The Prey

by Tony Park

  He walked to her, around the desk, and she looked up at him as he stood, so close that his leg was touching her thigh.

  Tertia looked up at him. ‘There isn’t time.’ But she was already wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue. He could see the rise and fall of her chest.

  Chris didn’t bother trying to convince her with words. He reached for his jeans and unzipped his fly. She swivelled in her office chair and spread her knees so her khaki skirt was hiked up and her legs were either side of him. Still sitting, she leaned forward and pulled his penis from his pants. She glanced up, catching his eye, and he saw her sly smile.

  He wrapped his hand in her hair and guided her face onto him, just as she opened her mouth to take him. She wanted him as much as he wanted her, but it made him feel good to gently push her head down. She moaned, deep in the back of her throat, as he felt her lips brushing against his groin.

  Chris relaxed his grip but kept his hands in her hair until he was close. When he was nearly ready he pulled away, revelling in the cheated look on her face, her wanton smile. He was breathing deep now, hungry for release. He swiped the accounts and letters and pens and paperclips from her desktop with the back of his hand, and when he saw her flash of annoyance he grabbed her by the elbow and lifted her from the chair so that her bum was against the edge of her desk.

  He lifted her legs and pushed her skirt higher up her thigh. Her lacy pants came away in his hand with one forceful tug. She opened herself for him and wrapped herself around him as he drove into her in one long, hard thrust. She grunted, animal-like, as he fucked her.

  Chris felt her fingernails on his back, clawing at him under the blue cotton of his Global Resources shirt.

  ‘Yes,’ she hissed.

  He held her down, his hand on her chest, preventing her from hugging him, as he exploded inside her and felt the spasms of her body gripping his at the same time.

  Chris pulled out of her, wiped himself with his hand and rubbed it up the inside of her thigh. Her eyes stayed on his. ‘I’m glad you’re back safe,’ she whispered.

  He put her torn pants in the pocket of his jeans and walked out of her office, closing the door quietly behind him so no one would hear.

  15

  Kylie sat next to Cameron on the first tier of seating in the open-top Land Rover, just behind where the guide would be sitting, and checked her watch.

  ‘Shall we wait a while longer?’ asked the guide, Tumi Mabunda, who looked no older than twenty-four. She had intricately braided hair, and a tailored uniform, and copper and elephant-hair bracelets encircled her wrists.

  ‘Chris definitely said he was coming,’ Kylie said. She was a punctual person who expected the same of others. This wasn’t a business meeting, but she found herself itching to get on the road. She thought of the elephant, how content it seemed and how relaxed it had been around them.

  Cameron nodded but didn’t seem to be worried by Chris’s tardiness. He looked out over a tributary of the Sabie River, which snaked its way through a valley flanked by thick riverine forest, at the base of the rise on which Tertia’s lodge was set.

  She wondered what was going through his mind. He’d been very quiet on the drive up from Barberton. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘the company will pay for a counsellor, if that’s what you want.’

  He smiled a little and snorted. ‘No, no. I’m fine on that front. I don’t want to sound like a Rambo, but I saw much worse during my time in the army. My thoughts are elsewhere, that’s all. I’ll be ready for the meeting with Tertia later, though, don’t worry.’

  ‘You’re thinking about your daughter. Jessica?’

  He looked at her. ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘What you did, for us, was incredibly brave, but it probably hurt her.’

  He nodded. ‘You’re right. I think she thinks I have some kind of death wish, and that it’s somehow a reflection on her. I thought she’d be proud of me, but she was just angry.’

  ‘It’s none of my business, but with your wife …’

  ‘Sorry, Kylie, but you’re right. It’s my business, no one else’s.’

  He was a prickly man, she thought. She had only been trying to reach out to him. She realised she hadn’t actually thanked him for what he had done for her, for all of them. If the grenade had gone off he would have been killed for sure, and she would have at least been wounded. Cameron looked at her, and she wondered if he was still thinking about the business with the grenade and the men he had killed, despite his bravado and his problems with his daughter.

  ‘Sorry!’ Chris strode up the pathway from his suite, tucking in a shirt as he walked.

  Kylie saw he had changed and when he climbed on the Land Rover she saw his hair was damp. He smelled of soap.

  ‘Ag, I dozed for what I thought was ten minutes and it turned out to be twenty. Sorry, but I needed a shower to wake up again.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ she said. Cameron was gazing out over the river.

  ‘Right, shall we be off?’ Tumi asked. She started the engine and the Land Rover belched a cloud of black diesel. ‘This one we call Old Smokey. Should have been replaced a couple of years ago, but with things as they are …’

  Kylie wondered if they were going to be preached at the whole time.

  ‘Sorry,’ Tumi said. ‘I didn’t mean to talk politics.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Kylie said. ‘I understand how hard it must be for all of you who work here, knowing the lodge is going to close.’

  Tumi shrugged. ‘Most of the guides and the other staff who work here – the cooks, the cleaners, the maids – are from the local community. Some of them will get jobs at the mine, and those who don’t will probably be absorbed onto the neighbouring game farms. The ones looking at jobs at the mine are expecting pay increases. Business hasn’t been good here and no one’s had a rise for a long time. The guides mostly work for tips, in any case.’

  ‘So some of you will be better off,’ Kylie said.

  Tumi looked back at her. ‘I have got a degree in business, but I decided to come work in the bush for peanuts. My parents wanted to disown me, but there’s nowhere in the world I’d rather be.’

  Kylie sat back in her seat.

  ‘Tumi,’ Chris asked from the back, ‘can you take us to the Sunset Dam?’

  ‘Yebo,’ said the guide.

  ‘That’s the location where we’re planning to mine first. The gravel road we’re on now will be the main access road,’ Chris said for Cameron and Kylie’s benefit.

  Kylie had studied a map of the proposed development, overlaid on an aerial photograph. The countryside hadn’t looked like anything special when she’d looked at it in one dimension. She’d thought it would be just flat land and scrub, but it was crisscrossed with stream beds, mostly dry, that were shaded with tall mature trees and thick vegetation. Here and there were granite boulders and other rock formations.

  The movement of the Land Rover produced a warm breeze and the lowering sun was casting a mellow golden wash over the bush so that the bark of a tree they were passing glowed almost pink. Birds called and Tumi stopped the Land Rover and turned off the engine.

  ‘That’s a lilac-breasted roller,’ she said.

  After a couple of seconds of searching, Kylie saw the bird. Apart from its eponymous breast, it had a white crowned head. When it turned its face to the breeze and took off, before she could even switch on her camera, its wings shone a brilliant, electric blue. It was, she thought, the most beautiful bird she had seen in her life.

  ‘Lovely,’ Tumi said, and Kylie could tell she meant it.

  Tumi started the engine but drove only three hundred metres before switching off again. ‘What is it?’ Kylie whispered.

  Cameron lifted a finger and pointed into the bush, off to the right. ‘Don’t you see it?’

  She shook her head.

  He put a hand on her shoulder and gently turned her until she was looking at a tree.

  He left his hand on her and it unsettled her sligh
tly. It wasn’t until she heard, then saw a swish of long black hairs, on a tail, that she saw the giraffe. It was no more than five metres from the edge of the road. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t see it.’ Instinctively she placed her hand on his, by way of thanks.

  Cameron gently slid his hand from under hers. ‘Your eyes take a bit of time to adjust from the city to the bush. Things can be staring you in the face, yet you can’t see them because your eyes are still in city mode.’

  Kylie found herself mesmerised by the statuesque, beautiful female. She could tell, thanks to Tumi, the sex of the giraffe by noting the tufts of hair on the tips of its horns; the males’ horns were bald. ‘She walks like a supermodel.’

  Chris laughed and when Kylie turned from the giraffe, slightly embarrassed, she saw Cameron was smiling, for the first time since she’d met him.

  Tumi lingered at the sighting for a couple more minutes before starting the Land Rover’s engine. As they drove away Kylie looked back at the giraffe, contentedly munching on leaves. She’d never imagined she would be so moved by the simple sight of an animal in the wild. She had seen giraffes in the zoo as a child in Australia and didn’t remember feeling nearly so engaged. Perhaps it was the setting.

  Kylie knew she would have to refocus her mind soon to get ready for the meeting with the feisty Tertia Venter. Chris had been on leave in the days following his rescue and had slept in the back of Cameron’s car on the drive up from Barberton, so they’d had little time to talk through the details of the new strategy. She couldn’t do so in front of Tumi, so they would be winging it for the meeting.

  Jan had stated the obvious, that Global Resources was starting to feel the impact of Tertia’s vitriolic PR campaign. The company already had in-principle approval to start mining, pending final sign-off on their environmental impact statement, which their government sources and local advisers were telling them was a fait accompli. Still, Tertia’s alarmist claim that animals in neighbouring concessions would be poisoned by contaminants from the mine entering local watercourses was causing some angst among shareholders in Australia. Kylie had been assured Tertia’s claim was nonsense, designed purely to grab headlines – but that’s precisely what she had done. Jan’s PR people, including Musa Mabunda, Tumi’s brother, were continually on the back foot, trying to put out the fires that Tertia kept lighting.

  Chris had come up with a scheme that would hopefully silence her. Kylie wasn’t convinced it would work, but Chris said he had built up a measure of rapport with the woman and thought his idea would appeal to her. They would soon see.

  Tumi’s radio beeped to life. ‘Tumi, Tumi, Quentin, copy?’

  Tumi keyed the handset. ‘Go Quentin.’

  ‘Tumi, I’ve got the mafazi ngala with mapimpans. She’s lalapanzi, eastern side of Sunset, copy?’

  ‘Roger, thanks Quentin, I’m coming to you just now. We were heading there in any case.’

  ‘What did all that mean?’ Kylie asked.

  Tumi shifted down a gear and accelerated. ‘Hang on, everyone.’

  ‘You’ll see,’ Cameron said. He looked back at Chris and winked.

  Kylie turned to Chris, who grinned and said: ‘Don’t look at me, my Shangaan is rubbish, man.’

  Kylie shook her head, aware that everyone on the vehicle knew what was going on except her. She grabbed the metal railing in front of her as Tumi bounced through a dip into a dry creek bed and up out the other side. She was content just to hang on and enjoy the ride and found she couldn’t suppress her smile.

  ‘This is Sunset Dam,’ Chris said in a low voice five minutes later as Tumi slowed the Land Rover to a stop and pulled her binoculars out of the daypack on the seat next to her.

  It was an aptly named spot, Kylie thought. The red sun was reflected in the waters of the dam, which rippled gently in the light breeze.

  ‘There,’ said Tumi, pointing into the setting sun.

  ‘Well, whatever it is, it’s not on the eastern side of the dam, like that guy said on the radio,’ Kylie said.

  ‘No, look,’ Cameron interjected, pointing now as Tumi engaged gear again and started driving close to and then around the edge of the dam’s lava-coloured waters. ‘She’s moving them.’

  ‘Who’s moving who?’ Kylie was getting exasperated now.

  Cameron laid a hand on her arm again, and his touch served to soothe her, as much as it surprised her again. She wouldn’t have thought him the touchy-feely type. Again he showed her where to look.

  ‘Oh my,’ she said, finally spotting what all the fuss was about.

  Tumi put the Land Rover in neutral and coasted slowly, silently, a little closer, until they were about fifteen metres from the cat.

  The lioness turned her golden eyes to look at them. The fur of her belly, her ears and that of the tiny squawking bundle she carried in her mouth were all suffused with a halo of golden light by the sun behind them. She walked in front of them, not two metres from the Land Rover’s bull bar, not seeming to mind it or the humans on board, and deposited her tiny baby cub with the utmost delicacy under a bush at the base of a tall tree.

  Tumi swivelled in her seat, grinning like a child. ‘She only had these cubs five days ago. Look how gentle she is with them.’ The lioness lay down on her side, keeping a watchful eye on the humans.

  Kylie thought her heart would melt as she accepted Tumi’s proffered binoculars and watched the cubs clambering over each other to get to their mother’s teats. They squeaked and snarled in imitation of the fearsome adults they might one day become, fighting for the right to feed first.

  ‘They’re adorable,’ Kylie said.

  ‘Yes,’ Tumi agreed.

  ‘So, anyway, this is where the first open-cut mine will be established,’ Chris said softly behind her.

  Kylie looked from the lioness and her cubs across the sun-bathed waterhole and at the surrounding wilderness. She sighed. Then, simultaneously, all three of their cellphones beeped.

  *

  Cameron had tried to make five calls from the bouncing back of the game-viewing vehicle before they made it to the lodge, but everyone seemed to be on the phone or busy elsewhere. Kylie, meanwhile, had spent most of the trip talking to Jan, in Australia, even though it was around two am in Sydney.

  Cameron sat on the bed in his suite scrolling through emails on his laptop, searching for news. There was a knock on the door and when he opened it Kylie walked in, holding her phone to her ear. ‘Tell me, Musa, how come we’re being called so late in the day for comment?’ she said.

  Kylie stood still, waiting for an answer, and Cameron moved his computer bag off the chair so she could sit down. She waved away his offer, so he sat down and resumed checking.

  ‘Hello?’ Chris said softly from the open door. Cameron beckoned him in.

  ‘Well, it’s just not acceptable,’ Kylie said. She listened for a few seconds more. ‘All right, Musa, call me as soon as you hear anything else.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Cameron asked.

  Kylie exhaled and sat down on the end of his bed. She ran a hand through her hair. ‘I was probably a bit hard on Musa. He’s just the messenger. Just as he said in his text message to us, the Mail and Guardian is running a story in tomorrow morning’s edition that says miners at Eureka are being exposed to grossly unsafe levels of silica and other pollutants.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s ridiculous,’ Cameron said.

  ‘Well, there’s more. It turns out that the claim isn’t ridiculous. Musa’s been in touch with your air pollution monitoring consultancy …’

  ‘APMS – Air Pollution Monitoring Systems,’ Cameron said.

  ‘Yes, well, whoever they are, they told Musa that what the paper is going to report is correct. The head guy, Johan something, was in the process of preparing a confidential report for you, but it appears one of his staff has leaked it to the press.’

  ‘Jissus.’ Cameron shook his head. ‘I was just trying to call him but his number was engaged. It must have been Musa talking to him.
’

  She looked across the room at him and he saw the cold fury in her eyes. ‘It shouldn’t be up to the company PR man to be finding this stuff out, Cameron.’

  ‘It’s my fault, too,’ Chris said. ‘I usually check in with APMS once a week, but after, well, after what happened to us underground I neglected to call Johan this week. He might have given me a verbal heads-up. I’m sorry.’

  Kylie waved off his apology ‘It’s not your fault, Chris.’

  Cameron bridled at her tone, and her stare. He couldn’t believe this was happening. There had to have been a mistake made somewhere. ‘Chris, you of all people know how stringent our dust control measures are. What do you think happened?’

  Chris shrugged. ‘You didn’t have any breakdowns of the ventilation system while I was underground? It could be the samples just came from one day where there was a problem.’

  Cameron shook his head. ‘No ways. I was keeping an eye on your stuff the whole time you were missing. I would have known if there’d been a breakdown.’

  Kylie stood and started pacing. ‘Look, there’ll be time to find out what went wrong soon enough, but the key thing we have to do now is find a way to turn this around in the media.’

  ‘No,’ Cameron said. ‘The key thing here is the safety of my workers.’

  She stopped and put her hands on her hips. ‘They’re not your workers, Cameron. I was just on the phone to Jan. Your transfer to acting head of special projects is now taking effect immediately. We’re putting Coetzee in charge of the mine as of tonight.’

  He jumped to his feet. ‘What? You can’t do this to me.’

  She squared up to him, even though he was a head taller than she. ‘I can and I just have, with Jan’s blessing.’

  ‘You’re making a mistake. I need to get back to Barberton and find out how and where this happened.’

  ‘No, Cameron. Coetzee is overseeing the investigation, which is going to be carried out by a team from APMS. Musa’s drafting a media release now saying that work is to be suspended at Eureka pending an urgent review of ventilation systems and intensive site monitoring. The government and union are being invited to send a representative to observe the investigation. Don’t try and accuse me of not putting the safety of our workers first – I’ve already ordered the mine shut down. It’s you who dropped the ball here, Cameron.’