by Deon Meyer
'One of your men gave it to me.'
'Which one?'
'He says his name is Kenosi.'
Shabangu cursed over the ether in Zulu, a stream of words that cracked like a whip. Then: 'I'm going to come and get you.'
' Ouboet, bring the money when you come.'
'Fuck you, Boer.'
' Ouboet, should I rather come to your house? Kenosi told me where you ...'
The call was abruptly cut off by Shabangu.
The surveillance operator laughed. 'Guy's got nerve.'
'What the hell was that all about?' asked Masilo.
'Who is this guy?' Raj asked again.
Shabangu's voice interrupted them again: Becker was calling a third time. 'Fuck off, just fuck off, I will not answer again.'
End of call.
'You know about this man?' asked Masilo.
They filled him in, briefly, about the white man who wanted his money back, apparently after a car hijacking.
'Why must I only hear about this now?'
Before anyone could explain, an operator said: 'Guys, we have a problem.'
Everyone looked at him.
'Shabangu has just sent an SMS. It reads: "Cellphone now off. Call Thato.'"'
'Shit,' said Rajkumar. 'Shit, shit, shit.'
'That's it. He's off-line.'
'What are the implications?' asked Masilo.
'Big,' said Rajkumar. 'Bad. He's been our primary, the number we've been tracking.'
'Can we intercept the other numbers, the recipients of the SMS?'
Rajkumar jumped up, waddled over to the door. 'We need more equipment in that area. It's going to take hours. I'll get on it.'
Tau Masilo slowly lowered his head into his hands. 'Beckett? Is that his name? Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?'
'No,' said Quinn. 'Becker. His name is Lukas Becker.'
The big electronic clock on the Ops Room wall read 23.35.
They were tired and fed up, because they knew it would fail. Not one of the PIA's seven teams on the Zimbabwe and Botswana borders had seen a Bedford truck.
Masilo did not hide his disappointment. In them, in everything.
Suddenly in a clear, optimistic tone an operator said: 'Shabangu is back on-line.'
'Thank God,' said Rajkumar and took another bite of his hamburger.
'Amen,' said Quinn, quietly.
'SMSs coming in.'
'Read them to us.'
'The first says, "Mercedes 1528".'
Quinn Googled the message. 'Second SMS is just numbers.' 'Read them!'
'S23 54.793 E28 27.243.'
'Jesus,' said Masilo, and looked at Quinn: 'GPS coordinates.' 'Mercedes 1528 is a truck ...' Quinn added. 'Shit,' said Rajkumar, putting his hamburger aside hurriedly, his fingers dancing across the keyboard to pinpoint the coordinates. 'The coordinates are way south of the border ... way south, shit, T-junction where the R518 and the D579 join.'
'Then let's get people down there. Now.' Masilo leaped up and began pacing up and down.
Quinn barked orders over the radio.
51
27 September 2009. Sunday.
Masilo got to bed at four in the morning. At 08.07 Rahjev Rajkumar's phone call woke him. 'The boss says she wants to see us and our department heads in the Ops Room at 10.00.'
Masilo rubbed his eyes, cleared his throat. 'I'm not going to accept unfair criticism.'
'We will have to accept whatever we get,' said Rajkumar soothingly. 'No,' said Masilo.
The informant and the agent had their heads together as if they were gossiping. They stood in an alley near the pavilion of the De Grendel sports complex in Parow, only 300 metres from the station where the informant had got off the train.
'Tweetybird's wife and children are gone, my bru’, got on a plane yesterday, to Paraguay or Uruguay. And everyone's saying The Bird will fly tomorrow, false passport, permanent exile. And now they say, it's Terror versus the Money Man, it's gonna be a war, I'm telling you.'
'Hang on. Terror Baadjies. He's the Restless Ravens' strongman, the Enforcer.'
'Yes.'
'And the Money Man is Moegamat Perkins. Tweetybird's accountant.'
'Yes.'
'Where is Tweetybird now?'
'He's lying low.'
'But where?'
'Not a clue, he's afraid the Prosecutor will lock him up for tax evasion before he can leave the country.'
'And Terror Baadjies? We can't find Terror.'
'They say he's the one who has to see that Tweetybird gets safely on the plane. They are hiding somewhere, but nobody knows where.'
The agent took five 100-rand notes out of his pocket and slipped them into the waiting hand of the informant. 'If you can tell us where they are I will give you 5,000.'
'Jissis, my bru'... I'll try ...'
Late that morning Mrs Killian phoned Milla. 'I know it's Sunday, but we need you. Can you come to the office, please?'
'Of course.'
Half an hour later she walked into the Report Squad. With the exception of Jessica, all the others were there.
'What's going on?' Milla asked.
Donald MacFarland sighed deeply, looking worried. 'If they call us in on a weekend, the shit has hit the fan.'
The Goddess only arrived an hour later. 'I was on a yacht, for God's sake. Don't these people have a life?'
'Welcome to my world,' said Mac the Wife.
It was a day of whispering about The Great Confrontation. It was a day of writing short reports, slowly, with odd fragments of information that trickled in hour after hour.
Oom Theunie was working on the profile of a young woman.
'Where do they find these people?' he asked. Later, shaking his head, he tested aloud the phrase 'disappeared without trace'.
'What?' asked Mac, irritated.
'Cornelia Johanna van Jaarsveld seems to be a professional tracker, Mac. But the irony is that she has disappeared without trace herself.'
Milla smiled. She was busy with a report on one Ephraim Silongo, also known as 'Snake'. She added to it systematically as the agents' reports were sent in. Snake Silongo's body had been found on a deserted gravel road in the Waterberg of Limpopo Province, bones broken, bullet wound to the head. Police information was that he was an armed robber, part of Julius Shabangu's syndicate.
'Didn't we do something recently on a Julius Shabangu?' she asked.
'We did,' said Oom Theunie. 'It will be in the database.'
While she searched, she thought again about the bubble she had lived in, her ignorance of the undercurrents in this country.
It was Donald MacFarland who told them, after a whispered phone call, about The Great Confrontation. 'I hear the Iron Lady exploded this morning,' he said.
'What?' asked The Goddess, always inquisitive when she heard Mac's gossipy tone.
'Apparently, my dear, the much venerated Director threw a tantrum, amongst other objects ...'
They all huddled around, and in muted tones and with frequent glances at Ma Killian's door, Mac repeated the rumour with as much verbal embellishment as possible. Something that happened last night, an operation had gone horribly wrong. And this morning Janina Mentz had called all senior personnel into the Ops Room, Mother Killian included. She stood in front of her audience, glared at the latecomers, waited till everyone was seated. Then she began to berate them. '"Never in my life have I seen such mediocrity, such inept imbecility," that's how she started, and it went downhill from there,' said Mac with great relish. 'She really did throw things. And then Mr Nobody dared to take her on, and she asked the rest to leave, and then the two of them had a showdown behind closed doors, they say you could hear them shouting at each other down the hall.'
Masilo walked into Janina Mentz's office with a single sheet of paper in his hand. He stood in front of her desk and said: 'Here is my letter of resignation. It is dated the fourteenth of October. If I can't prevent the terrorist attack, I will leave. If I am successful, it will b
e up to you to decide whether you accept this or not.'
Mentz stared at him, her expression impenetrable.
'We can't trace Willem de la Cruz or Terrence Richard Baadjies.' Masilo's monotone betrayed his weariness, his resignation. 'We suspect they have gone somewhere to receive the consignment of diamonds. We also suspect that de la Cruz is only waiting to complete the trade with the Supreme Committee before he flees to South America. Consequently, we are monitoring all international flights from Cape Town and Oliver Tambo Airport. We have liaised with traffic authorities in the Western Cape; they will hold every Mercedes 1528 truck that stops at a weighbridge on the way to Cape Town, until one of our agents has searched it. We have intensified the surveillance and tracking of Suleiman Dolly, Shaheed Latif Osman, Ebrahim Laattoe and Baboo Rayan. The reaction unit is ready if there is any contact between the Supreme Committee and the Restless Ravens. The operation to gain access to the computer system of Consolidated Fisheries will take place on Monday just after midnight.'
Still Mentz sat there, sphinx-like.
'Currently, we are investigating the feasibility of a plan to insert an electro-acoustic microphone in the cellar of 15 Chamberlain Street. The only way is to keep Baboo Rayan away from the house for at least an hour, possibly by a sham robbery of the cafe he visits every morning. It will have to be done with great circumspection as we don't know what security measures are in place inside the Committee's house. Finally: we will maintain the surveillance of Julius Shabangu until the thirteenth of October.'
Then he turned and walked out.
52
Photostatic record: Diary of Milla Strachan
Date of entry: 27 September 2009
Leaving tracks, creating some impression on the surface of this earth, is a way of saying 'I was here'. Something to give meaning to this fleeting existence.
How do you leave a track, a trail, a spoor?
And what sort of spoor do I want to leave? What sort of traces can I leave? Why would I want to leave my mark? Is it just fear, fear of being forgotten, since being forgotten makes a whole life pointless. Is that my actual fear? Is that why I want to write a book, my only (last!) chance to leave something tangible, a small scrap of evidence that I was here?
And what is the point of that?
I should also ask, then, what is the point of this diary? Is this not evidence? I was here, this is what happened to me. And how many of my journals are merely the writing down of nothing. Thoughts, sighs, murmurs, but nothing happened, nothing was done.
Because some days leave no tracks.
They pass as though they never existed, immediately forgotten in the haze of my routine. Other days' tracks are visible for a week or so, until the winds of memory cover them in the pale sand of new experiences.
How many of the average 22,000 days of our lives do we remember, date and day? Maybe ten or twelve, birthdays, weddings (desertions and divorces!) and deaths, a few of the First Times. The traces of the others wear away, so that a life really only consists of a month of specially commemorated days and a host of dateless recollections.
We must live so that we leave tracks on every day.
But how?
The Pilatus PC-12 landed at Walvis Bay at 13.52. It was the 'Combi' model, fitted out for four passengers and considerable cargo - in this instance, 200 kilograms of computer hardware.
The four men, respectively, two break-in specialists and two of Rajhev Rajkumar's best technicians, climbed out, offloaded the crates
of equipment and waited for Reinhard Rohn, who came towards them over the tarred surface, with an import permit in hand and two customs officers at his side.
It took ten minutes to deal with the formalities. Rohn fetched his bakkie to transport the crates. Once they were loaded, the break-in specialists and technicians, each with an overnight bag slung over the shoulder, walked off to the car hire section. Rohn watched them go, noting the lean bodies, the brash self-confidence. I was like that too, he thought. Long ago.
Operation Shawwal
Transcription: Audio surveillance, J. Shabangu and L. Becker, cellphone conversation
Date and Time: 27 September 2009. 17.21
JS: I don't have your fucking money and I'm telling you now, if I get my hands on you, you are going to bleed . . .
LB: Ay, Ouboet, that won't get us anywhere. Who has my money then?
JS: Fuck off.
(Call terminated.)
Operation Shawwal
Transcription: Audio surveillance, J. Shabangu and L. Becker, cellphone conversation
Date and Time: 27 September 2009. 17.29
LB: Ouboet, what a surprise .. .
JS: I'm going to tell you who has your money. Then you leave me alone.
LB: On my word of honour.
JS: Shaheed Latif Osman. Go and ask him.
LB: Who is Shaheed Latif Osman?
JS: He's a fuckin' isela, he lives in the Cape. He's got your money. Every fucking cent. I'm going to SMS you his number. You tell him, he and Tweety the Bird must give you your money. Tell him I said they should do it.
LB: Ouboet, I thank you ...
JS: Don't phone me again, fucking never again!
At 23.00 Quinn went to the office to monitor the break-in and installation taking place in Walvis Bay.
The operator had him listen to the conversation between Gauteng crime boss Julius Shabangu and the mysterious Lukas Becker. When it had finished Quinn shook his head in concern and disbelief. He wrote a quick email to Masilo and Rajkumar. He said that Becker was no longer just comic relief, since it was his call to Shabangu that had upset the Musina interception so dramatically. He was an unknown factor, with the potential to derail the whole operation. Consequently, they urgently needed to find out more, do an in-depth profile on him. And seriously consider intercepting him.
He sent the email and went to the Ops Room. Fifteen minutes before the Walvis Bay break-in. He sent up an emergency prayer. Dear Lord, please don't let there be any mistakes tonight. Amen.
28 September 2009. Monday.
Twenty past twelve at night, Milla's cellphone dragged her from sleep and she stumbled to the sitting room with a feeling of foreboding. She saw it was Barend calling and her stomach contracted.
'Are you OK?' was the first thing she asked.
'It's Pa,' he said.
Milla had to sit down suddenly. 'What happened?'
'He's been assaulted. He's in hospital.'
'Assaulted? Where?' She couldn't understand the reproach in her son's voice, it was not her fault.
'In Jacobsdal, but the ambulance took them to Kimberley ...'
'Barend, how serious is it?'
'Serious. They broke his cheekbone and nose and his ribs ...'
'How do you know this? How did you hear about it?'
'He phoned me, just now ...'
'Your father phoned you?'
'Yes ...'
Relief, and she nearly said, 'It can't be too bad then'. She sank back slowly on the couch. 'Who assaulted him? Why?'
'A bunch of guys just walked in and started beating them up ...'
'Them?'
'Oom Tjaart and Oom Langes and Oom Raynier, they were on the Harleys, they stopped in Jacobsdal to have a drink, then these freaks came into the bar and started beating them ...'
That was why Barend had to go to his grandparents for the holiday. So Christo and friends could go on a Harley road trip. He was still not taking his fatherly duties seriously, he still put himself first. But she would have to restrain herself, her son needed her.
'Does Granny know?'
'No.'
'I'll phone the hospital and find out how serious it is, then I'll call you back.'
'Ma, why don't you phone Pa?'
'A doctor would ... we need an expert opinion.'
Only once she had rung off, did she realise Barend's question meant that he still had hope, that he saw the assault as an opportunity to bring her and Christo back together.
> Half an hour later she phoned Barend. 'I spoke to the ward nurse. She says none of their injuries are serious, they will all be discharged later today.'
'How will Pa get home, Ma? He can't ride his bike with broken ribs. Can't we go and fetch him?'
'There are regular flights between Kimberley and Cape Town, Barend ...'
'Ma, how can you be so unfeeling?'
Rajkumar was not good with conflict management. So this meeting was painful to him, the oppressive atmosphere, the obvious antagonism between the Director and Masilo. A contributing factor was that there would be no praise, despite the good work of the previous night.
Masilo was stubborn. He stood throughout the meeting. It was a form of protest, Raj thought, a way of saying: if I sit down at a table with her, it indicates consent, solidarity.
And Mentz would not look at Masilo. She sat beside Raj, her eyes on the wall, while Rajkumar gave his report. 'The operation at Consolidated Fisheries was a resounding success, beautiful teamwork between Tau's operatives and my technicians,' he said and looked at her, saw it made no impression.
'Go on.'
'We are now cloning all their drives. Some of the software is proprietary, some is custom written, but we will be up and running in record time,' said with all the optimistic enthusiasm he could muster. 'The really great news is that we are already logged into their Fleet Tracker website. We will have a full report on all vessels' patterns for the last month by lunchtime.'
She merely nodded. 'Anything else?' she asked without looking at Masilo.
'Only bad news,' the Advocate said. 'We can't trace de la Cruz or Baadjies. Our attempt to intercept the truck has produced nothing. That is all.'
Milla was the first one in the office. Mrs Killian hurried in carrying a thin file. She greeted her, and placed the folder in front of Milla.
'Theunie will explain to you how a new profile works, look at this until he gets here. We only expect the first reports from the operators tomorrow, the idea is that you add to the document as you receive new information ...'
Milla opened the file. Just one sheet of paper, the original instruction under the title: In-depth Profile: Lukas Becker.