Thirteen Hours

by Deon Meyer

  Barry Smith turned white. 'Fuck off,' he said, with more venom.

  'Murder,' said Vusi to him. 'Life sentence.'

  'Fuck off, you black bastard.'

  The injustices of the day bore down incredibly heavily on Vusumuzi Ndabeni, but he shook them off one last time. Then Barry Smith said: 'Fucking motherfucker,' and Vusi's temper exploded over him like the mighty breakers on the Wild Coast. In one lightning move he reached the young white man, and his fist struck his temple with all the power in the lean, neat body behind it.

  Barry's head jerked back and he toppled backwards, chair and all. His head hit the floor with a dull thud. Vusi was there, on him, jerking him up by the collar, shoving his face into Barry's and said: 'My mother is a decent woman, do you hear?'

  Then he let go of him and stood back, breathing heavily. Vusi adjusted his jacket, realised his knuckles hurt and saw that Barry's eyes had trouble focusing. Barry got unsteadily to his feet, looked back, slowly picked up the chair, set it right and sat down. He put his hands on the table in slow motion and dropped his head onto them, his palms obscuring his face.

  It was quite a while before Vusi realised that the young man was crying. He pulled out a chair and sat down. He said nothing, not trusting his voice: his rage had not subsided, the guilt was just a small dark spot in his belly.

  They sat like that for over a minute.

  'My mother is going to kill me,' said Barry through his hands.

  'I can help you,' said Vusi.

  Barry sobbed, making his whole body shake. Then he began to talk.

  Dekker sat opposite Mouton. He said: 'I know you didn't shoot Adam Barnard. I know about the girl and the four guys chasing her.'

  'Five,' said Mouton, and then looked as if he could bite off his tongue.

  'Five,' said Dekker in satisfaction.

  'I want to phone my lawyer,' said Mouton.

  'Later. Let me tell you what happened. Barnard phoned you, last night, just after nine. You knew we would find a record of the call, that's why you volunteered it so easily ...'

  Mouton's Adam's apple moved, he wanted to say something, but Dekker silenced him with a hand. 'Adam didn't phone you to tell you how silly Ivan Nell's accusations were. He was worried. Nell told me Barnard was disturbed. He wasn't himself. He had a suspicion. He had a feeling, he knew someone was fucking with the money. I don't know why yet, but I will find out. In any case, Adam said he wanted to see you. Did he tell you to come to the office, you and Wouter? Or was it your suggestion - keep trouble away from home? So you came in here, probably very worried, because you are guilty. What time was that, Willie? Did he tell you to come at eleven so he could look at the figures first?

  I know he worked on his computer last night. He was so upset by what he saw that he never turned his laptop off. It was still on this morning. Maybe he loaded all the records on a CD so that you couldn't go and fiddle with them. You sat here, or maybe in his office, and he confronted you. Did you deny everything, Willie? How am I doing so far? Never mind, let me finish. You argued and fought from eleven o'clock to half past one in the night. Barnard must have said something like; 'Leave it, we'll talk more tomorrow.' He must have been tired. Thinking of his drunken wife at home. And you and Steenkamp followed him out into the garden. Argued some more. You went in just when the girl arrived. You got lucky, in more than one way. Because if you had been standing there, you might also have been shot. But then they shot Adam. Problem number one solved. There you two were, looking out the window at the body, and you thought: what now? Your big problem was Ivan Nell. Because, whatever you did, if Ivan came and told us there was a snake in the grass, you were in trouble.

  'So you wondered how you could make it look different, as though you had never been here. Give someone else the blame. Then you remembered about Josh and the Big Sin. And Alexa and the pistol. Fucking brilliant, Willie, I have to tell you. So you carried Barnard to the car. If he was in your or Wouter's car there will be blood and hair and fibres and DNA, and we'll find it.

  'Now, I must say, I couldn't figure out the shoe and the cell phone. Until about half an hour ago, when I put the whole story together. The shoe came off when you picked up Adam to carry him to the car. You must have picked him up by the feet. And the cell phone was in his hand when he was shot. So you picked up the phone and you remembered that he had phoned you. So you deleted his call history. And you put the cell phone in the shoe and the shoe in your pocket, or on top of Barnard, we will probably never know. And then when you reached the car and opened the boot, you put the shoe on the roof of the car. Just for the mean time. And then in your hurry you forgot about the shoe. You drove off, Wouter in front with Adam's car and you following.

  Something like that. And up there on the corner, as you turned, the shoe falls off and you don't even know it. How am I doing, Willie? I'm telling you, I had a really hard time figuring out that shoe, until I went up there to the corner again. It came to me in a flash. Fucking brilliant, let me tell you.'

  Mouton just stared at Dekker.

  'You and Wouter carried him up the stairs and you put him down there with Alexa. And you went and got the pistol out of the safe that you installed in the house. Somewhere you fired off three shots. I'm guessing you couldn't do it in the house. Even if you used a pillow or something to reduce the noise, you were too scared of waking Alexa, drunk or not. You must have driven somewhere, Willie. Up the mountain? Somewhere that it wouldn't matter. Then you went back and put the pistol down there. Clever. But not clever enough.'

  'I want to call my lawyer.'

  'Call him, Willie. Tell him to come to Green Point station. Because this is a warrant for your arrest, and this is a warrant to search these premises. I will be bringing smart people, Willie. Auditors, computer boffins, guys who specialise in white-collar crime. You stole Adam Barnard's and Ivan Nell's and who knows how many other people's money, and I'm going to find out how you did it and I'm going to put you and Wouter away, Willie, and that fucking Frankenstein lawyer of yours won't be able to do a thing about it. Or is he also a part of your little scheme?'

  Benny Griessel pushed the man through the front door of Caledon Square. His full beard and hair were trimmed short, neat, plain brown turning prematurely grey. He looked fit and lean in denim shirt and khaki chinos and blue boat shoes. It was only the handcuffs on his wrists that showed he was in trouble, his face was expressionless. Vusi was waiting in the entrance hall.

  'May I introduce you to Duncan Blake?' Griessel asked, with great satisfaction.

  Vusi looked the man up and down, as though measuring him against newfound knowledge. Then he applied himself to Griesselwith a worried: 'Benny, we will have to bring the Commissioner in.' 'Oh?'

  'This thing is big. And ugly. We will have to send a team to Camps Bay, to a hospital. A big team.'

  Only then did a shadow of emotion cross Duncan Blake's face.

  17:47-18:36

  Chapter 48

  They sat in the station commander's office - Griessel, Vusi and John Afrika.

  'I just want to say I am proud of you, the Provincial Commissioner is proud of you. The Minister says I must convey her congratulations,' Afrika said.

  'It was Vusi who cracked it,' said Griessel.

  'No, Commissioner, it was Benny ... Captain Griessel.'

  'The SAPS is proud of you both.'

  'Commissioner, this thing is big,' said Vusi.

  'How big?'

  'Commissioner, they smuggled people in, eight at a time, through Zimbabwe. Somalians, Sudanese, Zimbabweans ...'

  'All the trouble spots.'

  'That's right, Commissioner, people who have nothing, who want to make a new start, who will do anything ...'

  'They must have charged bags of money to bring them to this honey pot.'

  'No, Commissioner, not much.'

  'Oh?'

  'We thought it was just illegal immigrants at first. But Barry Smith, one of the guides, told me the rest. The hospital, the whole thing
...'

  'What hospital?' John Afrika asked.

  'Maybe we should start at the beginning. Benny talked to Blake, Commissioner.'

  Griessel nodded, scratched behind his ear, paged through his notebook and found the right page. 'Duncan Blake, Commissioner. He is a Zim citizen, fifty-five years old. He was married, but his

  wife died in Two thousand and one of cancer. In the Seventies he was part of the Rhodesian Special Air Services. For thirty years he farmed the family farm outside Hurungwe in Mashonaland- West. His sister, Mary-Anne Blake was a surgeon at the hospital in Harare. In May Two thousand, the leader of the Veterans' Movement, Chenjerai 'Hitler' Hunzvi, occupied Blake's farm. Apparently, Blake's foreman, Justice Chitsinga, tried to stop the squatters and was shot dead. For two years, Blake tried to regain possession of his farm through the courts, but in Two thousand and two he gave up and he and his sister moved to Cape Town. He brought Steven Chitsinga, his foreman's son, with him and started African Overland Adventures. Most of his staff were young men and women from Zimbabwe, children of dispossessed farmers, or their workers. De Klerk, Steven Chitsinga, Eben Etlinger, Barry Smith ...'

  'And the Metro man you shot dead? Oerson?' the Commissioner asked.

  'That's another story, Commissioner,' said Vusi. 'Smith said Oerson was with Provincial Traffic. Two years ago he was working at the weighbridge on the N-seven, at Vissershoek, and he pulled one of their Adventure lorries off the road. It was overweight. Then he began hinting, they needn't pay the fine, and de Klerk was immediately ready to pay something under the table. Oerson took it and let them go. But he began to wonder why the Adventure people paid so easily and so much. He thought about it. They came from the north, through Africa, and he was sure they were smuggling something. He waited for them to pass through again a month later. He pulled them off again. He said he wanted to have a look in the lorry and the trailer, in all the cavities. Then de Klerk said that wouldn't be necessary, how much did he want? And Oerson said, no, he wanted to look, because he thought they had something to hide. De Klerk kept offering him more and Oerson said open up. De Klerk said he couldn't and Oerson said: "Then cut me in, because I smell big money." So de Klerk phoned Blake. And they put Oerson on the payroll. But on one condition, Oerson must apply to Metro, because they needed another man to keep an eye on the Somalis and Zimmers who had already donated organs and were all in the city ...'

  'Donated organs?'

  'I'm getting to that, Commissioner. Lots of the people who have already donated have opened street-vendor stalls in the city with the money they were paid. There were a few who threatened to talk if they didn't get more money. It was Oerson's job to shut them up.'

  'As in permanently?'

  'Sometimes, Commissioner. But never personally, he had other contacts for that. Other Metro people too ...'

  'Jississaid John Afrika and folded his hands in front of him. Then he looked at Vusi. 'And the organs?'

  'Blake started the Adventure business, and he and his sister bought the old Atlantic Hotel in Camps Bay in Two thousand and three, and fixed the place up and started a private hospital. She is the "director" now ...'

  'A hospital?'

  Vusi had an idea. 'Excuse me, Commissioner,' he said and pulled the keyboard on the desk towards him, then the mouse. He turned the computer screen so that he could see better, clicked on the web browser icon and typed in the web address.

  Google South Africa read the screen.

  Vusi typed in the word 'AtlantiCare' into the box and clicked on Google Search. A long list of choices appeared. He picked the top link and a website slowly loaded on the screen. It showed a white building on the slopes of the Twelve Apostles, with a banner headline: ATLANTICARE: Exclusive International Medical Centre. Another photo appeared - the building from behind, with the Atlantic Ocean stretching to the horizon.

  'This is the place, Commissioner.'

  John Afrika whistled. 'Big money.'

  'Steven Chitsinga said they were big farmers. They owned and rented a lot of farms, there was cattle, tobacco, maize. Big business. There were some investments ... But the thing is, Commissioner,' Vusi shifted the mouse to a link that said Transplants, 'they do organ transplants.' Another web page opened up with the same white building in the banner across the top. Underneath it the heading: Transplants you can afford. Vusi read out loud to them. 'The average cost of a heart transplant in the United States of America is three hundred thousand dollars. A lung transplant will cost you two hundred and seventy-five thousand, an intestine almost half a million dollars. Impossible to afford without health insurance, but even if you are covered, there is no guarantee that you will receive a donated organ in time. For instance, the waiting list for a kidney transplant in the USA has more than fifty-five thousand people on it...'

  'Don't tell me they ...?'

  'That's right, Commissioner,' Vusi said, and he read from the web page again. 'With the most modern medical facilities available, including dedicated, specialist aftercare in a beautiful environment, world-class surgeons and an international network of donors, you can receive your transplant within three weeks of arriving, at a fraction of the cost.'

  'That's what they smuggled the people in for,' said Griessel.

  'For the organs,' said Vusi.

  'Bliksem,' said the Commissioner. 'We better get people to that hospital for the records.'

  'Mat Joubert is there already, Commissioner. He's got a big team with him.'

  'So they bring people in and then they kill them?'

  'Not always, Commissioner,' said Vusi. 'Apparently that was the price the people were required to pay for a better life in South Africa. They had to donate a kidney or a lung or part of their liver. Or part of an eye, corneas, and bone marrow as well. I'm still trying to get my head around it. Apparently you can donate a lot of your organs without the consequences being too serious.'

  'And the hearts?'

  'We will have to see, Commissioner, because the website talks about hearts as well. But the one Rachel Anderson saw, the one that de Klerk and Chitsinga murdered at Kariba, he had AIDS. Smith says they had test kits with them - before they loaded a person under the trailers, they drew blood and then they tested it.

  They realised that man had AIDS. So they took him out, and they couldn't afford to just let him go.'

  'What kind of people are these?' John Afrika asked.

  'That's what I asked Duncan Blake,' said Griessel. 'And he said Africa took everything he had, all his dreams, Africa tore out his heart. Why couldn't he do that to Africa?'

  Griessel's cell phone rang shrilly. He looked at the screen, got up and went aside to answer it.

  The Commissioner leaned forward, looked at the website, sighed deeply, listening to Griessel making noises of disbelief.

  Benny Griessel came back to the desk. 'That was Mat,' he said. 'Commissioner, this thing is going to get ugly.'

  'Why?' There was a lot of worry in John Afrika's voice.

  'There's a government Minister in the hospital records.'

  'One of our Ministers?'

  'Yes, Commissioner. Liver transplant.'

  'Ag nee, liewe fok,' said John Afrika.

  Fransman Dekker had heard the coloured SAPS computer specialist was genius. So he was expecting someone like Bill Gates. What he got was a slightly built man with the face of a schoolboy, two missing front teeth, a big Afro hairstyle, no sense of humour and a pronounced lisp. 'Thith ith candy floth,' the genius said to Dekker in Wouter Steenkamp's office.

  'Excuse me, bro'?' Dekker asked, because he couldn't understand a single word.

  'Candy floth.'

  'Candy floss?'

  'That'th right.'

  'How so, my bro'?'

  'Illusionth. A PDF pathword ith utheleth.'

  'A PDF pathword?'

  'No, a pathword.'

  'Password?'

  'That'th right. People think if you have a PDF pathword then you're thecure. But it'th not thecure.'

  'S
o how did they do it?'

  'Thith ou ...' he pointed at the computer, which belonged to Steenkamp, '... got the pathword-protected PDF'th for every thinger'th thaleth from the dithtributor. By email. Lookth like it wath hith job to thend it on to the thinger when the money wath tranthferred.'

  'Right.'

  'The thinger thinkth only he hath the pathword, tho he thinkth the record company can't change the thtatement of THEE-D thales. He thinkth he'th getting all the money.'

  'Because it comes from the dith ... er, the distributor?'

  'Yeth, the dithtributor puth the pathword on, but emailth it to thith ou. And thith ou emailth it to the thinger.'

  'Right.'

  'But look here ...' the computer boffin opened a program. 'Thith ith thoftware, Advanthed PDF Pathword Recovery, Enteprithe Edition, made by Elcomthoft. You can buy it from their webthite, the prithe ith jutht under a thouthand rand, but then you can do what you like with a PDF, even if it hath a forty- bit encrypthion with Thunder Tableth. It meanth thith ith candy floth, any pathword protecthion.'

  'So Steenkamp could get the singer's password and he could change the statement?'

  'Exthactly. He copieth and pathteth the PDF tableth into Microthoft Exthell, changeth the tableth, maketh a new PDF, becauth heth got Adobe Acrobat Profethional, the Thee Eth Four edithion, brand new, thtate of the art, and he puth the thame pathword protecthion on again. Tho the thinger thinkth it ith the original PDF, he doethn't know he'th been conned.'

  'How much did they skim?'

  'It lookth like it varieth, from ten to forty per thent, depending on how much the thinger thells.The big guyth, like Ivan Nell, they took up to forty per thent off him on hith latht THEE-D.'

  'Fucking hell.'

  'My thentimentth exthactly.'

  18:37-19:51

  Chapter 49