by Deon Meyer
'What are we going to do?'
'We are going to take the money.'
'What money?'
'There is always money, at this kind of transaction. Cash. This is a world where no one trusts anyone, you don't pay in advance, you don't pay by cheque, you don't believe it when a guy says he will make an electronic transfer. You want to see the money in your hand and you want to count it. One guy will bring something in, the other inspects the goods and hands over the money. Always. And if it is weapons, they will pay in dollars.'
'There are only two of us.'
'We're going to wait until the deal is done. We aren't interested in the weapons, we're after the guys who are going out with the boat again. Through that narrow slipway. They will have the money ...'
He took a pen out of a side pocket of his rucksack. He pulled the serviette closer, drew on it, quick lines for streets, the sea, the breakwater.
'I'll be here in front, on the point of the breakwater. You'll be here on the other side of Strand Road, behind the grass bank. That way we will cover both exits. The way this sort of thing usually works, the bringers in and the takers out all help to transfer the goods, it's in everybody's interest that it happens quickly, that the goods are delivered safely ...' 'Why?'
He smiled again at her compulsion to understand everything. 'Because they want to do more business in future, there are reputations to protect, a code of honour. So, with a bit of luck, the boat will go back to the ship with the money at the same time as the load goes out the gates. I will stop them at the breakwater. All you have to do is fire off a few rounds. Here, in the direction of the gate, low, into the ground ... It's dark, it's a hell of a surprise, we want to create the impression that we are many. I'll fire a burst with the AK, then with the H&K. You take the other AK and the pistol. Wait till I fire, then shoot first one then the other, single shots, five or six, completely different sounds, create the impression of superior numbers. That's all we need.'
He picked up his cup and took a big gulp. 'Lord, Lukas,' she said.
Extract: A Theory of Chaos, Coronet, 2010, pp. 312-313
He made the logical assumption. He thought my concern and uncertainty was about what lay ahead, he put his hand on mine and he said, 'If everything goes haywire, leave the weapons there and walk away. Go to the lights. To the hotel. Wash your hands and your clothes to remove the residue. Wait there for me.'
'No,' I said, because I couldn't contain it any longer. 'I wrote your report. I know what you learned in the Navy. How . . . ? Why do you know about things like everyone helping to offload, and about shaking off tails and buying cellphones without ID and getting guns in the Cape and about stealing cars, ripping parts off and connecting the right wires? And washing residue off your hands?'
Later, on the grass bank, I felt ashamed of my fervour and how badly I had expressed it. I found the words that I had wanted: 'It doesn't matter where all your knowledge comes from, it doesn't matter where you were and how you learned it. But why won't you trust me with the truth? Why don't you trust my love?' But it was too late by then.
I watched how he first looked past me at an invisible horizon. His face slowly changed. It became softer, like someone who was bringing sad tidings. In a voice the colour of a rainy day, he said the strangest thing: 'I went to study to find out when we lost our innocence. And I did.'
Only then did he look at me. 'For fourteen thousand years we have been heading for chaos, Milla. From the first settlement, the first town, the first city. So slowly that no one noticed it. But that's changed. It's pushing up like a tide, everywhere. In America, in Europe, here, ever faster, ever closer. In ten years, twenty, maybe fifty, it's going to swallow us up. You saw it, you know now. You will regret that, yet, you will still wonder whether it is better to be blissfully ignorant. You just have to get to the point where you realise the chaos is inevitable. Then you have to ask yourself, what are your choices? Can you afford to ignore it? Or should you utilise the chaos to escape it?
He picked up his coffee cup, drank the last of his coffee. He said, 'That's what I did. I learned from the chaos, so I could use it. And soon you will do that with me.'
77
He lay beside her on the grassy bank, the soccer stadium behind them, the street in front of them, the boat club to the other side. He held to his eyes a small pair of binoculars that he had dug out of his rucksack. He scanned the Oceana Power Boat Club, slowly, from end to end. Then he said, 'They're not here yet,' and he explained to her exactly what he wanted her to do. He told her how time stood still, how it disappeared when adrenaline flowed, a minute could feel like eternity, she must not be misled by that. She must look at her watch when she heard the first volley. They had easily ten, maybe twenty minutes before the police would arrive. Stay aware of the time, keep your cool. When she saw he had the money, when he was out of the gate, she must not go to him. Walk along behind the grass bank. To the light. To the hotel.
She nodded, a frown of great seriousness on her face.
He said the most difficult time would be the two hours of waiting. It was hard to lie still, so make sure you're comfortable, scratch open a place to lie in. Your greatest enemy is your mind. You're going to feel sleepy, you're going to doubt, you will see phantoms, you will think of everything that could go wrong. Just stick to the plan, forget about everything else: just stay awake, and stick to the plan.
He let her go through the rifle drill of the AK-47 one more time. Just before he got up and jogged expertly down the slope, he put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her in the neck and then on the temple. 'See you soon.'
She followed him with her eyes, across Strand Road, to the OPBC gate, until he disappeared in the shadows along the fence.
In the coordinating office, at a quarter to one in the morning, Masilo watched Bruno Burzynski. The CIA man walked up and down the opposite wall, restlessly, holding his cellphone to his ear. He kept repeating, 'Uh-huh', with varying pauses, his face betraying nothing.
He rang off, turned back to the table and sat down. His elbows on the table, his hands open in a gesture of conciliation. 'You have to talk to her, Tau.'
'She won't budge, Bruno. Not unless you tell her what the cargo is.'
For the first time the tension showed on Burzynski's face. He made a gesture of frustration and helplessness: 'I can't, it's not my decision, and this thing is so fucking politicised, so fucking invested . . .'
'That's not going to cut it.'
Burzynski regained control, his body still. He leaned back in his chair, visibly tired. 'I know.'
Extract: A Theory of Chaos, Coronet, 2010, p. 317
The last half-hour before they came was the most difficult.
The ache in my body from lying too long on the invisible, unknowable discomforts of the grass tufts and stones, the nagging, gnawing uncertainty, the doors opening in my head, unlocked by Markus's half confession, so that I thought of my own sins, submerged for so long.
On a grassy bank opposite a small-boat harbour, in the middle of the night, I remembered Cassie.
Casper. Eighteen years ago. Ten months before I met Frans. A year before I fell pregnant. Casper, the music student, the cellist, taking the same extra class as me. Cassie the vulnerable, Cassie the ugly, Cassie of the crooked teeth and small protruding ears, who made advances like a whipped dog. Cassie the annoying, with his nervous chat without context, his abrupt silences, yet I didn't have the courage to drive him away. It made me feel good, there was something sacrificial, something noble and altruistic in allowing Cassie his conversations, the development of the appearance of a friendship.
Cassie, who wanted more and more, who phoned, who followed me around, who asked for me at the hostel reception, until it all became too much, saturation point, the night of craziness. I stormed down the stairs, grabbed him by the hand, marched him off to his little flat. I closed the door behind us, and standing there in front of him, I took off all my clothes. Bare in front of him, naked, on display. I
watched Cassie, his eyes flickering from my breasts to my pubis, the slackness of his mouth, his disbelief, his gratitude, his sudden lust, his transformation from lapdog to guard dog. Like my mother, I had given expression to an impulse, a compulsion, a liberation, and like her, I found pleasure in it. It was a moment of light and darkness. And truth.
I would not let him touch me.
She saw the blue bakkie first, dark blue, battered. It drove slowly past the gate twice, then went away. Towards the Waterfront. Turned back. Two people in the front.
A quarter to one.
At five to, they were back again. They stopped beside the fence, got out. Surveyed everything carefully. One had a cellphone to his ear.
Milla tracked his every move.
At one o'clock the second wave arrived. A panel van stopped in front of the gate. The passenger door opened, a man got out, disappeared in front of the vehicle. Appeared again as he opened the gates, first the right, then the left. He remained standing as the panel van drove in, waited until the dark blue bakkie reappeared, then he also passed through the gateway. He closed them again, but did not lock them.
The rear door of the panel van opened. Six, seven, eight men climbed out, each holding a weapon. She recognised the shape: AK-47s like the one that lay in front of her.
A big man stood and pointed, gave orders, the others walked to the bakkie, offloaded some equipment, cylindrical, big and bulky.
They moved purposefully, everyone seemed to know what to do. Two of them walked left around the bay to the breakwater, two to the right. The rest disappeared behind the building.
God, Lukas, they will see you.
The lights of the vehicles turned off.
Silence. Nothing happened.
Seventeen minutes past one.
Mentz came into the coordination office. Both men saw the smugness. 'I'm sure you've worked it out by now, Bruno. The bad news was that Osman's laptop was severely damaged. The good news, I am happy to report, is that the hard disk is in pretty good shape. We should have data access within the next half an hour. So the question is, how are you doing, with your satellites and stuff?'
The waiting, the endless waiting. She felt hot in the jacket, she wished she could take it off, but dared not move. Her hands perspired against the wooden butt of the AK, her eyes kept searching down below, but nothing moved. She looked again and again at her watch, at the eternity of minutes passing. Her mind asked, 'What if...' threatening to let loose the anxiety over strange possibilities. Her lips formed the words, over and over, silently: just stay awake, stick to the plan.
At twenty-seven minutes past one she felt as if she was levitating out of her body. She could see herself lying on the slope, the forty- year-old woman with short, black hair, the mother of Barend Lombard, the ex-wife of Christo, her life and this moment unreal, belonging to someone else, she wanted to get up and go and find her own. She wanted to stand up and scream, wave her arms. She wanted to stand up and hold the AK aloft and pull the trigger, watch the trajectory of the bullets, pretty bows, fireworks, celebrations.
Her heartbeat brought her back, beating too quickly, too hard inside, so that it felt as though the ground was rising up to swallow her. She knew it was the stress, two long days of stress, and she looked at her watch, sixteen minutes to two, and she almost leaped with fright, a shock wave rippling through her body, where had the time gone? Just stick to the plan, forget about everything else, stay awake, and just stick to the plan.
This was not her world. She knew that now.
Fourteen minutes to two.
Rajkumar's hands hopped across the keyboard like two fat birds, 'We have the keys, we have the keys, I'm exporting now, start the decryption, somebody call the Director.'
Then: 'Shit.'
The technicians, his hand-picked team, his good-natured colleagues, all looking at him.
'There's email here. We might not need the decryption, motherfucker has it password protected, let's see, you Muslim bastard, gimme what you got...'
They laughed.
He looked up fleetingly, said sharply and angrily. 'Call the Director. Now.'
78
At nine minutes to two the other vehicle arrived.
At first Milla didn't believe her eyes: that shape, those markings. She shifted forwards, stared intently.
An ambulance. It had stopped in front of the gate.
Someone emerged from the darkness carrying a gun, and opened the gates.
The ambulance drove through. Stopped in front of the long building. The big man came walking around it, talked to the driver. Then he walked back, out of sight again.
Why an ambulance?
Six minutes to two.
Janina Mentz watched the screen, where the small program window flickered with files scrolling too fast to read, searching for the keyword.
'Three, four minutes,' said Rajkumar. 'We're almost there.'
The telephone rang.
Rajkumar answered, listened. He held his hand over the instrument, looked at Janina and said, deeply impressed: 'The Director of the CIA wants to speak to you. From Langley. On the secure line.'
She must remember to check her watch when Lukas fired, she must remember, she must concentrate. Movement down below.
The ambulance doors opened, a weak beam of yellow light shining out. Someone moved in the interior. It was the figure of a man, bent over a low stretcher. He was busy. Then he sat on the bench next to it.
An ambulance. Camouflage. They were going to put the missiles in there. Nobody stopped an ambulance.
Relief, she felt relieved, a riddle solved.
'Please hold for the Director of the CIA,' said a woman's voice.
Before Mentz could react, his voice came over the line. 'Madam Director?'
'Yes.'
'I would have preferred our first meeting to be face to face, and under different circumstances, please accept my apology. As a fellow servant of the State, I am hoping for your understanding. Sometimes, we have to follow orders.'
'I understand, and your apology is accepted.'
'Thank you, madam. I have to tell you about the cargo being brought to your shores, but first, I want to ask a favour I have no right to. Would you please consider allowing AIC Burzynski to accompany you when you intercept? It would mean a lot to us, and to our government. And, in a minute, you will understand why.'
'We will gladly include Bruno.'
'Thank you very much. Now, allow me to tell you ...'
The darkness below melted away, unexpectedly, in slow motion, so that she thought she was imagining it at first.
Four lights, a soft glow. It was the cylinders they had been carrying, two down at the quay, two further away at the end of each breakwater, where Lukas was. Her heart lurched, paralysing her, her body, her arms, her hands were as heavy as lead, her eyes were transfixed.
Light that made the small bay visible, surreal, since the sounds of the night had not altered, there was no additional movement, only the light.
Minutes dragged.
Then she heard the shout, faint and far away against the white noise of the city and the sea. She saw two small, dark figures leaping between the dolosse, impossibly long shadows fragmenting against the hundreds of facets. She knew before she saw, before her brain could decode the movements, knew it was Lukas, he had been seen, their dance was towards him, weapons in their arms, aimed urgently.
Two stick figures became three: Lukas with his hands on his head, the rucksack a small bulge at this distance. Milla was turned to stone, everything flowed out of her, only her eyes followed them, to the right, rifle barrels poking and prodding him like an animal, a lamb to the slaughter.
Rajkumar uttered a shrill sound of triumph. He opened the email program, a long list of messages in the inbox, the subject indecipherable. He chose one halfway down the list, speed read, saw references to the ship, nothing of use. Picked another one, scanned it, another:
Shipment arrives Monday 23 Shawwal 1430A.H. a
t 02.00 (GMT +2).
'Shit,' he said and looked up. Janina Mentz wasn't back yet.
He read the next email.
We agree with your assessment. Arrival of The Madeleine and Haidar ...
'Haidar?' he said aloud. 'Two ships?'
...now 24 hours earlier at 02.00 (GMT +2) on Sunday 22 Shawwal 1430 A.H.
'Fuck,' said Rajhev Rajkumar, looked at the wall clock. 'Where? Tell me where?'
He rose from behind the computer, he must go and get Mentz, he moved towards the door. He saw her approaching.
On the concrete slipway they made Lukas kneel, his hands behind his bowed head, two firearms aimed at him.
Four people came out of the building, walked quickly to the ambulance, took out the stretcher and pushed it around the corner.
The boat came through the gap, an illusion unfurling from the darkness, white, sleek and lovely, with the lines of a bird of prey. The deep, dull throb of the engines suddenly ceased.
Her eyes went back to Lukas, her whole body paralysed.
A few of the men ran to the wooden pier.
The big man appeared from behind the building, walked up to Lukas with his hands at his sides.
The boat cut slowly through the quiet water of the harbour, men on deck, ropes were thrown and caught. The vessel bumped gently against the pier, the prow slid against it, ropes were tightened, it came to a halt.
They all turned and looked to where Lukas knelt.
Milla stood up, gravity seemed almost too strong.
The big man in front of Lukas looked down, said something to him.
Walked slowly around behind Lukas. Stopped. Took a step back, stretched out his arm, to the back of Lukas's head.