‘That won’t stack up if Cobra gets a look at me,’ said Clay. ‘He saw me plain and clear that day near Rito.’
‘So we better make sure he doesn’t.’
Clay tightened the bandana around his face. ‘Thank God for the shit.’
‘Poor bastards,’ said Eben.
‘Poor bastards,’ repeated Clay.
‘Next time I’m at mass with my mum I’ll do just that, broer. Dear Lord, I’ll say, thank you for the shit.’
Clay smiled, felt the bandana cinch up around his nose. He hoped the men across the cargo bay noticed it.
‘Do you really think old Wade signed those orders, Clay?’
‘Who the hell knows?’ He’d been wondering just that for more than an hour. Why would their CO have signed an order sending two relatively junior soldiers out on a covert mission into a neighbouring country with a known enemy to conduct surveillance on their ally? ‘Maybe the order was a fake,’ Clay said.
Eben nodded. ‘Why would a 32-Bat Sergeant forge an order? Unless he’s a mole.’
You’ve been reading too many spy books, bru.’
‘There’s one way to find out. As soon as we get back, we go talk to the CO.’
Clay nodded.
‘If we get back.’
‘Seneca.’
Eben smiled. He had a great smile. Even said so himself.
They fell into silence. Time slowed. The rising sun painted the cargo bay roof red. Clay watched the rear door’s shadow retreat across the forward bulkhead, that knife-edge of now-yellowing light warping over the faces and blinking eyes of the paramilitaries, then flowing like a tide across the landscape of rowed-out bodies. Ten-thousand-foot air flowed thin through his lungs. Anoxia toyed with his senses, brought strange visitors, offered fleeting illusions of clarity. Still heading west, out to sea, somewhere over the Atlantic.
Clay was about to speak a prayer of his own – and mean it – when the engines throttled back. Instantly everything was a little bit quieter; the whine of the servos as the flaps came down, the adjustment of pitch as the aircraft was trimmed up.
‘We’re slowing to drop speed,’ said Clay. They had both done enough jumps from C-130s – flossies as the parabats called them – to know the sequence well enough.
‘Out here?’ said Eben. ‘I don’t see any chutes.’
Clay scanned the cargo bay. ‘Over there, near the ramp controls.’ A dozen parachutes packed away behind strapping.
Clay figured they were about two hundred kilometres offshore now. Below, the deep, cold blue of the Benguela current, which ran north along the western edge of Africa, and the darker upwelling of nutrient-rich waters that brought fish and seals teeming to the Skeleton Coast. The men were unbuckling their shoulder straps now, standing, checking their webbing. Clay and Eben did the same.
The forward bulkhead door opened. Cobra appeared, a cigarette burning between his lips. The sharp smell of tobacco whirled through the cargo bay. The rear ramp was coming down now. Beyond the rows of bodies, the deep blue of the ocean filled the yawning cargo-bay door. Even from this altitude the surface was alive, duned with long ribbons of darker water that shifted with the currents, sculpted by shearing winds and squalls, scattered over with pearl-strings of low cloud. Clay imagined all the life below that surface, the creatures varied and multitudinous.
Once, sailing with his uncle in the Indian Ocean off Durban, he’d caught a yellowfin tuna. It had taken him more than an hour to bring the fish close enough to the boat to see. He remembered looking through the water and seeing him so big, far down still, magnified by the lens of the water, the beautiful silver of the broad flanks, the flashes of deep yellow, a shade like none you could see in the city, in anything made by people, and below him that dark-blue Indian Ocean depth.
Cobra closed the bulkhead door behind him and stood facing the men. He took a long pull on his cigarette, poured the smoke back out through his nostrils. ‘You know what to do,’ he shouted in Afrikaans. ‘Make it quick. Cold beer and a brai when we get back.’
A few grins and nods as the men paired up as before and started moving towards the rear of the plane. Clay and Eben followed.
The first pair stood next to the aft-most body. Each man tethered himself to the aircraft with one of the big nylon straps, clipping it into his webbing. Then together they lifted the body, wrists and ankles, and dragged it across the ramp. They stood like that a moment, silhouetted against the blues of the ocean and the atmosphere, the body between them. Then they swung it over the edge.
Clay gasped, choked. Someone laughed.
The next pair lifted a body, carried it to the ramp, swung it out into the slipstream. Six pairs of men performed the same act, and then it was Clay and Eben’s turn. The man at their feet was of average height. His ribs showed through greying skin. He had a short grey beard, a pinched nose. The eyes were open but dead, empty. Clay took the man’s hands in his own. The skin was cold, the arms already stiff. Eben lifted the man’s legs. Clay looked at his friend. Eben’s eyes were stretched wide above the edge of his bandana. Clay met his gaze, fixed it a moment – a second perhaps, two, trying to convey what he didn’t know how to say: all of the things that later he would come to imagine he had managed to process then, there, as it was happening.
Many years later, when he had finally unearthed all that he had buried inside himself, in the deepest ocean trenches, he would come close to a realisation. And it was this: that he had become one of those soldiers in the documentaries he’d seen about the Nazi atrocities during the war – laying and stacking the bodies of murdered Jews, rows upon rows in the pre-dug mass graves. Only now it was the sea, and even though he did not agree with it, he was, nevertheless, a part of it, a cam in the machine, spinning asymmetric on his axis and doing his job as the whole thing whirred around him and consumed and killed and grew. And much later, as a witness testifying about these atrocities, he would be asked about this man standing opposite him, the best friend he’d ever had; and when the lady commissioner expressed her regret at his death, Clay would say he was glad and she would be truly shocked. He would see it on her face, in the colour coming up under her powdered cheeks, the moistening of her cracked, old-woman’s lips. Can you imagine living a year, let alone a decade, with the knowledge of this act locked away in a body as immobile and unresponsive as the one they’d just thrown from the door of an airplane travelling at ten thousand feet into the ocean below? And what if you were unable to drown it in alcohol, dim it with sex or drugs, mute it with the epinephrine of combat or fear; or even, if you were lucky – and then only for the shortest of times – kill it with love?
Clay did what the others before had done: tethered himself with one of the big nylon straps, hooking the d-ring to his body webbing. Eben did the same. They started towards the ramp, the body heavy and rigid between them, the excrement now hard and dry on the man’s legs. They stood at the edge of the ramp. Clay stared down at the ocean far below, the pure-white clouds drifting across its surface.
This cannot be happening.
This is not me doing this.
I am looking down on someone else and some other ocean.
And whether he had thought these things then, the flesh of the man’s arms cold against his, or much later, he would in the end no longer be able to distinguish.
They swung the body. Clay watched it fall, a man and then a black speck against the limitless blue. And then nothing.
Clay turned, unclipped, started walking back to the rows of bodies as another pair moved to the ramp’s edge. Another body was flung out. Clay’s insides were shuddering as if they would liquefy at any moment and come up through his throat, as if he would vomit out his liver and heart and stomach and his shit-wormed intestines. His hands were shaking. Someone clapped him on the back, laughed.
The next one was a boy, not much more than ten years old. Curly dark hair fringed around a delicate face, the skin lighter than some of the other men, more like the bushmen – a warm caramel
colour. The boy was not nearly as heavy as the man they had just thrown into the void. Clay clamped down hard around the boy’s wrists, lifted. The skin was warm to the touch, almost feverish. Eben lifted the boy’s legs, shuffling a moment with the weight.
Then Eben stopped dead, wide eyed. ‘Jesus fokken
Christ,’ he said. Clay looked down at the boy’s face. It was a face he would remember for the rest of his life, a face that would come to him, there in that hotel room on the coast of Mozambique so many years later, after he had lost the only woman he had ever loved and there was nothing left for him in the world.
Clay staggered. A bolt of lightning shot through him, blew apart his circuits.
The boy’s eyes were wide open, staring right at him. These were not the dull, lifeless eyes that Clay had seen before on enemies and friends alike. There was depth, movement. And in the boy’s wrists, even and strong like time, a pulse.
It was Adriano, Zulaika’s son.
Commissioner Rotzenburg: I remind the witness that he is under oath.
Witness: I understood. I understand.
Commissioner Rotzenburg: This is a very serious accusation.
Witness: It’s not an accusation.
Commissioner Barbour: With respect, Mister Straker, this sounds fantastic. I mean, it’s very hard to believe.
Witness: It happened.
Commissioner Ksole: And you participated.
Witness does not answer.
Commissioner Ksole: I repeat, Mister Straker. You participated.
Witness: There was nothing else we could do.
Commissioner Ksole: You could have stopped it.
Commissioner Rotzenburg: If it actually happened. I remind the witness and this commission of the findings of the Cyprus Prison Service’s evaluation of his mental state, in its report of 1995. On this basis, how can we be sure that your testimony is in any way accurate, Mister Straker?
Commissioner Barbour: The commission already has this information. We are all aware of it.
Commissioner Rotzenburg: In the opinion of the Chief Psychiatrist of the Cyprus Prison Service, Mister Straker, you are an extremely unstable individual. He concluded that you have a tendency to confound the past with the present, that you muddle places and events. In short, Mister Straker, your internal chronometer does not function as a normal person’s does.
Witness is silent.
Commissioner Rotzenburg: So, I repeat the question. How can we be sure that these details are accurate?
Witness: I guess you can’t.
Commissioner Barbour: Gentlemen, please.
Commissioner Ksole: May I repeat my question, please? Could you have stopped it, Mister Straker, what happened on the plane?
Witness: With respect, sir, there were two of us; over a dozen of them. We were two miles above the Atlantic.
Commissioner Ksole: You could have tried.
Witness: What would you have done, sir?
Commissioner Ksole: I would have at least tried.
Witness: Truly?
Commissioner Ksole: Of course.
Witness: Then you would have ended up out the door, too.
Commissioner Barbour: Please, Mister Straker. You are walking very close to the edge, here.
Commissioner Ksole: You don’t know what might have happened.
Witness: I don’t know anything anymore.
Commissioner Lacy: Mister Straker?
Witness: What can one man do, alone?
Commissioner Ksole: His best, Mister Straker. His best.
Witness: My best was never good enough. I know that now.
Commissioner Lacy: But you are here, Mister Straker. This is a brave thing you are doing, and the commission commends you for it.
Witness does not answer.
12
Looking Straight into Him
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Clay. ‘He’s alive.’
Eben stared at him. ‘What?’ he shouted, trying to out-decibel the noise from the open doorway.
Clay tipped his chin at the boy he was holding by the wrists, the pulse clear there now, an unmistakeable nudge he could feel all the way through himself. ‘He’s alive. Breathing.’
Eben’s eyes widened.
Next to them, another pair of men had hoisted a body and were waiting their turn to move towards the doors. It was the okes Eben had been speaking to before take-off.
‘Get moving,’ barked the man with the dark moustache.
‘This one’s alive,’ shouted Clay.
‘All these ones are,’ the man shouted back, glancing at the row of bodies at their feet. ‘Get moving.’
‘He’s only a boy,’ said Clay. ‘Just a villager.’
‘How the fok do you know that?’
‘We were there with UNITA when they took him from the village,’ bellowed Clay. Eben’s story was all they had now.
Some of the other men were looking at them, muttering.
‘A little late, now, broer,’ shouted the man with the moustache. ‘Should have taken it up with UNITA. Now either get going or get the fok out of the way.’
‘Fokken recon pussies,’ shouted the other man.
‘What’s the hold up?’ someone called from further forward.
Cobra was moving towards them, weaving his way between those standing and those not.
Clay looked at Eben. It was all there in his eyes.
In the months and years to come, in the time that was left to him, Clay would imagine other courses of action they may have chosen to take that day; and even as the memory of the thing itself was subsumed and interred, the imagined alternatives began to establish themselves as possibilities, and a salve of doubt came to be brewed and applied to the wound. Maybe it hadn’t happened the way it had. Maybe he and Eben had put the boy down, refused to help with the dumping of bodies, had picked up their weapons and in righteous fury dispatched every one of the executioners, then entered the cockpit and commandeered the plane and brought the leaders – Doctor Death and Cobra – to justice. Or, maybe they’d somehow convinced them all, including Cobra and Doctor Death, through strength of argument, through force of will, to desist and turn back to the makeshift airstrip in Angola, let the prisoners who were still alive go. And along the way, Clay and Eben had convinced the doctor to abandon this murder altogether and seek a more righteous path. And in their gratitude for the saving of their souls, the doctor and Cobra and his men had allowed Clay and Eben on their way, too, some perhaps with admiration in their eyes. But of course rationalisation was more powerful than any of these twenty-year-old’s fantastic reconstructions. If they hadn’t done what they’d done, they wouldn’t have survived, and the story would never have been told, and the possibility of justice would have been lost forever. After all, when they’d first embarked on this journey they’d had no idea what would happen and were thus completely unprepared. Faced with few viable options, they’d done the best they could at the time. And as with all rationalisations, it didn’t help much.
Clay and Eben let the other pair pass and watched as the man they carried was thrown alive into the ten thousand feet of air that was all he had left.
They laid the boy down on the deck, towards the rear of the cargo bay, out of the way of the other pairs of men dragging bodies towards the ramp. Cobra was halfway along the length of the cargo deck now, eyes narrowed.
‘We’re screwed,’ said Clay.
Another pair passed with a body. The man they were carrying was big, heavy, and they could only drag him, his back scraping across the ridged aluminium decking. ‘Kaffir lovers,’ one of the men said as he passed.
‘Stay here,’ Eben said. ‘And whatever you do, don’t let him see your face.’ Then Eben pulled away his bandana, turned and paced towards Cobra.
Clay crouched next to the boy, his back to the fuselage. He kept his head lowered, took the boy’s wrist in his hand, felt the pulse there steady still.
Eben was standing with Cobra now as the men worked around them. One by on
e the bodies, dead and living, were thrown tumbling into the slipstream, as if to measure time. Eben and Cobra continued talking. Clay looked at the boy. Like the others, he had voided his bowels when injected, and his legs were coated with dried excrement. His breathing was shallow and laboured, as if his lungs were being compressed by a great weight. His pulse was regular but slow, and he seemed incapable of movement. His facial muscles, too, seemed unable to contract, voluntarily or otherwise. Only his eyes retained a hint of life, an almost imperceptible flicker of the retina. The boy was looking straight at him. Straight into him.
The deck was clear of bodies now.
All except the boy.
Clay glanced up to where Cobra and Eben were standing. Cobra signalled with his hand and the rear ramp started to close. Clay could hear the flaps coming up and the surge of power to the engines and then the Hercules was banking steeply so that some of the men standing on the deck stumbled and braced against the turn. Soon they were level again and Clay could see by the light in the half-open rear door that they were heading east, back towards Africa.
Cobra turned and started back towards the cockpit. Eben returned and crouched beside Clay and the boy.
‘How is he?’ said Eben.
‘Alive. Barely. Whatever they put inside him has caused almost total paralysis. His lungs and heart are working, but only just.’
‘Truly fucked up,’ said Eben.
The other men were clustering at the forward bulkhead, where the doctor’s assistant was dispensing soap from a gallon jug. Water splashed to the deck from a thirty-gallon container balanced on a tubed platform. The men were washing their hands and faces, drying themselves with towels that they threw into a plastic bin lashed to the forward bulkhead.
Clay looked at his friend. ‘What did you say to him?’
‘I told him that the boy was the son of an important Angolan politician – a man with connections high up, someone our politicians were dealing with on the inside in Luanda. I told him we had orders to infiltrate UNITA, posing as advisers, and get him back.’
Reconciliation for the Dead Page 12