Place of Bones (13 page)

“Here?”

“Sure. Ryan reckons that from your point of view, here’s the only place that’ll really satisfy you. Since you could otherwise assume that anywhere else, and they could pick her up again whenever they wanted. Which would be the same as hanging on to her.”

“Bloody courteous of him!” It was all I could think to say.

Piet nodded. “I thought a lot about that on the flight over from Uganda. It’s an act of good faith they’re trying to get through to you, Robbie. But it’s a null and void point, if you ask me. You want an opinion?”

“I could use one. Plus a stiff drink.”

“They’re on the level, Robbie. At least about Karen. They know that if you state Jo-burg as a preference, then she’d be available to the Brits again. And that would negate the whole deal. Same, really, would apply wherever you said take her. Which is why Ryan said she’d be safer left with him. The point is, S.A.I. don’t
need
her. Not the way the Brits do...did! They’ve got their guarantee already.”

“Tell me.”

Piet hesitated. “You’re going to be a marked man, Robbie. Especially from the Chinese point of view. They’re going to be after their pound of flesh
whatever
happens from here on it. Granted, there’s not a lot they could do with us here, but they’d think up something nasty for afterwards. We can’t stay here for ever. There are a hundred
also’s
, Robbie. Also, the yanks are out there somewhere. God knows why, but they’re there. We don’t have many friends. Or, we
won’t
have. SAI knows it, and I’ve got to tell you, I do too. It’s either play it their way, or make a stand right here - without bothering to put on any long playing records.”

I had to smile. “But you came, Piet.”

He shrugged. “Sure. I told you. I owe you. I owe “Cat.” Besides, life was getting to be a yawn.” He grinned briefly. “But the decision has to be made right now. No-one knows how much time we’ve got left, least of all Ryan. If you don’t do something before the Brits realize what’s happened to Karen...” He let that hang.

I said, “What’s in it for South Africa, Piet? You haven’t told me yet.”

“That’s easy. I don’t know what water went under the bridge two days ago, not to do with this mess, but the overall picture has been up for display for months. The Chinese had to be stopped. Because if they weren’t, and they gained control of Zaire, then S.A. would be next on the list. No question. I’m South African, Robbie, though anyone else would be forgiven for thinking otherwise. All I mean by that, is I know the score. I know what this means for Pretoria, for the new administration. You send the Chinese into S.A. and they’ll blow everything to hell and back. And we’ve only recently come
back
from that place!”

I nodded. “So what do they want?”

Piet sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. “They want an immediate strike. They know Camp-One is a fresh outfit; untried, unmolded. But they’re all fighting men, and that’s what counts.”

“What’s the target?” This was just question and answer. I had yet to assimilate in my mind what it all meant.

“There’s two, Robbie. Kinshasa’s the first; for effect. Motanga’s pad. He’s there now, apparently. Will be for several weeks. He’s got to be knocked out.”

“Making space for whom?”

“I’d be guessing on that one.”

“Then guess.”

“Lumimba.”

“Roderick Lumimba?” I knew a lot of men who had gone down putting that man into power. I also knew a lot who had died taking that power away from him!

“Can’t think of anyone else. Can you? Lumimba is not exactly pro-S. A. But he’s not
that
anti, either. He
is
anti-Motanga. And he hates the Brits and the yanks. Also, Lumimba’s mother was Kikuyu. But the clincher, for my money, is that his brother’s wife is Kangatzi. And we all know how Motanga feels about them. At the very least the country will be split in half.” He gave a humorless grunt. “Again!”

“Okay. What’s the second target?” For me, it was still a matter of question and answer. No more, no less. For the moment.

“You know more about that than I do. Motanga’s got all his loyal troops out in the field, waiting for the British pay-off. I’ve got a few guesses about that side of it, Robbie, and if I’m right you won’t want to discuss it much. True?”

I nodded. “True.”

“Shit,” he said softly, more mouthed than heard above the din of the water. What he meant by that, I did not know. Nor did I ask him. I said, “Go on.”

“Eh?” he said, lost for a moment. Then, “Yeah, well. They need to be hit fairly hard. I know it sounds crazy, three thousand troops. But it shouldn’t be too difficult to knock a bit of wind out of their sails, not with Motanga already out of the picture.” He gave a wry smile. “Assuming he
is!
Anyway, a night strike maybe. Hit and run. In and out. We’ve done it before, Robbie, against worse odds.”

I smiled. “No, we haven’t, Piet.”

He shrugged. “Well, almost...Let’s not get too negative, eh?”

“By all means. In and out, you said. How?”

“How what?”

“How out?”

“Ah!  S.A. will supply the transport. Chopper gunships. I don’t know where from, but they’ll have them somewhere. Ryan says they can be here in a matter of hours.”

“And all this has got to be done yesterday. Right?”

“If not the day before.”

For no good reason, we started to laugh.

“You need
what?
” said Ryan.

Karen McCann felt like a fool.
Things!
What a childish way to put it! Had the man been a pharmacist in Jo-burg she would have felt no embarrassment at all, no need to search for code words. Well, that was not quite true. There was always a tinge of embarrassment when the chemist was a man. Why, she did not know. It was not as if she were the only girl in the world to suffer the monthly
plague.
But it was never like this. Then again, she had never been stuck on a farm in the middle of nowhere before, with only two men for company. Surely to God she was allowed a little embarrassment, a little discomfort. She steeled herself. She had to. Too soon, she knew from pains in her stomach, it would be far too late for self-consciousness.

“I need some tampons.” She felt herself flush to the roots of her being. How
could
they put her in this impossible situation!

“Oh, that,” said Ryan, his face clearing immediately. “Why the hell didn’t you say so in the first place!  Any particular kind?”

Oh, God! Karen thought, am I supposed to discuss these things in detail with a perfect stranger? “Just tampons!” she spat. She turned on her heel and stormed into the house, brushing angrily passed the other man, the black African farm manager, as if he were not there. She could not understand why she felt so mortified, so hurt. She went immediately to the room they had given her and threw herself onto the bed, fighting hard to stem the tears that, so far, she had managed to conquer. I’ll not cry. They’ll not make me cry!

Karen McCann’s stoicism was a trait inherited from the mother she had never really known, and which had been underpinned by sixteen years of life as a virtual orphan.

She was different from all her friends, she knew it and accepted it. Hers could never be the life of family gatherings; of ready mother’s shoulder to cry on; of a steadying father’s day to day influence; of the true if stormy companionship of a brother or sister. She was, for all intents and purposes, alone in the world. She had grown used to the idea as a child and was beginning to come to terms with it as an adolescent. To her, Robert McCann had never been any more than a source of pocket money. She rarely saw him and, in truth, rarely even
thought
of him. Certainly never as a father. And now, suddenly, out of nowhere, this...this jumble of confusion in a vacuum of nothingness. And it was all
his
fault!

At first, when those three men, those awful automatons, had bustled her into their car, she had been very frightened indeed, imagining all kinds of evils about to be perpetrated upon her. Then had come the slow realization that she was not about to be raped, nor even molested, other - they had told her - than that which she brought upon herself. Whatever they meant by
that!
The flight, in what she could only assume to be some kind of executive jet, small, yet ostentatiously furnished, had been a quiet affair and had proved beyond doubt that, for now at least, her life was in no danger. It had amazed her that she found herself able to cope with what could have been a horrifying experience. The kind you only read about, or saw enacted in films.

She heard a knock to the door. It was a light, almost apologetic tap. That was Isa, the manager. Ryan’s knock was bolder.

“Go away!”

“Yes, miss,” came the reply, “But mister Ryan said I was to make you some breakfast.”

“I don’t want any breakfast.”

“No,miss. But mister Ryan said I was to make it anyway. You want eggs?”

Karen sat up, steadying herself. She was being petulant and she knew it. It had to stop. But what other device did she have? “Just coffee.”

“Yes, miss. Shall I put your eggs on some toast?”

Karen stared out of the window at the veldt that stretched in gently undulating waves to the horizon, the emptiness of the scene reminding her of the desolation she felt inside. If only she knew
why
she was here. What was it all about? Ryan had said that it was to do with her father. But
what
to do with him? And why had she to be brought here, to a farm in the middle of a wilderness. Well, it was a farm in name only. Certainly there were no signs of any farm
work
being done. For that matter, where were the farm
workers?
There was only Ryan and Isa. Everything about it was unnatural, unreal. She glanced at the tiny dressing table upon which she had laid her only possessions; her purse, a small comb, and the necklace her...She wrenched her eyes back to the window. Her father had sent her that necklace last Christmas. She wished now she had thrown it away.

“Miss?”

“What!”

“Toast?”

She looked again at the pitifully small array on the dressing table. At that moment those three things represented the sum total of her short life. A purse containing a few coins and hair pins; a comb; and... Tears were very close now, she could feel them pricking at her eyes. Why did she have to be so alone? Almost unconsciously her hand reached out for the necklace. She stared at it as if mesmerized. Johannesburg seemed a million miles and a hundred years away. Her entire life might have belonged to someone else.

“It’s not fair!” she heard herself say bitterly.

“Pardon, miss?”

She tore here eyes from the necklace, frowning at the door. “What?” She noticed, with a strange kind of detachment, that the paper above the door was peeling away from the wall. She had not seen it before. Then she looked around the rest of the room. It was all like that; peeling and faded like an old photograph. And it smelt. She sniffed, her nose crinkling. God! Was that smell
her!
She lifted her arm and sniffed beneath it. No, it was the room. Decay, rot and disinfectant. Again she sniffed her armpit. Now she perceived   the beginnings of a very definite body odor. She would have to bathe soon, she knew it. Besides, her
friend
would be here before the day was out, or tomorrow, at the latest. With some residue of embarrassment she remembered Ryan, and hoped he had already left to do her shopping. She would have a bath before he returned. She had refused before, but that was out of petulance. Now it was a matter of some urgency.

She also realized that she
was
hungry.

“Miss?” Isa’s voice had a measure of desperation in it now.

She smiled suddenly, despite herself. From the beginning Isa had bent over backwards to make her feel at home, she realized that now as if for the first time. In fact, they had both, Isa
and
Ryan, been as nice as they knew how. It had grated on her before;
nice
was not enough. She needed explanations, she needed....she needed to go home, back to her life. She needed this to be a bad dream from which she would soon wake.

But it was real. It had happened, and here she was. Almost without thinking she said, “Where
is
this place, Isa?” She had asked the question many times before.

“Pardon, miss?”

“You can open the door, you know.”

The door opened and Isa poked his head into the room. “Eggs, miss?”

Karen felt like bursting out laughing. She remembered Ryan, only this morning, saying, “It’s an adventure, for Pete’s sake! Don’t you like adventures?” And for no reason at all, she wanted to stop acting the sullen teenager. It was a strange feeling. Up to that moment everything had been dreamlike, fantastic. The kidnapping, the flight to the middle of nowhere, the visit from that odd, nameless South African, when Ryan had taken a picture of her, the endless hours of boredom and frustration, with Isa hovering nearby, always trying to do things right.

“Yes, thank you, Isa. I’ll have eggs.”

Isa beamed, straightening from the apologetic crouch that had annoyed her so much. “Yes, miss. And toast?”

Karen smiled at him. Where this sudden change of heart had come from, she had no idea. Perhaps she had simply drained herself of all the negative feelings. She had not cried, but she felt as if she had. It was a release of some kind. The questions were still there to be answered, but it seemed different now. It was as if a switch had been thrown. She wished she knew why. She took a deep breath and stood up. “I’ll have the toast if you tell me where we are.”

The happy smile vanished from Isa’s face, to be replaced by the one he generally wore when she confronted him with such questions. He shook his head sadly. “I can’t tell you anything, miss.” He waved an arm vaguely about the room. “I just look after this place. Mister Ryan -”

“Sod mister Ryan!” she retorted uncharacteristically. “He isn’t God, you know.” She smiled again. This was better. “I just want to know which part of the
world
I’m in!”

The smile came back. “Africa, miss...” His expression told her that he was not being sarcastic; he was simply answering a question that he felt able to. Besides, she knew that Isa did not have a sarcastic bone in him.

“I know
that.
I want to know...”  She had a sudden thought. “Do you know where
I
come from?”

Isa frowned. “Pardon, miss?”

“Do you know who
I
am?”

Isa looked uncomfortable. “No, miss.”

“Do you know why I am
here?”

His gaze slid to the window. “No, miss.”

Karen could have hugged him. “Then we’re
both
in the dark.”

Isa bin Mohammed, a Moslem from Madagascar, had managed Kronje Farm as an SAI safe house for several years. He knew the business he was in and he knew who paid him his wages. He also knew the rules which governed his employment. Beyond these things, as Karen McCann had stated, he
was
in the dark. Unlike the girl, however, such a general state of affairs bothered him not one bit. He had no
desire
to know the finer details of the work he was involved in. In fact, he could have cared less. His only desire was to channel as much money back home as was possible. And the only reason he worked for South African Intelligence at all was because his father had done so. It was, however, a well-paid job, if lonely on occasion - the farm was not used often. Certainly, he had never had to entertain a woman before, let alone a young girl. He, like Karen herself, could not imagine why she had been brought there, and to what end. He had gleaned from Ryan, his temporary control officer, that it was something to do with the girl’s father, a mercenary soldier. But that was all he knew. He would, however, have liked very much to be in a position to tell Karen exactly where she was, geographically, but had been forbidden to offer any information at all. So, however sorry he felt for her and her predicament, this was the way it must be. His
“Africa”
offering had actually been a feeble attempt at humor.

*

For once it was a cool night and the humidity level was reasonably bearable. I figured to take a shower and make the most of it, the rain forests didn’t hand out nights like that without keeping something worse up its sleeve for later. Also, I was shattered. Mentally and physically. We had chewed the whole deal over for three hours, sorting out the bits and pieces, which Brook committed to his damned clipboard. He was off now going through the stores and getting the hardware ready for issue. But for most of the camp there would be nothing to do until morning. The floodlights were ablaze and a football game had started up. Piet was with me in the portacabin. He laid his AK on the radio table and threw himself onto my bunk.

“Jeez! I’m bloody whacked!  I’ll doss down here, if you don’t mind.”

“I do mind,” I said, attempting to grab a bluebottle in flight. I missed.

“You’re an uncharitable bastard. “Cat” was right.”

“About what?” I leant on the door jamb and watched the match dashing through the trees. They had made a ball of someone’s rolled-up shirt and it was mayhem. I had second thoughts about the shower.

“About you being an uncharitable bastard.”

I thought about “Cat” and had a sudden attack of the melancholy. “They’re all gone now, Piet,” I said. “Near as dammit. The youngsters are taking over.”

Piet grunted and settled his head into his hands. “The youngsters can have it. Uganda was going to be my last. I hope you’re suitably impressed.”

“Oh, I am, I am.” I felt oddly at ease as I stood there and watched the shirt taking a pounding, and the men dashing through the shadowed areas like kids, and the guys on the sidelines yelling encouragement. I felt at home. Almost. “Where do you hang your hat now, Piet?”

“You mean when I’m not hanging it in a suitcase?”

“Yes, pillock!”

“Durban, when I get there, which isn’t often. You?”

That was a good and a valid question. “Christ knows!  Nowhere...anywhere. What would you do if you quit?”

“Absolutely sod all.”

“And be bored shitless within a week.”

Piet was silent for a moment, his eyes closed. “Yeah, I guess. How about you?”