Zulu

by Caryl Ferey

  “No!” Ruby cried.

  Brian was crawling on all fours now, not sure he was still alive. The heel of the boot broke his back.

  5.

  Janet Helms corresponded with other hackers via lines they themselves had set up, whose access codes changed every month, but never on the same dates. It was as good a way as any other to compensate for her loneliness and to become even better at hacking. What had they thought in intelligence—that she had become a hacker by paying for intensive courses in high-tech institutes that cost two hundred rand an hour?

  Chester Murphy lived in Woodstock, two blocks from the two-room apartment she rented. Chester was a real vampire; he avoided sunlight and, like her, lived mainly on junk food and computers. Janet spent the night at his place once or twice a week, depending on what the club was currently up to. Chester wasn’t good-looking, with his fat face and tapir-like nose, but Janet liked him—he had never come on to her.

  Chester had put together a network of hackers, twelve members whose identities were secret, and who sent each other individual or collective challenges: to be the first to hack into the computer system of an institution or company suspected of fraud, or to join together and hack into one of the army’s radar systems. The network he had set up had so far proved undetectable, independent, and undeniably effective.

  Chester hadn’t asked any questions when Janet had showed up at his place at about ten in the evening—he was busy on the computer in his bedroom. Janet had settled down in front of the screen in the living room, with her fizzy drinks, her exercise books, and her mints. She had picked up her precious codes from her office at headquarters and felt up to hacking half the universe. After a few hours spent testing the enemy’s defenses, she finally managed to get into certain classified army files. Many dated from the apartheid period. By five in the morning, she had the whole organizational structure of Project Coast—two hundred names in all. She had immediately faxed the list to Brian Epkeen, who had gone night fishing in Hout Bay. His reply had come quickly, in a text: Rossow.

  Dawn was breaking when Chester told her he was going to bed—she barely heard him climb the stairs. She continued her research and found some interesting information. Unlike Joost Terreblanche, Charles Rossow’s name was mentioned on several websites, and his activities as a chemist were displayed for all to see. He had worked for several major national and, more recently, international pharmaceutical companies. There was nothing, though, about his collaboration with Basson—only his successes were recalled. Now fifty-eight, Charles Rossow was currently a researcher in molecular biology for Couvence, an organization that worked under contract for a number of large pharmaceutical companies and specialized in setting up clinical trials abroad. Rossow had also published several articles in prestigious reviews, focusing in particular on genome sequencing, which he described as “a major advance in the molecular knowledge of the human body.”

  Digging a little deeper, Janet collated the content of the articles.

  The composition of most genes was not yet known, nor the place and time when they were expressed in the form of proteins, but the genome provided an extremely useful toolbox. The next stage would involve the discovery and localization of most genes, understanding their significance and, above all, analyzing their control mechanisms. Thanks to molecular biology, a precise knowledge of the human genome and the genomes of infectious and parasitical agents would gradually lead to a description of all the mechanisms of living things and their disorders. Once that had been achieved, it would become possible to take specific action to correct anomalies, alleviate or eradicate illnesses, even to act beforehand to prevent them: a fundamental advance in regard to the human condition, and the future of mankind as a whole. Quoting Fichte—“What man must be, he must become”—Rossow stated that whereas other animals were finished, man was only sketched. Recent discoveries were a step on the infinite road to perfection. The power of current research lay in its capacity to modify human nature itself. It would distinguish itself from traditional medicine by its ability to act on the very genotype of man, affecting not only the person concerned but also all his descendants. Biotechnology would then be able to achieve what a century of ideology hadn’t: a new kind of human being. It would be possible to give birth to individuals who were less violent, free of criminal tendencies. Man could be remodeled like a faulty product that is sent back to the factory, biotechnology would allow us to modify his faults, his very nature.

  Staring at the computer screen with burning eyes, Janet Helms was starting to understand what was going on. It was he, Rossow, who had invented the unknown molecule found in the drug.

  By leaving industrialists to finance clinical research, the political authorities had made a serious mistake. Whenever a pharmaceutical company applied for a license to put a new product on the market, it alone was in a position to supply the elements by which that product could be evaluated—with the result that expensive medications falsely claiming to be innovative had become the rule. The same company also kept exclusive rights, opening the way to human life itself being patented. Rossow and his sponsors had seen that opening and had moved in.

  Janet found an address for Rossow in a well-to-do and highly protected suburb of Johannesburg, but nothing in Cape Province. Next, she took a closer look at Rossow’s employer, Couvence, an organization specializing in clinical trials. Activities listed in India, Thailand, Mexico, South Africa.

  “This is it,” she said under her breath.

  Seven-fifteen. Janet Helms went home to take a shower before dashing to the harbor.

  The Waterfront was almost deserted at this time of day. The shops were just opening, stalls being set up. Janet was the first to arrive at the bar where they had arranged to meet. She was five minutes early, and she was starving. She sat down on the terrace and put down the exercise book in which she had made notes on the information gathered during the night. As Neuman had asked, it couldn’t be traced back to her computer.

  The air was cool, the young waiter indifferent to her presence. She managed to catch his eye and ordered a tea with milk and some sweet cakes.

  In spite of her sleepless night, Janet was excited. Quite apart from the chance to avenge her lost love, this was the biggest case she’d ever worked on. If they brought it off, it would establish her as an essential part of the captain’s team. She would be promoted, and work directly under Neuman. She would make herself indispensable. Irreplaceable. As she had with Dan Fletcher. He would find he couldn’t do without her. She would end up ousting his current right-hand man, Brian Epkeen, who wasn’t exactly in Superintendent Krüge’s good books. Time was on her side. Her capacity for work was unequaled. She would take the place Neuman had intended for Dan.

  Janet looked at her watch again. Eight-eleven. The lanyards of the sailboats flapped in the breeze, the shipping company shuttles gleamed in the sun, waiting for the tourists to arrive; the Waterfront was gradually waking up. The waiter passed her table, all smiles, drawn to the young blonde who had just sat down at the next table.

  The light climbed up the verdant mountain. Eight-thirty. Janet Helms was waiting on the terrace of the cafe where they had arranged to meet, but no one came.

  No one ever came.

  *

  The heel of a boot breaking his back—that was the last thing Brian Epkeen remembered before he had sunk into limbo. Reality came back, little by little, green daughter of the sunlight filtering in through the drawn blinds—Ruby’s eyes, just above him, swaying in the post-boreal atmosphere.

  “I was starting to think you were dead,” she said in a low voice.

  He was. Only it wasn’t visible. His eyes finally came into focus. The world was still here, half-nocturnal, painful—a searing pain in his lower back, boring into his spine. He could hardly move. He wondered if he would ever walk again. He was thinking in fragments, pieces of thought that, when he put them in order, didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t only his back that hurt—his skull did, t
oo. He realized he was lying on the wooden floor of a dark room, with Ruby’s large emerald eyes all he could see.

  “What happened to my head?” he asked.

  “They hit you.”

  “Ah.”

  He felt like a drowning man who had come back to the surface. They had tied his hands behind his back with tape. He turned on his side to relieve the pain in the small of his back. His head would have to wait.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  “In the house.”

  The blinds were drawn, the window handle had been removed. Brian was seeing stars.

  “How long have I been out?”

  “Half an hour,” she replied, sitting down on the bed. “Shit, who are these guys?”

  “Rick’s pals. He worked on a top-secret project with an ex-soldier named Terreblanche. That’s the old guy with the shaved head who beat me up.”

  Ruby said nothing, but she was sick with rage. This bastard Brian was right. The world was populated with bastards—the world was full of Rick van der Verskuizens who whispered sweet nothings in her ear and sniffed her ass and then dumped her in the end for his faggot friend in the boots.

  Brian tried to stand, thought better of it. “Do you know where David is?” he asked.

  “In Port Elisabeth, celebrating his diploma with Marjorie and his friends. Don’t worry, he won’t be back before next week.”

  Steps squeaked in the corridor. They fell silent, waiting. The door opened wide. Brian saw a pair of boots on the polished floor, then Joost Terreblanche’s athletic physique above him, a military jacket, weasel eyes staring at him.

  “So, cop, woken up?” The voice matched his boot studs.

  “I liked it better when I was asleep.”

  “A wiseguy, I see. Who knows you’re here?”

  “No one.”

  “Coming out of a shootout? What do you take me for—an idiot?”

  “No, just a son of a b—”

  Terreblanche placed his boot on Brian’s head, and pressed down with all his weight. He wasn’t very tall, but he was as thick as an anvil.

  “What did you do when you left your house?”

  “I came straight here,” Brian replied, his mouth twisted by the boot.

  “Why didn’t you go to your police friends?”

  “I wanted to get Ruby out of here. You might have used her . . . for blackmail.”

  “Did you suspect the dentist?”

  “Yes.”

  He squashed Brian’s face under his boot. “And you didn’t tell anyone on your way here?”

  “I left my cell phone behind,” Brian managed to say. “With your friends after me.”

  Debeer had found the fax with the Project Coast list, the samples, and the hard disk stolen from Hout Bay. But this shit stirrer had had the time to look at it. Terreblanche took his boot away, leaving stud marks on Brian’s cheek. His story seemed to match Debeer’s.

  He took an object from his jacket. “Look what we found in your pocket.”

  Brian looked up and saw the memory stick. The leather heel smashed into his stomach. He may have been expecting it, but he still writhed on the floor.

  “Leave him alone!” Ruby cried, from the bed.

  Terreblanche didn’t even look at her. “Shut up, bitch, unless you want a pickax handle up your ass. Who did you show the contents of the hard disk to?”

  Brian was snatching at the air like a flying fish. “Nobody.”

  “Is that right?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what?”

  “Didn’t have time.”

  Terreblanche kneeled and grabbed Brian by his shirt collar. “Did you send a copy to headquarters?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “The lines . . .” he spluttered, hardly able to breathe. “The lines weren’t secure. Too many names erased from the records.”

  Terreblanche hesitated. His men had destroyed the computer in the bedroom during the attack, so there was no way of knowing what he might have done with the files.

  “Did you send a copy of the hard disk to anyone else?” Terreblanche was getting impatient. “Well, did you? Talk or I’ll kill her!”

  He took out his gun and aimed it at Ruby’s head. She shrank back toward the bed in fright.

  “That won’t make any difference,” Brian breathed. “I was trying to make sense of the files when your guys jumped me.”

  The hand that held the gun was covered in brown spots. At the end of the barrel, Ruby was shaking for the two of them.

  “So nobody knows these files exist?”

  Brian shook his head—this asshole reminded him of his father. “No,” he said. “Only me.”

  Silence bounced off the walls of the room. Terreblanche lowered his gun and glanced at his Rolex. “O.K. We’ll see.”

  *

  The cellar was a cold, gloomy room that smelled of casks. Brian was trying to loosen the ropes binding him, but without much hope. He had been tied to a chair, and with the lamp shining on his face all he could see was a black dot.

  A corpulent man was preparing something on the nearby table. He thought he made out Debeer, and a machine that didn’t look very encouraging.

  “I see we haven’t kicked our old habits,” he said to the soldiers.

  Terreblanche did not reply. He had tortured people before. Blacks, mostly. Some who didn’t even belong to the ANC or the UDF. Usually losers who’d let themselves be manipulated by Communist agitators. Thatcher and the others had dumped them after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but he still felt the same hatred for Communists, kaffirs, liberals, all that riffraff now in power.

  “You’d do better to save your saliva,” he said, supervising the setting up.

  He looked at his watch. They still had a little time before dashing to the airfield. Rick’s house was isolated, nobody would disturb them. It was when they returned to Hout Bay for the loading that they had found the guards and the switchboard operator out cold. Someone had broken into the building and stolen the hard disk. They’d guessed it was the cop who’d been nosing around, and they’d been proved right, but the bastard had escaped. Luckily, Debeer had seen the fax he had received, the Project Coast list, with V.D.V.’s name on it. The cop was sure to have made the connection.

  Brian’s one thought was to play for time.

  “You’re the one who dreamed up this Zulu business, aren’t you?” he said. “You kept Gulethu alive so that his DNA would implicate him in Kate’s murder and make it seem like a racist killing. Gulethu was supplying dope to the street kids in Cape Flats, except that he tried to double-cross you by selling to the young whites on the coast. He and his gang were guarding the house while Rossow was putting together his little potions. Were they the same kinds of experiments you used to do with Doctor Basson?”

  Terreblanche, his big hairy forearms folded over his beige jacket, pricked up his ears.

  “Was the Muizenberg house a mobile research unit that could be packed up quickly and put in the back of a Pinzgauer? You knew we were going to ferret around the area, so you dreamed up this story of the place being a squat and a base for the tsotsis. Who were you testing your miracle product on—street kids?”

  Terreblanche was watching Debeer struggling impassively with his equipment.

  “You should have used the mentally handicapped,” Brian went on. “They talk less than kids, and anyway, between you and me, what use are they to anybody? Don’t you think?”

  Terreblanche looked him up and down with a sardonic grin—the cop had regained his strength, it seemed. The machine was almost ready.

  “Whites couldn’t deal drugs in the townships, that was why you subcontracted the work to gangs. Except that with Gulethu, you came across someone who was really out to lunch. He was the one who killed Nicole Wiese, wasn’t he? He wanted Ramphele to take the rap, without even knowing what was in the dope—a miracle product mixed with the crystals to test on guinea pigs, and a strain of AIDS to guaran
tee their silence. What was their life expectancy—a few weeks?”

  Debeer made a sign that everything was ready.

  “I’m asking the questions now,” Terreblanche said, approaching the chair. He passed the tip of his riding crop over Brian’s eyes to irritate him. “For the last time, who else knows about the stolen files?”

  “I told you, nobody. Too many leaks in our computer networks.”

  “What did you do when you left Hout Bay?”

  Brian tried to push the riding crop away from his eyes. “I went straight home to see what was on the hard disk. Your hit men arrived just as I was trying to make sense of it.”

  “You might have tried to get a copy to your chief.”

  “I don’t have a chief.”

  “Does Neuman have a copy?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I didn’t have time to give him one.”

  The riding crop caressed his nose. “Why didn’t you send it?”

  “I was still trying to make sense of what was on the hard disk,” Brian retorted. “Do I have to say it in Afrikaans?”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I wish I was.”

  “You could have e-mailed the file in a couple of minutes. Why didn’t you?”

  “Our lines aren’t secure.”

  “That didn’t stop you getting a fax.”

  “If I’d sent a copy to headquarters, I wouldn’t have taken the memory stick with me.”

  “Is there another copy?”

  “No.”

  Brian was starting to sweat on his chair. Terreblanche lowered his riding crop. A veil fell over his clouded eyes, and he signaled to Debeer, who had just connected electrodes to the machine on the table. Debeer sniffed and pulled up his belt, then placed himself behind Brian, grabbed him by the scalp and pulled his head back. Brian tried to break free, but the ex-cop had a grip like iron. Terreblanche applied one clip to one lower eyelid, then the other clip to the other.