A Question of Time

by James Stejskal

“There are quite a few in Africa. They’re a perfect bush plane for hunters as well as NGOs.”

  Kingsley finished up with the pre-flight checks, while Becker stowed his small bag inside and got comfortable. Kingsley climbed in and went straight into startup. Satisfied with the gauges, he rolled the plane towards the runway. The turboprop at full power buffeted the airplane and it danced a bit on the runway until he released the brakes. Becker watched the scenery race by and felt the tail lift after a few short seconds. Then they were airborne.

  “Not the fastest, but we can land just about anywhere.” “Except where I need to go,” Becker groused.

  “Yes, but we’ll get what you need.”

  The plane turned northeast and soon they were flying over the semi-arid wasteland, the savanna that bordered the southern edge of the Kalahari.

  When they landed, it was mid-afternoon. A dark-blue Land Rover Series III awaited them on the strip. A short, slim man with a thin face, brown skin and what to Becker could have been Asian features waited for them by the car. Another taller man who looked like a younger version of Kingsley strode out to greet them.

  “Welcome to Vortrekker Camp,” the young man said.

  Sensing Becker was about to ask a question, Kingsley said, “My son William.”

  Unlike his father, William had a deeper accent, reminiscent of the Australians Becker worked with in Southeast Asia, but not as strong as that of the Afrikaners who once in a while consented to speak English with outsiders.

  They climbed into the car and drove to the nearby camp which was made up of canvas tents on wood pole platforms that circled around a larger main tent. There were camel thorn trees and low brush around the site, but the center was fairly wide open. That was both to make walking easier in the camp, but also to reduce the number of hiding places for snakes and other deadly things. Becker smelled the dry, scented air of the brush and heard the sounds of unfamiliar birds chattering and calling.

  “We’ll get started right away,” Kingsley said. He walked towards the main tent as his son dealt with the baggage. The small, dark man followed them into the tent where another, older, dark man waited at a table. The sitting man’s face was creased and lined, wizened with years of exposure to the harsh desert sun. His younger comrade would age into the same face in the years to come.

  “This is Sam and this is Henry. They are Khoi, the first people of South Africa,” Kingsley said, introducing the elder first, “Their tribal names are difficult for outsiders to pronounce, so they have adopted European names. These are the men who will go for you.”

  Kingsley introduced Klaus to the two in Afrikaans. They seemed to regard him with curiosity.

  Becker greeted them before turning back to his host.

  “Have they done this kind of work before? They have your full trust?”

  Hearing Becker’s words, Henry spoke to Sam in their language. “Henry speaks English, Klaus,” Kingsley said. “They have worked for me for several years. I trust them. They are not fans of the government, nor do they like the ANC,” Kingsley said. “Neither the Apartheid government or the leaders of the African National

  Congress always represent the wishes of the original peoples.” “Sorry, I just needed to be sure,” Becker said. He was speaking to all three men now. “They are much like the Montagnards of Vietnam,” he added, “caught between two systems.”

  “I imagine. Let’s get down to the task then.”

  With Becker talking and Kingsley translating, the mission was laid out. Becker asked if they could record the things they saw at the site and was met with doubt. Kingsley noted that they didn’t know how to read and write.

  “If you see trucks, how would you remember the numbers?” “We would just remember and tell you how few or many we saw,” Henry said.

  “And if I need to know the number exactly?”

  Becker wanted to ensure accuracy so he pulled out a notebook and drew several images on the side of one page. One was a simple depiction of a pick-up truck, another a car, and another a cargo truck. There were also drawings of a building and a generator. Becker explained the drawings and showed the men how to make a mark next to each item to keep track of the numbers. Four vertical lines with a hatch mark through them made five, he explained.

  “That’s a good trick,” Kingsley said, “where did you come up with that?”

  “I stole it from Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

  “The value of literature in action.”

  After concluding the briefing, they broke for an open-air dinner.

  “The bushmen won’t join us tonight. Our food is not really to their liking,” Kingsley announced as they sat down to eat.

  The food was prepared by the camp staff. Besides Kingsley, his son, Becker, and the two Khoi, only four or five locals were present in the camp’s background. It made for a quiet meal. The birds were still calling even though it was turning to night. And, for the first time, Becker heard the unmistakable laughing call and answer of two hyena in the distance. He paused and looked in the direction when he heard the cry.

  “The hyena usually stay far away from the camp, although they play tricks on us sometimes. They like to steal things so don’t forget to secure your tent flaps tonight.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Becker said as he sipped the Scotch that Kingsley had brought out to cap off the evening.

  “We will launch in the morning to an airstrip northeast of here to look for game. Our tracker friends will go with us and begin their trip from there. The test site is around 30 kilometers east of the field and they should be able to get in and out in three days. We’ll meet up with them once they return. In the meantime, we’ll make a circuit of several camps so you have something to talk about with your clients.”

  “The Khoi, they must be a hardy people.” Becker said.

  “You have no idea. They call us fish-people because we drink so much water in the desert. They can find food and water in anything and don’t need a compass to move across the land. Vastrap was once their land but the government appropriated it from them without any compensation. They know it well. They will get you what you need.”

  Becker took the hissing gas lantern that was offered him and walked to his tent. He sensed the local man, the guard that paralleled him in the darkness, before he saw the silhouette of the rifle he was carrying in the light of the campfire behind him.

  For once, I am being protected.

  He turned off the lantern and secured the flaps of his tent. Becker decided to listen to the night sounds before calling it quits for the day. He poured himself another dram of Scotch from a bottle in the sideboard and sat in the canvas campaign chair. Before long his eyelids started to droop and he yawned. He gave up and crawled into bed. Lying there as sleep approached, he again heard the plaintive cry of the hyena, sounding like laughter in the darkness.

  ***

  The next morning, William took them to the strip where the plane and the two trackers awaited them. They took off and headed north flying at five thousand feet. Kingsley monitored the radio closely listening for any military traffic while constantly scanning the skies for fast movers.

  “The military airfield is east of us now. The air force is generally good about notifying us of exercises but sometimes aircraft appear out of nowhere. There’s a lot of activity to the north along the border between South West Africa with Angola and Zambia with the war going on. Some of the SAAF bombers and fighters fly in without notice.”

  “I guess I should help watch,” Becker said, “I’d hate for us to get knocked out of the sky by a jet.”

  “It would happen so fast that you would not feel a thing.” “That is very comforting. Thank you.”

  “My pleasure. We’re almost there.”

  Becker could see the faint line of a dirt airstrip up ahead as Kingsley nosed the plane downward in a slow descent. He was still scanning the horizon for fast-moving objects as they lined up with the field. Then the plane was over the threshold a
nd on the ground, rolling down the dirt runway with a cloud of red-brown dust blown up behind them. Kingsley used so little of the strip that he could steer the plane into the small parking stand halfway down the field without having to turn it around.

  The doors popped open when the propeller came to a standstill. Kingsley and Becker hopped out. There was no one to greet them. Kingsley motioned for Sam and Henry to climb down the ladders from the aircraft, which was significantly harder for the much shorter men.

  “They are ready to go,” Kingsley said. “Do you have anything else for them?”

  “Just these.” Becker pulled two small bottles out of his bag and handed them to Henry. “Fill them with sand from as close to the building as you can get.”

  Kingsley repeated the instructions to the Khoi in Afrikaans. Sam said, “Yes, but why?”

  “It will tell us what kind of things like chemicals are being used in the building.”

  Sam and Henry nodded their heads as Kingsley spoke again. Then they picked up their long canvas shoulder bags, bows, and arrows and headed east across the airstrip, each touching the ground lightly with their walking sticks as they moved. Once they disappeared into the bush, Kingsley went to the rear cargo door and pulled two bolt-action hunting rifles out of their cases, handing one to Becker with a box of ammunition.

  “We might as well take a short tour of the neighborhood as long as we’re here. I assume you’ve handled one of these before?”

  Becker looked the rifle over; it was a Brno ZKK 602. The

  .375 caliber Holland and Holland was larger than anything he had hunted with before, but he didn’t count 40-mm grenade launchers or .50 caliber M2 machine guns as hunting weapons. Those were for killing other things.

  “I was brought up with a Springfield 03A3 by my dad. We hunted deer mostly—whitetail and mule—maybe an elk or two, but it was only .30–06 caliber. So this will be interesting.”

  He took out five rounds and loaded them into the rifle. Then he chambered the sixth and final cartridge by hand, slid the bolt closed before he put the safety on and stuffed the box into the cargo pocket of his field pants.

  “We may see kudu or gemsbok, possibly a cat or three. Don’t shoot the cats unless you’re attacked, I don’t have a current license for them.”

  “I don’t want to shoot any lions or leopards. I’m not into trophy animals, only something we can eat.”

  Kingsley tossed a big green canteen with a long strap to Becker as he shouldered a small backpack. “We won’t be out long, but there’s water and I have a medical kit in my bag.”

  They stepped off in the opposite direction the Khoi had traveled and into the bush. Dry grass crunched under their feet. The surrounding terrain was alive with birds and bugs. Becker heard the loud song of the cicada in the distance but they would suddenly quiet as they approached. As did the birds. Their presence seemed to signal danger to the animals as well; there were none to be seen. Kingsley stopped after about fifteen minutes and raised his hand in a universal signal to halt. Becker waited, looking into the bush ahead, straining to see what Kingsley saw. Then the raised hand motioned Becker forward. Quietly and slowly, Becker moved to

  Kingsley’s side. He pointed through the brush. “There, about 50 meters straight in front of us.”

  It was a kudu, one of the largest of the African antelope. A big majestic one, his hide was blue-gray with thin white stripes and his horns turned three spirals above his head. He was totally unconcerned with their presence. He looked like he weighed about 700 pounds.

  “He’s about eight years old. Magnificent horns. Want to take him?” Becker located the animal and stared at him over the iron express sights. He knew he could take the bull. It was not a long or difficult shot. There was little brush, just a gap through which he could easily put a bullet into his vitals. He stood steady with his left arm through the sling to stabilize the rifle, a technique he had learned from the instructors at the Army Marksmanship Unit. He breathed in and out slowly before clicking the safety off. He held the sight picture for a moment, then clicked the safety back on. He could have pulled the trigger but he didn’t want to.

  “No, he’s too proud and too pretty and I’m not hungry.”

  “Fair enough. We would have to carry him back to the airplane anyway and I can do without that. Let’s continue. We’ll be back in four days and maybe then something else will show up when we have extra hands to carry it.”

  They trudged back to the strip and the plane and reloaded the gear before climbing in. Kingsley completed his checks, restarted the engine, and taxied to the end of the runway. Hearing nothing on the radio, he rolled the plane forward and took off over the bush to the South.

  The next days were filled with stops along the Western Cape and the Garden Route in the extreme south of the country. First, it was the Atlantic coastline, and then the Indian Ocean. The sights along the coast would mostly appeal to tourists who enjoyed scenery, botanical parks, and the ocean. There wasn’t much wildlife except in the B&B bars at nighttime. Becker saw everything he needed to begin his ostensible tourist excursions and more, but in the back of his mind, he was with the Khoi trackers in the desert. Four days later they headed north.

  No sooner had they landed, than the two Khoi came trotting out of the bush. Becker saw that they looked tired, but Henry had a smile on his face. Kingsley and Becker climbed out of the airplane and met them as they arrived planeside. Sam unshouldered his pouch, pulled out a leaf-wrapped package and handed it to Becker. While Becker unwrapped it, Sam handed another small packet to Kingsley. Once Becker had removed the protective leaves, he held up the two bottles filled with sand.

  “Great,” he said, “and this came from close to the building?”

  Henry nodded in the affirmative. “Very close,” he said, “the floor of the shed was too hard.”

  Kingsley said, “It must have been a concrete slab. Where did you get the papers?”

  “From their trash bin next to the building,” Sam said.

  Kingsley unfolded the papers. Most were nothing special to his eyes but one stood out. It was a delivery invoice with the company imprint written in Afrikaans.

  “I see it’s from ARMSCOR, the Armaments Corporation of South Africa, but what does it say exactly?” Becker said.

  “It’s for a shaft cover plate to be delivered to a SAAF test site.” “A shaft cover plate? It says that specifically?”

  “Yes, I asked them to retrieve anything they could find from the site to prove that they were there. It says Vastrap test site on it, but I have no idea what the item is. And here’s your ‘Hemingway’ paper.” “Whatever it is will be for the experts to figure out, but I would call that validation.”

  Becker took the papers. There were only a couple of marks on his pictorial record and one of those was for the building. The invoice was the most important piece because it tied the samples directly to the test site. He would burn everything else and prepare it and the bottles together to be handed over to the Agency.

  “There wasn’t much going on there?”

  “No,” said Henry, “very quiet. It was night when we visited.

  Nobody there.”

  “I think this was a success. We can get out of here. Sam and Henry deserve a rest.”

  Minutes later, the airplane lifted off the ground and headed back to the river camp. They spent the rest of the day relaxing. Becker knew he would have no more chances at the site and now had to pass the materials on to an Agency contact. It would be best to do that as soon as possible and get out of the country.

  “We’ll go back to Cape Town tomorrow and I will not see you again. Have you been taken care of by our office?”

  “They’ll get a bill. They gave me a pretty good advance, but I didn’t factor in all the fuel and taking care of our two friends. Fresh meat and honey can get expensive, especially when you’re taking care of an extended family,” Kingsley said. His smile came through the beard as an enormous white grin.

 
“I also wanted to thank you for reminding me of something. Trusting the locals, someone you don’t know well, to help you… I’d forgotten what I learned before. ‘Better they do it tolerably than you do it perfectly.’ They usually know best. And maybe I’ll come back for the kudu.”

  “You have also read T. E. Lawrence then. Good, I think we both learned a bit.”

  The following day, Becker returned to the Cape Heritage from the airport. He checked into one of the suites and cleaned off the dust and other bits of savannah he had brought back with him. Later that evening, he went downstairs and poked his head out onto the street. The sun was descending as he ambled down Long Street. He went in one bar for a medicinal gin and tonic and then moved on to another. The second was attached to a hotel, which made it convenient to find a telephone. After ordering he walked into the hotel and placed a quick call from the public telephone.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Robert Grammercy?” Becker said. There was a short pause.

  “I’m sorry, you must have the wrong number. This is 6811810.” The line went dead, but Becker had the time and date for his contact.

  ***

  The next day Becker was contemplating his English breakfast while admiring the grapevine that was climbing the courtyard wall.

  The sign claimed it was brought to the Cape in the eighteenth century. He believed it because the main trunk was as thick as his bicep and its bark rivaled the old Khoi’s face with all its creases and cracks. For a moment, he pictured the city as it might have appeared back in 1780, but then quickly came back to reviewing his plan for the day.

  No daydreaming.

  Becker was living a lie and the hardest part of that kind of life was to make sure that no one saw anything inconsistent with the lie. At every moment, his actions had to make sense to someone watching him. It was a game in which no inconsistencies were permissible. If anyone made a mistake, they risked arrest. Today, he would meet an undercover officer who could be declared persona non grata or arrested if caught in the act by BoSS. Becker knew he too would face severe consequences: he would certainly spend time in jail, maybe years. The life of a singleton, a solitary operator, was hard. Family and friends were far away and there was no refuge in an embassy. Even though there were allies out there, he would never meet them and couldn’t rely on them for help. He was alone.