Old Lovers Don't Die (30 page)

“Ne déplacez pas.”

Christian could feel the barrel hard up against his spine and knew not to move.

“Déplacer à l’arrière du camion.”

He moved around to the back of the truck as instructed. The person with the gun standing behind him was not allowing Christian a view of who he was. At the rear of the truck, he was instructed in French again, to climb up and remain face down on the tray. Clambering up onto the tray, he wished he had kept his camera case with him. As he turned to see who it was pointing the gun at him, he heard a small cry and heard the gun fall to the ground. He looked around; his assailant had collapsed beside the goat track, blood streaming from a head wound. Christian looked up and saw Mike emerging from the track giving a thumbs-up sign. Beyond Mike a little bit further up the road, Galela and Isabella were hurrying towards the ambulance. He jumped down off the tray and climbed back in the cab. He had the engine started before they arrived. Isabella put her head through the drive’s door, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and mouthed thank you before clambering up on the back of the truck with Mike. Galela got in the right-hand passenger door, his automatic weapon laid on the floor under his feet, a canvas bag similar to what he had seen Mike carrying placed on the seat next to him.

“If there was one, there are liable to be more. Don’t stop driving. Just let me and Mike deal with it,” Galela said as he used the rifle butt to smash the half-broken windscreen in front of him.

Christian drove as fast as he thought the ambulance would allow. Despite being designed as an off-road ambulance, the huge wheels were more suited for mud than the dry rutted African dirt and volcanic rocks. He glanced down at the speedometer; 20 mph was all he could manage. If they were pursued in anything more modern, they would be caught. Then he heard Mike start firing from the back of the ambulance. Glancing in the rear vision mirror, he could see the black Range Rover. He could see men were hanging from the windows firing indiscriminately in their direction. Christian instinctively crouched lower over the wheel, as he heard some of the bullets lodge in the cab. Galela was now out the passenger window looking to assist Mike. He heard the distinctive clatter from Mike’s weapon. As they rounded a corner, he knew they were fifteen minutes from the town. Suddenly as he rounded the corner there was another large black four-wheel-drive across the road in front of him. Two men stood in front of it with automatic weapons aimed at them. He shouted at Galela as he applied the brakes.

“Don’t stop. Go round them!” Galela said as he expertly shot the two men through the missing windscreen before jumping out of the passenger door rolling into the bush. Glancing back, he could see Mike had done the same, taking Isabella with him. Christian swerved to get around the rear of the black Mercedes four-wheel-drive, when he felt the wheels of the ambulance slide down the hill. It refused to go any further despite him trying to reverse back.

“Get out,” he heard Mike shout from the bush.

Scrambling out of the cab, he grabbed the camera bag and crawled through the bush close to where he had seen Galela roll. In the distance, he could see the top of the black Range Rover parked across the road. An eerie quiet had descended upon the road. Christian knew the occupants of the Range Rover would be making their way through the bush towards them. Christian reached into the camera bag. He had a feeling he might need the Glock pistol. He also removed the SD card from the camera and slipped it into his rear pocket.

“They will try and get in front of us,” Galela whispered in his ear having crawled up next to him. “We need that black Mercedes; can you crawl around the back while I cover you? Keep your head down and when you are ready to start, signal me with a fist in the air, and Mike and I will cover you.”

Christian nodded and smiled at Galela and began crawling through the undergrowth to get to far side of the vehicle. At the rear of the black Mercedes, and still protected by the bush, he could see one of the men whom Galela had shot still holding the keys to the car. To be able to get them he would be in full view of whoever was up the road. However, if he did not get them, they all might die on the side of the road. He broke cover from the bush and ran as hard as he could, crouched over. As he drew level with the rear wheel, he heard the passenger window shatter above his head, sprinkling him with glass. Instinctively he dived to the ground, sliding to be within reach of the keys. He pulled the keys out of the hand of the dead driver, and rolled into the bush at the front of the Mercedes. Then he heard another bullet strike the front tire and the tire behind him. Kim and Kariba’s gang were trying to isolate the Mercedes. Christian crawled up the bank to see whether the Mercedes was sitting on flat tires and whether they could still use it. As he peered through the grass at the top of the bank, he heard another shot and suddenly felt a burning in his right flank. As he looked down, blood was oozing through his shirt.

He called out to Galela, “I’ve been shot.”

“Have you got the keys?”

“Yes,” he shouted back.

“Stay where you are. I’ll come and get you.”

Christian ripped his shirt and then could see a bullet hole beneath his right rib cage. It had exited through his back; the real issue was what important organ it had hit and missed inside his abdomen. He knew that he was going to need surgery. If the bullet had sliced his liver, he doubted whether there would be anyone with the skill to repair it. At least there was the small comfort that if he did die, it was in the same continent that his father had died on. He could hear Galela crawling through the bush and wondered how much time he had as the blood had now soaked half of his shirt. Looking up, he saw Galela crawling across the road and crouching behind the rear wheel of the Mercedes. More shots struck the far side of the vehicle.

“Hang on, Christian. We going to get you out,” Galela shouted to him under the car.

“I’m going to throw the keys to you underneath the car.”

Christian threw the keys underneath the car and watched Galela pick them up. More gunfire erupted from close to the black Range Rover. There was no way that they would get into the car; as soon as they did, they would be sitting ducks and all would be killed. The firing then momentarily stopped. In the relative quiet, Christian could detect another car coming up the road from the direction of the town. If they were Kariba’s men, they were going to be sandwiched. Galela heard the approaching vehicle and turned his gun to face the oncoming threat. A red Civic Honda then appeared around the corner and slid to a halt in a cloud of dust fifty metres from where they were. Four men leapt out carrying automatic weapons.

“Don’t shoot!” they shouted as they ran crouched before diving into the bush next to them.

“Mohamed’s friendly jihadists. We heard you were in trouble,” one of the young man called out from his hiding place in the bush. Christian watched a series of hand signals. The long grass started to move as the one of the young man from the red Honda Civic crawled and then stood behind the front wheel of the Mercedes. Signalling silently to three of his friends, they positioned themselves behind with the Mercedes between them and the black Range Rover. Then as one stood and opened fire on the bush on either side of the Range Rover.

“Christian, the next time they do that, crawl towards their car,” Galela shouted.

Christian watched as they reloaded magazines into their weapons, wondering how much blood he would lose crawling to the car, when he felt Mike and Isabella alongside him.

“Mike, I’ve been shot. I think it’s serious and the bullet has gone through my liver. I’m going to need a laparotomy to stop the bleeding. I can feel my pulse is already 84 bpm so I’m losing a significant volume of blood.”

Mike looked up and saw Galela pointing repeatedly at the red car. Mike turned and explained to the nearest gunman what they intended to do. He nodded showing Mike five fingers. As the fifth finger went up, the four young men stood up and started firing again as Mike and Isabella dragged Christian to the red Honda Civic. Once in the back seat, Isabella quickly removed Christian’s shirt, tearing it using parts to plug the entrance and exit wounds.

“Doctor Sudani,” Mike said into his mobile phone as they headed towards Garanyi. “Christian has been shot and is going to need a laparotomy. I can do the anaesthetic but we are going to need a surgeon a bit more experienced than a generalist. Is there anyone who is close that you could get urgently? We will be at the hospital in fifteen minutes.”

“Hang on, Christian,” Mike said as he switched his phone off. “We are in luck. The visiting surgeon from Syria, Josef Strauss, is at the hospital. He’s going to wait for us in theatre, and he’s previously done all kinds of complex surgery according to Emmanuel.”

Arriving at the hospital, Mike and Galela lifted Christian out of the red Civic and carried him in through the theatre door. Emmanuel met them and quickly inserted an intravenous line into Christian’s arm.

“Joseph is in theatre scrubbed up as is Teresa. All you need to do, Mike, is familiarise yourself with the ventilator and the drugs. Satilde is also here to help you do that. The changing room is there to your right.”

Christian heard Mike changing and then walking through into the theatre.

“This will make you feel better,” He said as he opened his medical supply bag and took out some propofol.

Emmanuel had changed into surgical scrubs as had John, who had appeared when he heard that it was Christian who was going to be operated on. They both lifted Christian onto the operating table and, looking up, Christian could only see the deep blue eyes of Josef Strauss.

“I think it has gone through my liver.”

“Don’t you worry; I have operated on many livers and even replaced some of them. You will be fine, besides which you also have an excellent anaesthetist.”

Mike had his intravenous line running and started to trickle in the propofol. For a moment, he stopped and looked up, uncertain as to what disturbed him about Josef Straus. It was the last comment he had made, but surgeons often said things like that. Flattering the anaesthetist was a ritual that surgeons regularly indulged in partly because they did not really understand what the anaesthetists did. The top of the table was considered a bit of a black magic zone. Banter aside, there was something familiar about the way that Josef stood; also his accent wasn’t clearly German or Dutch. Mike hoped he wasn’t one of those rogue surgeons who had been kicked out of his home country and now operated unsupervised in Africa.

Christian looked up, starting to relax as the propofol took effect. He was finding it difficult to focus, but he could see the concern in Mike’s eyes. As he drifted off to sleep, he hoped that Josef Strauss knew what he was doing.

The voices all sounded some way off as he struggled to wake up from the anaesthetic. The sedative effects of the morphine made it difficult to focus. Blinking a few times, he was aware of many blurred faces standing around the foot of his bed. A yellowish light filtering through a small window above his bed created a surreal effect. As his mind started to clear, he understood where he was: the recovery area outside of theatre. Squinting to focus, he could just make out Cindy; she was closest to him and holding his hand. He looked up at and smiled. When he tried to turn to look at her he winced, the pain in his abdomen reminding him of his surgery. Picking up the sheet, he looked underneath; there was an incision just below his right rib margin. However, it was not a midline incision; it was a Kocher’s incision, very specific for liver injuries. Whoever the surgeon was, he had had great surgical experience, and in addition, he had neatly repaired his skin.

“Christian.” He heard another voice next to his ear.

He turned his head away from Cindy and tried to focus again. He recognised Isabella’s voice; as he turned slowly to his right, he could see her sitting in a chair next to his bed, stethoscope and blood pressure cuff in hand.

“I need to check your blood pressure again,” she said as she unfurled the sphygmomanometer. “How are you feeling and how’s your pain level?”

“Pain about 4/10; otherwise I feel okay. Who was the surgeon who operated on me?”

Christian did not really understand the silence that followed his question. He looked towards the foot of the bed where Mike and Galela were standing next to each other. Mike gave the thumbs up sign while Galela just winked and smiled at him. Dr. Sudani was standing next to Galela, but the person next to him he did not recognise. He had on a white coat so Christian knew he was probably a doctor. However, he was wearing a surgical mask that covered most of his face, and beneath the mask there was, protesting its containment, a full bristly beard. It disguised his features, keeping all well hidden, other than piercing blue eyes. Christian remembered Isabella’s description from when they were triaging the boys in the Congo; the description fitted the surgeon Josef Strauss.

“You must be Josef Strauss. Thank you for saving my life. And doing such a neat job of stitching me closed.”

“Great to see you awake, Christian.”

“You obviously had some experience dealing with livers from where you put the incision.”

“Quite a bit of experience in actual fact, which I’m happy to tell you about when you are feeling a little better.”

As Josef finished his last sentence, Christian was aware of Mike and Galela smiling as if part of some intrigue. They were looking at Josef Strauss as though expecting him to make some kind of grand pronouncement. Christian looked back to Josef. He noticed he quickly averted his eyes, but not before Christian had seen the tears gathering in the corners. He then turned and quickly walked out the door with Mike following closely behind.

“What’s going on?” Christian said, looking both at Cindy and at Isabella for an answer. “Doesn’t Josef think that I will recover?”

He felt Cindy squeeze his hand tighter while Isabella put the stethoscope down and looked at him.

“You’re going to be fine; Josef did a wonderful job of repairing your liver and the inferior vena cava, which the bullet had torn. Without his experience you might have died. Your haemoglobin is now five but we think that you are going to be fine without a transfusion. You will just be tired for a few weeks as you would know, but the plan is for Mike and Galela to take you back to Cape Town on a special plane which Sibokwe has organised in a week’s time.”

“So why did Josef walk out with tears in his eyes?”

“It was a very emotional experience, and with you bleeding, we didn’t know whether we would lose you on the table.”

“So you were assisting Josef.”

“Yes I was.”

“And do I look as good on the inside as I do on the outside?”

“Very cute, I mean you look very cute on the inside as well, everything where it should be, and nice to hear the sense of humour returning - that’s always a good clinical indicator.”

“But that doesn’t really explain Josef’s reaction just now. Surgeons are trained not to be emotional and with the experience that he must have, judging by that perfect incision, that does not really fit either. What is it that you’re not telling me?”

“We just want you to get well first.”

“Get well first before what. Come on, Isabella, we are all adults here. My haemoglobin maybe five but my pulse rate is down. I’m not bleeding, therefore I’m going to recover, my sense of humour has returned. I’m capable of dealing with whatever you need to tell me.”

“Okay, let me go and talk to your surgeon,” said Isabella disconnecting the blood pressure cuff.

Isabella stood up and placed the sphygmomanometer on the seat. She looked at Cindy, raising her eyebrows in a way which indicated the inevitability of supplying an answer to Christian’s question. Christian noticed the look and stared at Cindy to see whether he could determine a clue to what was going on from her facial expression. She looked at him, smiled and squeezed his hand. That did not tell him much, but she did not look away so he interpreted that as a positive sign.

“Tell me what happened then to Kariba’s gang. I know that I can manage to hear about that.” Christian winked at Cindy.

“The men that Mohammed sent to find you shot two of Kariba’s men. They think three others got away and that Kariba was one of them.”

“That’s a pity that he escaped. In a way if he hadn’t, that would have been raw jungle justice.”

“Yes, it would have been, but dying by the sword would have been too easy for someone who has inflicted so much pain and suffering on so many. However, there is some good news. Bosco the Brutal surrendered to European authorities and is to be tried for war crimes committed in the Congo. Mike told us that he has lung cancer and the only treatment for his particular type of lung cancer is in the Netherlands.”

“Mike hinted at that when we were at the mine. The only issue with that is that Kariba will see the whole of the Congo as his unrivalled kingdom; there will be nothing to restrain him, especially with unrestricted Chinese support. By the way, have you seen Michelangelo?”

“Yes I did. He is doing really well and wants to come and see you after late afternoon prayers with Mohammed and say thank you for everything that you did for him.”

“Now that’s really good news. I’ll look forward to that. I take that to mean, now that Mike and Galela are here, that Kim Yao is no longer a threat.”

“Before you went into theatre, Mike checked all your pockets and found the disc with the photos that you had taken with your telephoto lens of Kim dumping boys at Mount Golgotha. He uploaded them to his laptop as well as the data from the meeting at the orphanage, which was on my phone. He then e-mailed them to the Chinese embassy in Cape Town threatening to release them to the media. Kim and her entourage, we heard, left the orphanage in a great rush in the middle of the night and they haven’t been seen since.”

“So who’s running the orphanage now?”

“Gabriella and I,” Cindy said smiling contentedly.

“Well Cindy, sounds like you’re going to have your hands full. You may not be able to leave, you realise.”

“I was thinking exactly that and how wonderful that might be.”

Christian heard the theatre door open again. Mike and Galela walked in, followed by Josef Strauss and Isabella. Josef had removed his surgical mask, and without looking directly at Christian, sat on the chair next to his bed. Christian looked more closely at Josef; strangely, it was like looking at a bearded, older version of himself. Josef turned and looked Christian directly in the eyes; a shout of primal recognition reverberated deep within Christian followed by a strange sense of peace. It was a feeling that Christian had never experienced before.

“Christian, do you remember what struck you most when you first went to Dr Sudani’s house?”

Christian thought it was a very strange question with which to begin a conversation, especially with someone you had just operated on. In addition, he could not imagine that Dr Sudani’s house would explain all the looks that had been exchanged between everyone in the room previously.

“I thought it was very reminiscent of some of the houses that I had seen in Cape Town.”

“You are absolutely correct. I designed it when I thought that I was going to live here. Then unfortunately I couldn’t.”

“Well, I’ve heard that the houses in Cape Town are very similar to those in Holland or Germany. I guess, though, the interesting bit is why you couldn’t live there?”

“I know you’re not prepared for this, although a few minutes ago I sensed a brief recognition in your soul. What I am going to tell you next there is no preparation for. For more than twenty years, you have had no father and for more than twenty years, I have had no son. However, there is not a day that has gone by that I have not thought about you or your mother. I am your father Jannie, who you thought had been killed in Cape Town. A man named Van der Walt tried to kill me to prevent me disclosing information, which would severely embarrass the South African apartheid government. It was only because Galela fought with him that I wasn’t executed in the back garden of our home in Wynberg. I knew the threat of documents being released would keep you and your mother alive, but if Van der Walt knew I was alive, he would not rest until he found me and tortured me for the location of the documents. When I arrived at the mortuary in Cape Town, a doctor friend of mine pronounced me dead although it was he who resuscitated me. I thought I could live and do surgery in Rwanda as Josef Strauss but someone recognised me from the time I had been here doing research. Therefore, despite my newly acquired beard, my German name and accent, I had to disappear before Van der Walt came looking for me again.”

Christian could have touched the silence in the room. All eyes he knew were on him as he struggled to take in the enormity of Josef’s revelation.

“Are you really my father? I saw you shot by Van der Walt next to the pool at our house in Wynberg Cape Town and mum and I weren’t unable to resuscitate you.”

“When Van der Walt shot your father, he was about to put a bullet through his head and then kill me so that I would get the blame for the killing. We fought and the noise of the fighting attracted the lady next door. That combination saved your father a fatal headshot,” said Galela.

“I saw all of that,” Christian said. “I’d climbed back up on the tree stump and saw what was happening.”

“I seem to remember telling you to stay hidden no matter what you heard,” Josef said smiling at Christian. “Must be those rebellious genes which you inherited from your mother.”

“But she was certain that you were dead, and she is a good doctor!”

“Your mother could not feel a pulse because I had lost a significant amount of blood. The paramedic also thought I was dead and took me directly to the Salt River mortuary. A friend of mine, Dr Sandy van de Merwe, was a pathologist working there and was about to put a tag on my toe which would identify my corpse, when he noticed some eye movement. He started CPR again. Sandy sutured my neck wound with some of the suture material he used on the corpses, and put up an intravenous line. He said that within fifteen minutes, I was sitting up and talking.”

“Seeing you dead next to our swimming pool gave me nightmares for many years. Almost ten years ago, I went back to Cape Town and our home in Wynberg, to try to put the memory to rest.”

“Mike and Galela have told me that part of the story and that you went back just after you finished high school and found the folder that I had buried in the back garden.”

“It was Isabella who worked out the cryptic clue from the
Wind in the Willows
.”

Isabella interrupted. “The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the pool, he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spellbound by exciting stories. And when tired at last, he sat beneath the willow, while the pool still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.”

“Perfect memory, Isabella, and it was there by the side of the pool that I had changed the original quote that you both worked out which led you to the folder.”

“That’s right,” Christian said. “But surely you could have in some way let us know that you were alive.”

Josef looked at Mike and Galela before replying.

“Van der Walt, as I said, would have hunted you down and killed you and your mother. If he knew that I was alive, there was always a threat, not only to himself for crimes against humanity, but also to governments which had been covertly involved with the South African apartheid. Before he tried to kill me, I was about to reveal the South African apartheid government’s involvement in a secret germ warfare programme. I also knew about South Africa’s nuclear weapons development in which France, Israel, and the United States were covertly involved. I wasn’t certain that the security forces in those countries wouldn’t have cooperated with Van der Walt’s threat to find and kill me if he thought I was alive.”