phone really was useless, as it had been squashed at some point during her escape. She had bought a cheap phone and a prepaid SIM card at an Indian shop in Kasane on her walk the day before, but she couldn’t risk giving that to Martin, as it would be easily traceable.
Sonja looked over her shoulder to make sure she was still alone in the bureau de change and logged into her Channel Islands bank account. True to his word – and she had no reason to doubt him – Martin had deposited her share of the first payment for the Zimbabwean job. It was some small comfort that she had received a reasonable payment for nearly losing her life. No matter what her daughter thought of her as a mother, Emma would inherit enough to see her way through university, plus a very tidy nest egg. Sonja gave a small nod of satisfaction as she double-checked the balance and closed out of her account and logged off. If she’d lived in England for every second of Emma’s childhood they would have barely scraped by. Standing, she painfully stretched her injured leg, then paid the girl behind the steel grille. Her work had its risks, she thought as she walked out into the sun and towards the supermarket, but she might have died from the inside out if she hadn’t fallen in with Martin after the army.
The Choppies supermarket hadn’t been there when she’d last stayed at the safari lodge with Stirling. It was a sign of progress, an indicator that Botswana really was doing well. If you could afford to shop in airconditioned comfort and buy fruit from the Cape and seafood from Mozambique, then your government was doing something right. She ordered a kilogram of fillet steak at the butchery counter and bought some ice cream for dessert. She paid cash for the food, not wanting to leave a paper trail by using a credit card, and stopped in at the liquor store for a bottle of South African red – a nice Alto Rouge – a six-pack of St Louis beer, and a copy of the Daily News.
Sonja walked back into the Safari Lodge, through reception and along the edge of the verandah that took in a spectacular view of the Chobe River, whose shiny, still surface was broken here and there by grassy emerald islands, in turn punctuated with the dark dots of grazing buffalo and elephant. Waiters doted on tourists lounging around the swimming pool and children splashed in the clear waters. Not a hundred kilometres away was a country where people starved and died of cholera. That was Africa, Sonja thought.
When she got back to the camp site she shooed a pair of vervet monkeys off Chipchase’s camping table. She heard snoring from inside the campervan and wondered how the man could sleep in the mobile coffin in the heat of the day. She’d slept in his hammock, a mosquito net suspended above her from a tree, soothed to slumber by the grunt of the hippos in the Chobe and glimpses of stars through the riverine bush canopy above her.
She eased herself into the safari lounger, grateful to take the weight off her leg, but pleasingly achey from the walk. She couldn’t afford to lose muscle tone, even if it hurt a bit during the recovery. Sonja took another big gulp of her fast-warming beer and opened the newspaper.
BDF, POLICE HELP SEARCH FOR ZIM ASSASSIN shouted the headline. She frowned as she read.
The Botswana president said that while he had not always agreed with his Zimbabwean counterpart’s policies and politics there was no excuse for someone to try and kill a head of state.
Sonja snorted. For years the dinner-party conversation around the world had been ‘Why hasn’t someone simply killed him?’
Police sources said a description of the alleged assassin had been circulated to them and the Botswana Defence Force, although the identikit picture would not be released to the media.
‘Not surprising,’ Sonja said softly. However, the news that the president had nearly been offed by a woman would be too salacious to be kept quiet for too long. It would make travelling harder for her, but not impossible.
Page three of the Daily News led with a story sourced from the Botswana president’s spokesman admitting a lack of progress in talks with the Namibian and Angolan governments to increase flows from the recently completed dam on the Okavango River. Diplomatic efforts to stop the dam being built had failed and the governments that had part funded the project were pointing to the severe drought as the reason why the impact on the Okavango Delta was so far more drastic than had been predicted. The final stage of the project, the newspaper reported, would soon be completed once the hydro-electric power station associated with the project was commissioned.
Sonja turned her head when she heard the creak of the Land Cruiser’s rear springs. The rear cargo door opened and Sydney Chipchase poked his head out.
‘Afternoon. Or is it still morning?’ he said, blinking.
‘Too much Bushmills last night?’ They had both stayed up late and Sonja had enjoyed blotting out the events of the recent and distant past for a few hours. The stories they’d told had been funny ones, from their army days, and she’d told him a little, very little, of her time growing up in Botswana.
Sydney looked over Sonja’s shoulder at the newspaper article about the dam. ‘What do you think about that?’
Sonja shrugged. ‘I know people need electricity, but I can’t help thinking there’s more to this than meets the eye. Mines need lots of water. This dam could destroy the Okavango Delta for what? So some more people can get satellite TV and some politicians can line their pockets with kickbacks from the companies that will really benefit from damming the river.’
Chipchase nodded. ‘I visit the construction site often, to minister to the workers and their families. It’s provided a lot of employment for a poor region in these tough financial times.’ He helped himself to one of the beers still in the plastic bag on the table. ‘I’ve got to leave tomorrow, Sonja. I’m heading south to Francistown. Can I give you a lift?’
‘You know the cops will be looking for me at the roadblocks.’
Chipchase nodded. ‘They’ll be looking for a solo woman, not a missionary couple.’
She laughed. ‘I don’t know if I can play the part of a Godbotherer’s wife.’
‘You played the part of an IRA sympathiser.’
She knew she shouldn’t rise to his bait, but she couldn’t help herself. There had been too many whispers, too much speculative bullshit after she’d returned from Northern Ireland. ‘I was told to get close to the quartermaster who supplied the explosives for the school bus bombing. I did that.’
Sydney lowered himself into his camp chair and took a sip of his beer. ‘And Martin Steele hung you out to dry.’
She didn’t like him making suppositions about Martin either. Chipchase was an intelligence officer who fought his war from behind a desk. ‘We pushed the boundaries, yes … even for the Det.’
‘The word was you slept with Byrne. Is that true?’
‘That’s none of your fucking business, Sydney.’
He nodded. ‘Aye. You’re right. I’m interested, though, from a professional and historical point of view. You were probably closer to the fighting in Northern Ireland than any military woman ever was. Didn’t you feel Steele was using you, as a woman?’
Sonja shook her head. ‘Why do men have to paint us as victims or, worse, as helpless pawns? I got close to Byrne, yes, and I found out that his brother was the brains behind the bus bombing.’
‘The ends justified the means?’
‘Get your mind out of the gutter, Sydney. It was war, and I fought it the way I thought it needed to be fought.’
‘He was a killer, Sonja – as guilty as his brother was. He supplied the explosives and he must have known what they were going to be used for.’
Chipchase could never understand what had gone on between her and Danny Byrne, or between Danny and his
brother. ‘I was able to get close to Danny because I knew where he was coming from. He was a guy who’d grown up in a war, on the side of the minority that thought it could never win. He grew up in an environment where killing made you a man, and where those who carried guns were seen as peacemakers and patriots. I grew up in the same world. That’s how I got to him.’
‘And that,’ Sydney said, pausing to drink some more beer, ‘is how you set him up to be assassinated by the SAS.’
SIX
The road from Kazungula to Francistown was one of the most boring in Africa, and only the potholes provided a distraction from the dull brown bush and dry yellow grass that flanked the shimmering river of tar that stretched endlessly into the distance.
Chipchase played AC/DC on his iPod, fed through the Land Cruiser’s radio speakers. When ‘Highway to Hell’ blasted forth Sonja told him she thought it an odd choice for a missionary.
‘It reminds me of my good old days as a sinner and gives me a reference point for how far I’ve travelled.’
She smiled, but she had too much on her mind and small talk wasn’t her forte. She was heading for a confrontation. The safest place for her to hide was at Xakanaxa, and that would mean seeing Stirling. Chipchase’s gentle but persistent questioning about her days in the army had brought back memories she’d fought for a long time to suppress. She knew that the more she thought about the events in Northern Ireland, the quicker she would reopen that particular wound. Would seeing Stirling again heal her, or kill what was left of her soul for good? A month earlier, while still in the UK, she had succumbed, over a couple of glasses of wine, to a simmering urge to look for Stirling on Facebook. She’d found him and been quietly ecstatic to see his status was listed as ‘single’. It had taken all her self-control not to message him or try to add him as a friend. She’d known she would soon be headed for Africa and she had wanted to surprise him, rather than give him the option of an easy rejection via the internet. She couldn’t quite decide whether her strategy smacked of bravery or idiocy.