Trackers

by Deon Meyer

  She saw the extension of his arm, a weapon. Long and thin.

  The outstretched arm jerked.

  Lukas toppled forward.

  The sound washed past her, dull. Lukas collapsed, dropped into a little bundle.

  She must go and lift him up.

  Keeping her eyes on him, her hands searched and found the pistol. Grabbed the rifle. Stood erect, so difficult, so slow. She shuffled down the slope. She saw them leave Lukas there and all walk over to the quay. There was activity on the deck, but her eyes were fixed on Lukas.

  She walked across the pavement, across the tarmac of Strand Road. She pushed the pistol down the front of her jeans, not feeling the scrape of metal against the skin of her belly. She held the AK in both hands, walked down the road to the gate, across the gravel, her trainers almost soundless.

  She pushed the gate open with her hip.

  The ambulance was in front of her, that yellow light from the interior, the man busy with something, head down. The boat and the others were out of sight behind the building.

  She cocked the AK as Lukas had showed her, left hand under, pull the bolt back, let go. Pressed the long safety catch with her right thumb, from top to bottom. In the ambulance the man heard the metallic clicks, looked up, saw her. He was coloured, middle-aged. He had a black fringe. Long. A dark mole on his forehead, above the left eye, big and unsightly. His jaw dropped.

  She pointed the AK at him. He put his hands up. 'No. Asseblief! Pleading.

  She stopped. She could see Lukas. He lay tipped forward, still half kneeling, his head on the concrete, turned to her as though resting. The blood shone in the light, a wide dark red puddle. One eye was open, white and staring. The other eye was destroyed, horrifying.

  Something tore inside her, a world fell away.

  Rajkumar sweated, dark stains on his back and under his arms, clicked on the Sent Items folder, Mentz stood behind him.

  There were messages.

  'Thank God,' he said, and opened them one after the other.

  She heard them coming, the noise of something moving on the concrete.

  The wheels of the stretcher.

  She took two steps to the ambulance and got in. The man with the long fringe stared at her in fear, hands raised defensively. 'I'm just the doctor.'

  She moved right to the back corner, beside the sliding window to the driver's cab. She poked the doctor in the ribs with the barrel, so that he had to shift forward on the bench.

  Then they were there, five of them, guns slung over their shoulders. One held a drip high, four handled the stretcher. A shape lay on it under blankets, beard, hair peppered with grey.

  The carriers saw her. Shock like shadows crossed their faces.

  The patient followed their frozen stares, to her. He turned his head slowly. And looked at her. Pale, sunken, black eyes, lined, contoured features, beard, face, an eternity before it sank in.

  She knew him.

  Fragments tumbled through her mind: bits, pieces, words, a splintered mirror that became whole. She saw, she rejected, she tried again, she understood, dizzy, synapses flashed and fired and crackled, an impossible reality that eventually made sense.

  The doctor's whispers, respectful, pleading. 'Please don't shoot.'

  Brought to her senses, Milla took a deep breath. 'Put him in,' she said.

  No one moved.

  Milla moved the barrel of the gun to the side panel. Pulled the trigger. The noise inside deafening.

  They jumped. Someone bellowed outside. The smell of cordite in her nostrils. She leaned forward, pressed the weapon to the patient's head.

  'Put him in.' She didn't know her own voice.

  They picked up the stretcher, and pushed it slowly in.

  The big man appeared at the ambulance door, pistol and silencer in his hand.

  79

  Rajkumar and Mentz stood at the back of the Ops Room listening. Over the radio, the racket of the Super Lynx 300 turbo engines. Mazibuko's voice: 'On our way, ETA seven minutes.'

  Quinn's voice was calm, every word clear. 'Major, I have a new directive, repeat, I have a new directive. Shipment may be human cargo, of extreme value, order is to intercept and protect, protect at all costs, please confirm.'

  'Roger, Ops, target is possible human cargo, extreme value, intercept and protect at all costs.'

  Rajkumar looked hopefully at Mentz, wishing she would share the secret with him. She said nothing, her expression grim.

  'Roger, Major. Be aware of a black BMW X5, Advocate Tau Masilo and a member of the CIA are en route, five or six minutes away, unarmed, they will wait for visual confirmation of your arrival, at the corner of Portswood and Beach Roads, and approach drop zone from the east, down Beach, please confirm.'

  'Roger, Ops, black BMW X5, their ETA five minutes, coming down Beach Road from the east after our arrival.'

  Silence.

  Rajkumar couldn't keep it in any more. He whispered to the Director: 'Haidar means "lion", that's all I could find.'

  'Try "lion sheikh",' she said provokingly, the suspense a mask.

  At first he stood processing the clue of a phonetic 'lion's cheek' to the context of' sheikh'. He walked quickly to one of the vacant computers, set the web browser to a search engine, and typed in the words.

  The third link was the one that made his eyes pop. He clicked on it. Arabic script, a simple web page. He had to scroll down before he saw the photo, the familiar face, and the English translation. From The Lion Sheikh Usama Ibnu Laden May Allah Preserve Him.

  'Shit,' said Rajhev Rajkumar, the sibilant long and drawn-out.

  The big man outside the ambulance, the one who had shot Lukas, had a heavy face, as if carved from granite, thick bushy eyebrows above eyes filled with hate, as he lowered the pistol.

  Milla, right at the back, stared back with contempt.

  The doctor took the drip and hung it from a hook, folded his hands on his lap. The bearers retreated.

  'Lukas's money,' said Milla.

  No one responded.

  She lifted the AK, brought it down on the patient's face, on his nose and mouth, a convulsive movement, the doctor gasped, the big man roared, her voice above everything, screaming, rage verging on hysteria, 'Bring Lukas's money!'

  More hesitation. Then the big man shouted at someone out of sight: 'Bring the silver case.'

  'And his rucksack,' she said with more control this time.

  'Take the rucksack off him,' the big one ordered.

  Blood from the patient's nose soaked into the grey-black moustache. The doctor looked at it, looked at her in question. She shook her head.

  A case was passed to the big man, another pair of astounded eyes peered at her, then disappeared.

  'Open it.'

  He took a step up to the ambulance, put the shiny aluminium case down on the floor, undipped it, turned it around, lifted the lid.

  Dollars, tightly packed.

  She nodded.

  The rucksack arrived. He took it, put it beside the case.

  She saw the blood spatters on Lukas's bag, the flecks of tissue. A sound slipped from her throat. She looked up, saw the contemptuous eyes under the bushy eyebrows. She lifted the AK, leaned forward as she had been taught, and shot the big man, three cracking staccato shots, jerking him back and away, staggering, falling. The doctor called to Heaven, the patient tried to lift his arms from under the blanket, and she turned the weapon, pressed it against him, and said: 'Drive now. Drive.'

  The bearers outside the open doors didn't move.

  Again she hit the patient with the muzzle of the gun, against the cheekbone. The doctor shouted, in desperation: 'Get someone, please, someone to drive.'

  One of the bearers came to his senses, a young man, he disappeared, she felt the springs of the vehicle budge, the front door slam shut, the window behind her slide open.

  'Where to?' he asked.

  In the distance, the sound of helicopters.

  The parking lot of the Tyger Val
ley shopping centre was dark and deserted.

  She gestured to the driver to drive to the Renault. The patient's eyes were on her, intense. Filled with hatred.

  They stopped beside her car.

  'Open up,' she said to the doctor.

  He hesitated.

  'I want to get out,' she said. 'Then you can go.'

  BOOK 4: MAT JOUBERT

  (FORM 92)

  February 2010

  Reporting found persons must be cancelled by personally

  notifying the police station where the person was reported as

  missing of his/her return, or by the investigation official

  investigating the missing person's case. A SAPS 92 is used to

  effect the cancellation on the relevant Circulation System.

  South African Police Services Directive, 2008 (verbatim)

  8o

  He loved to watch her.

  Margaret stood on the other side of the breakfast counter, ten to seven in the morning, already showered and dressed. Her long, reddish- brown hair in a plait, pale pink lipstick, an almost invisible sprinkling of freckles on her cheeks. A head shorter than he was, but tall for a woman. And full-bodied. With the slender forearms and delicate hands that now constructed the sandwiches with so much practised skill: a lick of mayonnaise, lettuce leaves, half peppadews, fine rounds of sweet cucumber and, finally, the slivers of roast chicken, before she sliced her creation cleanly with the knife, straight across, precisely in half.

  He sat and ate his yoghurt and muesli.

  She placed each sandwich in its own transparent bag and looked up at him with her oddly-coloured eyes, the one bright blue, the other brown, flecked with speckles of gold dust.

  'So how does it feel?'

  'Strange,' said Mat Joubert. 'A bit nervous.'

  'I can believe it.' Her English accent was careful, the way her tongue worked the Afrikaans charming. 'Everything will be fine. Ready for your coffee?'

  'Please.'

  She turned towards the coffee machine. He admired her curves in denim jeans, the white heels. Forty-eight, and easy on his eye. 'You look sexy,' he said.

  'You too.'

  He smiled, because it was good to hear her say it. She poured coffee into a mug, walked around the counter, right up against him, kissed him on the cheek. 'Jacket and tie have always suited you.' She had picked it all out, Saturday at Canal Walk, because he was never good with clothes. The scale of the search was always so discouraging - it was a constant struggle to find something that fitted his unusually large frame. But this time he had to, because at Jack Fischer and Associates the dress code was a little different from what he'd been accustomed to over the last few years.

  She pulled the milk and artificial sweetener closer. 'Mat Joubert, Private Eye. It's got a certain ring to it.'

  'Senior Security Consultant,' he added. 'Sounds like some guy sitting at a gate with a clipboard.' He shook one sweetener pill into his coffee, added milk and stirred.

  She walked across to the sink with his yoghurt bowl. 'I have to go to Stellenbosch. Michelle's washing ...' Her daughter, third-year drama student, absent-minded and eccentric. 'I have to be back by twelve, for the buyers.'

  'Do you think they're serious?' He stood up, picked up the sandwiches. Wallet, cellphone and new briefcase, he ticked off the reminders to himself.

  'I hope so. But call me when you can. I'm very curious.'

  He walked over to her, kissed her on the forehead, breathed in her subtle feminine scent appreciatively. 'I will.'

  'You're going to be early.'

  'The roadworks ... I don't know what the traffic will be like. And better early than late.'

  'Love you,' she said. 'My PI.'

  He smiled. 'You too.'

  When he opened the front door she called out: 'Have you got the briefcase?'

  He turned back to fetch it.

  'She's a fifty-five,' was how Jack Fischer briefed him in the passageway, police lingo, a reference to the SAPS missing persons form.

  In the conference room he could see that the loss was recent. Her narrow shoulders drooped dejectedly, her eyes stared absently down at St George's Mall, the pedestrian area three storeys below. She clutched a cellphone against her chest, as if hoping it might ring.

  Jack Fischer let him walk ahead, then said: 'Mrs Vlok?'

  She jumped, startled. 'Pardon me ...' she said, putting down the phone and holding her hand out. 'Tanya Flint.' The smile was forced, the eyes weary.

  'Flint,' said Jack Fischer, as if memorising the name.

  She was in her thirties, Joubert guessed. Short, dark brown hair. A determination in the line of her jaw, the set of her mouth, now softened by anxiety. And loss. The black jacket, white blouse and black skirt were professional, but somewhat loose, as if she'd recently lost weight.

  'Mrs Flint, I am Jack Fischer, and this is Senior Consultant Mat Joubert.'

  She shook each one's hand quickly, intimidated by the bulk of the two middle-aged men against her slight frame.

  'Sit, do sit.' It sounded almost like an order to Joubert, though Fischer was trying to be gallant.

  'Thank you .'With a brave smile. She slid the handbag off her shoulder and moved towards a chair.

  They sat around the big dark wood table, Fischer at the head, Joubert and Tanya Flint on either side.

  'Madam, firstly, a warm welcome to Jack Fischer and Associates ...' The big ring on Jack's finger flashed with the genial wave of his hand. He was in his sixties, but his thick black hair showed little grey, the side parting was precise, his moustache bushy.

  'Thank you.'

  'Has Mildred asked if you'd like something to drink?'

  'She did, thank you, but I'm fine.' Her hand wrapped around the cellphone again, thumb rubbing the back.

  'Excellent, excellent. I just want to give you the assurance that although I don't handle all the cases personally, I am nevertheless kept up-to-date on everything every day. But with S.C. Joubert, you are getting one of the best in the country. He has recently left the South African Police Services after thirty-two years of service - he was Senior Superintendent, and Head of the Serious and Violent Crimes Unit here in the Cape. He's an old hand, madam, with incredible experience, a brilliant investigator. Now, before I leave you in his very capable hands, just a few admin matters. You understand that, should we accept your case, there is a deposit payable?'

  'Yes, I saw ...'

  'Excellent, excellent.' Broad smile below the extravagant moustache. 'We work on an hourly rate of 600 rand, excluding travel costs, naturally also any fees for lab work, external consultants, that sort of thing, but we check everything with you first. We're not the cheapest, but we're the best. And the biggest. And our system ensures that you don't spend more than you want to. We'll tell you within two days if your case can be resolved. When the work reaches eighty per cent of your deposit, we give you a ring. When it reaches a hundred per cent, we ask for a further deposit.'

  'I understand ...'

  'That way there are no surprises, you understand?'

  She nodded.

  'Any questions?'

  'I... No, not at the moment.'

  'Excellent, excellent. Well, good, Mrs Flint, now tell us what we can do for you.'

  She set the cellphone down carefully on the table in front of her, drew in a deep breath. 'It's my husband, Danie. He disappeared on November twenty-fifth last year.' As the tears welled up in her eyes, she shifted her gaze to Mat Joubert and said: 'I won't cry. I made a decision that I wouldn't come here today, and cry.'

  81

  She went off to pay the 30,000 rand deposit to senior financial controller Fanus Delport while Joubert waited for her in his new office. He experienced a measure of tension within himself. For the first time in his career someone had to pay directly for his services. And it was six, seven years since he'd last done investigative work himself, in the front line. 'It's like riding a bicycle,' Jack Fischer had said two months ago during the recruitme
nt interview, 'you just get back on again.'

  He hoped it was true.

  Tanya Flint appeared in the doorway. 'May I come in?'

  'Of course,' he said, standing up, waiting for her to sit down. He saw her look around, take in her surroundings. The room was still bare, the dark wood wall units empty. The only personal items were the leather folder for his notepad, his briefcase with two sandwiches in it, and the framed photo on the desk.

  'It's my first day,' he said, by way of explanation.

  'Oh. Then I'm lucky.'

  He wasn't sure what she meant.

  She pointed at the photo. 'Your family?'

  'My wife and my ... stepchildren.' He'd never liked the word.

  'She's very pretty.'

  'I think so too.'

  An uncomfortable silence. He flipped open the leather folder in front of him. Inside it was a pen and an A4 writing pad. At the top of each page, in silver letters, stood Jack Fischer and Associates, pale, like a watermark. He slid the pen from its loop and clicked the nib out, at the ready.

  She unclasped her handbag, on her lap, and took out a photo and a notebook. She handed him the photo. Postcard size, in full colour, of a man in his thirties. The sandy hair trimmed in a short brush cut, braai tongs in one hand, bare chested, outside, laughing. An open, boyish face. There was a certain carefree air about him, someone who had managed to dodge most of life's blows. 'This is Danie,' she said.

  She wanted to start on the day that he'd vanished, but Joubert asked her to begin right from the beginning. 'I need all the background I can get.'

  She nodded, resolute. 'I understand.'

  And she told him. With a note of barely-suppressed nostalgia in her voice.

  She had met Danie Flint seven years ago, when she was twenty-six and he was twenty-eight, at a gathering of mutual friends in Bellville. Not love at first sight, but there was a connection, a natural ease with each other. She liked his sense of humour, the way he laughed, his respectfulness towards her, from the beginning. 'He was so considerate.' And, with a small longing laugh: 'His shirt was always hanging out, even though he tucked it in a hundred times a day.' Joubert noted the past tense and thought it was better that way. It meant that she was realistic, she had already weighed up all the possibilities in a country where disappearance and death generally went hand in hand.