Heart of the Hunter

by Deon Meyer

  * * *

  Da Costa, Little Joe Moroka, Cupido, and Zwelitini waited till the Oryx landed and the great engines had quieted before jumping down.

  The helicopter had landed in a piece of open veld, bordered by the river and road and thorn trees. The first thing they did was to walk to the river, drawn by the ancient magnetism of water. Behind them the main rotor turned ever more slowly and stopped. The night sounds took over, frogs that had been still, insects, somewhere far away a dog barked.

  Da Costa walked to the water, opened his fly, and urinated a fat shiny stream in the moonlight.

  “Hey, the farmers have to drink that fucking water,” said Cupido.

  “The Boers drink brandy and Coke,” said Da Costa, and spat his chewing gum in an impressive arc.

  “Not bad,” said Zwelitini. “For a whitey”

  “So, can you do better?”

  “Naturally. didn’'t you know we Zulus have lips like these so we can spit on whiteys and Xhosas?”

  “Put your money where your lips are, Your Highness.”

  “Ten rand says I can do better than that.”

  “Best of three.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Hey what about us?” asked Cupido.

  “This is the RU, my bru’. Come and spit with us.”

  “Wait,” said Da Costa. “I must radio the captain first. Tell him we are in position.”

  “Take your time. The night is young.”

  And so they bantered and teased and spat, ignorant of their prey only twelve meters away, unaware that one of them would not see the sun rise.

  31.

  She told the director in his office of Miriam Nzululwazi’s death and she could see how the news upset him, how the stress of the whole affair slowly crept up on him. The little smile was gone, the compassion and consideration for her was less, the cheerfulness had been swept away.

  He is feeling the strain, she thought. The snow-white shirt had lost its gleam; the wrinkles were like cracks in his armor, barely visible.

  “And Vincent?” he asked in a weary voice.

  “He offered his resignation.”

  “You accepted it.”

  “Yes, sir.” There was finality in her voice.

  The Zulu closed his eyes. He sat motionless, hands on his lap, and for a moment she wondered if he was praying, but she knew it was just his manner. Other people would have gestures or blow out their breath or sag in the shoulders. His way was to shut out the world momentarily.

  “There are always casualties in our work,” he said softly.

  She did not think he expected her to respond. She waited for the eyes to open, but it did not happen.

  “This is the part I don'’t like. It is the part I hate. But it is inevitable.”

  The eyes opened. “Vincent.” A hand gesture at last, a vague wave. “He is too idealistic. Too soft and emotional. I will get him a transfer. Somewhere we can channel that dedication.”

  She still had no idea what to say, for her opinion differed. Vincent had failed. For her he no longer existed.

  “What are we going to do with Mrs. Nzululwazi?”

  With the body? Why didn’'t he say it? She was learning a lot tonight. She saw weakness.

  “I will arrange to have her sent to the morgue, sir. No questions asked.”

  “And the child?”

  She had forgotten about the child.

  “Sir, the best would be for family to look after him. We are not we don'’t have the facilities.”

  “That is true,” he said.

  “You said over the phone you had some interesting news.”

  “Oh. Yes. I have. I had a call from Luke Powell.”

  It took a while to sink in. “Luke Powell?” she repeated, mainly to gain time, to make the mental adjustments.

  “He wants to meet us. He wants to talk.”

  She smiled at the director. “This is unexpected, sir. But not an unpleasant prospect.”

  He answered her smile with one of his own. “It is, Janina. He is waiting for us. At the Spur on the waterfront.”

  “Oh, he wants to play a home game,” she said, and waited for the director to acknowledge the joke, but he did not.

  * * *

  Allison Healy made two calls before she began to type the lead story for the next day’s Cape Times. The first was to Rassie Erasmus of the Laingsburg police.

  “I tried twice this afternoon, but your cell was off,” he said reproachfully “I had an interview with a difficult man,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “Three things,” he said. “The thing this morning at Beaufort West. They say the biker held a gun to one soldier’s head, he could have shot them both to hell, but he let them go and said something like ‘I don'’t want to hurt anybody’ ”

  “I don'’t want to hurt anybody,” she repeated as she made frantic notes.

  “Number two: it’s a rumor but the source is good, an old pal of mine in Pretoria. That brigadier who said over the news that the biker was such a fuckup in the Struggle, you know who I mean, the one in the army?”

  “Yes?” She sifted through the documents on her desk for the fax.

  Apparently there’s a case pending against him. Sexual harassment or something. They say he’s talking now because the sexual harassment thing against him may just go away if he’s helpful enough.”

  “Wait, wait, wait, Rassie.” She found the paper and ran her finger down it. “You say the brigadier, here it is, Lucas Morape, you say he’s lying about this to save his own skin?”

  “I’m not saying he’s lying. I’m saying he’s helping them. And that’s not a fact, it’s a rumor.”

  “So what’s the third thing?”

  “They’ve cornered the biker in the Free State.”

  “Where in the Free State?”

  “Petrusburg.”

  “Petrusburg?”

  “I know, I know, between bugger all and nowhere, but that’s what the guy says.”

  “You said they’ve cornered him.”

  “Wait, let me explain. This afternoon he went through a speed trap this side of Petrusburg, and the speed cop wrote him a fucking ticket without a clue who he was and then let him go. When the poor fool got back to the office, the bomb burst. They thought he must have slipped through Petrusburg because of all the other BMW motorbikes, but now they’ve blocked all the holes. Apparently, there’s a whole squadron of Rooivalks waiting for him with guided missiles.”

  “Rassie, don'’t be ridiculous.”

  “Sweetness, have I ever lied to you?”

  “No ”

  “I tell you like I hear it, Allison. You know that. And I’ve never let you down.”

  “That’s true.”

  “You owe me.”

  “Yes, I owe you, Rassie.” She hung up and shouted at the news editor: “I’m going to need some help on this one, Chief.”

  “What do you need?”

  “People to make some calls.”

  “you’'ve got it,” he said, and crossed over to her desk.

  She had already dialed the next number. It was to the house of Miriam Nzululwazi in Guguletu. “I need someone to call Defence Force Media Relations and ask them to confirm or deny the fact that Brigadier Lucas Morape has a sexual harassment case pending.”

  The phone rang in Guguletu.

  “What brigadier?”

  “The guy who put out the press release about how bad the biker really is.”

  “Check,” said the news editor.

  “And I need someone to call that Kimberley number and ask them to confirm or deny that Thobela Mpayipheli has been trapped near Petrusburg.”

  “Good girl,” said the news editor.

  The phone still rang.

  “And I need someone to try and find a list of child day-care centers in Guguletu and start calling. We need to know if a Pakamile Nzululwazi has been picked up by his mom today.”

  “It’s eight-thirty”

  “It’s Guguletu, Chief. Not some cozy white suburb where everybody goes home at five o’clock. We might get lucky. Please.”

  The phone rang and rang.

  * * *


  Tiger Mazibuko sat in the copilot’s seat of the Oryx. It had landed beside the R.64, halfway between Dealesville and Boshof.

  He had the radio headset on, listening to the Rooivalk pilots calling in from each sector they had searched as clear. He marked them off on a chart.

  Could the dog be through already, beyond Boshof?

  He shook his head.

  Impossible. He couldn'’t ride that fast.

  They would get him. Even if he got lucky, there was a last resort. Beyond Mafikeng there were only two roads over the Botswana border. Just two. And he would close them off.

  But it would probably not be necessary.

  * * *

  At first there was relief. The Oryx had not landed here because they had spotted him. Now there was the frustration of being trapped.

  He lay beside the GS under the bridge and dared not move, he dared not make a sound, they were too close, the four romping young soldiers. The copilot had come down, too, and now they were skipping flat stones over the water. The one with the most skips before the stone sank would be the champion.

  He had recognized one of the soldiers, the young black fellow. This morning he had held a rifle to his head.

  He saw himself in them. Twenty years ago. Young, so very young, boys in men’s bodies, competitI've, idealistic, and so ready to play soldier.

  It was always so, through the ages, the children went to war. Van Heerden said it was the age to show off what you had, to make your mark so you could take your place in the hierarchy.

  He was even younger when he had left home, seventeen. He could remember it well, in his uncle Senzeni’s car, the nighttime journey, Queenstown, East London, Umtata; they had talked endlessly, without stopping, about the long road that lay ahead. Senzeni had repeated over and over that it was his right and his privilege, that the ancestors would smile on him, the revolution was coming, injustice would be swept away. He remembered, but as he lay here now, he could not recall the fire that burned in his soul. He searched for that zeal, that Sturm und Drang that he had felt, he knew it had been there, but as he tried to taste it, it was only cold ash. He had caught the bus in Umtata; Senzeni had hugged him long and hard and there were tears in his uncle’s eyes and his farewell was “Mayibuye.” It was the last time he had seen him— had Senzeni known? Had he known his own battle would be the more dangerous, working inside the lion’s den, with so much greater risk? Was the desperation of Senzeni’s embrace because of a foreboding that he would die in the war on the home front?

  The bus ride to Durban, to Empangeni, was a journey into the unknown; in the earliest hours before dawn, the enormity of that journey ahead became a worm in his heart that brought with it the corruption of insecurity.

  Seventeen.

  Old enough to go to war, young enough to lie awake in the night and fear, to long for the bed in his room and the reassurance of his father in the rectory, young enough to wonder if he would ever feel his mother’s arms again.

  But the sun rose and burned away the fears, it brought bravado, and when he got off at Pongola he was fine. The next night they smuggled him over the border to Swaziland, and the following night he was in Mozambique and his life was irrevocably changed.

  And here he was now, using a skill the East Germans had taught him. To lie still, that was the art of the assassin and sniper, to lie motionless and invisible for hours, but he had been a younger man— this one was forty years old, and his body complained. One leg was asleep, the stones under the other hip were sharp and unbearably uncomfortable, the fire in his belly was quenched and his zeal was gone. It was fifteen hundred kilometers south in a small house on the Cape Flats beside the peaceful sleeping body of a tall slim woman, and he smiled to himself in the dark, despite his discomfort, he smiled at the way things change, nothing ever stays the same and it was good, life goes on.

  And with the smile came the realization, the suspicion, that this journey would change his life, too. He was on the way to more than Lusaka.

  Where would it take him?

  How could anyone know?

  * * *

  She worked on the lead story, knowing it was going to be a difficult job tonight.

  A squadron of Rooivalk attack helicopters cornered the fugitive motorcyclist Thobela Mpayipheli near the Free State town of Petrusburg late last night amid conflicting reports from the military and unofficial sources.

  She read her introductory paragraph. Not bad. But not quite right. The Burger and television and radio could have the same information. And by tomorrow morning he might have been arrested.

  She placed the pointer of the computer screen on the end of the paragraph and deleted it. She thought, she rephrased, testing sentences and construction in her mind.

  A new drama surrounding the fugitive motorcyclist Thobela Mpayipheli unfolded late last night with the mysterious disappearance of his common-law wife, Mrs. Miriam Nzululwazi.

  This was where her scoop lay. She went on.

  Authorities, including the SAPS and the Office of the Intelligence Ministry, strongly denied that Mrs. Nzululwazi was in government custody Yet colleagues say the Absa employee was apprehended by unidentified law enforcement officials at the Heerengracht branch yesterday

  The military reaction on persistent rumors that a squadron of Rooivalk attack helicopters had cornered Mpayipheli near the Free State town of Petrusburg after sunset yesterday was “no comment.”

  That’s better, she thought. Two birds with one stone.

  “Allison ”

  She looked up. A black colleague stood beside her. “I’ve got something.” “Shoot.”

  “The kid. I found him. Sort of.” “You did!”

  “A woman at the Guguletu Preschool and Child Care Center says he’s a regular there. And the mother never turned up tonight.” “Shit.” “But some sort of government guy did.” The man looked at his notes. “Said his name was Radebe; flashed a card at her and said there had been some sort of accident and he was there to take the kid into his care.”

  “Ohmigod. Did he say whom he worked for? Where was he taking the kid?”

  “She says the card he showed her just said he was Department of Defence.”

  “And she let the kid go?”

  “He was the last one left.”

  “The last one left?”

  “He was the last kid to be fetched, and I think the lady just wanted to go home.”

  * * *

  Vincent Radebe could not tell the boy his mother was dead. He did not know how.

  “Your mother has to work late” was the best he could do, in the car. “She asked me to look after you.”

  “Do you work with her?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Do you know Thobela?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Thobela has gone somewhere and it’s our secret.”

  “I know.”

  “And I’m not going to tell anybody.”

  “That’s good.”

  “And he’s coming back tomorrow.”

  “Yes, he’s coming back tomorrow,” he had said on the way to Green Point, where his flat was. There were moments in the car that his guilt, the heaviness of spirit, became nearly too much for him, but now in McDonald’s opposite the Green Point athletic stadium he had control of himself. He watched Pakamile devour the Big Mac and asked: “Have you got other family here in the Cape?”

  “No,” said the boy. There was tomato sauce on his forehead. Radebe took a napkin and wiped it off.

  “Nobody?”

  “My granny lived in Port Elizabeth, but she’s dead.”

  “Have you got uncles or aunts?”

  “No. Just Thobela and my mother. Thobela says there are dolphins in Port Elizabeth and he is going to show us at the end of the year.”

  “Oh.”

  “I know where Lusaka is. Do you?”

  “I know.”

  “Thobela showed me. In the atlas. Did you know Thobela is the cleverest man in the world?”

  32.

  Luke Powell’s official title was economic attaché o
f the American consulate in Cape Town. But his unofficial office, as everyone in the intelligence community was well aware, had little to do with the economy. His actual rank was senior special agent in charge of the CIA in southern Africa, which included everything this side of the Sahara.