by Camilla Monk
Dominik was in no mood to say hi. Perhaps because his “brothers” had tried to clean him up mere hours ago. “Fok jou, ’Porho,” he croaked.
That earned him a reprimand and a little slap from the woman—on his good arm, indeed.
Isiporho shrugged. “I’d shoot him to teach him manners, but as you can see, it’s already been done.”
The old woman left Dominik’s side, whispering a few words in Afrikaans that I couldn’t understand, save for the word drink. She went to search a cupboard, from which she retrieved three glasses and a bottle of flashy green soda. Cream soda, in fact, according to the label. She wiped each glass with her sleeve before pouring soda in them. Isiporho accepted his drink. When it was March’s turn, he seemed conflicted but took the glass with a gentle smile. “Dankie.” Thank you.
I knew he wouldn’t drink it. The old woman trotted back to Dominik’s bed, chewing on another unintelligible sentence.
Isiporho toasted me with his glass and, in a conversational tone, asked March, “So, jy naai Dries se dogter?” So, you fuck Dries’s daughter?
I choked on my soda, inhaling some and coughing it out forcefully, while behind us, Dominik let out a weak groan and hissed an insult between his teeth.
March took the hit without flinching. Technically, he didn’t lie. He looked at his “brother” straight in the eye and said, “No.”
“Fokken liar!” Dominik spat, only to earn himself another slap from the woman I now strongly suspected to be his grandma.
Isiporho’s shoulders shook with quiet laughter.
“In any case, I doubt Dries brought us here to discuss my personal life,” March said, his tone suddenly a notch cooler.
I sipped my soda in silence, looking back and forth between those two. I didn’t want to miss a single breath of what would follow. Isiporho glanced at March and tipped his head to the plywood door. “Buite?” Outside?
When I moved to follow them, they both turned with an air of surprise.
“What?” I asked.
“You can wait here with our little ray of sunshine, Dominik, if you want. There’s plenty of Sparletta left,” Isiporho said, pointing at the soda bottle.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “No, thanks. I want to hear what you have to say.”
March’s features softened; the corners of his lips lifted in an apologetic smile, and I knew what would come next.
I held out an accusing finger. “Stop. Stop this. You’re about to biscuit me.”
He raised his palms in a pacifying gesture. “No . . . I have”—he paused, considering his next words under Isiporho’s incredulous gaze—“I have no secrets for you. You can follow us if you’d like.”
I’m not fluent in hit man nonverbal communication, but I’m fairly certain that the way Isiporho’s face pinched could be translated as Dude, where have your balls gone?
Regardless, he led us out and away from the house toward the wooden barrier enclosing the settlement, beyond which the highway stretched along the industrial area surrounding the airport.
“Malek, Beaunard, and Tjaard are dead,” Isiporho announced, all traces of mirth gone from his voice—fellow Lions, no doubt. “But that old chop Dikkenek is fine. They don’t know where he lives now, and since he’s retired, I doubt he’s their priority.”
“Where is he?” March asked.
“In Venice. He’s painting a house there. I didn’t get all the details, but it made no sense. Sounds like the sort of thing he’d do.”
“He’s a weirdo?” I asked.
Isiporho shrugged. “No worse than March, I suppose.”
“March isn’t weird.”
That prompted Isiporho to raise a dubious eyebrow at the interested party. “Dries showed me the website for that security business you set up in New York. Why the hell an ostrich?”
“It’s an emu,” March corrected with an aggravated sigh. “It’s completely different. I encourage you to check Wikipedia.”
Isiporho turned to me and raised his palms as if to say, See?
Well, that pic of an angry emu gracing the cover of March’s commercial brochure was indeed the subject of mild contention between him and Phyllis, because she had insisted they go for the emu when March’s favorite animal was the ostrich, whose long lashes and tranquil gaze he believed reflected a deep, contemplative personality. I didn’t dare contradict him, even though my own experience with ostriches at the Berlin Zoo had me convinced that they were in fact the skinheads of the animal kingdom: stupid, aggressive, and bald.
Anyway. We weren’t here to discuss March’s advertising strategy. “So that’s where we’re going, Venice? When do we leave the country?”
“Bi—” He held it back when I shot him a withering glare. “Island, all I want is for you to be safe.”
One of Isiporho’s large hands reached for my shoulder with the obvious intent to pat it. I dodged. It made him chuckle. “You’ll be going with Dominik and me. I’ll put you on a flight to New York. One stop in London and you’re home.”
I treated March to my best look of outrage. “Is that the plan? I wasn’t aware we were parting ways.”
When he answered, his gaze wouldn’t quite meet mine. “I’m sorry. I can’t take you with me. Phyllis will pick you up at Teterboro.”
I looked down at the dust covering our shoes, incipient anger swelling in my chest, buzzing in my ears. “Isiporho?”
He flashed me a lopsided grin, waiting for the rest.
“March and I need to fight; can you give us a moment?”
Once he was a few yards away, waving March good luck with his back to us, I attacked. “What did you agree to do for Dries?”
He stiffened. “Island, I don’t want you involved in his business.”
“You said we had to be honest with each other. You bit my head off for contacting Alex . . . but it’s always me who has to be an open book. You? You keep hiding stuff, and if I ask, you just clam up on me.”
“I believe you’re being very unfair, considering what I shared with you,” he lashed back.
The briefest of flushes warmed my cheeks, but I knew he didn’t mean that. It was true though: he had told me about the meaning of the scarification on his back and the code number the Lions had given him. And upon my asking, he’d revealed that the number my mother had tried to warn me about was in fact Anies’s own code.
I drew a tired sigh. “I’m sorry . . . I just don’t like it when you brush me off like that.”
The tight line of his mouth softened. “I promise to be careful. But this is something I must do. The Lions won’t leave Dries or any of his disciples in peace until either we’re all dead, or Dries is able to clear his name.”
“That’s the deal? You help him find who framed him so you won’t have to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life?”
“Hopefully.”
“What if you fail? Or if it turns out that Dries is involved after all?” I knew he wouldn’t answer that, so I moved closer and lowered my voice. “You’ll have to make the good-bye kiss worth it, in case we never see each other again.”
His lips quirked. “Not in public.”
March might have cared; I didn’t, especially after Isiporho had stated that he suspected the worst—or the best, depending. I rested my cheek against his chest and wrapped my arms around his waist. He still smelled a little of Pieter’s manly soap, and through soft cotton I could feel the promised land: pecs and springy chest hair. I rubbed my cheek deliberately. A low sigh of appreciation rewarded my efforts.
Even so, March’s walls were no easy siege. I let out a little huff of displeasure when his hands landed on my shoulders, maneuvering us apart. “Biscuit . . . not here.”
I resisted. “Let’s say you take care of keeping us alive, and I take care of the puzzle.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “The puzzle?”
“It’s not just about Dries. I want to know what really happened to that plane. Don’t you?”
He schooled his features into a poker face
, which I deemed a good sign because it meant he was trying to conceal genuine interest. “Where will you start?”
“With the data Colin sent you. Whoever outed Dries wants everyone’s attention focused on him. Now, if you’re certain he’s not the one who did it, I’m thinking that maybe, in all that data, there’s a trail of bread crumbs leading to someone else.”
His lips pursed.
“Plus Phyllis and Colin will help us—”
“No.”
“All right, Phyllis and Colin will help me.”
“Island . . .”
I straightened to stand like a soldier awaiting orders. “I know the rules. When you say keep quiet, I keep quiet. When you say stay back, I stay back. When you tell me not to touch a weapon, I don’t touch it.”
March inhaled sharply.
As I had hoped, this particular comeback derailed his implacable logic, which dictated that he’d say no again, and, if meeting any further resistance, would shift to caveman mode. His jaw worked silently as he came to realize that those were the very rules he’d set during our first adventure in Paris. In his eyes, some measure of admiration warred with mild outrage—guess he didn’t expect for me to steal his lines and turn them against him.
Eventually his forefinger landed on the tip of my nose, a last recourse he believed could keep me under control. “I see . . . I’m afraid, however, that you missed the memo.”
I pushed the finger away and slanted my eyes at him.
“Additional rules: You will not leave the hotel room. You’re not even allowed to go on the balcony.”
“Objection—”
“And no room service.”
I made a face. “Your program sounds a lot like a Norwegian prison.”
My protest was met with the cocking of a haughty eyebrow. “Which means one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world. I’d say this is exactly what you need.”
Dominik could walk but not without Isiporho’s help. Not only had he been shot twice in the arm and shoulder, but one of his ankles had been sprained badly during his escape. The old woman patted his cheek and sealed a lunch box for his journey. By then, I’d learned that she was, indeed, his grandma—well, Ouma, really—and she was actually nice but didn’t like to chat with strangers because she was missing most of her teeth.
Forced to hide his wounded comrade and himself somewhere he believed the Lions wouldn’t look for them, Isiporho had quite simply brought Dominik back home. My best guess was that the “cub” therefore behaved like a douchenozzle because the move didn’t sit well with him. Presumably for the same reasons March didn’t want to tell me about his own family: they’d both signed a pact with the devil to escape a life wasted in the gutter, and neither wanted to be reminded of where they came from.
When March put a hand on my shoulder to signal that we were leaving, the old woman held me back and took my hands in hers. She squeezed them and mumbled a short tirade, which she concluded with a sharp look in March’s direction.
He responded with an embarrassed smile. “Asseblief, moenie bekommerd wees nie, ek is nie so nie.” Please don’t worry, I’m not like that.
I smiled too and thanked her for her hospitality, because I had no idea what else to do.
“What did she say?” I asked March as we walked out.
Next to us, Isiporho snickered, and Dominik made every effort to avoid my gaze. March translated nonetheless. “She said that you shouldn’t stay with me, that you think I’m nice now, but I’m nothing but a gangster and”—he cleared his throat—“when you become pregnant, I will leave you, and you won’t have a nice home.”
I blushed, cringed . . . and eventually chortled. “It’s okay. I’ll ask a PI to hunt you down for palimony. I know this agency in New York; I think the name’s Struthio.”
One mischievous dimple poked March’s cheek as he said, “I’ll keep it in mind.”
On our way down the settlement’s main alley, Isiporho kept staring back and forth between us with that deceptive grin of his. “The daughter and the gunsteling dissipel,” he finally said. “Dries’s ulcer must be torturing him.”
Limping at Isiporho’s side, his arm over his shoulder, Dominik shot a dirty look at March and muttered something along the lines of “Fokken disgrace.” Since he looked still young, I wondered if he was going through some sort of fanboy phase when it came to Dries—you know what they say about new converts—or if he just took everything March did personally. At any rate, I was now privy to the fact that Dries suffered from a well-deserved stomach ulcer, and that it was common knowledge that March used to be his favorite. To be honest, I suspected he remained so, even after the events of Tokyo.
I asked March, “Is that why the Lions left you alone all this time, even though you were technically some sort of defector? Because you were the teacher’s pet?”
“Possibly,” he said.
“Too nosy for your own good,” Isiporho tutted with a glance my way.
I ignored his taunting. “What about Anies? What did he think of that?”
Isiporho barked a laugh. March shot him a look of warning, one he gleefully ignored. “You mean after the brotherhood had lost half a dozen good men, and Dries shat all over the code and said ‘Oh, he’s my boy; let it go?’”
I cringed. “Yeah, after that, I guess.”
A couple of mints made it from March’s pocket to his mouth, only to be mercilessly crushed between his molars. Isiporho patted Dominik’s back, his eyes never leaving us. “Let’s just say that Dominik and I didn’t get the helicopter. That’s VIP treatment.”
VIP, huh? I was starting to understand the roots of Dominik’s discontent. March wasn’t just your average defector. To the Lions, he not only embodied betrayal but also acted as a living testament of Dries’s weakness. Dominik’s idol was fallible, and every breath March took was a reminder of that. Anies, however, I had an inkling that his hand wouldn’t waver.
“So Anies wants March’s head to make some sort of point,” I said somberly as we reached our SUV.
March’s brow creased, but he didn’t comment.
Isiporho sighed. “There’s that . . . but, honestly, Dries’s had it coming for a very long time.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged. “Not your business. Not even mine, in fact.”
A telling statement from a man who seemed to otherwise stick his nose everywhere. I rubbed my forehead, fighting off a faint headache and, all the while, sorting my thoughts. Did he mean that Anies had been planning to get rid of Dries for a while, and the plane bombing was a convenient opportunity to carry out that plan?
I was distracted by March’s hand on the small of my back, steering me to the passenger door. He went to open the rear door so Isiporho could help Dominik inside. Once we were in the car, March behind the wheel and our companions of misfortune in the back seat, I fastened my seat belt and steeled my voice to play mini-me. “The car only starts when everyone has their seat belt on.” My gaze fell on the stereo’s screen. “And I hope you like Dolly Parton.”
As I expected, a smile of approval lit up March’s face, and I must confess, I felt a tinge of pride when I heard the twin clicks coming from the back seat.
From what I gathered, Dominik had “acquaintances” he could count on to provide discreet access to the tarmac. We met with a bunch of sketchy dudes in an abandoned warehouse that was part of the industrial area adjacent to the airport. The proffered deal was that they got to keep the SUV and all the weapons that weren’t in the magic suitcase, except the Twitter bazooka, which Isiporho wanted for himself. March noted that the transaction was unsatisfying. He pulled out his phone, launched the calculator, and several minutes of tough negotiation ensued, which resulted in Isiporho agreeing to sign a lease on the Twitter bazooka with an upfront payment of 30,000 rand and the gangsters pledging to remit 37 percent net of tax on all profits coming from the sale of the car and weapons if such sale occurred within two weeks. If not, they’d have to
pay March 30 percent of the goods’ market value.
He warned the gangsters that he’d show up to collect if they failed to honor the preferential deal he was offering, and he gave them a glimpse of the suppressed gun under his jacket, which achieved to convince them that he was absolutely serious. In the end, two guys took off with the vehicle, after we received a loyalty card for crystal meth promising very attractive rewards for any purchase above fifty grams. The remaining thug, a teen wearing a flashy bandana printed with the American flag, guided us through the industrial area, where he met with a man whose turquoise jacket identified him as an airport employee.
A wad of cash changed hands.
After that, the newcomer took over. Through streets, parking lots, gates, and hangars, more handshakes were exchanged, along with a couple of bills every time, and soon we were standing on the tarmac of the cargo terminal. I prayed the few people in the distance wouldn’t pay too much attention to Dominik’s bandaged arm, Isiporho’s bloody shirt, or even the large black case in which the Twitter bazooka rested. They didn’t, and, his work done, our guide slipped away without a word.
Isiporho directed his gaze to a row of aging planes and winked at March. “Don’t hold it against me; I was in a hurry.”
He welcomed the comment with a good-natured smile. “I’ve flown in worse.”
Agreed, anything would do as long as it got us away from the wrath of their brothers.
Isiporho walked to a blue plane next to which a pilot wearing a pair of sunglasses and crocodile boots awaited, a cigarette in hand. He threw it to the ground and mumbled a series of syllables punctuated by soft clicks of his tongue. Xhosa, presumably.
“Well”—Isiporho smiled—“that’s our flight; we’d better hurry.”
I shook his hand, but when I tried to offer the same to Dominik, he ignored it and locked eyes with March instead. Sweat beading on his brow, the “cub” swallowed and spoke in a low, threatening voice. “I failed, and I can’t serve him for now. So you go, and you die for him if you have to. You hear me? You pay your debt, and you die for him.”
That was the kind of grasp Dries held on his disciples, I realized: complete trust and devotion, through good and bad, and to the bitter end. A marriage of sorts.