Heart of the Hunter

by Deon Meyer

  It was difficult to watch the compass, to gauge their altitude, keep an eye on the crew, and get the sports bag out of the luggage case while juggling the HK in one hand.

  He did it step-by-step, aware of the need to concentrate. Nothing need happen quickly, he just had to stay alert and monitor all the variables. He placed the bag next to him.

  He pulled up the shirt to get at the wound. It did not look good.

  He heard the first Rooivalk arriving at the scene, listened to the reports. Heard the Rooivalk’s orders to come after them.

  They knew he was going to Botswana.

  It was the voice from this morning.

  My name is Captain Tiger Mazibuko. And I am talking to a dead man.

  Not yet, Captain Mazibuko. Not yet.

  Mazibuko barking out,

  And get Little Joe to a hospital.

  Too late, Captain.

  What?

  He’s dead, Captain.

  It was the pilot who looked around, disgusted at the Xhosa’s presence here. The injustice registered with Thobela, but that was irrelevant now.

  But his status

  was

  relevant. And that had changed dramatically. From illegal courier, in their perspective, to murderer. Although it was in self-defense, they would not see it like that.

  He looked down at the wound.

  He must concentrate on survival.

  Now more than ever.

  He could see now that it was more than one bullet: one had taken a chunk of flesh out just below the hip bone, the other had gone in and out on a skewed trajectory— it must have struck the hip bone. Blood was thick over the wounds. He pulled a shirt from the bag and began to clean it up, first looking up to see the copilot watching him, seeing the wounds, the man was pale. Checked the compass, looked outside, below he could see the landscape flashing by in the moonlight.

  He looked around the interior. Some of the soldiers’ gear had been left inside: backpacks, two metal trunks, a paperback. He pushed the backpacks around with his left foot. Got hold of two water bottles and loosened them from the packs.

  “I need bandages,” he said. The copilot pointed. At the back was a metal case with a red cross painted on it screwed to the body of the helicopter. Sealed.

  He stood up and unplugged the headset. He broke the seal of the case and opened it. The contents were old, but there were bandages, painkillers, ointment, antiseptic, syringes of drugs he did not recognize, everything in a removable canvas bag. He took it out and moved back to his seat, replaced the headset, went through the checklist of crew, altitude, and direction. He placed the bandages aside, trying to make out the labels on the tubes of ointment and packets of pills in the poor light. He put what he needed to one side.

  He had never been wounded before.

  The physical reaction was new to him; he vaguely recalled the expected pathology: there would be shock, tremors and dizziness, then the pain, fatigue, the dangers of blood loss, thirst, faint-ness, poor concentration. The important thing was to stop the bleeding and take in enough water; dehydration was the big enemy.

  He heard his mother’s voice in his head. He was fourteen, they were playing by the river, chasing iguanas, and the sharp edge of a reed had sliced open his leg like a knife. At first all he felt was the stinging. When he looked down, there was a deep wound to the bone, he could see it, above the kneecap, pure white against the dark skin, he could see the blood that instantaneously began seeping from all sides like soldiers charging the front lines. “Look,” he said proudly to his friends, hands around the leg, the wound long and very impressive, “I’m going home, so long,” limping back to his mother, watching the progression of blood down his leg with detached curiosity as if it wasn'’t his. His mother was in the kitchen, he needed to say nothing, only grinned. She had a shock—“Thobela,” her cry of worry. She let him sit on the edge of the bath and with soft hands and clicking tongue disinfected the wound with snow-white cotton balls, the smell of Dettol, the sting, the bandages and Band-Aid, his mother’s voice, soothing, loving, caressing hands— the longing welled up in him, for her, for that carefree time, for his father. He jerked back to the present, the compass was still at 355.

  He got to his feet, pressed the HK against the copilot’s neck. “Those helicopters. How fast can they fly?”

  “Aah uum ”

  “How fast?” And he jabbed the weapon into the man’s cheek.

  About two-eighty” said the pilot.

  And how fast are we going?”

  “One-sixty.”

  “Can’t we go faster?”

  “No,” said the pilot. “We can’t go faster.” Unconvincingly Are you lying to me?”

  “Look at the fucking aircraft. Does it look like a greyhound to you?”

  He sagged back to his seat.

  The man was lying. But what could he do about it?

  They wouldn'’t make it; the border was too far.

  What would the Rooivalks do when they intercepted?

  He unclipped another water bottle from one of the rucksacks and opened the cap, brought it to his lips and drank deeply. The water tasted of copper, strange on his tongue, but he gulped greedily, swallowing plenty. How the bottle shook in his big hand— hell— he trembled, trembled. He breathed in slowly, slowly breathed out. If he could just make it to Botswana. Then he had a chance.

  He began to clean the wound slowly and meticulously.

  * * *

  Because if he were still Umzingeli, there would be at least four dead bodies for you to explain.

  That is what the minister of water affairs and forestry had said, and now there was one body and Janina Mentz wondered if the gods had conspired against her. For what were the odds that the perfect operation, so well planned and seamlessly executed would draw in a retired assassin?

  And in the moment of self-pity she found the truth. The foundation of reason that she could build upon.

  It was not by chance.

  Johnny Kleintjes had instructed his daughter to involve Tho-bela Mpayipheli if something happened to him. Was it a premonition? Did the old man expect things to go wrong? Or was he playing some other game? Someone had known about the whole thing, someone had waited in Lusaka and taken the CIA out of the game, and the question, the first big question was, Who?

  The possibilities, this is what drove her out of her head, the multiple possibilities. It could be this own country’s National Intelligence Agency, it could be the Secret Service, or Military Intelligence— the rivalry, the spite, and corruption were tragic in their extent.

  The contents of the hard drive was the second big question, because that was a clue to the who.

  If Johnny Kleintjes had contacted someone else an old colleague now at the NIA or SS or MI, said this is what the people at PIU are planning But I have other data.

  Impossible.

  Because then this thing of the phone calls to Monica Kleintjes, the threats to kill Johnny Kleintjes, would never have happened. Why complicate it so? Why endanger his own daughter?

  Johnny could just have given copies of the data to the NIA.

  It had to be someone else.

  She had recruited Kleintjes, she had explained the operation to him, she had seen his eagerness, estimated his loyalty and patriotism. They had watched him in those weeks, listened to his calls and followed him, knew what he did, where he was. It made no sense. Kleintjes could not be the leak.

  Where then? With the CIA?

  Perhaps a year or two ago, but not since September

  n

  . The Americans had retreated into the

  laager;

  they played a serious, pitiless game, cards close to the vest. Took no chances.

  Where was the leak?

  Here she was the only one who knew.

  Here. Quinn and his teams had trailed Kleintjes and tapped his phone without being briefed with the whole picture. Only she knew the whole story. Everything.

  Who? Who, who, who?

  Her cell phone rang and she saw th
at it was Tiger. She did not want to speak to him right now.

  “Tiger?”

  “Ma’am, he’s on the way ”

  “Not now, Tiger, I’ll call you back.”

  “Ma’am ” Desperation, she could understand that. One of his men was dead, murder burned in his heart, someone had to pay. First she had to think; she pressed the button, cutting him off.

  When she entered the Ops Room she felt despair. She no longer felt up to the task. She recognized the feelings of self-pity. The director was the source of that. He had withdrawn his support and trust, and now she felt suddenly alone and aware of her lack of experience. She was a planner, a strategist, and a manipulator. Her skill was in organization, not crisis management. Not violence and guns and helicopters.

  But the fact remained, this was not about the crisis of the fugitive and a dead soldier.

  don'’t get caught up in the drama. Maintain perspective. Think. Reason, let her strong points count.

  The hard drive.

  Johnny Kleintjes had done what any player with a lifetime of sanctioned fraud behind him would do: left an escape route, a bit of insurance. Thobela Mpayipheli was that insurance, but Kleintjes had not even left the man’s proper address or telephone number with Monica— it was out-of-date. If he really expected trouble, he would have taken more trouble, probably gone to see Mpayipheli himself. At least made sure of where his old friend was.

  No, it was out of habit, not foreknowledge.

  The same went for the hard drive. It was a piece of insurance from the days when he was coordinator for the amalgamation of the awful stuff. Old forgotten intelligence on political leaders’ sexual preferences and suspected traitors and double agents. Negligible. Irrelevant, just something that Kleintjes had thought of when he was knee-deep in trouble, a way of using his insurance. don'’t focus on the hard drive; don'’t be misled by it. She felt relief growing, because she knew she was right.

  But she need not disregard it; she could play more than one game.

  She must concentrate on Lusaka. She must find out who was holding Johnny Kleintjes. If she knew that, she would know where the leak was, and in that knowledge lay the real power.

  Forget the director. Forget Thobela Mpayipheli. Focus.

  “Quinn,” she called out. He sat hunched over his panel and jumped when he heard his name.

  “Rahjev.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “don'’t look so depressed. Come, walk with me.” There was strength in her voice and they heard it. They looked to her, all of them.

  * * *

  By the time he knocked on the door, Allison had showered, dressed, put on music, agonized over the brightness of the lights, lit a cigarette, and sat down in her chair in the sitting room, trying to attain a measure of calm.

  But the minute she heard the soft knock, she lost it.

  * * *

  Janina Mentz walked in the middle, the two men flanking her— Quinn, the brown man, lean and athletic; Rajkumar impossibly fat— a pair of unmatched bookends. They walked down Wale Street without speaking, around the corner at the church toward the Supreme Court. The only sound was Rajkumar’s gasping as he struggled to keep up. The two men knew she had got them out to avoid listening ears. As participants in the plot, they accepted her lead.

  They crossed Queen Victoria and went into the Botanical Gardens, now dark and full of shadows of historic trees and shrubs, the pigeons and squirrels quiet. She had brought her children here with her ex-husband on days of bright sunshine, but even in daylight the gardens whispered, the dark corners created small oases of complicity and secretiveness. She walked to one of the wooden benches, looked at the lights of Parliament on the other side, and the homeless figure of a

  bergie

  on the grass.

  Ironic.

  “Good,” she said as they sat. “Let me tell you how things stand.”

  * * *

  Zatopek van Heerden had brought wine that he opened and poured into the glasses she provided.

  They were uneasy with each other, their roles now so different from that afternoon, the awareness they shared was avoided, sidestepped, ignored like a social disease.

  “What is it that you don'’t understand?” he asked as they sat.

  “You talked of genetic fitness indicators.”

  “Oh. That.”

  He studied his glass, the red wine glowing between his hands. Then he looked up and she saw he wanted her to say something else, to open a door for him, and she could not help herself, she asked the question of her fears. “Are you involved?” Realized that was not clear enough. “With someone?”

  36.

  No,” he said, and the corners of his mouth turned up. “What?” she asked unnecessarily, because she knew. “The difference between us. Between man and woman. For me it is still enigmatic.”

  She smiled with him.

  He looked at his glass as she spoke, his voice quiet. “How many times in one person’s life will you know that the attraction is mutual? In equal measure?”

  “I don'’t know.”

  “Too few,” he said.

  “And I need to know if there is someone else.”

  He shrugged. “I understand.”

  “doesn'’t it matter to you?”

  “Not now. Later. Definitely later.”

  “Odd,” she said, drawing on her cigarette, taking a swallow of wine, waiting. He stood up, placed the glass on the coffee table, and went to her. She waited a moment, then bent down to stub out her cigarette.

  * * *

  Tiger Mazibuko sat in the Oryx, alone. Outside at the bridge where Little Joe died, the men stood waiting, but he did not think of them. He had the charts with him, maps of Botswana. He hummed softly as his fingers ran over them, an unrecognizable, monotonous refrain, busy, busy when the phone rang. He knew who it would be.

  “What I really want to do,” he said straightaway, “is to blow the fucker out of the sky with a missile, preferably this side of the border.” His voice was easy, his choice of words deliberate. “But I know that’s not an option.”

  “That’s right,” said Janina Mentz.

  “I take it we are not going to call in the help of our neighbors.”

  “Still right.”

  “National pride and the small problem of sensitive data in strange hands.”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to ambush him, ma’am.”

  “Tiger, that’s not necessary.”

  “What do you mean, ‘not necessary’?”

  “This line is not secure, take my word for it. Priorities have changed.”

  He nearly lost it just then, the rage pushed up from below like lava.

  Priorities have changed:

  jissis, he had lost a man, he was humiliated and sent from pillar to post, he had endured the chaos and the fucking lack of professionalism, and now someone in a fucking office had changed the fucking priorities. It wanted to explode out violently but he held it in, choked it back, because he had to.

  “Are you there?”

  “I am here. Ma’am, I know what route he will use.”

  “And?”

  “He’s going to Kazungula.”

  “Kazungula?”

  “On the Zambian border. He won’t go through Zimbabwe, too many border posts, too much trouble. I know this.”

  “It doesn'’t help us. That’s in Botswana. Even if it comes from the top, official channels will take too long.”

  “I didn’'t have anything official in mind.”

  “No, Tiger.”

  “Ma’am, he’s wounded. The way Da Costa talks—”

  “Wounded, you say?”

  “Yes. Da Costa says it’s serious, his stomach or his leg. Little Joe got some rounds off before he was shot. It will slow him down. He has to rest. And drink. That gives us time.”

  “Tiger ”

  “Ma’am, just me. Alone. I can be in Ellisras in two hours. In three hours at Mahalapye. All I need is a vehicle .”

  “Tiger ”

  “It gives you an extra option.” He played his trump card.

  She va
cillated and he saw opportunity in that. “I swear I will keep a low profile. No international incident. I swear.”

  Still she hesitated and he drew breath to say more but stopped. Fuck her, he would not plead.

  “On your own?”

  “Yes. In every way.”

  “Without backup and communications and official approval?”

  “Yes.” He had her; he knew he had her. “Just a car. That’s all I ask.”

  * * *