“Nothing hard about it,” said Fat-Boy. “I turn the key in that delivery truck, and drive on outta there.”
“Fat-Boy’s our A-plan man,” said Robyn. “But if something goes wrong, we’re stuck in there like a school of goldfish in a bowl full of piranhas.”
“Piranhas?” said Fat-Boy.
“The fish with sharp teeth,” said Robyn.
“And what do goldfish do when they’re trapped by piranhas?” said Chandler.
“They get eaten.” I suggested.
“They get eaten,” agreed Chandler. “And downstream their broken scales and traces of their blood wash up on the shore. That’s the C-plan.”
“Do fish have blood?” asked Fat-Boy.
“There are three ways we get out of that building,” said Chandler. He counted them off on his fingers. “We drive our delivery truck out.” Another finger came up. “Or we come out with our hands cuffed behind us because the archive people call the police.”
“They’ll never call the cops,” said Fat-Boy, pulling his mind away from the circulatory systems of fish. “They’ve got their own army in there.”
“Or we come out in a hearse,” said Robyn.
“Not a hearse,” said Chandler. “Who calls a hearse?”
“They call an ambulance,” said Robyn. “Which is our B-plan.”
“I don’t like it,” said Fat-Boy. “How do we get them to call an ambulance?”
“They’ll call an ambulance when one of us gets shot.”
Fat-Boy puffed out his cheeks with exasperation. “You wanna ask them to shoot us?”
Robyn shook her head. “We do the shooting.”
“Like fuck I’m gonna let you shoot me,” said Fat-Boy. “I know how this will work. It’ll be the black guy who gets shot, won’t it?”
“It might,” said Chandler. “But we’ll be shooting blanks. We’ll get blood bags for the effect. It’s our best fall-back.”
He got to his feet and went to stand before the monitors. Scarface and Sidekick had completed their tests, and the vault was closing up again.
“We have a plan, don’t we?” said Chandler. He turned back to face us. “What do you say, Robyn?”
“I say we do it,” said Robyn.
“Fat-Boy?”
Fat-Boy took a moment, but then nodded. “We do it, Colonel.”
“Angel?”
“Let’s do it,” I said.
Chandler gave a curt nod. I felt a shiver run down my spine. The thing about being a part of a team of madmen is that you keep thinking surely one of you should be sensible and should provide an anchor of sanity. But the others didn’t seem to worry about that. Robyn noticed me watching her and held my look with eyes as hard as steel. There was more to Robyn than the struggling, bereaved alcoholic. I’d always known it, I suppose, but seemed to keep forgetting.
I watched the sun give up on the day from the roof terrace. A blanket of smog smothered the city and glowed with the dying golden light. Chandler joined me as I was finishing my cigarette.
“You have your file all worked out?” he asked.
“Fat-Boy tells me it’s on the second floor down. The floor Lategan didn’t want to show us. It’s been tagged for no withdrawal, but if you could make a phone call at an appropriate time… Fat-Boy has the number.”
“He’s good that Fat-Boy,” said Chandler, and he drew a deep breath as if he was about to start his Swedish exercises. “Very good with the computers, and all the technical stuff. But you need to watch over him tomorrow. His nerves get the better of him.”
“I will,” I assured him.
“Let Robyn do the shooting. She’s got a talent for it, one of the coolest heads I’ve come across. So long as she stays off the sauce.”
“Are they all blanks that she’s carrying?”
“Not all blanks, no. If she needs to do some real damage she can.”
“But if we start shooting at them we’re unlikely to get out of there.”
“Which is why we leave the shooting to Robyn.”
Chandler gazed out over the smog. A light wind was starting to tear at the edges. I could tell from his silence that there was something on his mind.
“You think they’re expecting us, don’t you?” I said.
“Certain of it,” said Chandler, and he turned to face me. “It’s why they’re moving the gold.”
“Then why not cancel?”
“Because that’s what everyone has done in the history of that man BB’s life. It’s what gives him his power, isn’t it? Anyone who dares to think of challenging him ends up cancelling, pulling out, or giving up. Am I wrong?”
“Or dying,” I said.
“That’s right. Or dying. As we know. How many men was it, Gabriel?”
In all the years I had known Chandler, we had never spoken directly of the men we had killed.
“For BB … thirteen,” I said. “There were thirteen of them.”
Chandler blinked and nodded. He knew the number as well as I did.
“Thirteen,” he agreed, and turned to look out at the smog again. “What Robyn says is true. We can improvise. It’s only a bit of yellow metal, for goodness’ sake. We’re not starting a war. We’ll show BB that he is not untouchable. You get your file, expose what they’re doing in protecting that new president. And if we get a few gold bars into the bargain, all the better. It’s time someone showed that man that his wealth and his power have limits.”
Chandler went quiet, and I lit another cigarette.
“It surprised me,” he said after a few minutes of silence. “When you came to me. I could see the change in you. Was he a good friend, that journalist who died?”
“I met him once, and didn’t like him,” I said.
Chandler laughed. “But you’re doing the right thing by him. After all these years you’ve turned out okay. I can still hardly believe it.”
“I’m going soft,” I said.
“No, Gabriel, you’re not. You’re doing what no one else will do. There will be no way back for you, and you know it. No one will like you, least of all Breytenbach and his government cronies. You’re messing with the most powerful people in the land. That’s not going soft, Gabriel. Not soft at all.”
Seventeen
“It’s a matter of accountability,” said Robyn. “Our leaders should be accountable to us. The most powerful man in the land cannot be hiding secrets from his people. If he killed someone he cannot expect to assume a position of power.”
“My leader killed people,” said Fat-Boy. “And I don’t care. You did kill people, didn’t you, Colonel?”
“It was our job to protect,” said Chandler, “not to kill.”
It was after midnight and we were up on the roof. I’d been asked by Fat-Boy to explain my ‘bit of paper’. Chandler was presiding over the dinner that he’d prepared as we ‘cleaned house’. Everything was gone. The empty spaces of our match factory were echoing and dusty as they had been when we arrived. Not a paper clip, thumb tack or wad of chewing gum could be seen. The monitors were gone, extension cables rolled up, furniture loaded into the panel van in the basement. The only things that remained were for what Fat-Boy insisted on calling our ‘Last Supper’. And we were doing it in style. Balloon wine-glasses, wooden pepper grinders and Chinese lanterns dangling from the one remaining power cable, bouncing back and forth as the wind built up its strength for the onslaught it was planning for the next day. The news had been full of anxious anticipation of the historic – once in a generation – storm that was expected. Chandler had said the storm would work in our favour, and we were holding onto that idea.
“Bubbles is playing with fire is all I’m saying,” said Fat-Boy. “He should forget his lousy file, focus on the important stuff.”
“The information in that file is important to Bubbles,” said Chandler as he finished pouring the wine, and lifted his glass as if that was a toast. “We’ll leave it at that.” He sipped the wine, sloshed it around a bit in a puckered mouth and then sat back with
satisfaction.
Fat-Boy pushed his lower lip forward and glowered.
“You doing the usual Fat-Boy?” asked Robyn.
“What do you think, baby? Bit of white sand, azure sea. Catch myself a tan, pick up a few plump bitches. A couple skinny bitches for variety. You wanna join me?”
Robyn laughed and shook her head. “I’ve got my own plans,” she said.
“You could be skinny bitch number one,” said Fat-Boy, “but it’d make Bubbles jealous.”
“Of course it wouldn’t,” I said. “Go ahead and be Fat-Boy’s skinny bitch.”
“Oh, I love it.” Fat-Boy pretended to be incapacitated by a laugh that shook his frame but made no sound. “Look at him. So jealous.”
I pulled a face at Fat-Boy.
“Bubbles is spoken for,” said Robyn, presumably because she thought that would end the discussion, but she had misjudged her audience.
“I know baby, I know all about that,” said Fat-Boy. “Fetch me a box of tissues. The coloured chick who went AWOL. Know all about it.” Fat-Boy looked at me with dispassionate interest to see whether he’d get a rise out of me. I gave him a blank look in return.
“Seriously AWOL?” asked Fat-Boy, who liked the bit where you twist the blade the most. “I mean she just upped and left, or did she find herself another man, and give you the heave-ho?”
“Seriously AWOL,” I said, keeping it light.
Fat-Boy was encouraged by this.
“You woke up one morning and her bags were packed. She’s at the foot of the bed blubbing and telling you it’ll never work?”
I almost said that was the way it was, and how did Fat-Boy know? But they say that’s not healthy. Honesty is healthy, that’s what they say.
“I woke up one morning and there were no bags. No blubbing either.”
Fat-Boy whistled softly. The other two kept their heads down, but Fat-Boy liked this stuff, and was going in deeper.
“Overnight?” he asked. “The night before, she slipped you a pill after her third orgasm? Or you slept so hard ‘cause you banged her so hard? She called her mates with the removal van and they shifted everything out?”
“There wasn’t much to shift,” I said.
“That’s harsh, brother.” He shook his head like he was feeling my pain, and took a deep draught of wine, mistaking it perhaps for his usual beer.
“She was a journalist?” asked Robyn.
“She was.”
“Bubbles put down his gun for her,” said Chandler. “Never thought I’d see that day.”
I didn’t point out that he hadn’t seen that day because it happened long after I’d sworn I’d never set eyes on him again. But arguing about it would only have encouraged the group therapy session. In any case Fat-Boy had tired of discussing my regrettable history.
“The point,” said Fat-Boy, “is that you can be my skinny bitch, Robsy. Bubbles can go cry into his pillow, but there ain’t nothing to stop us having fun.”
“I’ll pack my bikini,” said Robyn and gave him the full smile.
“The Angel tells me you haven’t given him the cattle story,” said Chandler.
Fat-Boy stopped wiggling his tongue at Robyn and looked at Chandler as if he had just given him awful news. He shook his head and turned to me.
“You said you were a Yank.” He turned to Chandler. “He said he was a Yank,” he complained. “And if he’s a Yank, then it’s all on you, Colonel. The Yanks were still dealing with their own native problem, can’t push the blame onto them.”
“I’d hardly call him a Yank. He was born in Toronto, and spent his school years in the UK, isn’t that so, Gabriel? There’s nothing Yank about him.”
“I’m a citizen of the world,” I said. “But if there’s blame going around, I’ll be the other one.”
“You’re a freaking mess is what you are,” said Fat-Boy. “Figure out whose side you’re on first and then I’ll tell you about the cattle.”
“The story changes according to who is hearing it, would be my guess,” said Chandler.
“Only too right,” said Fat-Boy, and we waited as he finished his wine. “1856,” he said as Chandler refilled the glass. “My people were destroyed. That’s what happened.”
“Destroyed because of the cattle?” I said.
“Cattle were our wealth. They were all we had, but we had a lot of them. The Xhosa people were powerful and wealthy. Then in 1856 a teenage girl called Nongqawuse, but don’t worry about the name – you whities will never be able to say it right – she had a vision. She met a man who said the Xhosa people would become the most powerful in the land and would force the white people back into the sea where they came from. This sounded good to the girl, but the way it needed to be done, said the man, was that every single cow had to be killed.”
“Surely nobody believed the girl,” said Robyn.
“She was the daughter of a great prophet. That’s why she was believed.”
“So they killed the cattle?” I asked.
Fat-Boy nodded his sad face. “It took them over a year. By the end of 1857, most of the cattle were gone. They destroyed crops as well. My people were broken. Forty thousand amaXhosa died. They had nothing, their wealth was gone, they had no food. Nothing. And the white people didn’t go back to the sea.”
“But what does this have to do with the British people?” I asked.
“Who do you think was the man that appeared to Nongqawuse in her vision?”
“That’s an unfounded allegation,” said Chandler. “The British administrators in the Cape did what they could to stop the massacre of the cattle and support the Xhosa people. I read up on it after you told me the story.”
“That’s why I don’t like the Brits,” said Fat-Boy, and he glared at me.
We settled into a comfortable silence. Chandler sipped again at his wine as if he was trying to make the glass last all night. He looked at each of us in turn and I resisted the impression that he was taking mental snapshots as someone does when they know they might not see that person again.
A gust of wind caught our Chinese lanterns and twirled them on their strings. The stars over the sea were being smothered one by one as a bank of cloud approached the city. “It’s starting,” said Chandler, and Robyn gave a shiver as if it had grown suddenly cold, although the air being pushed ahead of the storm was warm like the tantalising promise of a return of summer.
We cleared up after dinner and carried the table and all but two of the chairs down to the panel van. Chandler allowed Robyn and me to sit up with a bottle of wine for me, mineral water for Robyn, and a couple of cigarettes before sleeping. Robyn wrapped herself up in a duvet and gazed out at the approaching storm.
“It makes sense,” she said. “That you’re Canadian. It explains so many things.”
“Half Canadian,” I corrected her.
“And what? Half South African?”
“That’s about it. What does it explain?”
“But grew up in the UK?”
“What does it explain?”
“It explains your problem, Ben. You’re not quite anything. South Africans think you’re English, the English think you’re South African and god knows what the Canadians think.”
“It allows me to stay neutral.”
“But don’t you see, Ben? That’s the problem. You’re always neutral, always the outsider. It’s never you, always the other guy. Always the best man, never the groom. Can’t you see that?”
“I’ve had my fair share of the action.”
“Now I’ve upset you. I didn’t mean to.” She reached over with a finger and ran it down my cheekbone. “You can be so stubborn sometimes it makes me want to slap you,” she said. “You let Fat-Boy ride rough shod all over you, and he just needs to be told it’s none of his fucking business.”
The wind picked up again and spun the Chinese lanterns in a frenetic dance. Robyn blew smoke into the wind and turned to me. There was something bothering her.
“I should just
keep my mouth shut, shouldn’t I?” she said. “Who would want to hear advice from an old soak like me?”
“Advice?” I said. “I must have missed that part.”
“Criticism then. I was getting to the advice part, but I think I’ll just shut up now.”
She sat quietly, and we watched the lanterns throw themselves with abandon off the building only to bounce back when the cable caught them. Perhaps she wasn’t bothered, maybe it was simply her nerves. We were all feeling the tension.
“You’re not an old soak anyway,” I said.
Robyn turned to me and finished her glass of mineral water as if making a point.
“I am, Ben. There are many types of soak, and I’m the other one. You don’t know what it’s like. The feeling that builds up. The desperation, and then days later the shame and the disgust, and it all starts over. It’s an endless cycle. You have no idea.”
The wind had built up to the point that it seemed likely the Chinese lanterns would make a break for it and scatter themselves over the neighbouring buildings, and that would not make Chandler happy. I got up from my chair beside Robyn and took them down and wound up the cable.
“That girl of yours really just disappear like that?” asked Robyn.
“Pretty much,” I said. “Cleared her clothes out a few days after she left on a work trip.”
“You don’t want to talk about it.”
“Not really.”
Robyn flicked the stub of her cigarette away with an irritated gesture. I still had the feeling there was something she wanted to say but couldn’t find a way of saying it.
“We’ve known each other for years, Ben,” she said with the irritation showing. “But you talk to me like a speak-your-weight machine. I wish sometimes that you would let me in. That you would talk to me. What do you feel? About her, about me. Say something, for god’s sake.”
I didn’t say anything. Her eyes held mine, and I thought of all the things I wanted to say, but they all seemed wrong. They were the kind of thing I could never say to her. They were disrespectful to the memory of Brian. They made a mockery of the alleged friendship she spoke of between us. The wind was buffeting us now, and Robyn’s hair was being caught up in handfuls and being used to flay the back of the camping chair.
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