A Sailor's Honour (26 page)

‘Call me Natasha,' she said to the admiring crowd in a throaty whisper laced with her Bulgarian accent.

No one noticed that James Mazibuko was absent during the performance. He was in the kitchen, doing his own dirty work.

The next morning Natasha slept late while Mazibuko did the tourist thing. He walked about the grounds with binoculars and camera in hand. The binoculars might have looked small, but they were high-definition military-issue with the extreme magnification so sought after by keen bird-watchers. Mazibuko made a show of asking whoever was around the names of the birds he found. Likewise with his camera: he took wide-angle and telephoto shots of the lodge and surrounds, the approaches and the jetty jutting out over the river. There was a small thatched boma at the end of the jetty where it jutted out over the murky water below. The deck of the jetty was smooth and sloped down towards the water.

Mazibuko spent a lot of time gazing out over the water. He had heard hippo splashing about and there were signs all over the camp not to venture out to the river at night. They were out of sight now, but on the opposite bank of the river he counted at least five crocodiles longer than two metres. They lay immobile in the sun, some facing toward the river and ready for immediate action should any prey drift into their domain. He looked down from the edge of the deck. There was a subtle motion below the surface. He looked up. There was one fewer crocodile on the sandbank across the river. He felt a sudden, unexpected shudder and took a few steps backward. They ought to have a railing here, he thought.

In the afternoon he and Natasha sat on the back of the open Land Rover and gawked like good tourists. To the delight of the game warden, Mazibuko appeared to be quite ignorant of the animals of the African bush. ‘What's this?' and ‘What's that?' he asked. There were lots of animal spoor too, but no sign of Liesl Weber.

The second night, the lodge was overflowing with hard-drinking guests. The local farmers had got wind of the show and filled the pub and main lounge, drinking steadily and waiting in eager anticipation of the main event, but Natasha's hands were sore and she had to improvise again. This time she swayed and stripped to Ravel's
Boléro
, the fourteen-minute version.

No one took any notice when James Mazibuko disappeared into the night and visited the workers' compound. There he flashed his cash around. ‘Who is that old man in the wheelchair?' he asked after the customary introductions and many innocuous questions.

‘We don't know,' they said. ‘He lives in a double room on his own. Every three weeks or so people come to visit him, and then there is a big meeting around the fire in the afternoon, and we are not allowed to go near. They speak Afrikaans, and they listen to the man in the wheelchair.'

‘I heard them calling him general,' the tractor driver said.

‘They don't use names,' another said. ‘But I also heard them call him the same thing.'

Mazibuko feigned disinterest and tried to change the topic, but they would not let him. ‘He's got a tokoloshe who works with him,' one said.

‘No,' said another. ‘It's a sangoma from up north, from Malawi or Tanzania, where they have many of them.'

‘Many of what?'

‘Many people with white hair and pink eyes.'

But there was no word of Liesl Weber, nothing he could ask directly.

During dinner, he had poured large quantities of very good, and very expensive, wine into the flower pot next to their dinner table. When he returned to his table, Natasha was doing an encore. Mazibuko slipped out through one of the side doors and pretended to be lost. He went into each of the passages of the lodge and knocked on every door. No one replied until he found one door with a chair outside. The chair was occupied by a man in khaki uniform wearing a conspicuous holster on his hip.

Mazibuko pretended to be drunk. ‘Where ish my wife?' he slurred. ‘She must come to dinner.'

‘Your wife is at dinner already,' the guard said. ‘Shaking her booty.'

‘No, thish ish my room and my wife ish in there,' Mazibuko said and made for the door.

The guard stood up and barred his way. ‘No,' he said as he maintained a firm but polite stance. ‘This is not your room. Your room is on the other side.'

‘No, she'sh here. I can schmell her perfume,' Mazibuko said. ‘Hello, Cindy, eesh me, Jamesh. Will you come out pleash? I forgive you,' he shouted at the door. He tried to push forward, but the guard stopped him with a hand on his chest. It was room number 1, Mazibuko noticed, at the end of the passage, the only way in through the main foyer.

‘Listen,' the guard said, ‘it is not your wife's perfume you smell. It is another woman.'

‘Then where eesh my wife?' Mazibuko demanded. ‘And where eesh my room?'

‘The room number will be on your key,' the guard said. ‘Do you have a key?' The guard's patience was wearing thin.

Mazibuko fumbled in his pockets, swaying to and fro, holding onto the guard for stability. ‘Help me find it,' he said.

The guard pushed Mazibuko away from him and pulled the key from Mazibuko's shirt pocket. ‘Here it is, and it's room number 27, the bridal suite, right on the other side. But there's no bride there now, is there?' he teased. ‘She's in the dining room dancing on the tables, isn't she?'

He steered Mazibuko in the right direction and sat down again.

At the end of the passage, Mazibuko turned and waved. ‘Shank you, friend. Shank you and good night.'

De Villiers spoke to a tearful, scared and lonely Emma every evening. He also spoke to Zoë at the appointed hour every day. Zoë was cheerful. ‘We've been on an adventure,' she said. In the language of the De Villiers household, that meant they had been out of the house and had gone on a drive. This might mean Zoë's captors were to move to a different hideout. De Villiers immediately phoned his men in Kawerau and asked them to be extra vigilant. Then he phoned Emma again to reassure and pacify her.

Afterwards he was struck by a sudden attack of remorse. I'm playing with my daughter's safety here, he said to himself. But I know these men. They are trained reconnaissance unit soldiers and there's no way they will harm a child. They'll follow orders, but only up to a point. Even if they were ordered to do something bad to a child, they would refuse. There are things a well-trained soldier just cannot do. And won't do. De Villiers knew he was putting a lot of faith in the ethics and discipline of a pair of soldiers he had never met, but he reckoned the years of training they had received to make them independent operators would prevail.

They won't harm a child.

De Villiers started with his medical appointments early the next morning. The first appointment, at the Oncology Centre at Westridge, was over quickly. He had to wait a few minutes with the other cancer patients in the overfull lounge outside Dr MacDonald's room. On the way out he asked for Marissa, but she was not working there anymore.

At Westville Hospital he had two appointments. Dr McKerron was his usual dour self, but declared the sonar scan results to be encouraging. ‘With the
PSA
undetectable and no growth showing up on the sonar, you are in the clear, but keep doing the
PSA
every six months.'

At the gastroenterologist, De Villiers was given a prescription for the rectal bleeding. ‘Don't worry, that kind of bleeding is quite common after extensive radiation therapy,' the doctor said. ‘It will clear up soon.'

But De Villiers's mind was elsewhere through all the consultations and tests. He left Westville for Weber's chambers without having concentrated on his state of health. He had no idea how the rest of the week would develop. He badly needed news from Kawerau.

James Mazibuko didn't turn up for his meeting with Weber. He was driving with Natasha from the game lodge back to Johannesburg. He made a call from the car's built-in phone. ‘I know where your wife is,' he said to Johann Weber. ‘And it's going to cost you more than your precious little car.'

‘Is she safe?' Weber asked.

‘As safe as can be, with a personal guard at her door.'

‘Where is she? Can we free her without her getting hurt?'

‘Easier than taking money from a cash-in-transit van,' Mazibuko said. ‘If you know what I mean,' he chuckled.

‘Where?' Weber asked again.

‘In the northeast, as you guessed.'

‘I want to be there when you free her.'

‘You get no discount for helping,' Mazibuko said. ‘And as I said, it's going to cost you more than your precious little Carrera.'

‘What more do you want?'

‘I'll let you decide how much your wife is worth after my men have freed her. It's only then that we'll know what risks we've had to take and what the cost in lives and, dare I say it, prison sentences might be.'

Weber pondered the equation. He had once read of a businessman who hired out his services to established concerns as a cost cutter. He charged his clients what they thought his advice was worth after he had saved their businesses from bankruptcy. Mazibuko's proposal fitted well with Weber's training as a maritime lawyer. In the shipping world, the reward given to a successful salvor was determined after the event, and depended greatly on precisely such factors as Mazibuko had mentioned. Value of the ship or cargo saved. Expenses incurred by the salvor. Degree of risk taken by the salvor. Technical difficulty of the salvage operation. Loss of men and equipment during the salvage operation.

‘That sounds fair,' he said. ‘Where do we meet? And when?'

‘Phalaborwa Airport, I think. It's not much more than an airstrip, and you're going to have to hire a private plane.'

Weber had been to Phalaborwa for a maritime lawyers' conference. There were private-hire flights available at Virginia Airport in Durban North and at Oribi Airport outside Pietermaritzburg. ‘Will tomorrow do?' he asked.

‘Too soon. I need to put an operation together,' Mazibuko said. ‘Give me a break. These things don't happen overnight.'

‘Day after tomorrow? I can be there at about 9.'

‘Make it earlier. We need to hit them during the morning's first game drive.'

‘Fine. See you at the airstrip at, say, 7.30 on Friday. I'll make it happen,' Weber said.

‘Not so fast,' Mazibuko said. ‘Jeez, it's obvious you have no experience at this kind of thing. I'll contact you after I've put everything in place, and only then will we know whether it's doable and whether there's a place for you in the team.'

Weber held on for more, but Mazibuko cut the connection.

The general and the major changed the venue at the last moment. ‘Go to the airport and wait at the House of Coffees,' said the message. De Villiers would have done the same as a security measure.

‘Let me do the talking,' Johann Weber said while they were looking for a parking space in the covered parking nearest to the terminal.

‘What? Don't you trust me?' De Villiers asked.

‘It's not that. We need a strategy for this meeting, and it's the kind of thing I do,' Weber said. ‘You're a man of action. Verbal strategy is my business.'

De Villiers continued to argue all the way into the terminal. ‘They're after me, not you. You are just a convenient tool for them to get at me.'

‘That may be so. That's exactly why you shouldn't do the talking. You are too deeply involved. Let me do it, alright?'

They were early. The coffee shop was crowded with travellers and their hangers-on and there was luggage all over the floor. ‘Now keep out of it, if you can,' Weber cautioned De Villiers again as they stood and waited for a table. ‘Let me probe a bit first. And don't lose your temper.'

They saw the pale figure manoeuvring a man in a wheelchair between the chairs and tables inside. The man stopped in front of them. Behind his wheelchair stood the major Weber had seen many years ago in Pretoria when they were settling the
Alicia Mae
affair.

Weber looked at the man in the wheelchair. The man looked up at Weber. Recognition dawned simultaneously in Weber's eyes. ‘You,' Johann Weber said.

‘Yes, me,' Spokie van den Bergh said.

Time stood still as old memories and animosities rose to the surface.

‘This is your way of getting even? Abducting my wife?' Weber asked when he had recovered from the shock. When he had last seen Spokie, he had been a teacher. Now he was a general.

‘Nothing happens without my say-so,' Van den Bergh said. ‘And I keep my promises.' It was clear that he had remembered and had known precisely whom to expect at the meeting.

Weber turned to Pierre de Villiers. ‘Is this the general who sent you on the mission to shoot Robert Mugabe?'

De Villiers nodded.

‘And the same general who involved you in the
Alicia Mae
operation?'

‘The same,' De Villiers said.

‘Why didn't you tell me?' Weber asked.

‘I didn't know you knew each other,' De Villiers said. ‘How could I? How
do
you know each other?'

‘It goes back a long way,' Weber said.

‘Sit down,' Spokie said. ‘We have important business to discuss and we have no time to waste.'

They sat around the table like four large dogs, each of a different breed, none prepared to show fear or intimidation.

‘What do you want from us?' Weber said. ‘Make it short and believable.'

‘Money,' the major said. ‘And lots of it.' He spoke with the assurance of a man in charge.

‘I don't believe you,' Weber said. ‘You people have never been interested in money.'

‘Tell them, Major,' the general said.

The major's eyes shifted between Spokie van den Bergh and Weber as he spoke. ‘You'll remember that settlement agreement we did in your office in 1993? Well, there's a problem with it.'