by Tony Park
‘The name is Venter. V-e-n-t-e-r.’
Kylie looked back and was shocked to see she had heard correctly ‘Tertia!’
Cameron turned and swore softly. ‘What’s she doing here?’
Even more surprisingly, Kylie saw Jan get up from his chair and walk over to her, and take her hand.
‘Madam, sir?’ the carriage butler said to them. ‘We must board now.’
‘I’ll catch up with you,’ Kylie said. Jan was steering Tertia towards the members of the Global Resources board. She walked to where Tertia was now being introduced to the Chinese delegation. ‘Jan. Can I have a private word, please?’
‘In a moment, Kylie.’
Kylie fumed. She was his number two and he was acting as though she wasn’t there. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said to Tertia once the introductions were complete. Miss Li, the interpreter, translated the question for the Chinese businessmen.
‘I heard about this little powwow on the grapevine. I came here because I wanted to meet your board and to get an assurance from them that they weren’t secretly negotiating with the Chinese for them to move onto my land once the sale is done.’
‘That’s all out of our hands,’ Jan said, trying to defuse things. ‘Tertia, this is a public train so we can’t stop you coming on board, but while our meetings will be confidential, you know that the discovery of the owls on Lion Plains means that no coalmine will go ahead there.’
Tertia glared at him. ‘And if the birds move off? What then? What’s to stop you or your new Chinese owners going back to the government with a new claim?’
The board members glanced at each other uneasily, none of them wanting to buy into what was fast becoming a public spectacle.
‘I want your Chinese buyers to also know how you’ve been poisoning your workers underground. Translate that,’ Tertia said to the interpreter.
The train manager called a cabin number for the third time and Tertia glanced at her boarding pass. ‘That’s me. I’m going now, but I’ll be going to the media the minute we get off this train in Cape Town if I catch one whiff of you plotting some way to come back onto Lion Plains.’
Tertia stormed off and Jan took Kylie gently by the elbow. ‘She’s insane,’ he said out of the side of his mouth. ‘But I decided to be as cordial to her as possible. I don’t want her to upset the Chinese any more than necessary. We need this sale to go through. So please don’t pick a fight with her again.’
‘I did not pick a fight with her. I just asked her what she was doing here.’
‘Well, just don’t goad her. She can’t stop the sale from going through. I won’t let her.’
Kylie bridled at the tone he was using with her, but she imagined he was under considerable stress. ‘What would happen if we got offered another coalfield, maybe in Mozambique?’
Jan shook his head. ‘Too late, and we’ve been losing so much to the zama zamas we don’t have the liquidity to buy another concession. There’ll be some compensation from the South African government but that could take months or years to get back from the local community that owns Lion Plains. The best thing for Global Resources now is to at least sell the African operations and, if possible, hold on to Australia. That’s what we’re discussing here on the train, Kylie.’
‘I know what we’re discussing, but –’
‘We have to board.’ He walked away from her and she headed after him, onto the platform.
Musa Mabunda, dressed in a grey suit and maroon tie and carrying his laptop bag, caught up with her on the platform. ‘You look like you’re having a bad day already.’
‘It’s getting worse by the minute,’ she said.
‘Cheer up,’ Musa said. ‘You’ll probably still have a job by the end of this train trip, but I don’t think China Dynamic has much time for PR. From what I’ve read of them online, their idea of public relations is to say no comment to the media and pay off whoever needs to be paid off to make their problems go away.’
‘How’s your cousin Tumi?’ Kylie asked. ‘Happy that she’s still going to be working as a safari guide instead of a mine forklift driver?’
‘Very, I’m sure. In fact, that reminds me, I got a voicemail from her saying she wanted to speak to me urgently, but I was too busy organising champagne and orange juice and brandy for the Chinese. Those people can drink.’
‘I’ll see you on the train, Musa.’
‘We may as well enjoy it while it lasts.’
Kylie found her way to her carriage and the butler was waiting for her in her suite. She only half-listened to the instructions about the television, the airconditioning and the times for meals. She felt as though the situation, like the company she had once been so proud to work for, was slipping away from her. When the butler left she went to the next suite and knocked on the door.
‘Come in,’ Cameron said.
She opened the door. He had his laptop open and was checking his phone. ‘Luis tried to call me a little while ago, but the call kept cutting out.’
‘We can’t go to the board without details of this offer he wants to make to us. And in any case, Jan seems to have given up hope. He sees the Chinese buyout, of Africa at least, as a foregone conclusion.’
Cameron patted the couch next to where he sat. ‘Perhaps it is.’
‘You don’t look so worried.’ She sat down and he took her hand in his.
‘I’m not. I thought that running a goldmine was the most important thing in the world to me, but it turns out it’s not. It cost me my marriage, and while I’m desperately sad about what happened to Tania, particularly for Jess, I know that pretending our relationship was fine for so long was no good for any of us – not me, not her, not Jessica. I came close to losing Jess and I don’t want that to happen. When she finishes matric, if she wants to stay living with me, then I’ll do what’s best for her. She says she likes the idea of moving to Mozambique.’
‘Seriously? You’re going to buy a charter boat and take tourists out snorkelling?’
‘Why not? I think I’ve had enough of living underground. I want to enjoy the sun a little, and spend some time with my daughter before she runs off with someone who I won’t think is good enough for her. What about you?’
‘What about me?’
Cameron drew her to him, and she slid over and sat on his lap. He brushed a strand of hair away from her face and kissed her, long and deep. She felt safe in his arms. When they broke the kiss he said: ‘I meant, what about us?’
She frowned. She wasn’t ready to give up work and be a beach bum. Not yet, anyway. Kylie didn’t know if she would be kept on in the company if the Chinese took over, and it was likely the succession plan she had envisaged, with her taking over from Jan one day, was just a half-baked dream now. ‘You could move to Australia. There are heaps of South Africans working for our mining companies. Jess could study there.’
‘I’m African, Kylie. I was born here. I just can’t leave this place.’
He reached around her and ran his fingers down the back of her neck, then down her spine. She shivered. Their time together had been torrid, at loggerheads at the beginning, and now making love with the urgency of people who had been denied too long. There was important business to be discussed with the Chinese, and who knew what, if anything, Luis would bring to the table if he ever contacted them again. And there was Jan, who was freezing her out of the last days, perhaps hours, of the company. There was so much to do that she didn’t have time to have sex with Cameron. His hand moved to her bottom, grabbing it as he kissed her again, then to the hem of her skirt.
She really didn’t have time for this. ‘What about Jess?’ she whispered in his ear. ‘She might walk in on us.’
‘I’ve ordered her to do at least an hour’s study in her suite. She brought her books with her.’
He pushed her pants to one side and she felt the delicious touch of his fingers on her again. ‘Anyone would have thought you had this all planned.’ Kylie reached for his zipper and straddled him on the couc
h. ‘Really,’ she mumbled through a kiss, ‘this is not what I need.’
‘Well it’s exactly what I need.’ He reached across to the table under the cabin window and slid a foil-wrapped condom from a pocket of his laptop bag.
‘You dog,’ she said as she leaned back so he could roll it on. The train started to pull away from the station as Kylie lowered herself on to him, kissing him deeply as she rode him to the clickety-clack rhythm.
Kylie hugged him tight as she came and felt him pulse inside her. The warmth flowed through her body and she wished, right then, she could have it all: career, man, love, lust, work, play. Cameron. Hell, maybe even a child of their own. She sighed against him. It was all a dream. She was going back to Australia in a few days, possibly onto the unemployment line. The mining industry was still booming, and she was sure she would find a lesser position somewhere else – Global Resources would be a toxic brand for some time – but what were the chances a new job would bring her back to Africa any time soon?
Cameron shifted under her, but she held him tight. She wanted to stay connected to him for as long as she could.
39
Cameron was coming to the end of his presentation on Global Resources’ new business projects in Africa. The Chinese executives and Mary Li were seated on one side of the long polished-wood table in the Blue Train’s conference car, and Jan, Kylie and the Australian board members were on the other.
With the Lion Plains coalmine off the books, Cameron’s Power-Point brief, projected on the screen at the end of the carriage, was exactly that – brief. He had trouble padding it out to the allocated forty-five minutes. Even Miss Li, who also had a role to play in the presentation, was covering a yawn with her hand.
To exacerbate the risk of lethargy, they had all eaten lunch. Cameron had noticed the Chinese businessmen quaffing back wine with their meal, while the Australians pointedly stuck to sparkling water. China Dynamic, it seemed, was already celebrating their next acquisition. All that was left to negotiate was how much of a steal they would get the African mines for.
He scanned his audience and Kylie winked at him.
There was a knock on the door and Musa Mabunda walked in. He coughed. ‘Cameron, I need to speak with you for a minute. It’s urgent.’
‘I’m nearly finished, Musa. Are there any questions?’
‘Cameron,’ Musa said quietly but urgently.
If there was a word that summed up the PR man, Cameron thought, it was polite, so this intrusion during a presentation was completely out of character for him. Jan stood and said, ‘Cameron, I’m sure you’ve covered everything. We’ll be arriving at our scheduled stop in Kimberley shortly and I’m sure everyone would appreciate the chance to freshen up before we get off the train for the tour.’
Miss Li translated rapidly and there were enthusiastic nods from the Chinese delegation, some of whom had been showing drowsy eyes. ‘Very good, Cameron,’ said Hilary Hann, the sole woman on the Global Resources board.
Cameron excused himself and followed Musa out into the corridor of the gently swaying carriage. ‘Cameron, I’m sorry but I just got off the phone to my cousin at Lion Plains. I have to tell you what she told me.’
‘OK.’
Kylie joined them and Musa looked at her.
‘You can say whatever it is you need to say in front of Kylie,’ Cameron said.
‘Very well, but I suggest we go back to my suite.’
They followed Musa to the next carriage and the three of them found space in his cabin to sit. ‘My cousin just told me that a Chinese woman by the name of Mary Li visited Lion Plains yesterday.’
‘Mary? Our Mary Li, the translator?’ Kylie said.
Musa nodded. ‘Seems she’s more than an interpreter. Anyway, Tumi was checking a fault in an electric fence and heard Mary Li and Tertia talking in one of the lodge’s birding hides. Tertia told Miss Li she had just put in an offer on Kilarney, the farm neighbouring Lion Plains, and that old man Berger, the owner, had accepted.’
‘Stoffel Berger, the guy who vowed he would never sell to anyone?’ Kylie asked.
‘The very one. Tertia boasted to Li that he had agreed to sell to her because she had done such a good job protecting Lion Plains. He was worried the government would take it off him eventually, to give it to the local community, and Tertia told him that with the mine plan cancelled she would roll it into Lion Plains and restock it with game.’
‘That does make sense for her, now that she’s got some security, but what would this have to do with someone from China Dynamic?’ Cameron asked.
Musa took a deep breath. ‘Tumi said that the Chinese woman then said, “Good, as soon as the sale of Global Resources goes through you can sell Kilarney to China Dynamic.” Tumi didn’t really know what to make of that, but she was amazed to hear Tertia and this woman doing business together. Tumi googled China Dynamic afterwards and found out they are a mining company.’
Kylie thumped the polished timber carriage wall beside her. ‘She’s been playing us and her local community all along.’
‘So it wasn’t about “her” wildlife at all,’ Cameron said.
‘No,’ said Kylie. ‘It was about good old-fashioned greed. She had nothing to gain and everything to lose if the local community was successful in getting us to mine on Lion Plains. If it had still been her land she would have made a fortune had we bought the rights from her. As it was, her game lodge concession on the community land would be put out of business. I almost feel sorry for her, but she organised the public campaign that accused us of being environmental rapists, while the whole time she was sweet-talking old man Berger into selling her his place so she could sell the mining rights to the Chinese. She doesn’t care if a future mine affects business at Lion Plains because it’s not hers anyway. She’ll probably be able to buy half-a-dozen game farms with the profit she’ll make on Kilarney, and at the same time her publicity campaign was cruelling our share price, which makes us an even softer target for China Dynamic.’
‘We’ve got to go to Jan with this,’ Cameron said.
Kylie looked to him, then Musa.
‘What?’ Cameron asked.
‘Nothing. I don’t know. You’re right, we should tell him. If she’s come here to do a deal on the quiet with the Chinese, maybe we can get in first.’
Cameron shook his head. ‘They’ll just outbid us and, besides, there’s the problem of our cash flow. Jan still needs to know.’
The train started to slow and the manager announced over the PA system that they would soon be arriving in Kimberley. Outside the light was fading and a bloody sunset soaked the open landscape.
*
Luis was in the air, on an Airlink flight from Johannesburg’s OR Tambo Airport to Kimberley. He checked his cheap digital watch again. He was late. From his online research he knew the Blue Train would only be in Kimberley for a little more than an hour and if the train was on time, then it was already there.
The captain advised his passengers they were beginning their descent. Luis felt the knot grow in his stomach. He would have to organise a car or taxi from the airport. He didn’t know if he could make it in time, but he had to get to Cameron and Kylie and give them the information he had extracted from Wellington before he had killed him. Even if he was allowed to use his cellphone from the aircraft, which he wasn’t, it wouldn’t work as he had run out of credit.
His future and that of his son might be lost because he had been in too much of a rush to board his flight in Maputo to recharge his phone. He had only been late for the flight because he had killed a man – albeit a bad man – in cold blood. Perhaps the Lord had decided his fate long ago, when Luis had first cast his lot in with the criminal miners. He bunched his hands into impotent fists.
‘Ja, I get nervous at landing time too,’ the grey-haired Afrikaner matron next to him said. She reached over and patted his arm. ‘You’ll be fine, man.’ He smiled at her and her unexpected charity. Perhaps all was not lost.
*
Tertia followed the delegates from the mining companies into the cinema where they were to view the short film that was part of the Kimberley tour. She’d been here before and knew that afterwards they would all inspect the Big Hole, the remains of a huge open-cut diamond mine. She knew the Australians thought of her as a vindictive leech, hanging off the dying corpse of their company, and they were not far wrong. She couldn’t care less.
Mary Li hung back, pretending, no doubt, to defer to her male colleagues, and Tertia took the seat next to her as the cinema lights went down. The big screen was filled with the image of a small boy running through brittle, dry farmlands, and the story began of how diamonds were first discovered.
‘My chairman will see you this evening, after we get on the train but before dinner. There is a break in the interminable presentations,’ Mary Li whispered without preamble.
‘Good. You’ve passed on the amount we discussed?’
‘I have. We’re Chinese; we’ll want to negotiate. But you will do well out of this sale.’
‘They understand the need for absolute secrecy? If the man selling me the farm gets a whiff of this deal he will pull out,’ Tertia said.
‘I have told my board this,’ Mary said. ‘We, too, want this kept quiet until the purchase goes through.’
Tertia glanced along the row of seating. The Australian contingent was beyond the Chinese and Jan Stein was watching the screen. Just an hour or more to go, she told herself, until the beginning of a new, perfect life. It had been a long time coming and she did regret some of the things she had done to get here, especially what she had put Chris through.
He had loved her like a puppy, with boundless enthusiasm and without the need for her to match him. And he had been a beautiful boy. But he was a means to an end and nothing could have come of their relationship. It was always bound to end, and at least he had died in love and not with a broken heart.
Tertia looked back at the rows of seats behind her. Cameron McMurtrie and Kylie Hamilton were not there. She had watched them on the train, at brunch, and had seen how close they were sitting in the departure lounge. They had become more than business colleagues, she thought. She wondered if they had skipped the tour in order to stay on the train and fuck.