Heart of the Hunter

by Deon Meyer

  If they knew, the Ni would be their candidate. That’s why he needed to use the darkness and the lead he had on them.

  He switched the beam of the lights on high, the black ribbon strung out before him, opened the throttle, the needle crept past 140, up the long gradients, 150, his eyes measuring the lit course in front of him. How fast could he safely go at night?

  Just over the crest of the next rise a valley opened up before him and the GS moved past the 160 mark. He saw the blue and red revolving lights of the law far ahead in the distance.

  He grabbed the front brakes, kicked the back brake, and the ABS shuddered, intense pressure crushing his arms, but he kept the clutch in, for a moment he thought he would lose control, and then he had stopped, in the middle of the road, and there was something he still had to do— what was it? the lights, turn off the lights— searching for the switch in panic, got it, switched it off with his right thumb and suddenly he was night blind, all dark, just himself and the knowledge that they knew, that they were waiting for him, that everything had changed.

  Again.

  12.

  The crime reporter of the Cape Times didn’'t know that the call would be a turning point in her life.

  She would never know whether the loss of life would have been less and the outcome very different if she had taken her bag and left for home one minute earlier.

  She was by nature a plump woman, cheerful, with wide soft curves and a broad quick smile and a hearty laugh, jolly dimples in her cheeks. If she had been more introspective, she might have wondered if she got on with people so easily because she presented no threat.

  Her name was Allison Healy and when the phone rang on her desk late on a Sunday night, she answered with her usual cheery voice.

  “Times,”

  she said.

  “Allison, this is Erasmus from Laingsburg.” Slightly muffled, as if he didn’'t want his colleagues to hear. “I don'’t know if you remember me.”

  She remembered. The policeman had worked at the Sea Point office. They called him “Rassie.” Burned out at twenty-eight in the fight against a declining suburb, he had transferred to more restful pastures. She greeted him happily, asking how he was. As well, he replied, as you could be in a place where the sweet blow all grew a meter high. She laughed her throaty laugh. Then the voice on the line became serious.

  “Do you know about the Xhosa on the BMW?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Then I’'ve got a story for you.”

  CLASSIFIED GRADE ONE

  MEMORANDUM

  17 NOVEMBER 1984 19:32

  STATUS:

  Urgent

  FROM:

  Derek Lategan, legal attaché, Embassy, Washington

  TO:

  Quartus Naudé

  Urgent request from CIA, Langley, Virginia: Any possible information and/or photographic material:

  Thobela Mpayipheli, alias Tiny, alias Umzingeli. Suspected previously Umkhonto we Sizwe, probably current operator, Stasi/KGB. Probably operational in UK/Europe. Black male, 2.1 m, 100-120 kg. No further intelligence available.

  End

  Janina Mentz looked at the fax, the poor reproduction, the handwritten note in the upper right corner barely legible: “Our help with this matter could open doors. Regards, Derek.”

  She checked the cover page. “Attachments: 1.”

  “Is this all?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am, that’s all,” said Radebe.

  “Where’s the follow-up? Where’s the answer?”

  “They say that’s the only reference on the microfiche, ma’am. Just that.”

  “They’re lying. Send a request for the follow-up correspondence. And contact details for the sender and addressee of the memorandum: Lategan and Naudé.”

  Why did they have to struggle for cooperation? Why the endless rivalry and politicking? She was angry and frustrated. She knew the real source was the new information, the caliber of their fugitive and their underestimation of him. This meant escalation. It meant trouble. For her and the project. And if the NIA wanted to play games, she had to get a bigger stick.

  She reached for the phone and dialed an internal number. The director answered.

  “Sir,” she said, “we need help with the NIA. They are not playing ball. Can you use NICoC influence?”

  The director, together with the director-general of the National Intelligence Agency, the head of Military Intelligence, the head of the Police National Investigation Service, and the director-general of the Secret Service, was a member of the National Intelligence Coordinating Committee, under the chairmanship of the minister.

  “Let me phone the DG direct,” said the director.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I am happy to help, Janina.”

  She took up the fax again. In 1984 the CIA suspected that Mpayipheli was working for the KGB? In Europe?

  The CIA?

  Urgent request Our help with this matter could open doors.

  This man? This middle-aged gofer? The coward from the airport?

  She pulled the transcript of the Orlando Arendse interview from the pile in front of her.

  So let me give you some advice: Start ordering the body bags now.

  She took a deep breath. No reason to worry. It meant Johnny Kleintjes knew what he was doing. He would not put his safety in amateur hands. They had underestimated Mpayipheli. She would not make that mistake again.

  She used the new intelligence, ran through her strategy. More sure than ever that he would use the Ni. A cool cat, this one, self-assured: his display at the airport calculated to mislead, the smooth disarming of the agents explained, the choice of motorbike, in retrospect, very clever.

  But still they had the upper hand. Mpayipheli did not know that they knew.

  And if things went wrong, there was always the leverage of Miriam Nzululwazi. And the child.

  * * *

  He knew he had to get off the road. He couldn'’t stay where he was in the dark. Or he must turn back, find another route; but he was unwilling, his entire being rejected retreat; he must move on, to the north.

  Gradually his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He switched the motorbike on, slowly rode to the side of the highway, looked at the moonlit veld, the wire fence straight as an arrow parallel with the Ni. He was looking for a farm gate or a wash under the wire, kept glancing back, unwilling to be caught in the glare of oncoming headlights. He wanted to get off and have a stretch and think.

  How far ahead was that roadblock? Four or five kilometers. Closer. Three?

  Thank God the GS’s exhaust noise was soft. He kept the revs low, scanning the fences, saw promise on the opposite side of the road, a gate and a two-track road into the veld. He rode over, tires crunching on the gravel, stopped, put the bike on the stand, pulled off his gloves, checked the fastening of the gate. No padlock. He pulled the gate open, rode the bike in, and closed the gate behind him.

  He must get far off the road, but close enough to still see the lights.

  He realized his good fortune: the GS was dual-purpose, made for blacktop and dirt road, the so-called adventure touring bike, spoke wheels, high and well sprung. He turned in the veld so the nose faced the highway, stopped, got off. He pulled the helmet off his head, stuffed the gloves inside, placed it on the saddle, stretched his arms and legs, felt the night breeze on his face, heard the noises of the Karoo in the night.

  Blue and red and orange lights.

  He heard an oncoming vehicle, from the Cape side, saw the lights, counted the seconds from when it flashed past, watching the red taillights, trying to estimate the distance to the roadblock, but it got lost in the distance, melting into the hazard lights.

  He would have to turn back. Take another route.

  He needed a road map. Where did his other choices lie? Somewhere there was a turnoff to Sutherland, but where? He did not know that region well. It was on the road to nowhere. A long detour? Tried to recall what lay behind him. A road sign on the left had called out “Ceres” before Tou
ws river even, but it would take him almost back to Cape Town.

  He breathed in deeply. If he must, he would go back, whether he wanted to or not. Rather a step backward than wasting his time here.

  Stretched, bent his back, touched toes, stretched his long arms skyward, cracked his shoulder joints backward, and took up the helmet. Time to go.

  Then he saw the orange flashing lights coming closer from the blockade. Stared rigidly at them. Yellow? That was not the Law. A possibility whispered; he watched, filling up with hope as the vehicle approached, the noise reaching him, and then it took shape, rumbled past sixty meters from where he stood, and he saw the trailer clearly, the wreck being towed, a car that had rolled, and he knew it was not a roadblock— they were not looking for him.

  An accident. A temporary hurdle.

  Relief.

  He would just have to wait.

  * * *

  “The problem,” said Rahjev Rajkumar, “is that Absa keeps only the last two months’ statements immediately accessible for any account. The rest are backed up on an offline mainframe, and there is no way to get in there. The good news is that that is the only bad news. Our Thobela had a savings account and a bond on a property. This is where it gets interesting. The balance in the savings account is R52.341.89, which is quite a sum for a laborer. The only income the last two months was from Mother City Motorrad, a weekly payment of R572.72, or R2,290.88 per month— and the interest on the account, just over R440 per month. The debit order from the savings account for the bond repayment is Ri,181.59. There is another debit order, for R129 per month, but I can’t work out what that is for. That leaves him with Ri, 385.29 per month to live off. He draws R300 a week from an auto bank, usually the one at Thibault Square, and it seems like the remaining R189.29 is saved. A disciplined man, this Thobela.”

  “The property?” Janina prodded.

  “That’s the funny thing,” said Rajkumar. “It’s not a house. It’s a farm.” He raised his head, looking for a reaction from the audience.

  “You have our attention, Rahjev.”

  “Eighteen months ago Mpayipheli bought eight hundred hectares near Keiskammahoek. The farm’s name is Cala, after the river that runs there. The bond— listen to this— is just over R

  100,000

  , but the original purchase price was nearly half a million.”

  “Keiskammahoek?” said Quinn. “Where the hell is that?”

  “Far away in the old Ciskei, not too far from King William’s Town. Seems he wants to go back to his

  roots.”

  “And the thing is, where did he get the other R

  400,000

  ?” said Janina Mentz.

  “Precisely ma’am. Precisely.”

  “Good work, Rahjev.”

  “No, no,” said the fat Indian. “Brilliant work.”

  * * *

  Thobela Mpayipheli sat with back against a rock, watching the lights on the Ni.

  The night had turned cool; the moon was high, a small round ball on its way, unmarked, to score the goal of the night in the west. His eyes wandered over the desolate ridges, followed the contours of the strange landscape. They said there were rain forests here long ago. Somewhere around here, he had read, they dug up bones of giant dinosaurs that lived between the ferns and short stubby trees, a green pleasure garden of silver waterfalls and thunderstorms that watered the reptilian world with fat drops. Weird sounds must have risen with the vapor from the proto-jungle: bellows, bugling, clamor. And the eternal battle of life and death, a frightful food chain, terrifying predators with rows of teeth and small, evil eyes hunting down the herbivores. Blood had flowed here, in the lakes and on the plains.

  He shifted against the chilly stone. Blood had always flowed on this continent. Here where man at last had shrugged off the ape, where he left his first tracks on two feet in mud that later turned to stone. Not even the glaciers, those great ice rivers that transformed the landscape, that left heaps of unsuspecting rocks in grotesque formations, could staunch the flow of blood. The ground was drenched in it. Africa. Not the Dark Continent. The Red Continent. The Mother. That gave life in abundance. And death as counterweight, creating predators to keep the balance, predators in all their forms, through the millennia.

  And then she created the perfect hunter, the predator that upset the balance, that could not be controlled by ice ages and droughts and disease, that kept on sowing destruction, rejecting her power and might. The two-legged predators carried out the great coup, the cosmic coup d’état, conquered all and then turned on one another, white against white, black against black, white against black.

  He wondered if there was hope. For Africa. For this land.

  Johnny Kleintjes. If steadfast Johnny Kleintjes could bow to temptation, led astray by the rotten stink of money, merely one of the lures of this continent, could there be hope?

  He sighed deeply. More lights broke away from the cluster in the darkness; an ambulance siren wailed through the night, coming closer, gone along the road.

  Not long now.

  It became systematically still again. He heard a jackal howl, far over the ridges, a mockery of the ambulance.

  Predators and scavengers and prey.

  He was the former.

  Was.

  Maybe. Perhaps there was hope. If he had looked into the mirror of his life and found it abhorrent, he who lived his carnivore vocation so mercilessly, then there could be others like him. And perhaps that was all that was needed, one person, first only one. Then two, four, and a handful of people to shift the scales, just a fraction of a millimeter, to reclaim Mother Africa piece by piece, foot by foot, to rebuild, to give a glimmer of hope.

  Maybe, if he and Miriam could take Pakamile Nzululwazi away to the Cala river, make a new beginning far from the city, in the landscape of his forefathers, away from the cycle of poverty and soulless travail, the crime, the corruption of empty foreign cultures.

  Maybe.

  Because nothing in this world could make him as he once was.

  * * *

  The Rooivalk helicopters chose their flight path through the tops of the cumulus nimbus, the white towers majestic in the moonlight, lightning striking silver tentacles kilometers far through the system, turbulence jerking and shaking them, the green, orange, and red flickering of the weather radar screens confirming the system.

  “Another ten minutes, then we’re through,” said the pilot of Rooivalk One. “ETA, twenty-two minutes.”

  “Roger, One,” answered the other.

  * * *

  Just over 160 kilometers east of the two attack helicopters the flight engineer of the Oryx clicked on the intercom.

  “Better buckle up, Mazibuko.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Weather system. And it looks bad.”

  “How long still?” asked Tiger Mazibuko.

  “Just over an hour. I hope you brought raincoats in those crates.”

  “We’re not scared of a little rain.”

  Just wait,

  thought the flight engineer.

  Wait till the winds begin tossing us around.

  13.

  Allison Healy wrote the story immediately, because the official deadline was already past.

  CAPE TOWN— A manhunt for an armed and dangerous fugitive is under way after an unknown government intelligence agency alerted local police and traffic authorities along the Ni to be on the lookout for a Xhosa man traveling on a big BMW motorcycle.

  No,

  she thought.

  Too formal, too official, too crime-reporter. There’s a lighter element in this story, something unique.

  CAPE TOWN— A big, bad Xhosa biker on a huge BMW motorcycle is the subject of a province-wide manhunt, after an undisclosed and top-secret government intelligence agency alerted police and traffic officials along the Ni to be on the lookout for what they called “an armed and dangerous fugitive.”

  Reliable sources told the

  Cape Times

  the alert was posted around 22:00 last night, b
ut the directive did not provide details about the reason Mr. Thobela Mpayipheli was sought so desperately by what is rumored to be the Presidential Intelligence Unit (PIU).

  The fugitive is allegedly in possession of two firearms and one BMW R 1150 GS, all illegally obtained, “but apparently that’s not the reason they want to apprehend him,” the source said.

  Now she had to spin another paragraph or two out of the meager details. That was all the front page would have room for.

  The news editor stood impatiently in the doorway. “Almost done,” she said. “Almost done.” But she knew he would wait, because this was news, good front-page material. “With legs,” he had said in his cubicle when she had told him about it. “Nice little scoop, Alli, very nice.”