by Deon Meyer
Everyone spoke quietly. The whole barracks was silent, the news spread and left everyone dumbstruck.
Nero talked. He was the strongest of us all, I thought. He spoke so beautifully and calmly to us. He reassured us.
Eventually I couldn’t stand it any more. I asked them what had happened.
Nero said, yes, he understood. He understood I needed to know.
Yes, I said, tell me, please.
He said my father had been at Witput.
Between one and three o’clock this afternoon Pa had spoken to the irrigation farmers over the agriculture-reserved frequency many times, asking for advice about the diesel pump and the system he was busy installing. Pa had been making little jokes about his lack of technical know-how, but he never gave any indication that anyone was around or that he saw anything threatening.
Until half past three.
Pa used his emergency code phrase over the radio. Just that. Nothing else. Domingo had raced to him in his Jeep. The radio room also alerted Sarge X. Sarge wanted to send his Luckhoff patrol, the one that covered the north shore of the dam as far as Philippolis. But they didn’t answer. Sarge had a shortage of people and vehicles after the Great Trek; he immediately ordered the only other available team to drive to Witput, but they were in Hopetown, and it took them twenty-five more minutes to get there.
At Witput Sarge X’s two defence force men found Pa and Domingo. They were lying close together, on the edge of the salt pan, the snow-white, dry salt pan beside the old irrigation circles of Witput.
They had been shot. The defence force members loaded up the two bodies and raced back to Amanzi, to our hospital. A hopeless mission, because they were pretty certain that Pa and Domingo were already dead, but what else could they do?
Sarge X said, ‘By the time I got out there, to the crime scene, it was almost dark. There wasn’t much we could learn . . .’
And he hesitated, and I saw Sarge X and Nero and Birdy look at each other, and I said, ‘What is it?’
‘I want you to know, I had Hennie Fly in the sky. I had every available patrol out and searching, but there is just so much territory to cover . . .’
Nero Dlamini said, ‘We have no evidence, Nico. We don’t know for certain who did it. We really don’t.’
I realised what was going on. ‘But you suspect someone.’
‘Nico, we have to be very careful . . .’
‘Who, Birdy?’
‘Sit down first, Nico,’ and I realised I was on my feet.
‘We need cool heads,’ said Nero Dlamini. ‘Perhaps you should get some sleep first.’
‘Very cool heads,’ said Sarge X.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Sit, Nico.’
I couldn’t.
‘Please, Nico, we need you to be strong. We need you to be very strong tonight,’ said Nero.
Nero always had the ability to calm me down, ever since he had treated me for the PTSD after they stabbed Okkie. And now it made me suddenly tired. I sat. My body shuddered. I gripped my knees because I knew they would start shaking. I felt emotion for the first time. I kept it at bay, I wasn’t ready to believe it was all true.
They didn’t say a word. I regained control. After a while I looked up, at Birdy.
‘Please. Tell me now.’
It was too much for Birdy. She looked at Nero. He nodded. ‘I’ll tell him.’
It took him a quarter of an hour. He told me the whole story. He began with the radio contact from Trunkenpolz. He said two days ago, out of the blue, our arch-enemy wanted to arrange a meeting. Pa and Domingo eventually responded to Trunkenpolz alone, nobody knew what had been said there.
‘It’s him,’ I said. Rage and hatred ignited suddenly and I leapt up again.
Nero gently touched my shoulder. ‘Sit down, Nico. We don’t know that it was him. We really don’t. There’s other stuff. You need to hear everything.’
‘But he’s the one who—’
‘Please sit down first.’
‘Please, Nico,’ said Birdy. There was something in her voice that got through to me, a tone and an emphasis that said she couldn’t hold out much longer. And then from the depths of my own loss I saw her, I realised she had lost Domingo. She had lost her fiancé. Her heart was just as broken as mine.
I sat down.
Nero took a while before he got going again. He told me about all the events involving Pastor Sebego: from the moment when he announced the Great Trek during the Cabinet meeting, until yesterday, when he said he was coming to fetch the voltage regulator and the weapons. He talked of Domingo’s spy allegations and his confrontation with the pastor, and my father’s conclusion that it was possible, though highly unlikely.
‘You’re not making sense, Nero,’ I said. I was bewildered, the shock and emotion and fatigue and adrenalin and pain were all coursing through me, and I knew I wasn’t processing the information as I should.
‘Your dad wasn’t happy to confront Nkosi like that. But he had little . . . You know how it was, how tough it was for anybody to refuse Domingo. We owe our lives to him. So your dad didn’t have a choice, really. And afterwards, he said we should let it go. There just wasn’t any real evidence, other than circumstantial.’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘I don’t understand why you’re telling me all this.’
‘Patience, Nico,’ said Sarge X. ‘That was just to give you the background. Because something else happened this afternoon.’
‘What?’
Nero said, ‘First I need you to promise me something.’
‘What?’
‘We’re going to tell you, and then you’re going to take a sleeping pill, and I’m going to put you to bed,’ said Nero.
‘What?’ I said again, and looked at Sarge.
‘Will you do what we ask, Nico? Will you take the pill and go to sleep?’ said Birdy, pleading, as if she just wanted this day to end.
‘I will.’
Sarge X looked at Nero. Nero looked very intently for a long time before he nodded to Sarge.
‘As you know, I have a Luckhoff to Philippolis patrol during the day,’ said Sarge. ‘Two men in a Nissan truck. They do the farm roads, all along the northern shore. It’s a slow trip. They leave in the morning, they have lunch in Philippolis, then they take the Jeep track for a quick look at Luckhoff, just before they return here, at about five. They were the team I called when I received your father’s distress call. But they did not answer. Turns out their radio wasn’t working. And they never checked. Just one of those things, because the radio is quiet, they just assumed. Today, of all days . . . They got back about an hour after dark. They came straight to me, to report an incident. They didn’t know about your father and Domingo at that time.’
‘What incident?’
‘They saw three vehicles, speeding off . . .’
‘Motorbikes?’ I asked, with the first spark of rage.
‘Nico, please, just listen,’ said Nero.
‘My patrol came via the little Jeep track into Luckhoff from the east, and they saw the three vehicles speeding off on the tarmac road towards Koffiefontein. The timing, that was the significant thing. It was just after four. About ten past.’
Why didn’t he tell me who it was? ‘Did they see who it was?’
He made a gesture with his hands. There was despair in it, but I didn’t understand it. ‘What did they see, Sarge?’
‘They think it was our vehicles. Our pick-ups.’
‘Ours?’
‘Yes. Until three weeks ago, when we gave them to New Jerusalem.’
Chapter 104
The investigation of my father’s murder: I
Birdy broke the silence of Domingo’s office. ‘Nico, they think they were ours. They aren’t sure.’
‘They gave chase, but they couldn’t catch up,’ said Sarge.
‘What made them think they were NJ’s pick-ups?’
‘There were three Toyotas. All three.’
‘Of course, that doesn’t const
itute proof,’ said Nero Dlamini. ‘And they weren’t absolutely sure.’
I shook my head. I didn’t agree with Nero. If there were three Toyotas, the odds were good that they belonged to New Jerusalem. We gave them all the Toyota pick-ups in Amanzi, to simplify the situation with spares and maintenance. It was part of the final agreement. We kept the Fords and the Nissans. And who else in this region had diesel to keep three pick-ups – of any make – running so far from a town? Only Amanzi and New Jerusalem.
‘I have to know, Nico,’ said Birdy. ‘I have to know who did this thing. I won’t rest until we find out. I promise you that. But we must have proof. Not just allegations. That’s what your father would have wanted. And Domingo. We mustn’t let this destroy what they built here.’
‘We need cool heads,’ said Sarge X.
Nero Dlamini poured more water into my glass. He took a plastic pill holder out of his shirt pocket. ‘I want you to take two of these,’ he said.
‘We’ll start again tomorrow,’ said Birdy. It sounded as if she were talking to herself.
I held out my hand. Nero shook the pills into my palm. I took the glass. I pretended to toss the pills into my mouth. I swallowed only the water, while my right hand slipped the pills into my trouser pocket.
Sofia Bergman
I don’t think anyone could sleep that night.
Domingo was dead. It was unthinkable. Domingo was invincible. Immortal. Like a superhero, you never thought anything could happen to him. And if they could kill him, what chance did we have? And Willem Storm. He and Domingo were . . . They were Amanzi. They were everything about Amanzi. The members of the Cabinet, the rest of us were just bit players.
We were distraught, but we were also afraid. Who would be our leader now? What would happen to us?
That was the dominant emotion that night, I think, a sort of . . . suffocating anxiety. And incredulity. It couldn’t be true. Willem Storm and Domingo? Impossible.
The heartbreak of loss would come later. Remember, we were children of the Fever. We had all known death and loss. So we had ways of dealing with it. To a degree. But so many of us in Special Ops were children. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. Willem Storm and Domingo were like fathers to us. Or at least surrogate parents to us. Authority figures . . . No, that sounds so . . . When I was little, lying on my bed on the farm, hearing my father’s voice, or smelling the pipe tobacco he used to smoke, I would feel safe. I would know the world was okay.
That’s what Willem and Domingo had given us. That feeling that we were safe and the world was okay.
But that night we couldn’t articulate it. We just sat on the dam wall, in dazed silence. Team Alpha was still on guard duty, as Domingo had instructed as. Our sergeants, Taljaard and Masinga, were still in NJ, so we were completely leaderless. Entirely.
Since Domingo died . . . no one had thought to bring us food and water; just past twelve that night our food and water had run out, and I volunteered to fetch more. I walked back to base; via the shortcut it was just over one and a half kilometres.
Dead quiet, everything was silent. Just past midnight.
I passed the front door of HQ, and Nico Storm came out. He startled me, and I almost burst into tears, for him, for his loss, for everything. I expected that he couldn’t sleep, that he just wanted some air, somewhere to grieve. But he held a finger to his lips, and I could read the ‘please’ in his eyes and it made me wonder, why? It wasn’t what I was expecting, it wasn’t the way I imagined someone would behave if their father had just died.
I stood there, not saying a word, watched him walk past me, and go to Domingo’s Jeep, which was parked where Sarge X’s people had left it. Nico got into the Jeep and drove out the gate.
He doesn’t look heartbroken, I thought, he looks . . . determined. And I realised his rifle was slung over his shoulder.
I had no idea he was going to New Jerusalem. We knew nothing of all that.
I should have protected my father.
It was my job, my vocation, my responsibility. And I didn’t. I wasn’t here, but that didn’t matter, I should have protected my father.
I lay sleepless on my bed, I felt empty and rage began to fill the void inside me. It was rage that was a long time coming, a rage at myself that morphed into a rage at this world, this broken, unjust, wicked world, that morphed into a hatred for Nkosi Sebego, because I saw that he was responsible for all of it. At least, at the very least: if he hadn’t gone to New Jerusalem, Pa would still have been President, Pa wouldn’t have wanted to go farming at Witput. At the very least. But there was more. Much more. The more I thought of it, the more I knew it, I knew and I got up from my bed, dressed and picked up my pistol and rifle and I left the room, went down the stairs, out of the door.
I saw Sofia Bergman coming in. The sight of her brought me into some sort of clarity, so that I realised that for what I was about to do there must be no witnesses. I gestured to her she must keep quiet. She mustn’t tell a soul. Her eyes widened. She nodded.
I went to Domingo’s Jeep. Switched it on. The tank was nearly full. Enough fuel. I drove away.
At the main gate the guards were respectful and subdued, they expressed their sympathies. I said thank you, I was just going for a drive to clear my head.
They said they understood.
At the Petrusville gate it was the same.
And then it was just me, the darkness and the lights of the Jeep on the road. The road to Colesberg, and then Gariep. New Jerusalem.
It was a hundred and fifty kilometres. I knew this stretch of road, we had driven it over and over these past weeks of the Great Trek. With the Jeep it would take me just over ninety minutes.
My rage at the pastor grew to a light-headedness. I had listened to Nero describing Domingo’s allegations of espionage against him. I put all the clues together, and realised that Domingo was right. Nkosi was a traitor and a spy. I remember what he had said in the Committee back then. And I remember how he had humiliated my father time and time again. He was obsessed with power, had been from the beginning. I remember that very first day when he arrived, how he had looked at Domingo, as if he wanted to say: one day you’re going to stand in my way, and I’m going to kill you.
Domingo was dead.
Nkosi had murdered my father, and he had destroyed Domingo’s immortality.
By the time I turned off the N1 my fury was a white-hot flame. I knew where Nkosi lived. He had chosen a modest house in Hamerkop Street in the lower part of town. That had surprised most of the Spotters who escorted the Great Trek. I think it was a lesson he learned from my father.
NJ was pitch-dark. So different from Amanzi.
They had a temporary barricade at the town entrance, where the column with the words Gariep Dam still stood beside the little building with the pitched roof. NJ’s guards huddled round a fire; they looked scared and inexperienced as they walked in front of the Jeep with their rifles. They recognised me and wondered what was going on.
I was cold and calm. I said I had an urgent message for the pastor.
They said they must first let him know I was here.
I realised then that I hadn’t thought this through.
I said go ahead.
If he had guards who tried to stop me, I’d shoot them first.
Sofia Bergman
I packed my rucksack full of food and water and walked back to the dam wall. All the way I was thinking of Nico. Thinking of his expression, what had I read in it? There was something . . . familiar. In the finger on his lips, in his eyes, something I had seen before.
And where was he going in Domingo’s Jeep? In the middle of the night?
Should I tell anyone?
It took an eternity to wake the pastor. I couldn’t hear what he said, only the deep rumble of his voice over the guard’s radio. The guard walked up to me and said, ‘The pastor wants to know what this is about.’
‘I have a message from my father.’ Let me see what his response to that might be. Le
t me see if he betrayed himself.
They relayed this to him over the radio. No response. His silence gave him away. His silence gave me the assurance that I was looking for.
He stayed silent for so long that even the gate guards became uneasy.
‘Send him in,’ said Nkosi.
Sofia Bergman
At three in the morning I remembered where I had seen that look in Nico’s eyes before. It was the day that I shot him with the crossbow. The day he tackled me, in front of HQ, after I had hit him with the rifle.
The eyes of someone beyond fury.
But where had he gone?
Chapter 105
The investigation of my father’s murder: II
I stopped in front of the house, holding the R4. I switched off the Jeep, climbed out, and walked up to the front door.
He must have heard my boots on the gravel; he opened the door. He was wearing a dressing gown, somewhere behind him a lamp was burning, and I saw him in silhouette. I shifted the R4 to my left hand, and I hit him in the face with my fist. I hit him with all the rage and pain and hate in me.
I hit him on the mouth. ‘I’m going to kill you,’ I said as he staggered backwards into the house. But he didn’t fall.
He swung at me. He was a big man, taller than me, his shoulders wide and powerful. And he was much faster than I had expected. He caught me on my right cheekbone, lifting me off my feet. I crashed down, half-deafened in my right ear, black specks floating before my eyes. I tried to stand up, but I staggered, off-balance. He aimed another blow; I could see the whites of his eyes, his mouth bleeding. I could see he was capable of murder, he was wild, dangerous. I rolled to the left, up against the wall. He missed me, then he hit me, somewhere on my ribs. I pushed against the wall to roll away, suddenly realising this wasn’t going as I had planned; tonight I was going to be beaten to death.
Adrenalin.
I stood up fast, he was waiting for me. I moved quickly, hit out at him with everything I had, on the bridge of his nose.
He gave a deep roar and came at me, a bloodied bull. I knew how fast he was now, and as he swung I jerked my head away, just in time. The blow connected my left shoulder, the violence of it throwing me against the wall. My left arm felt dead. I hit out again, my only hope was that I was faster than him. I punched with my right fist, every ounce of strength. He bent his head down. My knuckles connected with the top of his shaven skull. I could hear my knuckle break, a sick, loud noise, and pain shot up my arm. He fell to his knee, grabbed something on a table. I had to hit him again, swung my left hand, but he hit me first, with something in his hand, against my hip and my pistol. The sound rang like a metal bell, because he had hit me with a pan, a big cast-iron pan. I stumbled and fell and he was on me. He lifted the pan, ready to hit me again, and I jammed my right elbow into his eye as hard as I could. I knew my knuckle was broken, the pain sharp, I would not be able to use my fist again.