Heart of the Hunter

by Deon Meyer

  The jockey’s eyes narrowed. “The Kimberley side. Turn left at the four-way stop.” He indicated up the street.

  “And the other one?”

  “On the Paardeberg gravel road. It’s farther on, other side the co-op, then left.”

  “And if I want to go to Boshof ?”

  “What is your name?” asked the man in Xhosa.

  “Nelson Mandela.”

  The jockey looked at him, and then the smile spread broadly across his face. “I know what you are planning.”

  “What?”

  “You want to wait for him on the other side of Kimberley.”

  “You are too clever for me.”

  “Boshof is straight ahead via Poplar Grove for about twenty kilos, then turn left other side the Modder and right again at the next bridge.”

  “The Modder?”

  “The mighty Modder, Capie, the Modder river.”

  “Thank you.” He had the helmet on, just pushed his fingers into the gloves.

  “If you see him, tell him, ‘Sharp, sharp.’ ”

  “Sharpzinto, muhle, stereke.”

  He pulled away. “You speak the language, my bro, you speak the language,” he heard the jockey calling after him.

  * * *

  Miriam Nzululwazi knelt by the chair in the interview room and wept. Her tears began with the fear that had grown too big, the weight of the walls too heavy so that she slid from the chair, her eyes shut so that she could not see them closing in on her, the memories of the Caledon Square cells that echoed in her head. The fear had grown too great and with it the knowledge that Pakamile would wait and wait and wait for his mother to fetch him, for the first time he would wait in vain because she was never late, in six years she had always been there to pick him up. But today he would not know what was wrong, the other children would be fetched, one after the other except him— please God— she could see him, she could feel her child’s fear, and it crushed her heart. Gradually her weeping included the wider loss of her life with Thobela, the lost perfection of it, the love, the security in every day, the predictability of a man who came home evening after evening and held her tight and whispered his love to her. The scene of him and her son in the vegetable garden behind the house, the block of man on his haunches by the small figure of the boy, close together, and her Pakamile’s undisguised hero worship. The loss of those evenings when they sat in the kitchen, he with his books that he had studied and read with a thirst and a dedication that was scary. She had sat and watched him, her big, lovely man who now and again would look up with that light of new knowledge in his eyes and say, “Did you know ,” and express his wonderment of the new world he was discovering. She would want to stand up and throw herself down before him and say, “You can’t be real.” When they lay in bed and he shifted his body close to hers and with his arm over her pulled her possessively tight against himself, his voice would travel wide paths. He would share with her what was in his heart, so many things, the future, the three of them and a new beginning on a farm that lay waiting, green and misty and beautiful. About their country and politics and people, his often weird observations at work, his worry over the violence and poverty of the townships, the filtering away of Xhosa culture in the desert sands of wannabe American. And sometimes, in the moments before they drifted into sleep, he would speak of his mother and father. How he wished to make peace, how he wished to do penance, and now she wept because it was all gone, lost— nothing would ever be the same. The sobs shook her, and the tears dampened the seat of the chair. Eventually she calmed, emptied of crying, but one thing remained— the impulse to get out.

  She did not know why she stood up and tried the door. Maybe her subconscious had registered no sound of a key turning with that last exit, maybe she was merely desperate. But when she turned the handle and the door gave to her fingers, she was shocked and pushed it shut again. She went back and sat in the chair, on the edge, and stared at the door, her heart beating wildly at the possibilities awaiting her.

  * * *

  Allison sat on the veranda of the little white house with its green roof. She sat in a green plastic garden chair opposite Dr. Zatopek van Heerden, captivated by his lean body and his intense eyes and energy locked up in him like a compressed spring, plus something indefinable, unrecognizable but familiar.

  It was hot and the light was soft in the transition from afternoon to evening. He had a beer and she drank water with tinkling ice cubes. He had cross-examined her for all she knew, hovering like a falcon over her words, ready to swoop on nonsense, and now he had heard her chronological story and he asked, “What now? What do you want?”

  She was discomfited by the intensity of his gaze— he looked right inside her, those eyes never still, over her and on her, searching and measuring, evaluating. With his psychological expertise, could he multiply the fractions of her voice and body language to a sum of her very thoughts? Strangely there was a sexuality in him that reached out and lured an involuntary response from deep in her body.

  “The truth,” she said.

  “The truth.” Cynical. “Do you believe there is such a thing?” He did not look away as other people did when they talked. His eyes never left her face. What was it, this thing she felt?

  “Truth is a moving target,” she admitted.

  “My dilemma,” he said, “is loyalty. Thobela Mpayipheli is my friend.”

  * * *

  Four Rooivalk attack helicopters flew low over the flat earth, crossing the boundary between Northern Cape and the Free State Province. Behind flew two Oryx, slow and cumbersome by comparison, each carrying four members of the RU’s Team Alpha in its constricted interior. The men were in full kit for the job: bulletproof vests, steel helmets mounted with infrared night sights, weapons held comfortably clasped with both hands between knees. In the leading Oryx, Tiger Mazibuko tried to conduct a cell phone conversation over the roar of the engines.

  * * *

  Janina Mentz was in the dining room of her house, between the school homework books of her daughters. She could barely make out Mazibuko’s words.

  “Where, Tiger? Where?”

  “Somewhere near Pe—”

  “I can’t hear you.” She was practically shouting.

  “Petrusburg.”

  Petrusburg? She had no idea where that was.

  “I’m going back to the Ops Room, Tiger. We will try the radio.”

  “ get him ”

  “What?”

  The signal was gone.

  “What’s that about Petrusburg, Ma?” asked Lien.

  “It’s work, sweetie, I’ve got to go.”

  * * *

  The tension he felt going into the petrol station had resurrected a memory, brought it back from the past, the same trembling in his hands and perspiration on his face during that first time, that first assassination. He was in Munich with the SVD in his hands, the long sharpshooter’s weapon, the latest model with the synthetic nonfolding stock, a weapon whose deadly reach was 3,800 meters. The cross hairs looked for Klemperer, the double agent who should come out a door a kilometer away.

  He felt as if Evgeniy Fedorovich Dragunov were lying beside him, the legendary modest Russian weapons developer. He had met him briefly in East Germany when he and the other students of the Stasi sharpshooters school were helping test an experimental SVDS. Comrade Evgeniy Fedorovich was fascinated by the black student with the impossible groupings. At two thousand meters with a cross wind of seventeen kilometers per hour and the poor light of an overcast winter’s day, Thobela Mpayipheli had shot a Rioo factor of less than 400 mm. The stocky aging Russian had said something in his mother tongue and pushed up his black-framed eyeglasses onto his forehead before reaching out and gripping the Xhosa’s shoulder, to feel if he was real, perhaps.

  He wanted to dedicate this one to Dragunov but, dear God, his heart bounced so in his ribs on this, his first blooding, his fingers and palms were wet with sweat. On the practice range it was the testosterone of competition, but this was real, a man of flesh and blood, a bald middle-aged West German who wa
s feeding on both sides of the fence. The KGB had earmarked him for elimination, and it was time for the ANC’s exchange student to earn his keep. There was steam on the telescopic lens; he dared not take his eye from the door. It opened.

  * * *

  Miriam sat on the chair, staring at the door, trying to recall the route they had followed bringing her here. Was there another way out? It was so quiet in the building, just the soft sound of the air conditioner and now and then the creak of metal expanding or contracting. She could not wait much longer.

  * * *

  “I don'’t want to be on the record,” said Dr. Zatopek van Heerden. “That is the condition.”

  “I will show my story to you first.” She hoped for a compromise, but he shook his head.

  “I am not anti-media,” he said. “I believe every country gets the media it deserves. But Thobela is my friend.”

  Allison had to make a decision, and eventually she said, “It’s a deal.” Then Van Heerden began to speak, his eyes never leaving her face.

  * * *

  Tiger held the light of the little flashlight to the map before him. The fucking problem was that the R48 forked beyond Koffie-fontein, the R705 went to Jacobsdal, the R48 going on to Petrus-burg. He had ordered four Rooivalks south to Jacobsdal, the other four with the two Oryx to the more likely east, but the problem was that the damn traffic officer had alerted them too late. By Mazibuko’s reckoning, the fugitive could be past Petrusburg but where? Where the fuck? Because the roadblocks, two bloody roadblocks, said a horde of BMWs had gone through, but not one had a black guy, and the possibilities were legion. Where are you going, you dog? Dealesville or Boshof? His finger traced the routes farther, and he gambled on Mafikeng and the Botswana border. That made it Boshof. But had he crossed the Modder river yet? The Rooivalks would each have to follow a dirt road; there were too many alternatives.

  * * *

  “He is not a complex man, but that is precisely where you can make a mistake,” said Van Heerden. “Too many people equate uncomplicated with simple or a lack of intelligence. Thobela’s noncomplexity lies in his decision-making abilities, he is a man of action, he examines the facts, he accepts or rejects, he does not worry or agonize over it. If Miriam told you he was helping a friend by taking something to Lusaka, then he made the decision that his loyalty lay with his friend, regardless of the consequences.

  Finished and klaar. They are going to battle to get him to stop. They are going to have their hands full.”

  * * *

  Only part of his attention was on the long lit path that the double lamps of the GS shone through the growing dark. The dirt road was a good one, reddish brown and hard-surfaced. He kept his speed down to sixty or seventy. That fall in the Karoo storm still bothered him. The rest of his mind was in Munich, on his first assassination. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was aware that during the past twenty-four hours he was reliving the past, as if he was somehow reactivated. He let it flow, let it out, perhaps it was part of a healing process, a changeover, a closure so that he could shake it off, a period at the end of a paragraph in his metamorphosis.

  The door had opened and his finger had curled around the trigger, the SVD became an extension of his being. In his mind’s eye he could see the bullet waiting for metal to hit the percussion cap, the 9.8 gram steel of the 7.62 mm bullet waiting to be spun through the grooved tunnel of the 24 cm barrel, through the silencer, and then in a curved trajectory, irrevocably on its way. Pressure on the trigger increased, a woman and child appeared in the lens, freezing him, the cross rested on her forehead, right below the band of the blue wool cap, he saw the smoothness of her face, the bright healthy skin, laugh lines at her eyes, and he blew out his breath and the tempo of his heart accelerated some more.

  * * *

  Tiger Mazibuko screamed orders into the microphone. There were three routes to Boshof: from Paardeberg, Poplar Grove, and Wolwespruit. Two Rooivalks on the first, his primary choice, one each on the other two, flying north— he wanted them to start searching from Seretse.

  “I am putting the TDATS on infrared,” said the pilot over the radio, and Mazibuko had no idea what he was talking about. “That means we will see him even if his lights are off.”

  29.

  Miriam Nzululwazi stood up suddenly and opened the door and went out, closing it quietly behind her. The passage was empty. Gray cold tiled floor stretched left and right. She had come from the left; there were offices and people that way. She turned right, the flat heels of her shoes audible, tip-tap, tip-tap. She walked with purpose until she saw another door at the end of the passage.

  She could just make out the letters, in faded peeling red paint: FIRE ESCAPE.

  * * *

  “How well was he trained as a soldier?” asked Allison.

  “Soldier? He was never a soldier.”

  “But he was in Umkhonto.”

  He looked at her in surprise. “You don'’t know?”

  “don'’t know what?”

  “He was an assassin. For the KGB.”

  She knew her face betrayed her shock and dismay.

  “And now you are going to judge him. You think that changes everything?”

  “It’s just ”

  “Less honorable?”

  She searched for the right words. “No, no, I ,” but he did not give her time.

  “You formed a picture in your head of a foot soldier of the Struggle, a relatI'vely simple man, maybe something of a rebel who broke out now and again, but nothing more than that. Just an ordinary soldier.”

  “Well, yes. No. I didn’'t think him ordinary .”

  “I don'’t know the whole story. The Russians discovered him. Shooting competition in Kazakhstan, some base in the mountains where the ANC men were trained. Probably he shot the hell out of the commies and they saw possibilities. He had two years of training in East Germany at some special spy school.”

  “How many people did he ”

  “I don'’t remember precisely. Ten, fifteen ”

  “My God.” She blew out a breath. “Are we still off the record here?”

  “Yes, Allison Healy we are.”

  “My God.” She would not be able to write this.

  * * *

  He had given the lens a quick wipe with the soft cloth and lined up his eye behind it again. Not too close, just the right focus length, checked his adjustments again, and waited for the door. Beads of sweat ran down his forehead— he would have to get a sweatband, it was going to sting his eyes. The door, dark wood, was shut again, his palms were wet and the temperature inside the warm clothes still rising. He became aware of a distaste for what he was doing. This was not the way to wage war, it was not right; this was not the way of his people.

  * * *

  There was a bar on the door, white letters on a green background that read PUSH/DRUK, and Miriam obeyed. There was a snap as the lock disconnected and the door creaked and groaned as the unused hinges protested, and she saw she was outside, she saw the night and she heard the city sounds and stepped forward and closed the door behind her. She looked down, and far below there was an alley but right here in front of her was a metal rail and the rusty wounds of a sawed-off metal stairway. She realized she was in a dead end. The door had clicked shut behind her and there was no handle on the outside.

  * * *

  The light flashed on the access control panel and the official picked up the internal phone and called the Ops Room. It was Quinn who answered.

  “Fire door on the seventh floor. The alarm has been activated,” said the official.

  Quinn raised his voice. “Who is on the seventh floor? The fire door has been activated.”

  Six meters from him Vincent Radebe sat listening to the crackle of the Rooivalk radios more than a thousand kilometers north, and he only half registered what Quinn had said, but the hair rose on his neck.

  “What?” he said.

  “Someone has opened the fire door on seven.” Quinn and Radebe looked at each other and understood, and Radebe felt an icy hand knot his innards.<
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  * * *

  “You are a journalist. You should know that concepts of good and bad are relatI've,” said Zatopek van Heerden. He was up and moving to the edge of the veranda, looking out at the night sky. “No, not relatI've. Clumsy. Insufficient. You want to take sides. You want to be for him or against him. You need someone to be right, on the side of justice.”

  “You sound like Orlando Arendse,” she said.

  “Orlando is not a fool.”

  “How many people did he murder?”

  “Listen to yourself. Murder. He murdered no one. He fought a war. And I don'’t know how many of the enemy died at his hand, but it must have been many, because he was good. He never actually said, but I saw him in action and his ability was impressive.”

  And then he became a gofer at a motorbike dealership?”

  Van Heerden moved again, this time closer to her, and for Allison it was equally stimulating and threatening. He passed close by her and leaned back on the white plastic garden table and sat on it. She smelled him; she swore she could smell him.