The Prey (21 page)

Kylie sat back in her seat.

‘Tumi,’ Chris asked from the back, ‘can you take us to the Sunset Dam?’

‘
Yebo
,’ said the guide.

‘That’s the location where we’re planning to mine first. The gravel road we’re on now will be the main access road,’ Chris said for Cameron and Kylie’s benefit.

Kylie had studied a map of the proposed development, overlaid on an aerial photograph. The countryside hadn’t looked like anything special when she’d looked at it in one dimension. She’d thought it would be just flat land and scrub, but it was crisscrossed with stream beds, mostly dry, that were shaded with tall mature trees and thick vegetation. Here and there were granite boulders and other rock formations.

The movement of the Land Rover produced a warm breeze and the lowering sun was casting a mellow golden wash over the bush so that the bark of a tree they were passing glowed almost pink. Birds called and Tumi stopped the Land Rover and turned off the engine.

‘That’s a lilac-breasted roller,’ she said.

After a couple of seconds of searching, Kylie saw the bird. Apart from its eponymous breast, it had a white crowned head. When it turned its face to the breeze and took off, before she could even switch on her camera, its wings shone a brilliant, electric blue. It was, she thought, the most beautiful bird she had seen in her life.

‘Lovely,’ Tumi said, and Kylie could tell she meant it.

Tumi started the engine but drove only three hundred metres before switching off again. ‘What is it?’ Kylie whispered.

Cameron lifted a finger and pointed into the bush, off to the right. ‘Don’t you see it?’

She shook her head.

He put a hand on her shoulder and gently turned her until she was looking at a tree.

He left his hand on her and it unsettled her slightly. It wasn’t until she heard, then saw a swish of long black hairs, on a tail, that she saw the giraffe. It was no more than five metres from the edge of the road. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t see it.’ Instinctively she placed her hand on his, by way of thanks.

Cameron gently slid his hand from under hers. ‘Your eyes take a bit of time to adjust from the city to the bush. Things can be staring you in the face, yet you can’t see them because your eyes are still in city mode.’

Kylie found herself mesmerised by the statuesque, beautiful female. She could tell, thanks to Tumi, the sex of the giraffe by noting the tufts of hair on the tips of its horns; the males’ horns were bald. ‘She walks like a supermodel.’

Chris laughed and when Kylie turned from the giraffe, slightly embarrassed, she saw Cameron was smiling, for the first time since she’d met him.

Tumi lingered at the sighting for a couple more minutes before starting the Land Rover’s engine. As they drove away Kylie looked back at the giraffe, contentedly munching on leaves. She’d never imagined she would be so moved by the simple sight of an animal in the wild. She had seen giraffes in the zoo as a child in Australia and didn’t remember feeling nearly so engaged. Perhaps it was the setting.

Kylie knew she would have to refocus her mind soon to get ready for the meeting with the feisty Tertia Venter. Chris had been on leave in the days following his rescue and had slept in the back of
Cameron’s car on the drive up from Barberton, so they’d had little time to talk through the details of the new strategy. She couldn’t do so in front of Tumi, so they would be winging it for the meeting.

Jan had stated the obvious, that Global Resources was starting to feel the impact of Tertia’s vitriolic PR campaign. The company already had in-principle approval to start mining, pending final sign-off on their environmental impact statement, which their government sources and local advisers were telling them was a fait accompli. Still, Tertia’s alarmist claim that animals in neighbouring concessions would be poisoned by contaminants from the mine entering local watercourses was causing some angst among shareholders in Australia. Kylie had been assured Tertia’s claim was nonsense, designed purely to grab headlines – but that’s precisely what she had done. Jan’s PR people, including Musa Mabunda, Tumi’s brother, were continually on the back foot, trying to put out the fires that Tertia kept lighting.

Chris had come up with a scheme that would hopefully silence her. Kylie wasn’t convinced it would work, but Chris said he had built up a measure of rapport with the woman and thought his idea would appeal to her. They would soon see.

Tumi’s radio beeped to life. ‘
Tumi, Tumi, Quentin, copy?’

Tumi keyed the handset. ‘Go Quentin.’

‘
Tumi, I’ve got the
mafazi ngala
with
mapimpans.
She’s
lalapanzi,
eastern side of Sunset, copy
?’

‘Roger, thanks Quentin, I’m coming to you just now. We were heading there in any case.’

‘What did all that mean?’ Kylie asked.

Tumi shifted down a gear and accelerated. ‘Hang on, everyone.’

‘You’ll see,’ Cameron said. He looked back at Chris and winked.

Kylie turned to Chris, who grinned and said: ‘Don’t look at me, my Shangaan is rubbish, man.’

Kylie shook her head, aware that everyone on the vehicle knew what was going on except her. She grabbed the metal railing in front of her as Tumi bounced through a dip into a dry creek bed and up
out the other side. She was content just to hang on and enjoy the ride and found she couldn’t suppress her smile.

‘This is Sunset Dam,’ Chris said in a low voice five minutes later as Tumi slowed the Land Rover to a stop and pulled her binoculars out of the daypack on the seat next to her.

It was an aptly named spot, Kylie thought. The red sun was reflected in the waters of the dam, which rippled gently in the light breeze.

‘There,’ said Tumi, pointing into the setting sun.

‘Well, whatever it is, it’s not on the eastern side of the dam, like that guy said on the radio,’ Kylie said.

‘No, look,’ Cameron interjected, pointing now as Tumi engaged gear again and started driving close to and then around the edge of the dam’s lava-coloured waters. ‘She’s moving them.’

‘Who’s moving who?’ Kylie was getting exasperated now.

Cameron laid a hand on her arm again, and his touch served to soothe her, as much as it surprised her again. She wouldn’t have thought him the touchy-feely type. Again he showed her where to look.

‘Oh my,’ she said, finally spotting what all the fuss was about.

Tumi put the Land Rover in neutral and coasted slowly, silently, a little closer, until they were about fifteen metres from the cat.

The lioness turned her golden eyes to look at them. The fur of her belly, her ears and that of the tiny squawking bundle she carried in her mouth were all suffused with a halo of golden light by the sun behind them. She walked in front of them, not two metres from the Land Rover’s bull bar, not seeming to mind it or the humans on board, and deposited her tiny baby cub with the utmost delicacy under a bush at the base of a tall tree.

Tumi swivelled in her seat, grinning like a child. ‘She only had these cubs five days ago. Look how gentle she is with them.’ The lioness lay down on her side, keeping a watchful eye on the humans.

Kylie thought her heart would melt as she accepted Tumi’s proffered binoculars and watched the cubs clambering over each other
to get to their mother’s teats. They squeaked and snarled in imitation of the fearsome adults they might one day become, fighting for the right to feed first.

‘They’re
adorable
,’ Kylie said.

‘Yes,’ Tumi agreed.

‘So, anyway, this is where the first open-cut mine will be established,’ Chris said softly behind her.

Kylie looked from the lioness and her cubs across the sun-bathed waterhole and at the surrounding wilderness. She sighed. Then, simultaneously, all three of their cellphones beeped.

*

Cameron had tried to make five calls from the bouncing back of the game-viewing vehicle before they made it to the lodge, but everyone seemed to be on the phone or busy elsewhere. Kylie, meanwhile, had spent most of the trip talking to Jan, in Australia, even though it was around two am in Sydney.

Cameron sat on the bed in his suite scrolling through emails on his laptop, searching for news. There was a knock on the door and when he opened it Kylie walked in, holding her phone to her ear. ‘Tell me, Musa, how come we’re being called so late in the day for comment?’ she said.

Kylie stood still, waiting for an answer, and Cameron moved his computer bag off the chair so she could sit down. She waved away his offer, so he sat down and resumed checking.

‘Hello?’ Chris said softly from the open door. Cameron beckoned him in.

‘Well, it’s just not acceptable,’ Kylie said. She listened for a few seconds more. ‘All right, Musa, call me as soon as you hear anything else.’

‘What did he say?’ Cameron asked.

Kylie exhaled and sat down on the end of his bed. She ran a hand through her hair. ‘I was probably a bit hard on Musa. He’s just the messenger. Just as he said in his text message to us, the
Mail and
Guardian
is running a story in tomorrow morning’s edition that says miners at Eureka are being exposed to grossly unsafe levels of silica and other pollutants.’

‘Yes, but that’s ridiculous,’ Cameron said.

‘Well, there’s more. It turns out that the claim isn’t
ridiculous
. Musa’s been in touch with your air pollution monitoring consultancy …’

‘APMS – Air Pollution Monitoring Systems,’ Cameron said.

‘Yes, well, whoever they are, they told Musa that what the paper is going to report
is
correct. The head guy, Johan something, was in the process of preparing a confidential report for you, but it appears one of his staff has leaked it to the press.’

‘
Jissus
.’ Cameron shook his head. ‘I was just trying to call him but his number was engaged. It must have been Musa talking to him.’

She looked across the room at him and he saw the cold fury in her eyes. ‘It shouldn’t be up to the company PR man to be finding this stuff out, Cameron.’

‘It’s my fault, too,’ Chris said. ‘I usually check in with APMS once a week, but after, well, after what happened to us underground I neglected to call Johan this week. He might have given me a verbal heads-up. I’m sorry.’

Kylie waved off his apology ‘It’s not your fault, Chris.’

Cameron bridled at her tone, and her stare. He couldn’t believe this was happening. There had to have been a mistake made somewhere. ‘Chris, you of all people know how stringent our dust control measures are. What do you think happened?’

Chris shrugged. ‘You didn’t have any breakdowns of the ventilation system while I was underground? It could be the samples just came from one day where there was a problem.’

Cameron shook his head. ‘No ways. I was keeping an eye on your stuff the whole time you were missing. I would have known if there’d been a breakdown.’

Kylie stood and started pacing. ‘Look, there’ll be time to find out what went wrong soon enough, but the key thing we have to do now is find a way to turn this around in the media.’

‘No,’ Cameron said. ‘The key thing here is the safety of my workers.’

She stopped and put her hands on her hips. ‘They’re not
your
workers, Cameron. I was just on the phone to Jan. Your transfer to acting head of special projects is now taking effect immediately. We’re putting Coetzee in charge of the mine as of tonight.’

He jumped to his feet. ‘What? You can’t do this to me.’

She squared up to him, even though he was a head taller than she. ‘I can and I just have, with Jan’s blessing.’

‘You’re making a mistake. I need to get back to Barberton and find out how and where this happened.’

‘No, Cameron. Coetzee is overseeing the investigation, which is going to be carried out by a team from APMS. Musa’s drafting a media release now saying that work is to be suspended at Eureka pending an urgent review of ventilation systems and intensive site monitoring. The government and union are being invited to send a representative to observe the investigation. Don’t try and accuse me of not putting the safety of our workers first – I’ve already ordered the mine shut down. It’s you who dropped the ball here, Cameron.’

He clenched his fists in futile rage. Who did she think she was? He knew his mine and he knew his record, and Chris’s, on safety. He looked at Chris and the other man just shrugged. ‘Maybe they mixed up the samples.’

‘Musa asked Johan if that was possible,’ Kylie said. ‘He said that Eureka’s samples were the only ones they were working on this past week. He personally did a second and third analysis of the samples to make sure the findings were correct. He said he only found out yesterday. He was just about to put in his report when the leak happened.’

Cameron sat down again, defeated. Kylie’s phone rang and she jabbed the answer button.

‘Kylie Hamilton.’ She listened. ‘Shit, Musa, this is going from bad to worse. OK, call me after you’ve watched it.’ She hung up. ‘Fuck.’

‘What is it?’ Cameron asked.

‘The union’s just declined our invitation to take part in the review and they’re saying that they’re calling for an indefinite strike at the mine, pending the outcome of the review. On top of that, the
Mail and Guardian
is worried other media outlets will jump on the story so they’re going proactive with it and offering a preview of the article to SABC 1. It’s going to be on television tonight – claims that we’re exposing workers to “lethal” levels of contaminants.’

‘Is Musa going to go on TV?’ Chris asked.

Kylie shook her head. ‘No. The timing of all this couldn’t be worse. We’re stuck out here in the bloody bush, Musa is in Botswana visiting a diamond mine and Jan’s in Sydney. And now we’ve got to go and face that witch, Tertia Venter.’

Cameron held his tongue. He simply couldn’t believe he wasn’t being allowed to manage what was going on in the mine –
his
mine. But Kylie was right. Their meeting with Tertia was in minutes, yet they hadn’t had any free time to discuss their strategy, or Chris’s bold offer on behalf of Global Resources – the purpose of their visit to Lion Plains. They would have to wing it.