Heart of the Hunter

by Deon Meyer

  The routes and roads were a spiderweb of alternatives, spooky-looking in the dim light. He strained to see, the moon cast a shadow of his head over the page, forcing him to shift around, his eyes irritatingly close to the page. He found the right page.

  There was a road from there, from Leeu-Gamka to Fraserburg.

  Fraserburg?

  The direction was wrong, too far west, too few possibilities. He must go north.

  He saw there were two additional routes from Beaufort West, snaking threads to Aberdeen in the east and Loxton approximately north-northwest. That might do. He turned to the next page to follow it. Loxton, Carnarvon, Prieska. Too far west.

  Paging back, he followed the N1 to Three Sisters. The road forked there. To Bloemfontein or Kimberley Paging on, he found the Kimberley route, traced it with his finger. Promising. Many more options.

  In a game of chess, your opponent is looking for patterns of play. give him the pattern. Then change it.

  “We will change it at Three Sisters, herr obergruppenführer,” he said softly.

  He would have to fill up in Beaufort West. He would ask how far it was to Bloemfontein, what the road was like. With any luck, the spooks would hear about it. And at Three Sisters he would take the road to Kimberley.

  He took out the second can of Coke.

  * * *

  It was raining in the Great Karoo. The weather had rolled in over the plains, rumbling and spitting like some giant primordial predator, visible in the night sky only when lightning came searching in fantastic forms, and now here it was above them, the rains of Africa, extravagant and pitiless.

  Captain Tiger Mazibuko cursed, splashing through ankle-deep puddles, wiping water from his face. The rain fell in dark sheets; thunder growled continuously.

  He had been checking the maps in the traffic officer’s car. There were at least two side roads they would have to block. Halfway between the roadblock and Beaufort West one turned east to Nelspoort, the other was closer, forking west to Wage-naarskraal. Unfamiliar routes, but alternatives available to a fugitive. And they had too few men and too few vehicles. He would have to deploy four RU members; the police van would have to drop them off, minimizing the effect of his roadblock here. They would have to guard the roads in pairs. They would be on foot, while he had a motorbike. Visibility was terrible in this weather. It was a fucking fiasco. But that was typical. Backward. Everything was backward. You could say what you liked about the Americans, but if the FBI Hostage Rescue Team had been here, it would have been four-wheel drives and armored vehicles and helicopters. He knew because he had been there, in Quantico, Virginia, for four months; he had seen it with his own eyes. But no, in Africa things worked differently; here, we fucked up. Here, we putter around with a bloody bakkie and a Corolla and a frightened traffic cop and two Boers who worry about their caps getting rained on and just one fucking middle-aged Xhosa on a motorbike— jissis, couldn'’t the fucker get a more respectable form of transport? Even the bad guys were backward in Africa.

  He shook his fist at the heavens, which for a moment were still. He screamed his frustration, an uncanny sound, but the rain drowned it out.

  He pushed his head into the tent. Four soldiers looked dumbstruck at him.

  “I have to send you out,” he said, calm and under control.

  * * *

  The early hours began to take their toll in the Ops Room; urgency had leaked away.

  She struggled to decide whether to send people to Derek Late-gan and Quartus Naudé tonight.

  They weren’t compelled to cooperate. They were retired agents, had taken the package, probably not benign to the present government. A visit at this time of night would just complicate matters. She weighed that against the need for information. What could they contribute? Could they confirm that Mpayipheli had worked for the KGB? What difference would that make to the investigation?

  Let it wait, she thought. She looked up at the big chart of southern Africa on the wall.

  Where are you, Mpayipheli?

  Are you on the Ni? How strong is your motivation? Are you sleeping somewhere in a hotel room while we make the wrong assumptions about you?

  No. He was out there, somewhere; he couldn'’t be far from Maz-ibuko now. Contact. That is what they needed to shake off the lethargy, to regain momentum, to be in control again.

  Contact. Action. Control.

  Where was Thobela Mpayipheli?

  She stood up. There was another job to do.

  “May I have your attention, everyone,” she said.

  Unhurried, they turned to her.

  “This time of night is always the worst,” she said. “I know you’'ve had a long day and a long night, but if our calculations are right, we can finish this before eight o’clock.”

  There was little response. Blank faces gazed back at her.

  “I think we must see how many people we can relieve for an hour or two. But before we decide who is going to take a nap, there are some who wonder why we regard this fugitive as a criminal. I can understand why.”

  Bloodshot eyes looked back at her. She knew she was making no impression.

  “But we must also wonder where all that money came from. We must remember he worked for organized crime. Remember that he hired out his talents for the purpose of violence and intimidation. That he stole two firearms, after rejecting the chance to work with the state. See the nature of the man.”

  Here and there a head nodded.

  “We must be professional. There are too many gaps in our knowledge, too many questions unanswered. We have a very good idea now of what is on that hard drive. And that news is not good. We are talking about information on a mole at the highest level, code name Inkululeko. We are talking about very, very sensitive information that can cause untold damage in the wrong hands. Our job is to protect the state. Sympathy has no place in this. If we put everything into the balance, there is only one choice: be professional. Keep focused. Look at the facts, not the people behind them.”

  She looked over the room.

  “Have you any questions?”

  No reaction.

  But no matter. She had planted the seed. She had to force herself not to look up at the ceiling where she knew the microphones were hidden.

  15.

  His thoughts roamed freely, for this road did not require much concentration. He thought of this and that, knowing he must get some sleep but not wanting to waste the darkness. Somewhere beyond Three Sisters once the sun was up he would find a screened and shaded place in the veld for a few hours’ rest. He was familiar with the landscape of sleep deprivation, knew the greatest danger was poor judgment, bad decisions. His thoughts jumped around: Who were the spooks that were after him? How desperate were they? What was the whole purpose, the stuff on the drive that cast a hex over him?

  In one month’s time Pakamile would be finished with grade one. They could leave the township. How long had they been talking of this?

  She didn’'t want to. She always wanted to stick to the known, afraid of change. As she had been with him, when he had started courting her. When he had first seen her, that time in the investment consultant’s office, her hands— such deft, slim hands— her grace and pride, had been like a beacon to him. She wasn'’t even aware of him, but he could barely hear what the man was saying, she had consumed him so. He had been in love before, now and then, sometimes lust, sometimes more than that, but never absolutely right, never the way it was with Miriam, and she wanted nothing to do with him at first. The father of her child had put her off men, but he couldn'’t think of anything but her— Lord, to be in love like a teenager at his age, sweaty palms and heart beating haywire when he sat with her in Thibault Square in the bright sun and watched the cloud on the mountain grow and shrink and grow and he tried to hide the longing, afraid to scare her, his desire to touch her, to hold her hand, to press her against him and say, “I love you, you belong to me, let me keep you safe, I will chase away your fears like an evil spirit, I will cherish you, hold you and hon
or you.”

  He had to wait a year before he could make love to her, a year, twelve months of sighs and dreams, not at all what he had expected, soft and slow, quenching, and later his fingers on her body, no longer a young woman’s body, found the traces of motherhood and he was overwhelmed with compassion, his hands traced the marks in awe at this thing that she had accomplished, the life she had created and carried and borne; in her and on her she carried the fullness of her vocation, and he could only trace it with his fingertips, so conscious of his incompleteness, so filled with the urge to find his own.

  How would he tell her of the land he had bought? He already knew how she would react, how she clung to the things she had control over, because there was so much she could not control. The battle she had fought to get where she was, in her house with her son, had been so long, so hard in a world of poverty and violence. Her work, her house, her daily routine— it was her sanctum, her shield, her very survival.

  One Saturday he had looked up from the mathematics textbook he was studying and decided that today was the day. She had her needlework in her hands, he had turned down the radio and told her that in that time when he had stared into his own eyes, his urge had been to get away, to go back to where he came from, to continue his life’s journey back to the source, to begin again, a new life. To build something with his own hands— hands that had broken— perhaps a house, with his sweat and muscle and concentration, a place to live. To dig his fingers into the ground, to turn the earth and to plant and grow. He began to search, and weeks later he found it in the Cala valley, a beautiful place where the mist rose up against the mountain slopes in winter, where as far as the eye could see, the veld was an undulating green of fertility, Xhosa country, the landscape of his youth and his people.

  He was on his way, busy with the final arrangements, when Miriam had crossed his path, and now, months later, the urge remained. But he could no longer do it alone, for he was no longer alone. He asked her to come with him. Her and Pakamile. They would take the child out of this harsh world and show him his heritage, let him learn other values, give him a carefree youth. There were schools there, in town, where he would get his education. She wouldn'’t have to work. It would be just the three of them; he could provide, he would provide, he would build this new life for them.

  She was quiet for a long time, the needle and thread moving rhythmically in her hands. Then she said she needed to think about it— it was a big decision— and he nodded, grateful that she would at least consider it, that her first answer had not been no.

  The lightning brought him back. It seemed there was rain up ahead. He looked at the odometer, another sixty to Beaufort West. The fuel was below half. The eastern horizon was changing color, he had to make town before daybreak to refuel. He opened the throttle, 160, feeling the tiredness in his body, 170, he checked the figures on his digital watch, 04:43, the night was nearly over, he had not come very far and there was a long way to go today. Kimberley— if he could get there, he could get a plane, 180, perhaps to Durban, to break the pattern, from Durban to Maputo, Maputo to Lusaka or something, but keeping flexible, 190, be adaptable, get this thing over and then go back, so Miriam would see he would never desert her, 200, the white lines on the road flew past, too fast, he had never gone so fast. Yes, the new day was a red ribbon in the east.

  * * *

  Two more vehicles arrived, an Opel Corsa and an Izuzu bakkie, policemen climbing out stiff-legged, pulling their raincoats tight around their bodies, irritated by the early call out and the rain. They walked over to Mazibuko.

  “The sergeant called over the radio to say he has dropped off your men.”

  “I know. We have radio contact. Where’s the sergeant now?”

  “They have gone home. Their shift is over.”

  “Oh.”

  “The road will get very busy once it’s light. Are you stopping everything?”

  “Just the necessary. Are you here to help?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you must move your vehicles.”

  “How?”

  He directed them. He wanted a formation that would make running the roadblock impossible. They followed his instructions, pulling their vehicles into the road while he waded through puddles to the helicopter and pulled open the door. The flight engineer lay asleep in the back with mouth agape. The pilot was up front, awake.

  “Do you have a weather report?” asked Mazibuko.

  “Yes,” said the pilot. “Rain. Any minute now.” He smiled broadly at his own joke.

  “The rest of the day?”

  “The system will move east. It will clear in the afternoon.”

  “Fuck.”

  “You can say that again.”

  Mazibuko pulled his cell phone from under his jacket and punched in a number.

  “How far are you?” he asked.

  “Just beyond Richmond,” said Lieutenant Penrose, second in command of the Reaction Unit.

  “You must move.”

  “We are driving as fast as we can, Captain.”

  “Is it raining there?”

  “Not yet, but we can see it coming.”

  “Fuck,” said Tiger Mazibuko.

  “You can say that again,” mumbled the pilot in the Oryx.

  * * *

  The consignment of Cape newspapers landed in a pile on the desk of the news editor of the SABC’s morning television program in Auckland Park, Johannesburg, yesterday’s Argus and this morning’s Burger and Cape Times.

  It was one of his moments of truth every morning: how well the news team in the south had fared against the competition, but also a window to another strange world, ships sinking in storms, Muslim extremists, gangs in the Cape Flats, the ongoing political circus.

  MORE NNP LEADERS CROSS OVER read the Burger’s headline in Afrikaans. No surprises there. Nor in the rugby analysis: SKIN-STAD: WE HAVE NO EXCUSE

  .

  He overlooked the usual manipulative Christmas Fund article and skipped to the last front-page story of a thirteen-year-old cricket protégé. Mmmm. Country story, from Barrydale. He circled it with a thick red marker for follow-up.

  Pulled the Times from the stack. NEW ALLIANCE FOR PROVINCE? the headline cried. And THERE GOES THE RAND AGAIN. Then his eye fell on the third front-page story. SPOOKS SEEK BIG, BAD BMW BIKER by Allison Healy He read it.

  “Molly,” he called, but there was no response.

  “Molly!”

  A face appeared at the door.

  “Get that asshole in the Cape on the line. Right now.”

  * * *

  “Rooivalk One, this is Ops Control, come in, over.” There was urgency in Quinn’s voice. He waited a moment, got no reaction He made sure the frequency on the digital panel was correct, called again. “Rooivalk One, this is Ops Control, come in, over.”

  “This is Rooivalk One, Ops Control. What have you got for us? Over.” The voice was a little sleepy.

  “We have contact, Rooivalk One. Repeat, we have contact. Subject is four minutes out of Beaufort West on the Ni on the way to Three Sisters. We want you in the air. Do you read me? Over.”

  “We read you, Ops Control, we read you. Rooivalk One and Two operational. Over.”

  “What is your expected time of interception, Rooivalk One? Over.”

  “Expected time of contact, ten minutes, Ops Control, repeat, ten minutes. Over.”

  Quinn clearly heard the big engines being started up in the background. He spoke louder automatically. “We just want to chase him on to Three Sisters, Rooivalk One. We want presence, but no contact. Do you understand? Over.”

  “No contact, Rooivalk One confirming, no contact.”

  The pitch of the engines hit high. “Are you aware of the weather status, Ops Control? Over.”

  “We know it’s raining at Three Sisters, Rooivalk One. What is your situation? Over.”

  “The rain is threatening, Ops Control. There’s a helluva system up north. Over.”

  “Rooivalk One on the way, Ops Control. Over.”

  “Rooivalk Two ditto, over.”

/>   “We will keep contact, Rooivalk One, the channels stay open. Report when you intercept. Ops Control over and out.”

  “Roger, Ops Control. Rooivalk One over and out.”

  Quinn leaned back and looked around. Janina Mentz was busy on the cell phone with Tiger Mazibuko. The few people who had rested since four A.M. were back at their posts. There was a tingling in the air. The Ops Room was awake.

  * * *

  Allison Healy was dreaming of her mother when the phone rang. The dream was an argument, a never ending, disconnected fight over nothing, and she was relieved by the sound. In her dream she lifted the instrument to answer, but it continued ringing.