by Tony Park
‘They’re all together right now. You’re right about not leaving the children without a mother.’
‘We’ll wait for Nick to get here.’
‘Janet,’ Greeves said. ‘Tell Pervez to back off. I’m no threat to you.’
‘Oh, yes you are,’ she said. ‘You’re a threat to everything I have. But it’ll be quite interesting, letting your bodyguard decide whether you should live or not. Pervez?’
The Pakistani shifted his gaze, from down the rifle’s short barrel at Greeves, across to Janet. ‘Yes?’
‘I’ll cover these two. Get Wessels on the phone.’
32
Sannie ushered the children into the hallway of the house in Boksburg. ‘Henk?’ She heard the captain’s mobile phone ring, then his muted voice as he answered it.
She paused in the doorway of the kitchen. Wessels had his back turned to her and was nodding as he spoke. ‘Ja, I understand.’ He ended the call.
‘Henk, we’re going. Do you want to take us, or can the uniformed guys give us a lift?’
‘Sannie, it’s not safe for you to go. I’ve just had a call from the team watching your home. There’s a car that’s cruised past three times. The guys on duty are lying low inside and have called for back-up. We should wait here, just until it’s safe. This skurk is still on the loose.’
‘Then we’ll go to headquarters – anywhere but here. I don’t want to stay here.’
‘I’m going to send the guys from outside – they’ll get to your place quicker than the nearest patrol car. I want you here, with me, where I can keep an eye on you and the kids.’
‘Come on, man. This doesn’t make sense.’ Ilana tugged on her pants leg. ‘Wait a minute, baby. We’ll find a hotel, Henk. I’m not staying in this bloody dump.’
Wessels held up his hands, palms out. ‘Sannie, please. I know this is a difficult time for you, but why don’t you just go into the kitchen and make a cup of tea or something? We’re stretched thin and there’s a kidnapper on the loose. I can’t chauffeur you and the kids around just now. And, like I said, I want to make sure you’re safe.’
‘Well . . .’
‘That’s better. I’ll just go and tell the uniformed guys.’
‘Come on,’ Sannie said to Ilana and Christo. ‘Let’s see if there’s any food in this place.’
‘I’m pleased you’re here, Mom,’ Christo said, opening the refrigerator in the kitchen.
Through the window in the front lounge room Sannie could see Henk talking to the uniformed policeman. The man glanced inside, shrugged and then walked off, down the garden path, to where his comrade was getting into the white police bakkie.
Sannie thought the kids were holding up remarkably well, given that they’d been abducted – it seemed they hadn’t initially thought Carney was a bad person, despite all she’d drummed into their heads about not going anywhere with strangers. But, according to Henk, there had been a shoot-out and the man guarding them had been killed. ‘Did the gunshots scare you, my boy?’
Christo looked up at her, his faced screwed up in puzzlement. ‘What gunshots, Mom? I didn’t hear any.’
Tom looked around the verandah. Greeves was sitting on the edge of his chair, nervously looking at Janet. Every time he tried to speak she cut him off midsentence.
Janet looked calm and resolved. Khan had just told Wessels that the Englishman knew everything, so they could not afford to leave any witnesses, anywhere. Tom hadn’t met Sannie’s boss in person, but he could only presume that if this was an order to get rid of her – and her children – then the Wessels in question was her superior. Khan was right-handed, and had slung his AK 47 over his right shoulder, with his hand on the pistol grip. He had worked the buttons of the cell phone with his left hand and Tom had noted the difficulty of the manoeuvre. As Tom expected, when it came time to finish the call, Khan had to look down at the satellite phone and search for the end-call button.
Khan was off to his left, about four paces away and behind him, and Greeves was in front of him, also slightly to his left. Janet was to their right, perhaps six metres distant.
Janet looked at Khan and said, ‘Well?’
Both were distracted. Tom knew he had only one chance, and that Khan, armed with the rapid-firing military weapon, posed the greatest danger. He turned and ran at a crouch, bounding across the short distance between him and the Pakistani. As he drew alongside the wide-eyed Greeves he flung out his right hand. The flames on the two candles on the low coffee table, the only artificial light on the verandah, were already flickering with the sudden displacement of air, and they flew into Greeves’s lap as Tom knocked the table over. Greeves yelped like a frightened child as the hot wax spattered through his trousers.
Tom heard Janet’s silenced pistol cough twice as he hit Khan in a rugby tackle. He grabbed the startled man around the midriff and turned him as his charge pitched both of them over, so that the other man fell on top of him. He felt the doctor’s body flinch and stiffen as a two-two slug entered him somewhere. Tom had gambled that the small-calibre bullet wouldn’t penetrate through to him, and he must have been right because he felt no pain.
Khan was still alive, though, and he thrashed in pain and rage, landing a hard blow in Tom’s ribs with his elbow.
Tom had studied videos of street fights, caught on security cameras, mostly in the States, and he knew that the only way to survive in a brawl like this was to unleash uncontrolled aggression. He reached around with one hand and gouged his fingers into Khan’s eyeballs. He balled the other into a fist and slammed it twice, hard, into the man’s kidneys. Khan relinquished control of the rifle’s pistol grip to try to tear Tom’s hand from his eyes. Tom seized his chance, grabbing it himself, even though the weapon was still hanging from Khan’s shoulder.
In his peripheral vision he saw Greeves scuttling away, like a crab, crawling on all fours, but stopping to pick up Tom’s discarded pistol. Janet was firing now, and Tom heard a bullet ricochet off the tiles, close enough to his head for a chip of stone to slice into his cheek.
Tom pulled the trigger, hoping Khan would have been undisciplined enough to have the safety set to fire. He was right. The selector was on full automatic and the long burst of eight or more rounds punched holes in the roof and shattered one of the front windows. Janet Greeves turned and ran back into the house.
Khan’s breathing was ragged, and Tom could feel the strength oozing from the wounded man. Mercilessly, he punched him hard again in the stomach and rolled out from under him, unhooking the rifle in the process. Khan reached up a hand, but Tom ignored him. In the split seconds before the rage in him subsided, Tom hovered the end of the barrel near the doctor’s head and curled his finger around the trigger.
No. The man was evil, a trader in human misery who had turned his back on a noble profession, but it wasn’t in Tom’s nature or training to execute a man in cold blood.
Tom snatched the phone from Khan’s belt and slid off the deck onto the grass, about a metre below the surrounding railing. As he started to circle the lodge he looked across and saw Robert Greeves lying on the stone tiles, a pool of blood slowly ebbing from him. As Tom drew alongside the prone form, he saw the lifeless eyes staring out across the darkened lake. There was no faking this time.
Greeves had taken a bullet to the head, from his own wife’s hand. The woman who had gone to such elaborate lengths to protect her family, the political party to whom she owed her allegiance, and even the man who had betrayed her, had eliminated the cause of her woes.
Tom prised Sannie’s pistol from Greeves’s lifeless hand and stuffed it in the waistband of his shorts.
He sat on the grass, resting the AK on the edge of the verandah, and pointed towards the entrance to the lodge through which Janet had disappeared. He turned on the satellite phone and closed his eyes for a second, trying to visualise Sannie’s mobile phone number. He had called it enough times and he forced himself to remember the digits.
The phone started ri
nging.
‘Mom, your phone’s ringing!’ Christo called from the kitchen. Sannie had moved to the lounge room to try to hear what Wessels was saying to the departing policemen. She looked over at her son and saw that Christo had traced the ring tone to her sports bag, which she had dumped on the floor.
‘I’m coming.’
Christo hoisted the bag up onto a bar stool, behind the breakfast bar, and unzipped it. He was rummaging among her clothes. ‘Here, my boy. Let me find it.’
The front door of the house opened behind her and she heard Wessels’s footsteps on the polished concrete floor.
She found the phone just as it beeped, signalling she had a message.
‘Sannie?’ Wessels said.
She ignored him for the moment, as the voicemail service told her she had one message.
‘Sannie, it’s Tom. Listen to me, this is very, very important. Wessels, your boss, is working with them . . . with the gang. You have to stay away from him. Take the kids somewhere safe and wait for me to get back from Malawi. I’m going to get on the first plane out of here and fly back, and . . .’
‘Sannie, I need to talk to you, in private,’ Wessels said from behind her.
She smelled him. The cheap aftershave she’d once been prepared to overlook. She let her free hand casually fall into the sports bag. Slowly, she sifted through the clothes.
‘Put the phone down, Sannie, this can’t wait.’
As she turned her head, lowering the phone, she saw him casually brush his jacket to one side. She saw how the weight of the spare magazine in his coat pocket aided the movement, how it started to swing open. She glimpsed the black metal of his pistol, and saw where his fingers were heading.
Sannie’s hand closed around the hilt of her dead husband’s diving knife. She drew back her other hand and threw her mobile phone at Henk’s head. It bounced off him, barely causing him to check his pace.
‘Run!’ she screamed at her kids as she pulled the knife from the bag. With her now free hand she ripped off the plastic sheath and discarded it. She lunged at Wessels and felt the blade’s movement slow as it ran along the side of his belly, under his open suit jacket. ‘Get out!’ she said to Christo again, who was transfixed.
Wessels grunted and looked down as the red smear stained his white business shirt. There was a rent in the fabric, but Sannie thought she had only cut him, not penetrated any vital organs. She snatched back her hand to stab again, but Wessels bellowed with rage and lashed out with the back of his hand, the blow catching Sannie across the side of the head. She staggered back against the breakfast bar, clutching for support with her free hand.
Christo grabbed Ilana by the forearm and ran out the back door of the house, from the kitchen. Sannie righted herself and lunged again at Wessels, her primal protective instincts seeking to keep herself between danger and her children.
‘Bitch,’ he hissed, this time drawing his pistol.
She threw herself on him as he paused to rack the weapon, grabbing the slide with his left hand and pulling it back to chamber a round. Sannie stabbed blindly and felt the knife sink into flesh. Wessels toppled backwards onto the floor.
Sannie pulled on the hilt to free the blade, but the pressure inside Wessels’ stomach was sucking at the steel, holding it in. She grunted with the effort, but Wessels recovered his wits. He was at least twenty kilograms heavier than she, and, even wounded, far stronger. He flung her off him with his free hand, and lashed out with his foot, kicking her in the ribs and sending her sliding another metre from him.
Wessels stood and grabbed the knife handle. He bellowed, a low, animalistic groan as he wrenched it free. A spurt of bright blood followed the terrible sucking noise and Wessels staggered, the colour draining from his face as he fought the pain. He dropped the knife, but raised his pistol at the same time. He fired once, the noise like a small explosion in the confines of the house.
Sannie’s first instinct was to run out the back, but she knew that would draw the killer after her, and he would have a clear shot at either her or her kids. Instead, she stood and ran towards him, weaving as he fired another erratic shot. She hit him hard in the chest with all her weight, and pushed him onto his back again. She clawed at his eyes and grabbed his pistol hand with one of hers, trying to wrest the gun from him.
Wessels wrenched his gun hand from her clutch, drew it back and with the butt of the weapon landed a vicious blow on Sannie’s temple. The force stunned her, and she slumped against him.
‘Now you fucking die,’ he said, wheezing with pain and the shortness of breath from her charge, which had winded him. He turned the gun so that the barrel was against her head.
‘Why, Henk . . . ?’ Sannie blinked to try to focus on his face. ‘Why my children?’
‘Khan’s caretaker in the Timbavati called them, in Malawi, and told them Furey was on their tail. I tracked his border crossings through Interpol. It was only a matter of time before he found Greeves. Furey’s a nobody, but if he told you, and you got the authorities here involved, then it would have all gone to shit for them. They wanted me to buy your silence, but I told them you were too high-minded to take a bribe. I told them the only thing that would keep you quiet was your kids’ safety. Roberts told you not to tell me what he wanted you to do, Sannie, but you did. What kind of a fucking mother are you?’
She stared into his eyes. ‘I hope hell exists.’
Christo had run outside and led his screaming little sister to a backyard shed, where he had ordered her to wait. Hearing the gunshots inside, he knew his mother was in mortal danger. He thought of his father, and the terrible, terrible memories of the funeral. He had only been little then, but he hoped he would never again have to see someone laid out in a box and then buried in the ground. He ran down the side of the house, back to the front door. It was still open. He paused. In the distance he heard police sirens. Help was coming, but how long would it take for the police to arrive? He heard a crash inside, and the sound of something or someone falling over. His mom needed him.
He crept inside and saw the pair of them, Captain Wessels and his mother, lying on the floor. His mother’s boss had his gun at her head. Christo saw the bloodied knife on the floor, just behind them.
Christo hesitated. This couldn’t be right. Captain Wessels was a good man. He’d heard his mother say so. Then the captain said something bad – called his mother a bad name.
Christo ran forward and scooped up the knife.
Wessels turned his head at the sound behind him and looked up into the grim-set face of the small boy.
Sannie watched Wessels’s hand move, the squat black barrel of the pistol travelling towards her son’s face.
‘No!’ she screamed. Half rolling, she sank her teeth into his wrist and bit down as hard as she could. The gun discharged again, nearly deafening her, but she clamped her jaws tighter, not stopping even when she felt the first spurts of blood in her mouth.
She was aware of movement above her, and a momentary reflection of light on polished stainless steel as the knife came down in an arc, and into Henk Wessels’s right eye.
Tom heard a moan from inside the lodge.
He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. Khan had stopped his crying – for good, he thought. Tom looked up over the raised deck of the verandah and heard the groaning again.
He’d tried three times to get a number for the Malawian police, first at Cape Maclear, and then at headquarters in Lilongwe, but each time he’d got one – from UK directory assistance who put him through to Malawi – the number was either wrong or simply rang off.
Janet Greeves had shown she was ready to kill, and he didn’t fancy going into a darkened building to flush her out. His strategy was to sit tight until daylight and try either to negotiate with her, then take her into custody, or keep trying until he made contact with the local police. The other unknown was Nick Roberts. He was supposedly en route, and Tom tightened his hand on the pistol grip of Khan’s AK 47 in an
ticipation of that showdown.
The satellite phone rang.
Tom looked at the screen and saw the caller identification had been blocked.
‘Hello,’ he said into the handset.
‘Khan?’
There was a noise behind the voice, like the whining of a motor. Tom turned the phone away from him slightly, to muffle his voice. ‘Yes.’
‘The sun will shine on those who stand.’
Shit, Tom thought. It was obviously a coded challenge, and Tom had no idea of what the reply was. ‘What did you say?’
‘Is that you, Furey?’
Tom said nothing.
Nick laughed on the other end of the crackly satellite connection. ‘I heard the gunfire. I wondered if it had all gone pear-shaped. If you’ve got Khan’s phone, then he’s dead. Have you met our Janet yet?’
‘It’s over, Nick.’
‘Yes, right, Mr Bruce Willis, sir. Next you’ll be telling me you’ve got me surrounded and a crack Malawian police weapons team are on their way.’ Nick laughed again.
Tom heard the motor die, then held the handset away from him. He was getting the noise in stereo. ‘You’re close, aren’t you,’ he said. ‘I can hear you.’
‘Well, if you’ve got the phone, you’ve probably got Khan’s AK as well, so I ain’t coming ashore. Is Janet still alive?’
Tom said nothing. He raised his head to look out over the lake and saw a darkened boat, betrayed by the glimmer of its wake, which hadn’t yet settled. It shone like a pathway leading back to the mainland. Tom moved at a crouch, to the trees between the lodge and the first bungalow, and followed the cover down towards the water.
‘If she isn’t dead, you should kill her. That way, those spoiled brats of hers will inherit their millions and think both their dear old mum and their sick-fuck old man were killed by the big bad terrorists. Everyone will be happy.’