by Deon Meyer
'You realise this is your fault,' she said.
'What?'
'Becker. And Osman's laptop. You wanted to keep Becker in play, Tau. When I wanted him taken out. Neutralised. You hoped he would force me to act.'
'Yes,' he said.
'I appointed you because you're not a "yes-man". Because you're strong enough to disagree with me. But please do it openly and honestly.'
'It was a mistake. It won't happen again.'
70
At the deserted pavilion of the De Grendel Sports Complex in Parow the informant smoked a cigarette in short, nervous puffs, blowing the smoke out audibly between sentences. 'They say it's the Sheikh, calling in a favour.'
'Suleiman Dolly.'
'They say he phoned Terror personally.'
'And?'
'The Committee is looking for a laptop, stolen by a whitey in a blue Citi Golf, tall and dark, a Boer. Registration number is CA 143 and something.'
'And Terror and the Ravens have to help look?'
'Ja, that's the favour. And the word is, they don't want the whitey alive, it's the laptop that counts. There's a hundred K bonus for the one who brings it in, fifty more if you blaas the whitey. This news is travelling fast, every wannabe on the peninsula has got his eyes open now.'
'Do you think they'll get the guy?'
'Sooner or later.'
Janina Mentz sent for Quinn as well, to save time. Now they sat around the Director's round table with Rajkumar and Masilo.
'Our first priority,' said Janina, 'is to track down Becker and Strachan. Quinn, I want their photos in the Sunday papers, supply all the information: he's armed and dangerous, wanted for kidnapping and murder, she's the accomplice. Publicise the Golf's details as well, but talk to the Western Cape Commissioner of the SAPS, so that we work through their public relations department.'
Quinn made notes.
'The first thing she'll do when she sees her photo in the paper is phone her son. Are we prepared?'
'We are,' said Quinn.
'Keep the Reaction Unit ready, and tell the Police Commissioner to keep their hands off. We will take Becker out.'
Quinn nodded.
'Tau will set up and manage the coordination office with the CIA, and I will keep him updated from the Ops Room. One channel of information only, through me. I hope everyone understands that.'
She looked at Rajkumar. 'That's the brawn of the operation, Raj is going to head up the brain. I need you to select the best minds in the agency, Raj, get a think tank going. You will be concentrating on three issues. If anyone can figure out how the Supreme Committee can make a fishing trawler disappear off the face of the earth, it's you. It must be a question of technology, and I need you to show that we are smarter than the CIA. I want you to find The Madeleine.'
'OK,' said Rajkumar, delighted.
'Secondly, Becker. There's a lot about him that still doesn't make sense. If he's not working for the CIA - and I have to accept that for now - then who the hell is he working for? The third matter is related. The CIA's reaction on Thursday and again this morning, leads me to believe they have an asset in our midst, or they're fishing for one. Let's assume it wasn't Becker trying to recruit Strachan. So, who is it? Could you look into it?'
Milla stood at the stove, spoon in hand. She was making spaghetti bolognese with Ina Paarman's sauce, aware of Lukas sitting nearby at the counter, glued to the computer, a frown of concentration on his forehead. Aware of the irony, here she was again, reduced to cook and housekeeper, excluded from men's work.
And later that afternoon she had to go home, that was the agreement they had reached. She didn't like it.
She reached for the box of spaghetti and opened it. The water in the pot was boiling.
'Seven minutes till we eat,' she said.
He nodded absently, absorbed in the screen in front of him.
She let the spaghetti slide into the boiling water, added a little olive oil, then the salt.
'Jissis,' said Lukas, softly.
'What?' she asked.
'They ... There's something here ...'
She stirred the meat sauce, looked at him and saw a new focus.
'Jissis,' he said again, fingers moving quickly over the laptop's touch pad, to click, and click again.
The sauce simmered. She turned the heat off, took out two plates, then the parmesan and the grater.
Lukas looked up at her. 'They ...They talk about a shipment, they are bringing something in under the radar, smuggling something in. A woman by the name of Madeleine is going to ... No ... It's a ship, they are bringing something in by ship. Haidar ... that's what they're bringing in...'
'Haidar?'
'I think it's an abbreviation ... But the date makes no sense. It says here Monday 23 Shawwal 1430 A. H...'
'Shawwal,' said Milla, suddenly excited. 'That was the name of the operation, the whole PIA operation ...'
'What does it mean?'
'I don't know.'
The Ops Room was full, sixteen people manning computers and systems, Quinn in the middle, Mentz right at the back, on her own.
'There is no Volkswagen Golf on the system with a registration number beginning with CA 143,' one of Rajkumar's team members told Quinn.
'Maybe Osman didn't remember correctly ...'
'Maybe not. According to the SAPS database, the theft of a set of number plates was reported on Thursday evening, in Table View. CA 143 688.'
'Table View,' Quinn said.
'That's right.'
'Can you compile me a list of all places offering accommodation in Table View? Short term. Hotels, guest houses, holiday apartments.'
'It will take a while.'
'Then we had better start. You coordinate it, everyone who doesn't have a specific task: start phoning. You have Becker and Miss Jenny's descriptions ...'
Becker used his cellphone to Google. 'It's the Muslim calendar,' he said urgently, 'Twenty three Shawwal 1430 is the twelfth of October 2009. That's the day after tomorrow. Monday.'
He turned back to the computer, read more emails. 'Monday. Two in the morning ...'
'What about the abbreviation? Anything on that?' Milla asked, and walked back to the stove, ready to dish up.
He typed in the letters, clicked on the search button. 'Haidar,' he read, 'means "lion" in Arabic. This was the name of Ali, the husband of Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed.'
'Lion . . .' said Milla. In the PIA reports there was no mention of the word.
Becker was back at the laptop. 'It's a code word. For the cargo ... It... Here are some coordinates, Milla ...' He grabbed his cellphone again, pressed the keys in a hurry, until he looked up and said to her: 'I've got the bastards, I've got them.'
She smiled at him. 'Welcome back,' she said.
The operator phoned Quinn from the hospital, his voice urgent. 'There is a call for Osman, it sounds like a white guy.'
'Tell the team with Osman that I want him to take the call. Then put him through, we are listening this side,' and he gestured to the technician to get it on the Ops Room loudspeakers.
It took valuable seconds, they were just in time to hear Becker's voice. 'Shaheed, this is your friend from yesterday. I know about the ship, Shaheed, the date and time and place. Is it worth 500,000 to you?'
Then the click of a phone call being cut off. And silence.
Quinn wanted to swear, stopped himself, since Mentz was right behind him. He grabbed the phone and called the operator. 'What are you doing?'
'It wasn't us, it was Osman. He put the phone down.'
71
Milla ate alone. She was rinsing her plate when she heard the unfamiliar ring tone of the cellphone, not realising at first that it was her new one. She had to run to the bedroom where she had left it on the bedside cupboard the night before. She answered with just a 'Hello?'
'It's Lukas. I think they were with him, Milla. The PIA, or someone. He put the telephone down. I'll have to make another plan.'
'I'll have to get some weapons.'
'Weapons? What about your pistol?'
'I'm going to need more than that.'
Fear took hold of her. 'Why?'
'To get my money ... I'll have to intercept that ship's cargo.'
'Becker made the call from a public phone box at Eden on the Bay in Blouberg,' the operator told Quinn.
'A hotel?'
'I think it's a new shopping centre ...'
'Another one?'
'I'm trying to find out.'
'Get me a map on the big screen,' Quinn said. 'Mark the place where the number plate was stolen. Then the shopping centre. How are we doing with the guest houses?'
'We've phoned more than twenty. Nothing so far.'
'Make sure you include Blouberg as well.'
Then silence, until Janina Mentz's voice came from the back. 'Good work, Quinn.'
Masilo had hurriedly set up the coordination office on the ground floor of the Wale Street Chambers. Network cables snaked across the floor along with temporary phone connections, a long table stood in the centre, a few chairs gathered around.
Burzynski came in carrying files and a laptop, talking before the door even closed behind him. 'Your man Becker works for himself,' he said and put the stack on the table, the laptop on one side, and picked up the uppermost file.
'My man?'
'Figure of speech.' He handed the file to Masilo. 'We received this from the FBI an hour ago. Turns out, Lukas Becker is a smuggler. Of ancient and historic artefacts.'
Burzynski sat down and pulled his laptop closer. 'I'll be using wireless and my mobile, if you don't mind. Not that I don't trust you, of course, standard operating procedure ...' He pointed at the file: 'As you'll see, the FBI opened a file on Becker in 2004, after he was sacked by an archaeology professor from the University of Pennsylvania during a dig in Turkey. They caught him with a two-thousand-year- old pendant, worth a small fortune. The prof fired him on the spot, and, as he didn't want to report it to the Turkish authorities for fear of losing his excavation license, he made a call to the FBI. Told them other artefacts went missing too, but they couldn't pin it on Becker. When the Bureau started looking at Becker's past, they found that he was under suspicion at earlier digs, too, but nobody had any proof.'
'And then he went to Iraq.'
'Exactly. He must have known he had no hope of working in archaeology again. So, he joined Xe Services to train Iraqi boat crews patrolling the Tigris. Which runs all the way down to the Persian Gulf, a highway to smugglers' heaven. A month ago, Interpol started uncovering a massive syndicate trafficking in ancient artefacts, starting at the museums in Baghdad, pipelines to New York and Amsterdam, ancient Persian stuff, art, jewellery, you name it. Somehow, the info leaked, and the network started disbanding very rapidly. And your man Becker resigned from Xe overnight, and caught the first flight home, via London ...'
'Ahah ...' said Tau Masilo.
'But there's one more thing. When Interpol and the US Military Police started questioning some of the smugglers they arrested, they were told Becker got away with a tidy sum belonging to the syndicate bosses. Sterling. And, apparently, the syndicate caught up with your man in Johannesburg, where he told them a sad tale of car-jacking, and a fortune lost. Word is, he has six weeks to repay them, or they take him out.'
'Jeso.'
'Jeso, indeed,' said Bruno Burzynksi. 'Now that we've cleared the air, let's catch us some extremists.'
'Sir,' said another operator, 'here's a call from Jarryd January, he says it's urgent,'
'Put him through.' He waited for the little light to flash, and answered. 'You've got news?'
'My informant with the Ravens just phoned. He said someone told Terror Baadjies and them that the Golf has been spotted ...'
'In Blouberg?'
'Yes.' Surprised.
'Where exactly?'
'The guy drove out of the shopping centre, Eden on the Bay. They were too late to tail him. But now everyone is on the way there, every gangsta on the Flats.'
Quinn swore, barely audibly. He turned to Mentz. 'Ma'am, I want to move the Reaction Unit to Blouberg now.'
'Do it.'
Right at the back of the FBI report Masilo found a paragraph that made him suddenly pick up the phone and call Mentz's Ops Room extension. 'Mentz.'
'Becker worked for himself. Smuggler in antique artefacts, I've got a dossier here from the FBI, a report from Interpol. But tell Quinn, he has three aliases, all with forged passports ...'
'Let me write them down.'
'John Andreas, Dennis Faber ...'
'His parents ...' 'Excuse me?'
'Those are variations on his parents' names.'
'Oh .. .Yes .. .The last one is Marcus Smithfield.'
'I'll tell Quinn. Any other news?'
'Nothing.'
She had asked Lukas over the phone, where would he get weapons?
For the first time there was irritation in his voice, impatience withher, as though she was a bothersome child. 'Jissis, Milla, five years in Iraq, you get to know people,' and then, 'I have to go, see you as soon as I can.' Brusque and hasty.
She dropped down in an armchair, hurt, she had just been asking, she just wanted to know, there was no need to talk to her like that. Self- pity clashed with a desire to be understanding of his tone with her, indignation and the impulse to pack up and go against the knowledge that she didn't want to return to her flat. She knew they were waiting there for her, the ones who had bugged her, the ones who had studied her whole life in her diaries, she never wanted to see them again.
She had to go back. She had to collect her car, and her cellphone, there would be a message from Kemp, the attorney, about someone who could find the microphones in her flat. She would have to clean up and tidy up, she would keep the cellphone close at hand to call Kemp if they tried to interrogate her again. This time she would fight back, let them go ahead and charge her with something, she had broken no laws.
She would have to sit and wait until Lukas was finished, until he came back from this other world, the one where you got weapons because you knew people, the one where ships carried smuggled cargo, where people hijacked and stole money. A man's world of organised crime in Gauteng and the Cape Flats, and Muslim extremists. And poverty and unemployment and drugs, a reality she was only vaguely aware of, because she had been locked away in the prison, the fort of Durbanville, behind walls and alarms, a pseudo world built on ignorance, denial and enclosure, by huddling together with others who helped preserve the phantom of prosperity and security.
The irony was that she hadn't felt at home there. Durbanville was just as strange a landscape as this other one that Lukas wanted to expose himself to. And here she stood, a foot in each of these worlds, and she belonged in neither. Milla Strachan, permanent outsider. Her instinct was to get up and pick up pen and paper and write about it until it made sense, but she suddenly realised she was doing it again, trying to create a safe haven with words, a home, a place she belonged, a universe that made sense, even if just to her. Was that all she was destined to have?
She rose from the chair with the urge to do something, to take partin some sort of action that would save her from this limbo, a lifebelt in the river of words.
Her eye fell on the laptop on the counter, the one from which Lukas had extracted the explosive and the equally dangerous information, and she thought, let me take a look, I can at least know what he knows, it will make the wait for him more bearable.
'I've got him,' an operator called, hand cupped over the telephone receiver. 'Under the name of Dennis Faber, in the Big Bay Beach Club.'
'Hotel?' Quinn asked.
'No, it's self-catering units ...'
'Where is it?'
'Last place on the right when you drive out of Blouberg towards Melkbos.'
'Which number?'
'Sir?'
'Which number is Becker in?' Quinn lifted his phone receiver,
called Major Tiger Mazibuko, commanding officer of the Reaction Unit.
'Oh ... hold on ...' the operator said. 'Ma'am, Dennis Faber, what is the number of his unit... Twenty-seven ...'
'Mazibuko.'
'The Big Bay Beach Club, it's a holiday resort just outside Blouberg. He's in number twenty-seven ...'
'We're on our way.'
'How long?'
'Fifteen minutes.'
72
Milla read the emails between Osman and one Sayyid Macki.
Shipment arrives Monday 23 Shawwal 1430 A.H. at 02.00 (GMT +2).
Day after tomorrow, at two in the morning.
She looked in the Sent mail folder, found Osman's answer:
Alhumdulillah. We will be ready. The Madeleine to anchor at S33 49.517 E17 52.424, we will have transfer vessel waiting, to transport Haidar to fully equipped reception team at S33 54.064 E18 24.921, OPBC.
OPBC? What did that stand for? Was it also Arabic, like Haidar, which meant 'lion'?
She recalled the password on this computer. Amiralbahr. Another word with a Middle Eastern feel.
Words were what she knew, she would try to unravel this one. She would have to Google it, like Lukas. But how? She wasn't familiar with her new cellphone.
Milla got up and fetched her new cellphone and the box it came in, found the manual and started to read. 'Use your mobile phone as an Internet modem,' was all she could find. She followed the directions, plugged in the USB cable and activated the modem.
Network connection successful.
Pleased with her success, she opened Internet Explorer on the laptop and went to the Google website.
She typed in 'Amiralbahr'.
Did you mean amir al-bahr?
Perhaps. She clicked on it.
Facts about amir al-bahr: etymology, as discussed in admiral (naval officer): the title of admiral has an ancient lineage. It apparently originated before the 12th century with Muslim Arabs, who combined emir, or amir ('commander'), the article al, and bahr ('sea'). . .