by Caryl Ferey
“No.”
The Namib Desert was one of the hottest places in the world. By noon, the temperature would reach 120 in the shade, 160 in the sun. Without water, they wouldn’t last a day.
9.
Scientists had known for a long time that genes weren’t simple things. The relationship between genotype and phenotype was so complex that it left no room for an elementary description of a person’s genome or the pathological phenomena from which that person suffered. Human life became even more complex if you took into account each person’s social background, his way of life and his environment, all of which contributed to the often unpredictable incidence of diseases—an Indian from the Amazon jungle did not always suffer the same ills as a European. Not that this mattered, since the research carried out by pharmaceutical companies were not intended for the Third World, which was incapable of paying the going rate. Moral and legal constraints having proved too restrictive in the rich countries (especially the Nuremberg Code, adopted as a result of the trials of Nazi doctors), the companies had outsourced their clinical trials to “low-cost” countries like India, Brazil, Bulgaria, Zambia, and South Africa, where guinea pigs, mostly poor and without access to medical care, could enjoy the best treatment and state-of-the-art equipment in exchange for their cooperation. As thousands of patients had to be tested before a medicine could be validated, the labs had subcontracted the clinical trials to research organizations. Couvence was one of these.
After years of research, Rossow’s team had perfected a new molecule capable of curing conditions suffered by millions of people in the West—anxiety, depression, obesity, and so on—a product that would generate a staggering income.
They still had to test the product.
With its increasingly overcrowded townships, South Africa and the Cape region in particular were a perfect testing ground. Not only was there an endless supply of untreated patients, but after certain tragic results linked to problems of degeneration and other undesirable side effects, it had become impossible to continue the research in a transparent manner. Faced with determined competition from other companies, speed was of the essence, so they had opted for a mobile unit on the edge of the townships where they would do their tests on docile and unattached guinea pigs, street kids that no one would worry about.
To limit the risks, they would inoculate them with the AIDS virus, which was extremely effective. There were two advantages: the subjects’ life expectancy was limited anyway, and, as the disease was endemic in South Africa, a few more deaths wouldn’t arouse suspicion in case anything went wrong.
Placed in charge of the operation, Terreblanche had taken advantage of the no-go areas to come to an agreement with Mzala, whose gang controlled Khayelitsha. Mzala had subcontracted the actual dealing to Gulethu and his band of mercenaries who hung around the buffer zones. Gulethu and his bunch of misfits had distributed the cocktail in the squatter camps without arousing suspicion. The tik hooked the local kids, and they were taken at night to the Muizenberg lab, on the edge of the township, in order to evaluate the development of the molecule. Those who survived would die of AIDS and end up as pig swill. But then Gulethu had tried to double-cross them, and had fucked the whole thing up.
Brian Epkeen was dying from the heat in spite of the air-conditioning in the hospital room. He’d been beaten up, scalped, put in an electric chair. Sitting beside the bed, Suprintendent Krüge was listening to his report in silence. The police had collected about twenty dead bodies in the township, including Ali Neuman’s mother, and human bones behind the Lengezi church. For the moment, the press didn’t know anything.
“Do you know where Neuman is?” Krüge asked.
“No.”
Brian had only just resurfaced when Krüge had arrived to question him.
The superintendent wedged his double chin on the collar of his shirt and sighed. “If there’s any evidence for what you’re saying, then show it to me. You don’t have anything, lieutenant.”
A flight of crows passed across his clouded eyes. “What do you mean, I don’t have anything?”
“Where’s your evidence?”
“Being held prisoner at Van der Verskuizen’s house, Debeer dead, Terreblanche at large. What more do you need?”
“We don’t have any witnesses in this case,” Krüge replied. “Not one.”
“Obviously, they’re all dead.”
“That’s the problem. No one knows where the bones found behind the church came from, or who put them there. With Neuman nowhere to be found, we don’t have any explanation. As for what happened at the dentist’s house, we haven’t found any prints. Or rather, yes, we found yours.”
“Everything was wiped, you know that perfectly well,” Brian retorted from his heaped-up pillows. “Just like in the Muizenberg house. The offshore account is—”
“Information obtained illegally,” Krüge cut in. “Officer Helms has told us all about how you got hold of it.”
Brian’s face turned a little paler in the artificial light. Janet Helms had betrayed them. She had dropped them just as they were reaching their goal. They had let themselves be fooled by those fucking seal eyes of hers.
“Terreblanche and Rossow took part in Dr. Basson’s Project Coast,” Brian said, recovering his composure. “Terreblanche had the expertise and the logistical backup to organize an operation on this scale. Couvence provides a legal cover. You just have to question Rossow.”
“What do you think, lieutenant? That you’re going to attack a multinational pharmaceutical company with that? Terreblanche, Rossow, and Debeer don’t have criminal records. There’s nothing to corroborate your story.” Krüge looked at him as if he were a rabbit caught in the headlights. “You know what’s going to happen, Epkeen? They’re going to attack you, with an army of lawyers. They’re going to find out things about you, your loose morals, your son who refuses to see you, your quarrels with your ex-wife, the divorce you still haven’t come to terms with. They’re going to accuse you of murdering Rick van der Verskuizen.”
“What?”
“It would have been interesting to hear the dentist’s statement,” Krüge conceded. “Unfortunately, he was found dead in his living room, shot in the back of the neck with a bullet from your service pistol.”
“What are you implying? We were held prisoner, I was tortured to reveal what I’d found out in Hout Bay, and then we were injected with enough drugs to make a buffalo high. The crap I have in my blood, Debeer’s body, the stuff in the small case—doesn’t any of that count?”
Krüge didn’t give an inch. “The gun used to kill the dentist was found in the bedroom with your prints on it. They’re going to pin it on you, which will discredit your testimony and your ex-wife’s. She’ll be depicted as some kind of vixen with violent mood swings, willing to do anything to punish a man who cheated on her, even getting together with her biggest enemy. They’re going to say you were hooked on that famous drug, that you were trying to make up for your losses by getting rid of your rival, and that you killed the dealer, Debeer, in a violent fit of anger.”
“It was a setup!” Brian said, angrily. “You know that!”
“Prove it!”
“But it’s just ridiculous!”
“No more so than your story of an industrial plot,” Krüge retorted. “After what happened during apartheid, you ought to know that South Africa is the country where medical research is most closely monitored, especially when it comes to tests on humans. You’ll have to convince a jury of your allegations. You really caused carnage in that house. And the photographs we took in the bedroom where we found you don’t look good for you either.”
“What photos?” A flash of suspicion appeared in his dulled eyes.
“You didn’t see the state you put your ex-wife in,” he said. “Hands tied behind her back, your blood all over her body, her torn clothes, the scratches, the blows, the sexual violence. That’s not love, Epkeen, that’s rage. When we found you, you were frantically ci
rcling the bed.”
A shiver ran down his spine. A lion. A lion defending his territory.
“I didn’t rape my wife,” he said—a slip of the tongue.
“But it was her skin we found under your nails. That will have quite an effect on a jury.”
For a moment, Brian’s head spun, and he clutched at the air. The drugs, the rats in Tembo’s laboratory, the final phase—extreme aggression.
“They drugged us,” he growled. “You know that as well as I do.”
“Your prints are on the syringe.”
“They were trying to frame me. Shit, Debeer had plastic gloves on when you found him, didn’t he?”
“That doesn’t explain anything. At least that’s what they’ll say in court. Whatever happens, anything you say about collusion between your phantom pharmaceutical company and a paramilitary group led by an ex-colonel can be turned against you. Your night visit to the ADT office in Hout Bay—quite apart from the fact that none of the documents you claim you found are still around—will in any case be declared inadmissible.”
“It’s all on the memory stick.”
Krüge opened his hands in a gesture of good faith. “Then show it to me.”
There was a foul taste in Brian’s mouth, and he felt dizzy. Ruby, Terreblanche, Debeer, the injections, Ali’s disappearance, everything was going around in his head, he was going to fall, a long way down. He looked closely at the superintendent’s flabby, impassive face beside the bed.
“Are you in on this, Krüge?”
“I put that comment down to a confused mind,” Krüge muttered angrily. “But take care what you say, lieutenant. I’m just trying to warn you. The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most powerful lobbies on the fucking planet.”
“And one of the most corrupt.”
“Listen,” Krüge said, softening, “believe it or not, I’m on your side. But we’re going to need really solid arguments to convince the prosecutor to authorize an investigation, searches. You’ll also have to demolish whatever accusations they throw at you, and we have only your word.”
Brian was listening, in a daze. “What about my eyes?” he said. “Did I burn them to make myself look nice?”
“They’ll ask for a psychiatric examination and . . .”
Brian raised his hand, as if throwing in the towel. He was coming back to life, too late. The situation was absurd—they hadn’t gone through all this shit to end up here, in a hospital room.
“I’m not taking any action against you,” Krüge announced by way of conclusion. “Not for the moment, anyway. But I advise you to watch your step, until we get this cleared up. Whatever happens, you’re off the case. Gulethu killed the two girls—that’s the official version. There’s no industrial-criminal network, there’s only a terrible fiasco and my head on the block. The case is closed,” he insisted. “And that’s how I want you to consider it. Apart from anything else, there was another murder last night. Van Vost, one of the principal donors of the National Party, apparently killed by a black prostitute—”
“Where’s Ruby?” Brian cut in.
“Next door,” Krüge said, with a movement of the head. “But don’t count on her testimony.”
“Why, did you cut her tongue out, too?”
“I don’t think much of your sense of humor, Lieutenant Epkeen.”
“You’re wrong, life’s one big laugh after you’ve been tortured.”
“You exceeded your instructions and acted in a reckless manner,” Krüge said, becoming heated again. “I’ll talk to Neuman as soon as he shows up and take whatever action I deem necessary.”
“Cover the whole thing up, you mean? Are you afraid for your fucking World Cup?”
“Go home,” Krüge growled. “And stay there until further orders. Understood?”
Brian nodded. Message received. Destination nowhere.
Krüge left the room, leaving the door open, muttered something inaudible in the corridor and walked away. After a moment, Janet Helms came in. She was wearing her tight uniform and carrying a plastic bag.
“I brought you some clean clothes,” she said.
“Do you want a medal?”
She advanced timidly, met Brian’s accusing look, and placed the things on the chair next to the bed.
“Krüge give you the third degree, is that it?” he said, haughtily.
Janet lowered her head like a little girl caught doing something naughty and fidgeted nervously. “None of the information we gathered is admissible in court,” she said, in an attempt to clear her name. “I had no choice. My career’s on the line.” She lifted her big, wet eyes. “I hadn’t heard from you since yesterday morning. I thought they’d killed you.”
Her little ploy wasn’t working.
“Do you have any information on Rossow?” he asked.
Janet Helms pursed her brown lips.
“Have you located him? Do you know his whereabouts?”
“I’m not allowed to tell you,” she said at last.
“Krüge’s orders?”
“The case is closed,” she pleaded.
“You’re forgetting Neuman. Did Krüge ask you to grill me, is that it?”
Janet Helms did not reply immediately. “Do you know where he is?”
“If I did,” Brian said, peremptorily, “I’d have gotten out of here before now.”
Janet sighed. She was clearly hesitating. Brian let her stew in her own juice. The girl disgusted him—and she knew it.
“There’s something I didn’t tell Krüge’s men,” she said at last. “There’s a Steyr rifle missing from the armory. Captain Neuman signed it out—yesterday morning.”
A sniper’s weapon.
Brian’s heart started racing. Ali was going to kill them.
All of them.
With or without Krüge’s consent.
*
Brian was walking on an invisible wire along the corridor of the Park Avenue hospital. The duty doctor had refused to let him leave in that condition, so he had discharged himself—why didn’t they just leave him alone?—and asked to see Ruby. Request denied—she had just come out of her coma and was resting after the emergency tritherapy they had been given. He phoned Neuman from the hospital switchboard, just in case, but there was no network.
The asphalt was melting in the afternoon sun when Brian left the hospital. All he could see was a blurred filter behind his burning eyes, the rest was a complete mess. He felt nauseous, wanted to vomit. He bought a ten-rand pair of Ray-Bans from a stall in Greenmarket, and picked up a cell phone and his car from the basement of headquarters. The rear windshield was shattered, the front one was cracked from left to right, but the car started up at the first attempt.
And then, she . . . closed.
Her baby blue . . .
Her baby blue . . .
Oh . . . her baby blue . . . EYES!!!
The ash flew about in the passenger compartment of the Mercedes. Brian threw his cigarette out the window and climbed toward Somerset. His head still hurt terribly, and the conversation he’d had earlier had driven him over the edge. Krüge was covering up the case for reasons that escaped him, or rather, that were beyond him. But Brian wasn’t fooled. Faced with competition from world markets, sovereign states could do very little to withstand the pressures of finance and globalized trade, unless they wanted to alienate investors and threaten their own gross national product. The role of states was now limited to maintaining order and security in the midst of a new world disorder controlled by centrifugal, supranational and elusive forces. No one genuinely believed in progress anymore, the world had become an uncertain, precarious place, but most decision makers were happy to let the pirates of this phantom system continue with their plunder and to take advantage of it themselves while hoping it would all blow over. The excluded were pushed farther out onto the periphery of huge cities reserved for the winners of a cannibalistic game in which, with no prospect of collective action, people’s widespread frustration was chann
eled into television, sports, and celebrity culture.
Whether or not someone was exerting pressure on him, Krüge was a pragmatist. He wasn’t going to risk frightening investors away from the country that was getting ready to organize a great sporting carnival, just for the sake of a few street kids, whose prospects boiled down to a bottleneck filled with tik or a stray bullet. Neuman was Brian’s one hope—a hope that had vanished nearly two days earlier.
Brian coasted home and lay down wearily on the couch in the living room. Debeer’s injection had sent him into a terrifying state, and the night he had spent delirious in a hospital bed had left him exhausted. Like a horse that had died in the mud. He lay there for a while, putting back the scattered pieces of himself. The atmosphere in the house suddenly felt sinister. As if it wasn’t his anymore, as if the walls wanted to throw him out. The ghost of Ruby, a specter contaminated by the virus, coming to take her revenge on him? He dismissed his junkie visions, took two painkillers, and put on the latest Scrape. All the way—the crows will pick you clean. And indeed, a black veil soon fell over him as he lay on the couch. The music howled in the living room, loud enough to tear the skin from the sky. His thoughts gradually organized themselves. What did Janet Helms’s betrayal matter? Ali had cut off contact with them in order to have a free hand. And the fact that he had chosen a sniper’s weapon from the armory meant that he knew where the killers were.
Mzala—escaped.
Terreblanche—untraceable.
The American gang—wiped out.
The kids—a heap of bones.
Brian turned the mystery over a thousand times in his messed-up head, and at last understood. Zina.
*
Rhodes House was the hip club in the City Bowl, where models and advertising personalities met between shoots—a lucrative activity due to the region’s exceptional light.