A waitress came to take the order. ‘We’re here to look after each other, Arshad.’
‘Siraj?’ Ahmed Yusuf sighed without looking up from his laptop, which he had open on the dining room table. ‘You’re getting involved again. Why can’t you just walk away from Durant and that lot?’
Amina tightened the apron string around her waist and opened a recipe book. ‘I said I’d do it for him. He’s a little boy who maybe needs some love and attention.’
‘You must stop this doing your own thing. Why didn’t you ask me?’
Amina flipped through the pages of the book. Maybe crumbed steak. ‘I am asking you.’
‘No, you’ve already made up your mind. You’re doing this to punish me.’Yusuf’s fingers fell hard on the keyboard.
‘Don’t be silly, Ahmed. Why would I want to punish you?’
‘You know how much I want a boy of my own.’ He slipped a notebook from his shirt pocket and entered something into the laptop.
‘It’s fine, he’ll be in the crèche, you’ll be at work. You won’t see him.’ The steak strips looked appealing. Her husband loved steak.
‘So, from when?’
‘Soon, I think. Maybe next week. I’m going to meet his mom on Friday. Mariam, she’s from Chatsworth originally.’
‘It’s the father I’m worried about.’ Yusuf looked up from the screen. ‘A Pakistani.’ He said the words scornfully.
‘It’s fine, relax, I’m not dealing with the father, only the mother.’ The steak strips it was then. She’d baste them in olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
Yusuf sniffed and shook his head. ‘Hey, I don’t know. Sometimes you do things I don’t understand.’
Amina kicked her shoes off. ‘So do you.’
‘What do you mean?’ he asked sharply.
‘Well, for one, going out at night, almost every night.’
‘The machines break down, they run 24/7, I need to check on them.’
Amina’s voice had an edge as she tossed the raw steak onto a board. ‘But three times a week? And I don’t even know what time you get back in.’
‘What’s your point, actually?’ Yusuf huffed.
‘Ahmed, my point is you want a child but you’re not making much of an effort to actually make one.’ She pounded the steak, the tenderiser making thumping noises on the red flesh. She’d had this fight before. It was becoming a routine event that had the same result every time. It was all so predictable.
Yusuf stood up. ‘I can see now, it’s all my fault. Thanks for clarifying it.’ He pushed the chair back, walked to the cabinet and took out a packet of cigarettes. ‘Don’t question me, that’s all I ask, Amina, just don’t question me.’ He walked briskly to the balcony.
Amina shrugged her shoulders and put the steaks back in the fridge.
Masondo’s house in Westville could have been an extravagant mansion if he’d wanted it to be, but it wasn’t. It was big, and stately, but in an understated way. It needed maintenance and the garden wanted a touch of attention. It was clear the Operational Head preferred the indoors. It was the first time Durant had been to Masondo’s house and it was exactly as he’d expected it to be. Masondo wasn’t showy at all.
The evening function was a big affair in terms of numbers, and Durant didn’t know most of the people there. There was no one else present from the office and he couldn’t help feeling a sense of pride that Masondo thought him worthy of an invitation. Many of the guests were youngish, and Durant guessed they were friends and fellow graduates of Nandi, Masondo’s 25-year-old daughter.
‘Uncle Kevin!’ Nandi exclaimed and, before he could defend himself, she was on him, hugging him and pulling her shy-looking friends closer to introduce them to him.
‘The last time I saw you, you were still at school, I think – and look at you now. Doctor Nandi Masondo. What an achievement!’
‘Well, my dad’s in seventh heaven. It’s a dream for him. Come, Uncle Kevin, there’s plenty of food and drink, please have fun and I hope you’ll dance later!’
Durant smiled shyly. ‘Only if you stop calling me uncle, geez man, I’m not that old.’
Masondo was a proud man and Durant hadn’t seen him this relaxed in years. He smiled when he saw Durant and shook his hand, pulled him in and gave him a bear hug. ‘Kevin, thanks for coming, so good to see you here. Did you see Nandi?’
‘I did, Chief, she’s beautiful, she’s just turned out so well, you’ve done a great job.’
‘Can you believe she’ll be a medical doctor? I still can’t. Njabulo, come and meet Kevin Durant.’ Durant recognised Njabulo as a high-ranking political figure and councillor.
Durant shook hands with Njabulo while Masondo called over a waitress. ‘Cindy, please fill this for me,’ he asked, handing the young woman his glass. ‘Make it a double. Glad Shabalala’s not here; he’d have a lot to say about that one hey, Kevin, ha ha ha!’
The faint sound of a cellphone ringing. ‘Um, excuse me, that’s my phone.’
Masondo stepped away, spoke softly on the phone and then returned. He looked shaken. ‘That was the DG. He said last night a truck load of heavy calibre weapons was hijacked just outside Pietermaritzburg. The whole load’s gone and he wants to know where it is.’
Amina was outside the crèche when the bus stopped fifty metres up the road. Mariam’s bus. A warm morning, a long night, with little sleep. The thought of Siraj had troubled her. Poor child. A loveless home, a mother who could go to jail and a father who used them to get permanent residence. Mariam was probably streetwise and battle hardened; that tired, frazzled wife and mother who’d screwed up her life at a young age and who was paying the price. As long as she was looking after the child and he was clean and dressed warmly, it didn’t matter how Mariam was. If the child looked neglected, she would surely say something to the girl, no matter how uncomfortable it would be. A tall and well-dressed woman alighted the bus, a fold-up pram in one hand and a small child in her arm. From a distance Amina noticed the woman walked confidently, her long black hair in a pony tail which swung from side to side. The child was dressed in a white sailor’s outfit and wrapped in a knitted blanket. Amina felt ashamed. This was a normal, loving mother and dedicated wife trying to improve the lot of her child. ‘Mariam, I’m Amina, hi, and this must be Siraj, aw, he’s so cute.’
‘Salaam, Amina, I’m sorry if I kept you waiting. Thanks so much for agreeing to take him in. You’re a blessing; we really appreciate what you’re doing.’
Amina smiled. ‘Here I treat each child like it’s my own. I’m sure Siraj will be a happy little guy.’
Mariam took Amina’s arm and looked into her eyes. ‘I hope it was mentioned we can’t pay anything now, perhaps in a while—’
‘That’s not for you to worry about, girl. You just go out there, see if you can find some work and leave this little fellow to me.’
Masondo’s office was on the fourth floor of the building, on the eastern, sea-facing side. The big windows provided breathtaking views of the ocean, the northern suburbs and an internationally acclaimed eighteenhole golf course. Except Masondo kept his blinds closed. In the years that Durant had known him, he’d never seen the view through those big glass windows. The setting was a distraction, Masondo said. They were there to work, not admire the view. Masondo motioned for Durant and Shabalala to sit. ‘Gentlemen, word from the CIA.’ Masondo flipped a sheet of paper to Durant, who opened it and read: ‘Our Service learned that a threat was made to the US Consulate in Durban from an unidentified caller who threatened retaliatory strikes against US targets in response to US aggression in Afghanistan. The threat was made from a South African mobile number. We would be interested to know the location of the cell on 21 October 2009 and any call records associated with the number.’
‘That’s it? You want me to check the number?’ Durant asked.
‘Of course.’
‘I’m sure whoever made the call wasn’t stupid enough to have a contract phone though.’
&nbs
p; ‘Just get back to me with the detail, Mr Durant. And Mr Shabalala, why are you looking so preoccupied?’
‘I’m fine, sir.’
‘Good, then you help Mr Durant and get your mind off any plans you might be thinking of having with my daughter.’
Shabalala’s shoulders dropped. ‘Of course, yes, sir.’
Khalid lifted the page off the printer, closed and locked the door to the crypto room, and crossed the office to his desk. A minute later there was a brief knock on the door and Maia Berkeley and Cheyenne Ford stepped inside.
The consul-general spoke first. ‘Folks, let me give you a heads up, we’ve got quite a situation here. The threat against the consulate is apparently credible. The CIA sent through a document with details they got from the local boys on the cellphone used to make the threat. Can I see it, Imraan?’
Khalid passed the single page to Berkeley. She looked at it briefly and passed it to her Political Officer.
‘We’ve wanted to narrow the focus of the threat to a specific geographical area, and here we have it. Folks, the call was made in the vicinity of the Islam Africa Centre, so that’s got to be our target area. Imraan, what do we know about this place?’
Khalid shrugged his shoulders. ‘Ma’am, I just know it’s an Islamic Centre that does a lot of good in the community. I’ve spoken to people at the mosque, there’s nothing radical at all goin’ on there.’
‘Cheyenne, can you add anything?’
‘Just that there’s a Sheikh U-Haq there that I think we might need to look at. He’s never been on our radar, but he kinda fits our profile of someone we should be looking at. If someone at the centre made a call, then I guess we need to look at the whole thing.’
‘Aren’t we overreacting on this threat a little?’ Khalid asked.
‘No. You’ll hear it officially soon, it’s still pretty much corridor talk at State, but the Secretary of State for Africa’s visiting here around Christmas.
That just racks the threat level up through the roof.’
Khalid nodded. ‘That does. So what’s the plan?’
‘We need intelligence. Haven’t you got contacts in the area?’
‘I’ve got a lady, a local lady that I can perhaps use to infiltrate, but I don’t know if that’s gonna really do it.’
Berkeley shook her head. ‘Don’t second-guess yourself. We need this facility to be safe; it’s your job to make sure it’s safe. You represent Homeland Security so you need to really come to the party on this. Use every resource you have.’
FIVE
Julian Dos Santos. A hated man. A loved man. Depends on where you stand. Dos Santos studied journalism at Rhodes and wrote a dissertation which he titled ‘Hostile communication: the art of intelligence-driven journalism.’ He took investigative journalism to a new level – far deeper than most journalists feared to go. And he practised what he preached. He’d made headlines for spending time in jail for not revealing his sources in a leaked intelligence report investigation. His deep sources were reliable, protected, and confident. He handled them like a spy would handle deep-throat agents – used dead letter boxes, safe houses, and intermediaries. Dos Santos’s exposés were dynamite – shot the ratings of Informed Nation to levels which made the number gurus shiver with excitement. Some said that without Dos Santos, the newspaper might as well shut down. Others said that Dos Santos’s budget ran into millions of rands per year, probably more than some small countries budgeted to finance intelligence-gathering. Yet Dos Santos was a humble man. Balding, although not even 30, with a propensity to wear worn jeans and a chequered jacket as a type of statement of eccentricity, there was nothing extraordinary about his appearance. But when he went to work, those in the corridors of power and privilege felt their jaws clench on Fridays when the Nation hit the newspaper stands.
Cheyenne Ford liked his style. He wasn’t afraid of people in power; he fed off their arrogance and extravagance and smiled when they pulled their jackets to hide their faces on the court stairs. He was a soldier of truth, but not an idealist, and not foolish. He was cautious, professional. The type the CIA should fund for their propaganda operations. Perhaps they were funding him. She didn’t know. It didn’t matter. She first met him at a Fourth of July celebration at the consul-general’s residence. The press was invited and the Public Affairs Section didn’t expect Dos Santos to come. He, like any good investigative journalist, had immediately begun networking at the function and sought out influential people whom he could develop into confidential sources. Ford had paid only a passing interest in Dos Santos at the July reception; there were too many other people demanding her attention. As the political officer, she also had to ensure she was mixing with the local politicians and government officials and building her own network. She had nevertheless taken Dos Santos’s business card and slipped it into her card holder. Ever so often she would read one of his articles in the Informed Nation and consider calling him and engaging him on the topic, but she never had. Until the consulate got a phone call in October. It lasted about fifteen seconds and the consulate switchboard operator wrote down what the caller said: ‘We are not afraid to die. Your time as crusader-aggressors is at an end. Afghanistan occupation will be revenged! Victory is certain. Allahu Akbar!’
When Maia Berkeley called the senior staff to a meeting and relayed the threat, Ford felt angered. New security measures were implemented, extra security patrols brought in, delays at every turn. All because of one phone call, her comfort zone had been disturbed. And this was South Africa after all. They certainly couldn’t rely on local law enforcement to protect them. Dos Santos’s articles regularly painted a bleak picture of corruption, nepotism and inefficiency in the civil service. And in the absence of any effective law enforcement tackling the threat, it would remain there and her life would be disrupted, possibly for months. The RSO had said at the meeting that they were following up on certain leads, but that’s what security people always say. The only leads Khalid was following were those leading to women’s beds. The whole thing was a crock. The CG was weak, Khalid wasn’t interested and the local police were useless. It was perhaps a moment of weakness, or of strength. Whatever it was, it was wholly unprofessional and a total breach of security, but by the time she’d reflected on these things it was also too late. She’d already made the call to Dos Santos and told him the United States mission in South Africa had been threatened by Islamic terrorists barely eight months before the World Cup kick-off.
SIX
‘Come in, Kevin, have a seat.’ Masondo sat behind his desk and put his head in his hands. ‘The dilemma now is whether we target this organisation, the IAC, merely based on information the Americans have given us or if we start from scratch and try to figure out whether we would’ve targeted it anyway. It’s a catch-22 situation, isn’t it?’
‘Absolutely. We can’t target them until we know they’re up to something and we won’t know they’re up to something until we target them.’
‘And we can’t target them without authorisation. And they’ll be guided by our assessment of the merits of targeting. I don’t know, Kevin, what’s your gut telling you?’
‘My gut? Well, the threat call was made to the US consulate. May I?’ Durant pointed to the whiteboard and Masondo nodded. ‘The trace pinpoints an area the threat call was made from.’ Durant stood and drew a circle the size of a soccer ball on the whiteboard. ‘It’s a relatively rural area and no major roads run through it. The cellphone mast is here, the IAC is here.’ He drew two X-marks, one in the centre of the circle, another fifteen centimetres below the first. ‘This is a storage facility, and this is a convent.’ Another mark twenty centimetres above the first X. The cross was to the left of the first mark, on the edge of the circle.
‘A convent?’
‘Sisters of Mercy Convent is about two kays from the IAC,’ Durant ventured cautiously.
‘What are you suggesting? I hope it’s not to target the convent?’
‘The nuns are prone t
o violence, aren’t they?’ There was more than a hint of playfulness in Durant’s voice.
‘No place for levity here, Durant. This is serious business.’
‘Sorry. Look, we both know there’ve been red flags regarding the IAC before. The sheikh’s from Saudi Arabia and wealthy. I mean, these are all things which obviously worry the Americans because, well, of their experiences of terrorism. Yet, considering the assessment of the area, the IAC seems like the only plausible target. Maybe we’re a bit too naïve or accommodating. I don’t know, it’s a tough one.’ Durant sat down again.
‘Let me make it easier. I’ll get the analysts to write a motivation and we’ll send it to the folks who make the targeting decisions. Let them use their infinite wisdom to decide whether the IAC is a worthwhile target.’
‘There’s probably pressure from the Americans that we look at it, so they’ll probably approve. But I agree, send them all the available information and let it be their call.’
Masondo gave an agreeing nod and dismissed Durant.
Khalid closed the hotel room door softly and motioned Mariam to sit on the couch that faced towards the windows overlooking the sea.
‘I’m uncomfortable here, Imraan. Why a hotel room?’
‘It’s a safe place to talk.’ Khalid parted the curtain and glanced at the blue waters of the Indian Ocean beyond the promenade. This was Paradise indeed.
‘Safe from what?’
Khalid sat beside her on the couch, sinking into a plush cushion.
‘I’m a diplomat. I’m an American. I can’t be seen talking to locals, the South Africans are watching me, I have to be discreet. I don’t want to get you into trouble.’
Mariam shrugged her shoulders. ‘That seems a bit dramatic, but I’ll humour you.’
‘Good.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Are you adventurous?’
‘What do you mean?’
Khalid stood up and walked to the minibar. ‘I’ve got money I need to spend to get something done. What can I get you?’
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