“What are you saying? That they are waiting for that man Frans to end it? End it how?”
“By finishing what he started all those years ago.”
“We need to stop him. Find him and stop him.”
“We do,” I agreed. “And there is only one person who can tell us who he is.”
The moment Khanyi’s phone showed a glimmer of connectivity on the perilous climb back out of the valley, she called Fehrson.
“Father,” she said, oblivious to the irony of calling him that. “I’ve got you on speaker. Ben can hear you.”
“What on earth do you mean he can hear me?” said Fehrson.
Khanyi explained that her phone had a loudspeaker. Then she explained that we needed an audience with Mbuyo.
“Certainly not,” said Fehrson.
“It might be important,” said Khanyi.
“Might it? Oh well, in that case,” said Fehrson with heavy sarcasm. “I’m sure that he will cancel his address to the nation. Have you forgotten that’s tonight?”
I had forgotten. The televised address to the nation before his inauguration as state president.
Fehrson sniffed. “I’ll see what I can arrange for next week. You two having a nice time?” he asked archly.
Khanyi gave me a warning look. “Very nice, thank you sir,” I said.
“Don’t let that man get you into any more trouble, Khanyisile,” said Fehrson, and he ended the call.
We continued through the storm, which sent squalls of rain across the road like the giant folds of a lace curtain.
“You think the battlefield re-enactments were cancelled?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“That couple we spoke to this morning,” I said. “The ones watching the exits in the bar last night. They must have changed their plans. We passed them a few minutes ago.”
“The Americans?” said Khanyi. “They’re just tourists, Gabriel.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“Father’s right about you.”
“In what way?”
“You let your paranoia get the better of you.”
Another squall hit us, and I slowed down as the visibility reduced. Khanyi went quiet, I gave a non-committal grunt and did my best not to look paranoid as I wondered why the man had been wearing a holster under his jacket that morning when he climbed into the horse-drawn cart. And why his American accent had slipped into flat South African tones on his final “except by the wife”.
I pulled off the road, flicked on the hazard lights and waited for a gap in the traffic.
“What are you doing?” said Khanyi.
“They are not American tourists,” I said, and swung us around in a tight u-turn, killed the hazard lights and accelerated in pursuit of the small yellow car I had seen pass us.
“For goodness sake, Gabriel,” said Khanyi, but she went silent as I negotiated the treacherous pass at a speed that left no margin for error. There were not many cars on the road, and they were all driving in the poor visibility at a sensible crawl. I pushed past them at speed and we had a few worrying moments as the headlights of vehicles travelling in the opposite direction loomed suddenly out of the haze. There were several junctions where side roads joined the road we were on, but I didn’t see any yellow cars moving down them. We took the wooden bridge at speed, and arrived again within sight of Lindiwe’s house.
There was no yellow car, no fake American tourists with shoulder holsters. The bonnet of our car produced a thin mist of steam as the rain continued to fall. The lights of Lindiwe’s house were on, a warm refuge from the cold and rain.
“Happy?” asked Khanyi. “There’s nobody here.”
A few of the kids were out on the verandah, and I saw Lindiwe come out to call them in. I had been wrong about the couple in the yellow car. Perhaps Khanyi and Fehrson were right and I was simply paranoid.
“We’d better get to the airport,” said Khanyi. “And this time could you keep to the speed limit?”
We came out on the other side of the storm as we approached the airport. The sun shone benignly, and anxious little gusts of wind were the only sign that the foul weather was doing its best to catch up with us. Khanyi went ahead to get herself a bottle of mineral water while I loitered outside the terminal building with a cigarette.
Bill answered my call with a reluctant grunt. I explained to him what I wanted, and he grunted again, in a not entirely negative manner it seemed, but then he told me he wouldn’t do it.
“You still causing trouble for that new president?” he asked.
I admitted that I was, puffed on the cigarette and waited. He sighed heavily.
“I’ll call him,” said Bill.
“The Nyanga Bar, don’t forget. A mutual friend from the Nyanga Bar,” I said.
“I’ve written it down, Gabriel, have a little faith.”
I finished my cigarette and watched the ominous wall of cloud approaching from the Drakensberg. One way or another, that weather seemed determined to reach me.
Twenty-Four
Jacob Matlala had been squeezed into a brand-new suit. Dark navy blue with red stitching. It was the kind of suit that befitted a member of parliament, and one could overlook the fact that his physical presence had swelled a little beyond the initial expectations of the haberdashers, because he was now so important that details like that were trivial. His eyes glinted with scorn as I met him in the foyer of the VIP suites of the Green Point Stadium. I wasn’t wearing a new suit, and the wound in my side had opened. It left the smear of a bloodstain on my shirt, which because my jacket’s zip had broken was displayed to public view as I tried not to limp across the shiny marble floor.
“I don’t suppose that you are the mutual acquaintance from Nyanga Bar,” said Matlala.
As the Nyanga Bar had closed before I reached an age of double digits there seemed little point in denying it.
Before they ushered me into the presence of their supreme leader, a couple of bodybuilders ran their hands over me, checked the stitching of my hems, then asked me to smile for the security camera. I had the feeling that tensions were mounting.
The president-elect was standing at the glass wall of the VIP suite, gazing out over the floodlit stadium. Matlala instructed me to wait as he approached the dark silhouette of his leader. The stadium beyond them was so bright that it felt as if we were in a cinema, watching a panoramic 3D movie. Mbuyo didn’t turn but laid his hand on Matlala’s shoulder and whispered something in his ear. Matlala announced to the room that the president would like a few minutes alone. As my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, I could see small groups of aides clustered around laptops and sitting at the tables in discussion. There was a hum of disgruntled muttering as they gathered their electronics and gave me curious glances on their way out. Eventually only Mbuyo and Matlala remained.
“You too, Jake,” said Mbuyo. “Just a few minutes.” He still did not turn to face us and missed the furious glare that Matlala directed at me as his new patent leather shoes squeaked past. He closed the door behind himself with a little more force than was necessary.
Mbuyo said nothing for a good minute, and I was selecting one of my prepared openings when his deep bass voice finally spoke.
“They had to import a special vehicle just to change those bulbs, did you know that?”
“It seems a waste,” I said. The silhouette of a man could be seen standing in a cage before the floodlights. I guessed the vehicle holding him aloft was the imported one.
Mbuyo nodded, and he turned to me. His scarred face glinted slightly as the smooth skin caught the light.
“Doesn’t it?” he said, but his mind was no longer on imported trucks. He studied me carefully.
“I’ve known this day would come,” he said. “In thirty years not a day has passed that I haven’t wondered how it would happen. It seems somehow fitting for it to be here, and now. On the eve of my triumph.” He turned back and looked out over the stadium as if to imprint the moment
on his mind. “She is still beautiful, isn’t she?”
“She is.”
“In all these years I’ve never met anyone to match her,” he said. The imported truck’s cage lifted the man higher so he could reach the top level of lights. “And she told you about the Nyanga Bar? All about it? And all that followed?”
“She might have left a few of the details out.”
He nodded and watched the man in the cage give a dead bulb an experimental twist. The bulb was as wide as his chest, and it looked as if it took all his strength to twist it. “It is right that this happens now,” said Mbuyo again.
“You haven’t thought of bringing it upon yourself?” I asked. “Coming out and saying it?”
“I’ve thought of little else,” he said. “How many times have I considered raising my hand and saying ‘I’m not Thulani’?” He turned to me, to assure himself that wasn’t a surprise to me, a final confirmation that I knew. I showed no surprise. “I’m Wandile,” he said, “The traitor of the people. And I am a killer. I killed my own brother.”
I gave a small nod. It seemed the least I could do, given the magnitude of his confession.
He held out a scarred left hand. Two of the fingers were joined and one finger was missing altogether so that the hand resembled a claw.
“You see that?” he said. “That chain around my wrist.”
I could see the scar tissue around his wrist, which did resemble a chain.
“That’s why they thought I was my brother. That chain there. It melted into my skin. My brother wore a medical bracelet, had an allergy to penicillin. And in those last moments I took it from him. When we realised we weren’t getting out. I took the bracelet from him.”
Mbuyo withdrew his hand and pulled a sleeve over the scarred wrist.
“Why did you do that?” I asked.
“I thought if anyone survived, the security police would finish the job on my brother. I still thought we were doing what they wanted you see. And that if we failed, they would simply shoot him and be done with it.”
“But why take the bracelet?”
Mbuyo shrugged. “I wanted them to shoot me. The bracelet identified him. I thought if we survived the fire, it should be me they killed.”
Mbuyo’s face showed no emotion, but his eyes made up for that. They were dark and gentle and seemed to plead with me.
“Are you taking me away?” he said. “Just you? Or is there a team waiting outside?”
“Just me,” I said. “But I’m not taking you anywhere.”
“Isn’t this the end?”
“Who said anything about an end?”
Mbuyo turned his head to one side like a bird trying to hear something.
“You’re not here to tell me it’s all over?”
“That’s not for me to decide. Whether you are who you say you are, whether you are the hero of your people, or a traitor to them is none of my concern.”
“You’re here to prod my conscience then? Force a confession?”
“I’m not sure I’d recognise a conscience if it slapped me in the face. No, I’m here to ask you about the man you started the fire with. Who is Frans?”
Mbuyo’s head tilted again, and his eyes raised a question.
“He’s untouchable,” he said. “What do you want with him?”
“He killed a journalist. A friend of mine. And I think he’s going to kill again.”
“Of course he is,” said Mbuyo. “But you’ll not stop him. Nobody can stop him.”
“I passed two killers on the road today. I could be wrong about them, but I have some experience in that field. I think they were killers biding their time.”
“Killers? Where?”
“In Zululand. On the road to Masotsheni. If he is going to do anything,” I said. “He will act against both of you. Both you and Lindiwe.”
“Act against me?” said Mbuyo and the corner of his scarred mouth twisted into a smile. “You’re going to tell me not to go on stage tonight?”
“Step up your security. And ensure that Lindiwe is safe.”
“How would I do that? Lindiwe has no security.”
“None that I could see,” I agreed, thinking of the adolescent boy with the battered binoculars.
“She wants the end to come,” said Mbuyo. “You don’t understand that.” He turned to look out over the stadium. At the far end a stage had been constructed, and men were crawling over the steel girders adjusting lights. In the seating areas a team of policemen were moving along the rows of seats with large Alsatian dogs who were sniffing with enthusiasm in case anyone had been foolish enough to leave any explosives behind.
“She is overwhelmed with regret,” said Mbuyo. “As am I.” He kept gazing out over the stadium and was silent. “Something starts as a small secret,” he said eventually. “The plan of a beautiful woman to survive, and to enable me to survive. A life without each other, but a life nonetheless. It was more than I deserved, but I took it. And I regret it. I regret everything. You have no idea what it was like on Robben Island. No idea what it is like to regret your very existence. I regret it all, particularly that fire. Not because it killed my brother. Not because it killed four of his comrades. I regret it because it didn’t kill me.”
Suddenly a popping sound reverberated around the stadium, and the lights dropped to a dull orange glow and gradually faded into the early evening. The figures that a moment ago had been projected in full Technicolor onto the window in front of us became shadowy shapes without definition. There was a moment of confused silence, and then some figures broke away from the stage area and ran across the field, beams from torches they were carrying bounced across the ground ahead of them.
“Africa,” said Mbuyo, and his mouth twisted in the way the country had learned to recognise as a smile. “The only thing that’s certain here is that something will go wrong.”
“That small secret of yours has become something that other people are dying for,” I said.
“Two killers on the road, you said?”
“It looked that way.”
Mbuyo gazed out over the dark stadium.
“The man who called himself Frans,” I said. “He can be stopped.”
“How?” asked Mbuyo. “How do you stop a man like that?”
“I have some experience in the field,” I said. “Killing is one of my talents.”
He turned back to me. “Are you saying you would do it?”
He hesitated, then raised an objection. “But you don’t know who he is.”
“Does he have mining interests?” I asked. “His successful business interests have included gold mines?”
Mbuyo nodded.
“Do his friends call him BB?”
Mbuyo nodded again. “They do.”
“Riaan Breytenbach was a national serviceman thirty years ago,” I said. “He worked for the same small division of military intelligence that Lindiwe’s adoptive father worked for. His job was to collate the information passed on to him by the field contact. But when everything went wrong, nobody could find the field contact. They said he disappeared.”
“He didn’t disappear,” said Mbuyo. “He was the contact. They didn’t know that?”
“There was a man called Du Toit who had his suspicions. He wrote a report in which he suggested it, but everyone laughed at him and the report was buried.”
“They laughed at him? Or did they know what Breytenbach was doing and wanted it kept quiet?”
“That’s a question that needs asking,” I said.
“He supports the party now,” said Mbuyo. In the gloom of the early evening I could see his eyes glint. “A big donor. We sit in meetings together, and he looks at my new face, and he smiles at me. It’s been a few years now, and never once has he shown any recognition.”
“But if I am right,” I said. “That has changed. He knows who you are now. And knows where Lindiwe is.”
“He called me,” said Mbuyo. “I thought it was odd. A couple of days ago.”
“What did he want?”
“To say that he couldn’t be here tonight. As a big donor, he would have been here for the show. Wanted to tell me personally. Pledge his support, all that nonsense.”
“What reason did he give for not being here?”
“Some garbled story about being robbed. Retreating to a private game farm in Mpumalanga. Couldn’t get back here in time. I thought it was odd that he called.”
“He often calls you?”
“Never before.”
“Where did he get your number?”
“Goodness knows. I asked the team. They had no idea.”
“Do you pay the costs of Lindiwe’s orphanage?”
“Not in my name. I pay through a trust.”
“But your number could be linked to some of those accounts? Even if not your name, there might be a number?”
Mbuyo said nothing.
“If someone with connections in the right places found Lindiwe and her orphanage, is it possible that they might find your number? Might call that number to see who answers?”
Mbuyo still said nothing, but he raised his arms as if we were in an old spaghetti western, the harmonica music had started, and I was pointing a shotgun at him.
“It will be a relief,” he said. “You don’t understand. Thirty years I have waited for him to finish the job. You should kill me, not him. Allowing me to survive would be nothing short of treasonous. I am the traitor.”
The door across the room burst open suddenly, and someone shone a torch into the gloomy interior.
“Power failure,” called the man who was wearing the black outfit of the president’s guard. “Won’t be long, sir.” He noticed Mbuyo’s posture, and the torch beam shook as he pulled his revolver.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Mbuyo dropped his arms. “Everything’s fine,” he called. “Leave us.”
The man hesitated, but then withdrew.
“This started thirty years ago,” said Mbuyo, “and it is time for it to end. I knew it the moment you walked into that lounge at the Waterfront and asked me about Lindiwe. I knew that was the beginning of the end. Now finally, this is the end.”
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