I nodded. Suddenly, I didn’t want to leave Marsha alone.
“Come up with me,” I said.
Marsha shook her head. “Ten, I have to stay and listen. I need ten minutes.” She was almost whining, crouched by the side of a house like a schoolgirl playing hide-and-seek. “If I have to, I can create a distraction. Go get Nandi.” She raised her finger to her lips: Shhhhhh.
Inside the sunroom, the translator took his turn: “Mr. Yi says this is unacceptable behavior . . . and he is baffled as to why you would have pursued such a public and distasteful act at such a sensitive time for all of us . . .”
Marsha was lost in her surveillance, holding what looked like a phone up close to the window. A listening device? A recorder? Hell, she might have had a goddamn periscope.
I wanted to be mad at Marsha for switching priorities in the middle of our mission, but I found myself worrying about the man smoking in the red SUV. And the men at the meeting inside, who might see her through the window.
But Nandi needed me more than Marsha did.
Ten minutes, and I’ll be back with the prize, I thought. Be here.
TWENTY-SIX
8:35 P.M.
Midway up the tree, my foot slipped against the bark. I flung my arm out to catch a branch overhead—and I triggered the same security light we’d set off before. The side of the house closest to the vineyard lit up like it was midday, providing enough light past the patio that Marsha’s outline against the house came into sharper focus.
I hugged the tree like a lover, not moving as I tried to blend in. There was a rustle as Marsha ducked in the hedges near the sunroom. I counted the seconds, my arms aching from my awkward grip.
The man standing at the sunroom window pushed the blinds aside and stared outside.
I expected him to look down toward Marsha—instead, he seemed to stare straight at me, as if he knew exactly where I was perched. My torso was hidden from his angle by the branches, but my face was in plain sight, resting on a V in the tree.
We seemed to be staring eye to eye. I almost reached around for my gun.
When the light finally went off, my arteries drowned in an adrenaline surge. My limbs seemed numb, but I held on. The man in the sunroom closed the blinds again, and stayed at his post.
The rest of the climb raced by. My hands found their holds and my feet followed, just like I was playing in the old ficus tree I conquered daily in our yard when I was a kid. The branches near the window, chopped off at the ends, were strong enough to hold me, so I could look inside.
There was a nightstand light on in the room, which was smallish and sparsely furnished, like a guest room. There were shopping bags of clothes on the bed. I saw pajamas from the kids’ TV show Dora the Explorer, still carrying the price tag. Could Nandi be in the room?
The idea almost froze me on the windowsill. My imagination fed me an image of Nandi sitting upright on the bed, smiling and happy to see me. But then I realized that the door to the room was wide open, not locked. And no one was in sight.
An empty room was the next best thing to Nandi being there.
Fresh from my practice at Paki’s house, my knife sliced an X through the screen. A quick couple of taps, and I raised the open window high enough to let me inside. The next thing I knew, my feet were on a carpeted floor, soundless. I had penetrated the fortress.
But I didn’t have time to celebrate. There were footsteps coming in the hallway. Fast.
I rolled across the floor, landing behind the door just as a voice boomed nearby.
It was Paki, talking to someone as they walked briskly past. “. . . but they swore it would never come to this!” He sounded distraught, breathless.
“They are not reasonable like you and me,” said the black South African who had been counseling Paki in the wine-tasting room. “What is a child to them? They only know money! Don’t interfere with my brother. There is already talk—”
“She is my child!”
“Yes, Paki, yes, but if Mhambi thinks you are a problem, I am afraid for you . . .”
The voices faded again, moving past. She IS my child. Nandi was still alive!
They might have been on their way to see Spider, from the sound of it. If I got to them first, I might be able to sway Paki to help with a rescue. His friend might be halfway sane, too. Either way, I didn’t have time to think it through.
I only glanced around before I slipped into the hallway to follow the men, mostly to make sure there weren’t security cameras mounted in the corners. Paki and his friend turned a corner to my right.
I’d entered the house in a room near the top of a winding staircase. A tile floor gleamed up at me from the lower level. I heard rapid, angry Chinese downstairs, from the sunroom—Mr. Yi’s mood had not improved—but I didn’t see anyone milling around in the foyer, or posted at the door.
Keeping close to the wall, I dashed after Paki.
They had reached a small side corridor, and were walking toward a closed door at the end.
Paki’s friend was pleading with him in Xhosa, warning him. Genuinely worried.
Paki rapped on the door, hard. “Mhambi!” he called. “You must talk to me!”
Spider was in the room. Was Nandi there, too? I stayed hidden around the corner from Spider’s room, but that left me exposed in the upstairs main hall. After a glance at the other end to make sure no one else was coming, I slipped my hand around my Beretta, ready to draw.
A click around the corner as Spider’s door opened. Even in another language, I recognized the voice from Club Skylight. He sounded annoyed.
Paki’s friend spoke to Spider, trying to placate him. His fear needed no translation.
“I’ve bought clothes!” Paki said, breaking into English. “I can take her away with me.”
“You?” Spider said.
“Yes, me! I am her father!”
“And with such a father as you, it is more merciful to put her out of her misery!” Spider said. “You’ll be paid for your tears, Paki, and I’ll be paid for mine. They should make you go to the basement and wipe up your own shit.”
I wanted to turn the corner and shoot Spider on the spot. I wished I had a silencer on my gun the way people do in movies—but in the real world, silencers are really only sound suppressors, and they’re louder than silencers in movies. And I didn’t even have that.
But I had my lead.
They argued a while longer in Xhosa, but I wasn’t listening anymore.
As soon as I heard the word basement, I bolted toward the stairs.
I raced down the spiral staircase, running far ahead of ideas or plans. My eyes swept the ceilings, still looking for surveillance cameras. None so far.
At the bottom of the stairs, I almost ran headlong into the chest of the stout Asian man I’d seen smoking outside in the red SUV. He had a newspaper curled under his arm, fresh from a bathroom break. His linen jacket was pushed aside by the barrel of the AK-47 assault rifle. A very nasty gun. The black gleam nearly made me trip on the last steps.
Done, I thought.
The actor in me saved my life. I never broke my stride. Never reached for my gun. I maintained my breezy pace, giving AK-47 a Whassup nod as I rounded the staircase. Places to go, things to do, man. He nodded back, grunting in response. To him, I was another one of the Africans. Hell, maybe we all do look alike.
I was dizzy from adrenaline, but I didn’t have time to recover. I would be lucky if I had sixty seconds to find the basement. Where was it?
I veered away from the sunroom, to the other side of the house. If my search took me toward the sunroom, I’d have no choice—but it was no place to start if I wanted a chance.
Each door and archway might be full of promise, or death. I shunned open spaces, looking for corners, shadows, and furniture to keep me out of sight. I pursed my lips to keep from calling out Nandi’s name. Would she hear me? And who else would?
The foyer and living room looked empty, so I darted to a narrow reading roo
m with a fireplace, an antique grandfather clock, and a love seat beside a row of bookshelves. Two voices approached, speaking Xhosa or Zulu. I shrank behind the grandfather clock just in time to conceal myself as they passed. Not Spider, but I was sure they were armed.
There were at least twelve men in the house, and those were only the ones I knew about. Marsha had been right: They might as well be an army.
For a full five seconds, I ignored the inconsolable, wailing cries that pierced me. Since the sound captured the way I felt, I thought it was in my mind.
It wasn’t. Somewhere near me, Nandi was crying.
The cry was muffled, but the sound seemed to surround me. I gazed down at the floor and fell to my knees to put my ear against the cold tile. The cry sharpened.
Nandi was beneath me! My fingertips rested against the tile, as if to memorize the place where I had found her. My heartbeat raged and thrashed in my fingers. I might have tried to dig through the floor if I’d had a shovel ready.
Even then, I didn’t dare call to Nandi. The floor was thick, and my voice would carry much farther inside. I still heard the two men talking in the hall.
I looked around the reading room for a door that might lead to the basement. Nothing.
A one-eyed peek around the archway into the foyer. The two Africans were standing in what might be the kitchen doorway, twenty-five yards away.
I leapfrogged to the small corridor beside the reading room, and found an alcove with two closed doors on opposite sides. In the alcove’s rear, there was an entrance to a butler’s pantry, perhaps where the boss and his adviser had been standing when Marsha and I overheard them. That might mean I was within only a few yards of the back door, and my only backup. No conversation or stink of cigarette smoke: They must have gone. If Marsha had opened that door, we had egress.
But I didn’t have time to check on that door, or verify that Marsha was ready for us. Nandi was in the basement, and Spider was on his way. Nandi’s cries followed me into the alcove.
When I opened the door closest to me, a stench floated out. The driver with the AK-47 had nervous bowels, and a spritz of air freshener hadn’t helped erase the scent. I closed the door to the guest bathroom, softly.
The second door looked only wide enough to be a broom closet, but why would a broom closet need a padlock? The blowtorch was the easy part; I’ve used them before. I counted slowly to sixty as the flame flared against metal. I smelled the wood around the doorknob getting singed as the heat grew. The liquid nitrogen was actually more iffy. Two hundred degrees below zero is as corrosive as flame, but less familiar. The hissing sound was deafening to me.
Frosted. Thumped. Metal cracked, and I caught the pieces in the backpack. Only a hole remained where the doorknob had been. I wouldn’t have much time in the basement.
The two men near the kitchen went on with their endless conversation. They weren’t leaving, and they might wander back at any time. Fighting not to rush, I reached for the door.
I pushed the door open, expecting a guard just inside. A light was on above the doorway. My only Xhosa flashed to my mind: Molo, I would say. A friendly hello and a smile. One word might buy me enough time to knock him down the stairs.
Molo. Molo. Molo.
No one was there to greet me at the top of the concrete basement stairs, but Nandi’s cry burrowed into my ear. Holding my breath, I slid inside and pulled the door closed.
I don’t remember pulling out my Beretta, but it was in my hand, ready to fire. I crept down the stairs, my eyes watching for blind angles. I expected to see a muzzle flash with every step. Hold on, Nandi, I’m almost there.
It was pitch dark at the bottom of the stairs. Nandi’s cry was everywhere.
I touched the wall closest to me and found a dimmer switch. I turned on a chandelier, which looked misplaced, and it cast pale spikes of light across the unfinished room.
The basement was large, only partially finished, with industrial-grade carpeting. Giant rolls of brown carpet leaned against the walls, and other piles were covered by tarps. A washer and dryer sat silently behind me, beneath the stairs. The only furniture sharing the huge empty floor space was an old picnic table and benches.
Far across the room, I saw an overturned playpen.
But no Nandi. No one in sight. Now that I was here, she’d gone silent.
“Nandi?” I finally called out. “It’s Mr. Ten.”
An answering wail.
I ran toward the playpen and its sharp smell of urine and feces. A dirtied Barbie doll sat on top of a discarded diaper soaked brown. A child’s cup had spilled to the floor after the playpen fell over. Nandi had begun her escape without me.
“Sweetheart? I’m here to take you home,” I said, raising my voice as loudly as I dared.
In my imagination, Spider was already there and it was too late. I turned to aim my gun toward the stairs, sure he was standing there. He wasn’t. My joints were trembling in hidden places I hadn’t known about, slowing my movement.
Keep it together, Ten . . .
What looked like a trail of discarded animal cracker pieces led me to an overturned laundry basket in the corner behind the playpen. The crying was coming from the basket.
Nandi already sounded petrified, so I didn’t want to startle her by wresting away her protective basket. I kneeled down to stare past the white plastic bars to the small face inside.
Two frightened, damp eyes stared back at me.
“Nandi?” I said gently. “I’m here to take you home. But you need to be very quiet. We don’t want the bad people to hear us.” I had been rehearsing for Nandi since the football stadium.
“I want my BOTTLE!” Nandi screamed, furious that I hadn’t brought one.
And she was right. If I’d brought one, she wouldn’t have been screaming.
“Shhhhhh, hon, please please don’t cry,” I said. “Your mommy’s waiting for you, but we can only see her if you’re quiet.” Energy bar! What had Marsha said? I shucked the backpack, opened the zipper, and dug around, producing a foil-wrapped granola stick. Nandi’s eyes went wide when I pulled it out, and peeled it. She held her chubby hands out, and I gave it to her. She jammed it into her mouth and chewed greedily.
“Now as soon as we get you home,” I began, “your mommy—”
“MOM-MEEEEEEEEE!” Nandi shrieked, trying to conjure up her mother. I was horrified by the idea of rendering a two-year-old unconscious, but I might have to. I didn’t have a sedative. The only other ways might hurt her.
My Beretta and I checked the basement door. Spider’s ghost was running toward us again, but he was gone when I blinked.
Desperate to distract Nandi, I tugged at the energy bar. “Gimme! I’m hungry.”
“Mine!” Nandi objected.
I was bringing her back down from the cliff.
“Can’t I have just one bite?”
“No!” Nandi insisted.
I pretended to sigh with disappointment. “Well, then go ahead and be a little piggy. Hungry as I am, I might eat you by accident.” I don’t know where I found the jollity.
Slowly, the laundry basket lifted, and Nandi’s full face came into the light.
She was not the same child I had seen on the football field. Her face was so changed, I would not have recognized her. It wasn’t just the dirt that shadowed her complexion, although the dirt alone broke my heart. Her nose and cheeks were caked with dried mucus. Her hair was matted with dried baby food. She was naked except for a Dodgers T-shirt that hung past her thighs, and had been white before it turned gray. The child hadn’t been groomed in days.
The abductors had taken better care of Nandi when they thought they were sending her home. Once their plans changed, Nandi’s treatment changed. How long had it been since she’d been fed, or had a diaper changed?
For the first time, there was utter silence in the laundry room.
“Nandi, you know how there’s good guys and bad guys?” I said, risking more tears.
Nandi no
dded fervently while she chewed, as if she’d been studying the subject.
“You and me, we’re the good guys—but the bad guys are coming. And I want to take you away, but the bad guys will hurt us if they find us. So we have to be very quiet. Understand?”
I didn’t dress it up like a game this time. I stared straight into Nandi’s eyes and talked to the part of her that already knew.
“My bottle?” she said, still negotiating despite a mouth full of granola.
“I’ll get you a bottle as soon as we get away from the bad men. I promise.”
“I want it now.”
There was no time for further negotiation. I sat Nandi across the crook of my arm. She already seemed lighter than she’d been at the football stadium. Her T-shirt was damp, probably from urine. I felt so filled with rage that I planned to come back and lay waste to the whole house after I got Nandi home.
Nandi’s crying started again—much more softly, but much too loud. Still, we had to go.
I didn’t see any windows or other doors, so I carried her to the stairs.
We were halfway up when the basement door cracked open.
That time, I knew it wasn’t a trick of my eyes. I leaped backward, landing on the floor silently while air whooshed from Nandi’s lungs. I darted around the corner as a lone man’s footsteps descended.
“What happened to this door?” a man’s voice said.
Spider.
In one version of that night, Nandi was completely silent. Spider never saw us around the corner, distracted while he investigated Nandi’s overturned playpen. While his back was turned, I hit him in the base of the skull with the butt of the automatic, hard enough to send this King to the Kingdom.
That version died when Nandi wailed. My hand over her mouth only made her cry harder. “Hey!” Spider said, chiding Nandi. “How did you get—”
When Spider turned the corner from the stairs to look for Nandi, he came face-to-face with my Beretta.
From Cape Town with Love Page 32