The Prey (25 page)

Are you hard for me, lover?

He was.
Just thinking about how hard I fucked you on your desk
.

Lol
. It was the way they were. She liked him to be forceful with her when they met in the flesh, but she pulled the strings the rest of the time.
Did you get a
snotklap
from your lady boss, my poor baby, when I rejected your offer?

She was OK about it with me, but I’m sure she was pissed off
.

Where’s the info you were going to send to me, about your past air quality monitoring results?

I haven’t got it all together yet
. It was the type of information any shareholder or analyst could ask for. They were required to submit regular reports on air quality monitoring to the government’s Department of Mineral Resources, so technically he wasn’t leaking information to Tertia, just facilitating her getting it.

Get it for me, baby. I need it
.

OK
. The deception went against his grain, yet excited him at the same time. It was like his relationship with her. She was eight years older than he, and though she was an attractive woman he could have had his pick of the twenty year olds in town. She was experienced,
and they had done things that most of the girls closer to his age would have blushed at. She was the enemy of Global Resources, but he was desperately, completely in love with her.

When is her press conference?

Half an hour
, he typed. It was public knowledge, the details available on the Global Resources media alert that had been emailed that morning and posted on half-a-dozen news and mining websites, and the company’s.

He clicked on the folder that contained the air pollution monitoring reports and returns to the government. It was all there, the mine’s history of compliance over the past ten years. It would make for dry reading. He went back to the chat window and hovered his cursor over the file-sharing icon.

Unzip your trousers for me. In your office
, she typed.

She had never told him to do that. Not at work, at least. When he had tried it with her once she had said no, flat out. She would not risk one of her staff catching her. Yet she’d been quite happy for him to fuck her on her desk. The limits of this thing were being pushed all the time. He ran a hand through his hair. He thought of her grunting as he thrust in and out of her.

‘No,’ he whispered. He put his hands on the edge of his desk and pushed his office chair back.

Are you there, baby?

She knew he was. She knew the turmoil in him; the guilt; what he was going through for her. She was using him. And he loved it. He tried to be strong, and to hold off replying. He wanted to close down his computer now, to be done with her forever.
I’m sending you the file you want now
.

She ignored his message.
Do it. For me
.

He reached for his zipper.

*

Cameron knocked once on Chris’s door then opened it. Loubser looked up, startled, and rolled his chair closer under his desk.

‘Surfing porn at work? That’s in contravention of the Global Resources internet protocols and a punishable offence.’

‘No, boss. I …
sheesh
, you just gave me a fright is all, man.’

Cameron scoffed. ‘No problem either way.’

Chris’s face flushed even redder. Cameron wondered if he’d cut too close to the bone. In any case it didn’t matter; there was work to be done. ‘Kylie’s going to front the press in twenty minutes. She says you’re going to as well.’

‘But boss, hell, I don’t want to face those vultures. I thought head office said it was going to be Kylie and Hein talking about the review.’

Cameron knew he had to be patient, despite Chris’s whining. ‘They did, but I suggested to her it would be good to have our expert in air quality monitoring there to back her up and to answer any technical questions the jackals might have. She’s ignoring head office and I agree with her. Hein’s relieved. Besides, this is your area of the business that we’re being slandered over, so it’s only fair that you get up there and tell them what we do in terms of monitoring, and how good our results have been so far.’

Chris scratched his head, and used his mouse to click something closed on his computer. ‘All the same, I’d rather be underground again with those bastard
zama zamas
than facing that lot.’

There were parts of Cameron’s job that he didn’t like – most particularly dismissing people. However, he took responsibility for his decisions and stood by them. Chris was the man in the firing line over air quality monitoring. It might not have been his fault that something had gone wrong somewhere, leading to an off-the-scale reading, but he was the best man to explain to the media how seriously they took pollution control and monitoring at Eureka, and how best they could prove that this had all been a mistake. Or, if it wasn’t a mistake, how they would find the problem, fix it and ensure it didn’t happen again. ‘I understand, but we need you now, Chris.’

Reluctantly, Chris rolled back his chair and stood.

They went to the boardroom and Cameron opened the door. Kylie was leaning forward on the table, talking into a hands-free
unit used for teleconferences. She nodded to them. ‘Musa, Chris and Cameron are here now.’

‘Hi guys,’ Musa Mabunda said from the tinny speaker as they took their chairs. They greeted him back.

‘Musa, it’s Chris here. Can you please tell me how I explain what went wrong when we don’t know?’

‘That’s why we’re having the investigation,’ Kylie interjected. ‘Basically what we’re going to do is a complete environmental audit which will prove that these results couldn’t have come from Eureka. Unless, of course, there’s something going on I don’t know about.’ She looked at Cameron, Chris and Hein Coetzee in turn. None of them said a thing.

‘Kylie’s right,’ said Musa. ‘Stick to the facts and explain how we test, what we test for, and state that we’ll fix any problem the audit finds.’

Kylie ran them through the order of the media conference; she would give a prepared statement and then take questions. She then asked Cameron, Hein and Musa to play the parts of hostile journalists and bombard her and Chris with questions.

At the end of the rehearsal she said, ‘Right, is everybody ready?’

‘No,’ said Chris.

*

Wellington lay on the bed and used the remote to switch on the television in his room in the Cardoso Hotel in Maputo. The hotel overlooked the harbour. It was new enough to be comfortably modern, and old enough not to be out of place in Maputo’s European-feeling architecture.

The girl was in the shower.

He flicked through the channels to the SABC live news channel. The woman he had seen underground appeared on the screen, behind a cluster of microphones bearing the logos of South African radio and television stations. He had only caught glimpses of her underground, and she had been wearing sexless overalls and a helmet. She was in something corporate for the media conference,
a white blouse with the top two buttons undone, and a blue jacket. He couldn’t see her from the waist down, except in his mind’s eye. He knew from his sources that she was a senior executive with Global Resources, from Australia.

The whore emerged from the bathroom, the snowy white towel knotted just above her breasts, setting off her milk-coffee coloured skin nicely. She was almost white, this one. He’d specified her to feed one of his many fantasies, but now she was blocking his view.

‘Get out of the way, bitch.’

She pouted, paused, then stepped to one side and looked at the television.

‘Come here, baby,’ he said, his voice silky, as though he hadn’t just abused her. He moved to the end of the bed so he was sitting on the edge, his feet on the floor. He had his shirt off. ‘Kneel down.’

She did as he told her and she undid the knot of the towel, letting it fall around her. He returned his gaze to the television.

The woman on the television was wrapping up her prepared statement. ‘Are there any questions?’

Wellington unzipped his jeans. The girl took her cue and freed his shaft. She ran her hand up and down it. He leaned back and placed his hands on the bed behind him.

A male reporter asked the woman what comment Global Resources had about the mining union calling a strike at Eureka and boycotting involvement in the monitoring review.

‘You’d have to ask the union that. The fact is that we have suspended operations at the mine pending the outcome of our investigation and review. We don’t want our workers going underground until we can get to the bottom of this, so the strike is irrelevant.’

Wellington smiled as he grew hard under the woman’s ministrations. She rolled a condom over him and lowered her mouth to him. There would be no rubber between him and Kylie Hamilton if he ever got hold of her. He let the fantasy flit at the corner of his mind as he forced himself to concentrate on the screen and not the woman between his legs.

A woman from the press pack spoke up. ‘Annelien Oberholzer from
Beeld
, Dr Hamilton. How often in the past have air pollution monitoring results exceeded the mandated maximum?’

Kylie nodded, as if she had been expecting the question. ‘Global Resources has never been prosecuted for exceeding the maximum allowable levels in dust samples.’

‘That’s not what I asked. My question was, how many times have results exceeded the mandated maximum levels?’

The Australian woman’s confidence started to crack. She looked to her left and the camera panned to the handsome face of the white man, Chris Loubser. Wellington’s pulse quickened. He reached for the prostitute and wound his hand in her braided hair. She moaned on him.

‘Chris? Perhaps you could confirm this,’ Kylie Hamilton said.

He blinked a few times, then licked his lips. His face was bathed in the harsh light of the television cameras. ‘Umm, well, off the top of my head, about a hundred and twenty-two times.’

There was an audible murmur in the ranks of assembled journalists.

‘So this is far from an isolated case of Global Resources breaking the law,’ said another reporter.

‘What was that number again, and over what time period?’ Oberholzer asked.

Wellington laughed out loud and slapped his thigh. The girl started and glanced up at him, wide eyed. ‘Nothing,’ he said to her, ‘keep going.’ They were making Loubser say it again so there was no doubt the number was on the record.

‘A hundred and twenty-two times in the past ten years,’ Chris said.

‘Dr Hamilton, did you know that Global Resources has broken the law, and endangered the lives of its workers, on average, once a month over the past decade?’ the reporter from
Beeld
asked.

The camera panned back to Hamilton. She glanced at Loubser then back down the barrel of the lens. She looked flustered. Wellington wanted to laugh again, but also didn’t want to break the girl’s rhythm as she worked him close to the edge.

‘I’m sure this can be put into perspective,’ Kylie said.

Before she or Loubser could explain, a journalist said: ‘Dr Hamilton, you said in your earlier statement that the matter reported in the press was, quote, “an isolated incident”. Clearly it wasn’t, so were you lying or were you just not aware of what was going on at this mine?’

‘Neither, I just –’

‘Dr Hamilton,’ Oberholzer interrupted, ‘the ANC Youth League’s spokesman said today that your criminal negligence of health and safety at Eureka means the government should reject your plans to mine in the Kruger Park. How confident are you that the environmental impact assessment for the Lion Plains mine will be approved now that your record on pollution monitoring has been made public?’

‘I …’

The television screen returned to the studio, where the pretty anchor woman said to her co-host, ‘Well, Vusi, that looks like a very rattled Dr Kylie Hamilton from the mining company Global Resources. We’ll be watching this story with interest, and also the company’s plans to mine in the greater Kruger Park, which must be looking a little shaky now.’

Wellington closed his eyes and pictured himself back underground, with the Australian mining executive on her knees, in the dirt. He bunched the whore’s hair tighter in his fingers and she moaned compliantly for him.

Yes, Dr Hamilton would like it, though she might protest at first. He might not have to force her at all, once she realised there was no escape.

There were loose ends to be tied up. The traitor, Correia, would have to be eliminated before he could slip across the border into Mozambique. McMurtrie and the woman had seen him, so as long as they were alive he was at risk if he ventured back to Barberton. A car-jacking might be the best way to get rid of them, however Wellington wanted to feel her mouth on him before he killed her.

The smart thing would be for him to melt away and find another mine or another line of work. But he knew Eureka like it was his own. He wanted it all. The mine, the woman, the gold.

He would have it all. He closed his eyes and felt the surge of power from his loins.

*

‘My office, now,’ Cameron said to Chris as they left the boardroom.

Coetzee was escorting the last of the journalists and camera people out of the administration building, a task he seemed to relish. One of the photographers told him to take his hand off his arm.

Kylie followed them into the office which, Cameron realised yet again, was actually not his any more. He struggled to keep his fury in check. ‘Sit down. What the hell were you thinking, Chris?’

Chris held out his hands. ‘Musa said not to lie.
Jissus
, Cameron, what was I supposed to say?’

‘How about putting it in context?’

‘OK, let’s everyone cool it,’ Kylie said. ‘Cameron, to be fair to Chris, you don’t know how strenuous it is facing the media until you’ve had to do it.’

He shook his head. ‘I have had to do it. But the way that just went makes it looks like we’ve got a serial problem with air quality.’

‘
Have
you?’ she asked.

God, she could be infuriating, he thought. ‘No. Whenever we do get an elevated reading we report it and fix whatever’s caused it. What you should have said,’ Cameron fixed Chris with his gaze, ‘was that three weeks of those readings came from when the ventilation system in number two shaft was down. We stopped mining and sent workers down in breathing apparatus to fix it, but the whole time we continued to do air quality monitoring and report the findings to the DMR. No one was breaking any laws and no one was at risk. Why on earth didn’t you say that?’