by Tony Park
She tittered and put the end of the stethoscope on his chest. ‘You still have a heart.’
He laughed. She unzipped the little black bag. ‘What’s in there?’
‘Oh, just some special doctor things. Nothing to hurt you, Bruce. Big strong man like you . . .’
From the bag she took out an eye mask; it looked like the kind they gave you on airlines to sleep on night flights. ‘You want me to wear that?’
‘What you can’t see can’t hurt you, Bruce.’ Sally leaned over the bed and her small breasts rested against his chest. Bruce smiled.
*
Jorge Silva checked his phone. The SMS from Sally, the hooker, simply said In. That told him she had bypassed the nurse on duty and was completing her mission.
He had tailed the Land Rover with Kerry Maxwell in it from the hospital car park. The woman had Eli Johnston with her and Jorge followed them to a bed and breakfast place in Steiltes, an up-market suburb of Nelspruit high in the hills above the city. The American got out and waved goodbye. Jorge sent an SMS to Sally, giving her the address. She would deal with Johnston the same way she was dealing with Bruce Maxwell right now.
He followed the woman out of Nelspruit and through the plantation forest–covered hills between White River and Hazyview. They were passing through a stretch of banana farms. Jorge had been a sugar cane farmer with a property at Hectorspruit, in the south, but he had gone bankrupt and his wife had left him thanks to his gambling addiction.
Jorge liked wildlife, but he had looked at the large number of rhinos wandering the national park and the insane amount of money that was being paid for horn, and he had come up with a plan.
Security was tight and getting tighter at the park, but a white South African farmer of Portuguese descent who visited the park nearly every weekend and sometimes during the week attracted only the most cursory of checks from the security men and women on the gate. He knew most of them on a first-name basis.
Jorge had personally killed three rhinos on his own in the past, his rifle hidden under a mound of cooler boxes and luggage in the back of his vehicle, but it had become too risky to carry on like that – the security checks had intensified, even for him, and sometimes there were sniffer dogs on the gate.
In response to the increased security, one Sunday afternoon he had taken a drive in the park and then detoured onto one of the no-entry roads. These roads were used by national parks rangers to patrol the unseen parts of Kruger, and to fight fires. Out of sight and a few hundred metres from the main road that led to Crocodile Bridge gate, he had got out of his car and started to dig.
In the deep hole he’d buried a big, one-hundred-litre cooler box, and into that he had placed two disassembled rifles, a .375-calibre Czech hunting rifle and an AK-47 he had taken as a souvenir from his days fighting in Angola nearly thirty years earlier. He had wrapped them in oil-soaked rags and left a good supply of ammunition for each weapon, then closed the cooler box, covered it with plastic bin liner bags for extra protection, and filled in the hole. He had placed twigs and leaves and a big rock on top of the cache and marked the location with his handheld GPS.
On three successive trips Jorge had brought shooters with him – Mozambicans who had worked on his farm. He chose those who had served in the military during the Mozambican civil war, or those who had grown up in the bush and knew a thing or two about tracking and poaching. He’d told the security guards on the gate that he was rewarding his workers, giving them their first ever visit to the Kruger Park, for a weekend. These visits had coincided with the full moon, the hunter’s moon.
When Jorge had checked into his accommodation, either at Malelane Camp or Crocodile Bridge, he had done so alone. He had left his farm workers at the site of the cache, with a mobile phone.
Jorge would then spend the afternoon driving around the park. He rarely had to venture far from where his rifles and his trigger men were waiting; there were many white rhino in this part of Kruger. When Jorge found a suitable specimen – he was a man of principles so he mostly tried to find an old bull with a big horn, rather than a female with a calf – he would return, collect his shooter, and then drive him to a spot near where he had seen the rhino.
Jorge would then leave the men there, and head to his accommodation unit. While Jorge made his braai, drank his beer and his brandy and Coke and chatted to his fellow campers about how lekker the bush was and how terrible was the problem of rhino poaching, his erstwhile farm worker would be following the chosen rhino through the bush, waiting until it was far from any road where a ranger on patrol might see them. The man would then kill the rhino, take its horn, and then return to the place where the cooler box was buried. The weapon would be cleaned, disassembled and reburied, and the horn wrapped up and placed in a backpack. The next morning, just after the gates opened at dawn, Jorge would go and collect the poacher and his booty. It was a good system and it worked well.
That was, until Fidel Costa got wind of what Jorge was up to.
One Sunday, Jorge returned to the site of his buried weapons and walked into an ambush. Four poachers, heavily armed and led by a dapper-looking man in civilian clothes, were waiting for him. His farm worker was tied and gagged on the ground near the freshly unearthed cooler box. Jorge had been marched deeper into the bush at gunpoint and told to sit on a log.
Fidel had told him, as he sat waiting to die, that his days as a freelance poacher were over. The good news, Fidel told Jorge, was that if he started working for him taking rhinos, he could keep his life, and still earn good money. Jorge really couldn’t refuse, although he had not willingly signed up for the extra jobs Fidel expected of him, like this one.
Jorge couldn’t have grabbed Kerry Maxwell in the hospital car park – there was too much lighting and security, and she’d had an ex-Navy SEAL with her. His plan was to follow her and take her somewhere along her route – he assumed she was heading back to Hoedspruit where, he had been briefed, she was staying with Baird, the veterinarian. It was a long drive and he guessed she would stop somewhere on the way.
The R40 came to a T-junction on the outskirts of Hazyview, and Kerry, with Jorge behind her, followed the main road, to the left, towards Hoedspruit. Hazyview had grown in a rapid, ramshackle way in the past twenty years, from little more than a couple of farm stalls and a small supermarket to a bustling jumble of low-rise malls, shops and roadside businesses.
The Maxwell woman slowed, as if searching for something, and turned right onto the R536 and then left into Hazyview Junction, a new shopping mall that hadn’t been there the last time Jorge had been to the town.
She parked as close as she could to the Wimpy, which was still open, and Jorge stopped his Volkswagen Amarok a few spaces away. Kerry spoke to a car park guard, then went into the burger place. The same guard sauntered over to Jorge, who lowered his driver’s side window and lit a cigarette.
‘I will check your car nicely, boss,’ the young man said.
Jorge shook his head. ‘I’m staying with my bakkie, waiting for someone.’ He reached across into the footwell of the passenger side of the Amarok and picked up a couple of empty Coca-Cola cans and the wrapper off a Pick n Pay pie. ‘But take these to the bin and I’ll give you five rand.’
‘Sure, boss.’
When the guard took the rubbish Jorge opened the glove compartment and took out a bicycle spoke he had brought with him for just such an eventuality.
Chapter 15
Graham was bored, and a little drunk and maudlin.
He had brought a sixpack of Black Label lager with him to Ukuphila with the intention of having a few beers when he finished work, then getting a lift home to Raptor’s View. Things hadn’t gone according to plan.
Desmond Hennessy, the eccentric old man who owned Ukuphila, had gone to a wedding in Hazyview, and Silke, the German volunteer who had been at the wildlife orphanage long enough for Des to trust her as a part-time manager, was at the clinic. She’d come down with severe flu symptoms in the afternoo
n and Graham had ordered her to go and get a malaria test. Silke had tested negative but was feeling terrible, so Graham had told her to go home and assured her that he would look after the place until Des got back from the wedding dinner.
After operating on the wild dog and seeing Kerry off to Nelspruit, Graham had tended to a Bateleur eagle. It had been brought into Ukuphila by a South African National Parks honorary ranger, Dave Corlett, who had been on his way to the Kruger Park to do his weekend duty when he’d found the bird under a powerline outside of Hoedspruit.
‘Looks like he flew into an electricity cable,’ Dave had said. Graham occasionally played a round of golf at the Hoedspruit Air Force Base course, which was open to civilian members, and Dave was a regular on the greens and in the clubhouse. He had emigrated to South Africa after retiring from the police in the UK, and he and his wife had a house on Raptor’s View estate. Honorary rangers were part-timers who did volunteer work in South Africa’s national parks, easing the load on the fulltime staff. The beautiful eagle had escaped electrocution, but it had broken a wing.
Graham got up, turned off the television in the office – there was nothing on except 7de Laan in any case – and decided to go outside for a walk. He took his last beer with him, husbanding it by taking only the tiniest of sips.
It was a nice night out. He wondered how Kerry was doing. She had sent him a message to let him know she was driving back from Nelspruit.
He was concerned about her driving at night so he called her and she answered, on speaker. ‘Hi, Graham, yes, I’m still alive.’
‘It’s not you, it’s my Land Rover I’m worried about.’
‘You’re all heart.’
‘That’s the first time anyone’s ever said that to me.’ He laughed. Graham explained what had happened to Silke. ‘Can you come by Ukuphila and pick me up? Des should be home from his function by the time you get here.’
‘Sure, no problem. See you soon.’ Kerry ended the call.
A hyena whooped, and for want of any other plan and to take his mind off females – human ones at least – he walked towards the enclosure where a motley clan, of sorts, had been thrown together by circumstance.
Des had a varied collection of animals and birds. Some were orphans that had been brought in by farmers or the local nature conservation authorities, others had been involved in accidents outside the national park and adjoining game reserves. Des’s commitment to the natural environment was unquestionable; he would rail like an old-time preacher spouting fire and brimstone sometimes, literally frothing at the mouth when he told visiting tourists and school groups about the perils facing wildlife in the twenty-first century.
Much of the content of Des’s messages about habitat loss, poaching and pollution was lost on most tourist visitors however, who were probably only there to pat the resident cheetah, Roxy, but Des liked to think that occasionally someone took notice and, even better, took some positive action towards conservation.
Graham looked through the wire fence into Roxy’s enclosure, but she was asleep, which was normal for a cheetah at night.
Jamu, the orphaned leopard, was a different cat altogether. He paced up and down as Graham passed him, and bared his fangs. Jamu, in Graham’s opinion, should not have been at Ukuphila. Although Des had raised Jamu from a cub, Graham was sure that, given the slightest chance, the leopard would have clamped his jaws tight around his owner’s neck and suffocated him and then fed on him.
Des maintained that Jamu couldn’t be released into the wild, and in theory he was probably right. Jamu had been captive-bred, at a small private petting zoo that had since closed down. Such places were thankfully going out of vogue in South Africa. There was no place in Africa, in Graham’s view, for captive-bred lions, leopards or any other cats, for that matter.
Graham paused and watched as Jamu reached out with his right front paw and touched the single strand of electrified wire that ran at ankle height along the leopard’s side of the enclosure fence. Jamu snatched his paw back. He was, as was his habit several times each day, checking to see if the current was on. Des had a back-up generator in case the mains power went out. Graham couldn’t imagine how many thousands of times Jamu had tested the fence. He had no doubt that the day the cat found that wire dead, he would scale the chain-link fence in a few short bounds and then crawl over the three high-voltage strands at the top of the fence.
The whooping of the hyenas intensified as Graham got closer to them and they picked up his scent.
‘Hello, you bunch of ugly, slobbering, stinking misfits,’ he called to them. ‘Yes, yes, yes, I love you all.’
They crowded along the fence as Graham walked past them and around the side to the first of two sliding gates. The hyenas followed him, showing their excitement with tails raised like bushy feather dusters.
‘Howzit, my beauties.’
Graham took out the orphanage’s set of master keys and unlocked the padlock on the first gate, opening it then pulling it closed behind him. He slid the lock into position, but didn’t re-lock it.
When he undid the second gate and walked into the enclosure, the hyenas crowded around him, sniffing and nipping at him. The youngest, Jade, started nipping at his ankle.
‘Hey!’ Graham swung around and grabbed Jade under her forearms, lifting her up in a bear hug. He held her back to him so she couldn’t reach around and bite him. He lowered his face to her smelly fur, placed his mouth over her ear and bit down hard. He growled as he spun in a circle and shook her ear in his teeth as she yelped.
The others in the clan cackled and whooped with joy at the spectacle of Graham teaching the cheeky youngster a lesson. He spat out fur and tossed Jade from his arms, sidestepping to stay clear of her.
Graham hadn’t been cruel to Jade, he had simply treated her like one hyena would another – though nowhere near as painfully. He sat down on the ground and the matriarch of the small clan, Gina, came up to him. She sniffed him, from just a few centimetres away, and her calmness washed over the group, who milled around Graham.
‘Hello, my girls.’ He reached out a closed fist and Gina sniffed, then licked it.
He marvelled at them, at their close-knit family with its rigidly enforced pecking order. Gina had been brought to Ukuphila by the Limpopo province nature conservation authorities after she had been trapped on a farm.
She was a wild animal that had probably escaped from the Timbavati or one of the other private game reserves in the province, and when Des had put her in with his other hyenas, who were all captive-bred, she asserted her dominance over them in a frenzied, bloody rampage that had lasted less than half an hour. She had then mated with one of the subservient males in the group and Jade was her first offspring.
Graham hoped that Des might one day agree to his proposal that the clan be let loose on a private reserve somewhere that did not have any resident hyenas. Graham was confident that Gina could lead her blended family in the wild and teach them to become self-sufficient. She and her kind were incredibly intelligent animals, far more so than lions.
Graham sat, oddly at peace, as the hyenas relaxed or wandered around him in the dark. He felt no fear of them and they accepted him, almost as if he were one of their own.
Gina, who had plonked herself down proprietarily next to Graham, suddenly jumped to her feet. She put her head up, sniffed, then ran for the fence. Her subjects followed her.
Graham was also on the alert now.
He stood, dusted off his bum and moved to where the clan was.
‘Dr Baird,’ a voice called.
The hyenas whooped in reply.
Graham made his way to the fence. ‘Who is it?’
‘Charles. I am the new night security officer.’
While Graham worked out of Ukuphila it was rare for him to stay overnight, so he did not know all of the night shift. The man, Charles, was standing in the shadows about twenty metres away. Graham made out the dark peaked cap of the security guard’s uniform.
‘Very new; when did you start, Charles? What happened to Elphes?’
‘I started work just yesterday. Elphes met with a serious accident. He was the victim of a hit and run driver and is in hospital with a broken pelvis.’
‘Good lord. Poor fellow. What’s up, Charles?’
‘There is a problem,’ Charles continued.
‘Come closer.’
‘I am scared.’
‘Of what?’ Graham asked. What was the point of a chicken security guard?
‘Of those mpisi. Witches ride on the backs of those things and you should not be in with them, Dr Baird.’
Mpisi was the local word for hyena, and it was none of this fellow’s business to tell Graham what he should and shouldn’t do – even if he was right. ‘All right. I’ll come out. Just give me a minute. What’s the problem, anyway?’
‘One of the alarms on the fence has gone off.’
Gina continued her whooping.
‘Quiet, my girl,’ Graham said, but Gina kept up her call, flanked by her family, and stayed at the fence, fangs showing, drool falling from her chops, as she confronted the guard in the shadows.
‘Quickly, please, Dr Baird.’
‘All right, all right.’
Graham went through the first gate and pulled it closed.
‘The alarm was very close to where the rhino is, with her calf,’ Charles said, and there was no hiding the panic in his voice.
Graham was worried as well. He would have to get a firearm out of Des’s strongroom. The key was on the bunch in his pocket. Graham didn’t bother locking the hyenas’ internal gate and when he came to the external gate he remembered the padlock was the kind that had to be locked with a key, rather than snapped shut. He fumbled on the ring, looking for the right one. ‘Oh, bugger it.’ He didn’t have time. He slipped the lock into its hole and left it there. That would be fine for the moment.
Charles beckoned. ‘Hurry up, please, Dr Baird.’
The man was annoying him, but he was unarmed and had probably come to the same conclusion as Graham – if it was rhino poachers who were after Des’s old cow, Grace, and her impressive horn, which was as long as a man’s arm, then they would be heavily armed.