Heart of the Hunter

by Deon Meyer

  “Pretoria,” said Radebe. “The MK files are at Voortrekker-hoogte.”

  “What can you tell us about it?”

  “It was never much of a system. With the big influx of recruits after ’seventy-six, there was too much paper and too few administrators. But it could be worth looking.”

  “What about the old National Intelligence Service’s microfiche library. The Boers computerized the index, but it’s a secure unconnected system. It’s still active, in Pretoria. We can put in a request,” said Rajkumar.

  It was Radebe who made a disparaging noise, and Janina knew why. Her colleagues at the new National Intelligence Service did not command much respect from her and her people. But she liked the idea.

  “If the request comes from high enough up, they will jump to it,” she said. “I’m going to talk to the director.”

  “Ma’am,” said Quinn, holding up his hand to stop her.

  “What is it?”

  “Listen to this.” He selected keys, and the electronic hissing of the speakerphone filled the room.

  “Tell us again, Nathan.”

  “We managed to track down the owner of Mother City Motor-rad. His name is Bodenstein and he lives in Welgelegen. He says Mpayipheli isn'’t a mechanic, just a gofer. Quiet man, hard worker, punctual and trustworthy. He knows nothing about a military background.”

  “Tell us about the alarm again, Nathan.”

  “While we were busy with the interview, the phone rang. Bo-denstein’s security company reported that the bike shop’s alarm was turned off more than an hour ago and hasn’t been reactivated. He said he must go immediately, and we are following him there.”

  “And what did he say about the key, Nathan?”

  “Oh, yes. He says Mpayipheli has a key to the place and he knows the alarm code, because Mpayipheli is the one who opens up in the morning.”

  * * *

  Mpayipheli almost fell before he was properly on his way. The power of the huge bike caught him totally unaware as he turned onto Oswald Pirow and opened the throttle. The reaction of this bike was so different from his little Honda Benly that he nearly lost it. And the size— the GS felt massive, heavy and high and unmanageable. He was shocked, adrenaline making his hands tremble, his breath misting the visor of his helmet. He wrestled the bike back in line and this time twisted the throttle with great care and progressed to the traffic lights at the N1. He pulled the front brakes and nearly tipped again, the ABS brakes kicking in hard and urgent. He stopped, breathing heavily, knees trembling, not willing to die on this German machine. The lights turned green, slowly he pulled away, turning slowly to the right with an over-wide arc and exaggerated care, keeping the revs low, through the gears— bloody hell, the thing had power, he was at ioo kilometers per hour before he was properly in third gear, that would be just about the Benly’s top speed.

  The traffic on the freeway was light, but he was painfully aware of the cars around him. He was riding slower than the flow of traffic, cringing in the left lane, trying to get a feel for the GS; once you were going, the balance was easier, but the handlebars felt too wide, the tank in front of him impossibly big.

  He checked again where the blinkers were, how the dims and brights worked, his eyes flicking between the switches and the road ahead, his following distance was long, his speed just under a hundred. He had made a mistake, he had thought this was the way to get a long way from Cape Town very fast; if he could still make Bloemfontein tonight, he would be away because he could catch a plane there, they wouldn'’t be watching the Bloemfontein airport. But this thing was practically unrideable; he had made a mistake, it would have been quicker to take a minibus taxi, and it was dark, too, the lights of Century City reflected off the helmet. Maybe he should ride to Worcester, or only as far as Paarl, and ditch the bloody bike, what could he have been thinking?

  At the N 7 off-ramp he had to change lanes to let a lorry go past and he accelerated slowly, using the blinkers, changed lanes, swung back into the left one, relaxed a little. Through the long uphill turn at Parow, up the Tygerberg, he knew his body was leaning to the wrong side in the turn, but the bike was so unwieldy, the bend uncomfortable. If only there was less traffic; where were all these people going at this time of night? Down the hill to Bellville’s off-ramps and then the streetlights on the freeway became fewer, the traffic dropped off, he saw the signs at the one-stop petrol station beckoning and glanced at the fuel gauge. The tank was full. Thank God. How far could he go on one tank?

  His eye caught the speedometer, no, and he throttled back, felt out of control again— this machine had a life of its own, a wild mustang. All his senses intensely engaged, he knew he must plan ahead. What to do? The tollgate was up ahead, thirty kilometers. What should he do? Avoid the tollgate, go to Paarl, abandon the bike, catch a taxi?

  There must be taxis running to Worcester, but it was already very late. And if he stuck with the GS? Take on the Du Toits Kloof Pass with this monster?

  The tollgate was a spoor that he would leave; people would remember a big black man on a motorbike, wouldn'’t they? Lord, he feared the pass in the dark on this thing. But beyond were more passes, more dark roads with sharp turns and oncoming freight trucks. What had possessed him?

  What was he going to do?

  A taxi was not going to work, not at this time of night.

  Look at this positI'vely. He was on the move, on his way. Suppress the desire to get rid of the bike. Use the dark. Use the lead he had. Use the element of surprise. They had no idea, despite the two spooks in the car at the motorbike shop. It would be tomorrow morning before someone realized the GS was gone, he had—

  He hadn'’t reset the alarm. That knowledge came out of the back of his head like a hammer blow. In his hurry and wrestling with the GS, he had forgotten to switch on the alarm.

  Jissis, he had gotten sloppy.

  By the time he passed the Stellenbosch turnoff, his anger at Johnny Kleintjes and the spooks and at his own stupidity had grown greater than his fear of the motorbike, and he cursed inside the helmet, in all the languages he knew.

  * * *

  “I don'’t believe it,” said Bodenstein. “I bloody don'’t believe it.” They were standing in the showroom of Mother City Motorrad, the two agents and the owner. Bodenstein held out the piece of paper. “Read what he’s written. Can you believe this?”

  Nathan took the note.

  Mr. Bodenstein:

  I am borrowing the GS demonstration model for two or three days. I also took a suit and helmet and gloves; that is what the money is for that I left in your desk drawer. Unfortunately, I have to urgently help a friend and I had no other choice. Wear and tear and any damage to the motorbike will be paid in full.

  Thobela Mpayipheli

  “You think you know someone. You think you know who to trust,” said Bodenstein.

  “Which one is the GS?” asked Johnny, one of the agents.

  “It’s that fuckin’ huge thing, only yellow,” said Bodenstein, pointing to a silver motorbike on the showroom floor. “He’s going to fall. Fuckin’ hard. It’s not a toy. Can you believe it?”

  * * *

  “See reality the way things are, not as you want them to be” is one of the principles of Janina Mentz.

  That’s why she accepted the developments calmly.

  She thought through the happenings while the Ops Room buzzed around her. She stood still, at the end of the long table with her hand on her chin, her elbow propped on her arm, head bowed, a study in calm pensiveness. Aware that the director would hear every word, aware that the way she responded and what decisions she made, her tone of voice and attitude of body, would all create an impression on her team.

  Vision: In her mind’s eye she saw the road that the evasive persona of Thobela Mpayipheli must travel. He was headed north, and the N 1 lay like a fat, twisted artery stretching out ahead to the heart of Africa. The reason for his single-mindedness, the source of his motivation, was unplumbed and now irrelevant. She focused on the route: the implications, the countermeasures, the p
reventative and limiting steps.

  In a soft and even voice she had the big map of the country put up on the wall.

  With red ink she drew in the likely route. She defined the role of the Reaction Unit: they would be her net, the welcoming party seventy-seven kilometers north of Beaufort West, where the route forked and the possibilities doubled— Kimberley to Johannesburg left, or Bloemfontein to Johannesburg right.

  She asked Quinn’s and Radebe’s teams to alert the police stations and traffic authorities along the route, to warn them merely to gather intelligence and not to act, because their armed fugitive was still largely an unknown factor, but they knew he could shoot.

  Their ignorance of this factor lay heavily on her, and the next round of instructions must set that right: investigatI've teams to Miriam Nzululwazi, to Monica Kleintjes. The gloves were off now. Track down the fugitive’s family. His parents. His friends.

  Get information. Who? What? Where? Why? How? She needed to know him, this ghost with the elusive face.

  She had the power. She would use it.

  * * *

  Extract from transcript of interview by J. Wilkinson with Mr. André Bodenstein, owner of Mother City Motorrad, 23 October, 21:55, Oswald Pirow Boulevard, Cape Town:

  w: What do you know of Mr. Mpayipheli’s previous employment?

  B: He was a gofer.

  w: Gofer?

  B: Yes. For a car dealer in Somerset West.

  w: How do you know this?

  B: He told me.

  w: What kind of gofer?

  B: A gofer is a gofer. It means you do all the shit jobs that nobody else will.

  w: That’s all you know?

  B: Listen, I don'’t need a man with a bloody degree to wash the motorbikes.

  w: And you trusted him with a key?

  B: Not the first day, I’m not a moron.

  w: But later on.

  B: Hell, he was here on the doorstep every morning when I arrived. Every bloody morning, never sick, never late, never cheeky. He worked— hell, that man can work. Last winter I told him he must open up, he can’t stand in the rain like that, he could sweep out and put the kettle on. By the time we arrive, the coffee is made— every fucking morning, the place shines like a new penny. You think you can trust someone. You think you know people .

  Twice he was gofer at Killarney when the BMW Rider Academy was coaching well-off, middle-aged white men in the art of motorcycle riding, and now he regretted that he hadn'’t paid attention, that he hadn'’t absorbed all that knowledge.

  He was riding through Du Toits Kloof Pass in the dark and he was aware that he was a caricature of how it should not be done. Riding jerkily, brakes and throttle and brakes and throttle and switching the light between bright and dim in a battle between good vision and the oncoming traffic, massive, snorting trucks avoiding the toll by using the long route and taking the sharp turns wide or chugging along at a snail’s pace ahead of him. He sweated inside the expensive, efficient biker suit, his body heat steaming up the shield with water vapor so that time and again he had to clip it open, always aware of the drop on the left side, the lights very far down below.

  Brake, turn, brake, turn, ride, struggling and swearing to the highest point, and then the road swung abruptly east and the lights were gone. For the first time the darkness was complete and the road suddenly quiet, and he became aware of the tremendous tension in his torso, muscles like strung wires, and he pulled over to the side, stopped, yanked the helmet from his head, put the clutch in neutral, took his hands from the handlebars, and stretched, taking in a deep breath.

  He must relax, he had to, he was tired already and there were hundreds of kilometers ahead. He had made progress. He had come this far, navigated half the pass in the dark. Despite his ham-fistedness, the monster bike was not impossible. It was being patient with him as though it were waiting for him to try a lighter touch.

  Deep breaths, in and out, a certain satisfaction, he had reached this milestone, he was at the top. He had a story to tell Pakamile and Miriam. He wondered if she was asleep. The digital clock on the instrument panel said Miriam had laid out the boy’s school things, clothes, and lunch box. If he had been home, his lunch tin would have been packed, the house tidy, the sheets of their bed folded back, and she would have come and lay down with the wonderful smells of the oils and soaps of the bathroom, the alarm set for five o’clock, the light off and her breathing immediately deep and peaceful, the sleep of the innocent, the sleep of the worker.

  Behind him he heard a lorry approaching the turn, and he stretched one last time, savoring the night air, clipped the shield down, and pulled away with the knowledge that he had at least mastered the throttle. He deliberately turned it open, felt the power beneath him, and then he was in the next turn and he concentrated on keeping his body relaxed, leaning into the turn as he did with the Benly carefully, unskilled, but a lot better, more comfortable, more natural, and he accelerated slowly out of the turn, aimed for the next, through the old tunnel, another curve and another, down, down to the valley of the Meulenaars river, down, fighting the urge to stiffen up, keeping himself loose and light, feeling the personality of the bike through his limbs, turn and straighten, over and over, joining up with the toll road, suddenly impossibly luxurious and three lanes wide, the curves wide— the relief was tremendous.

  As he looked down at the speedo, it read 130. He smiled inside his helmet at the sensation and the amazing thing that he had accomplished.

  9.

  This is not what we were trained to do,” said Tiger Mazibuko over the cell phone. He was standing outside next to the runway. He could see his men through the window, they were still pumped after the action they had seen, they talked of nothing else, living it over in the finest detail on the way to the air force base, teasing one another, even him, begging their commander to let them all have a chance to shoot— why only Da Costa? Zwelitini said he was going to send a strongly worded letter to the Zulu king to complain that even in the country’s most elite unit there was racial discrimination— only the colonials were allowed to fire, the poor ol’ blacks could only watch— and the twelve roared with mirth, but Tiger Mazibuko did not.

  “I know, Tiger, but it was very valuable.”

  “We are not the SAPS. give us something proper to do. give us a challenge.”

  “Does a man that can pick off beer bottles with an AK at two hundred meters sound like a challenge?”

  “Only one man?”

  “Unfortunately, just one, Tiger.”

  “No, that doesn'’t sound like a challenge.”

  “Well, that’s the best I can do. Stand by for an Oryx from Twenty-third Squadron. We are going to pursue the fugitive; you will go on ahead and wait for him.”

  His quietness displayed his disgruntlement.

  When she realized what he was up to, her voice was angry. “If the challenge is not big enough for you, you can always go back to Tempe. I am sure I can find another alternative.”

  “What do we know about this great shooter of beer bottles?”

  “Too little. He might or might not have been MK, he was a sort of bodyguard for organized crime, and nowadays he is a gofer at a motorbike dealer.”

  “Was he MK, or wasn'’t he?”

  “We are working on it, Tiger. We are working on it.”

  * * *

  Transcript of interview by A. J. M. Williams with Mrs. Miriam Nzululwazi, 23 October, 22:51,21 Govan Mbeki Avenue, Guguletu

  w: I represent the state, Mrs. Nzululwazi. I have a few questions about Mr. Thobela Mpayipheli and a Miss Monica Kleintjes.

  N: I don'’t know her.

  w: But you do know Mr. Mpayipheli.

  N: Yes. He is a good man.

  w: How long have you known him?

  N: Two years.

  w: How did you meet?

  N: At my work.

  w: What work do you do, Mrs. Nzululwazi?

  N: I am a tea lady at Absa.

  w: Which branch of Absa?

  N: The Heerengracht
.

  w: And how did you come to meet him?

  N: He was a client.

  w: Yes?

  N: He came to see one of the consultants and I brought him tea. When he was finished he came to look for me.

  w: And asked for a date?

  N: Yes.

  w: And you said yes.

  N: No. Only later.

  w: So he came back again, after the first time.

  N: Yes.

  w: Why did you refuse him at first?

  N: I don'’t understand why you wake me up to ask me questions like this.

  w: Mr. Mpayipheli is in trouble, Mrs. Nzululwazi, and you can help him by answering the questions.