The Prey (33 page)

Ingwe, to his eternal annoyance, was already used to this, to birds and even the ever watchful baboons and monkeys shrieking and hollering to give away his location to all and sundry in the bush. He was still a clumsy hunter of big game, of the wily bushbuck and the fleet impala, but since he’d been weaned he had been honing his killing skills on the littler things – hares, lizards, rodents and, occasionally, baby birds in nests in the trees where he and his mother had spent much of their time.

Ingwe hooked his fore claws into the bark of the fig and began to climb. The owl attacked him again, close enough to brush his rosette-covered coat, but the leopard ignored the pesky bird. He heard the chick’s squeal again over the mother’s alarm and climbed higher.

The fisherman hovered in plain view of Ingwe, keeping pace with the cat’s climb. When it became clear that the leopard was heading for the branch with the nest, the fisherman played his final card: he dropped to the ground and whined out loud. In the clearing where he landed he crooked a wing and hopped about in a circle.

Ingwe stopped and looked down. The adult owl seemed to be injured. It thrashed about as though trying to fly, but could not leave the ground, and its call, like its size, dwarfed that of the chick in the tree and the female that flapped her wings and put herself between the leopard and the nest.

Ingwe had eaten baby birds that had fallen from nests, but he had never eaten a flying creature as big as the flailing owl on the ground. It was the size of a baby impala or a steenbok. Ingwe jumped to the nearest branch, turned around and retraced his path, running headlong down the trunk of the fig.

The fisherman watched the cat grow bigger with every bound as the leopard raced towards him, any thought of stealth now over-taken by the predator’s youthful excitement. At the moment Ingwe’s paws left the ground in what he thought would be his killing pounce, the fisherman’s seemingly broken wing healed itself and the owl fluttered up into the air. Ingwe landed where the bird had been, but instead of stopping he bounced upwards, his right front paw clawing the air. He came close to the fisherman but the owl flew ten metres then dropped to the ground again.

Once more the fisherman feigned a broken wing and Ingwe, who was still too young to understand the ploy, followed his instincts to jump on any wounded creature that still moved.

The fisherman took flight again. Just when it seemed the leopard might finally wake up to the bird’s deliberate attempts to draw him away from his chick, an eerie
wooo-ooop
checked Ingwe’s pursuit. The leopard turned its head as the call came again.

As the fisherman left the ground for the comparative safety of a nearby branch he saw the pair of hyena lope into view, and Ingwe, the leopard, who was no match for these spotted beasts with their vice-like jaws, ran off into the darkness.

‘I
still can’t believe we’re doing this,’ Kylie said the next morning as Cameron slowed to fifty kilometres an hour. He smiled and waved to the fat traffic cops leaning against the bonnet of their shiny Toyota as he approached the Komatipoort border post.

‘You didn’t have to come along,’ Cameron said.

She folded her arms. ‘Yes I did. Luis saved my life, too. Hell, everyone saved everyone’s life underground, so why shouldn’t we all do stupid things for each other now for the rest of our lives?’

He cracked a smile. ‘You want Wellington out of business, permanently, as much as I do. This has become personal for you.’

He was right, though she hated to admit it. The events of the last few days felt completely surreal to her. She’d done the same stupid thing she’d told him not to do, from Australia. She had taken the law into her own hands and she had even killed a man. The first of the nightmares about the underground shooting had come to her last night, days after it had happened. She’d told Cameron about it, on the drive to the border, and he had told her the nightmares would never end. They would reduce in frequency, he assured her, but never end.

Cameron hit the electric window and Kylie felt the humidity wash in over them. It was hotter and stickier here than in Barberton
or on the Sabie River. It must be like a furnace in the back, under the cover.

‘Afternoon, how are you?’ Cameron said to the security man.

‘I am fine, boss, and you?’ The man handed him a slip of white paper, a gate pass.

‘Here we go,’ Cameron said to her as he closed the window and drove up to the customs and immigration hall. ‘Remember the plan?’

‘If anyone finds Luis we act shocked and claim he stowed away in the back of the truck when we parked at the shopping mall at Mal–’

‘Malelane.’

She practised saying the name. It sounded exotic, but this place where gold dealers met and billionaires played golf had seemed anything but as they had passed through from Nelspruit.

Cameron parked and Kylie forced herself not to look back at the truck. They walked to the entry door and Cameron slid the gate pass onto the counter in front of a bored-looking man in a SARS uniform. He barely looked up from his copy of the
Sowetan
as he reached for his stamp. Cameron greeted him in Tsonga and the man mumbled a reply.

‘How many are you?’

‘Two.’

The first lie, Kylie thought, her heart pounding and her mouth dry. The man wrote the numeral on the gate pass and thudded it home with his stamp.

Cameron had told her and Luis of his conversation with Colonel Radebe when a clearly unhappy Frankie had brought him back to Hippo Rock. Kylie had had the distinct impression that Frankie wanted them all gone as soon as possible.

‘You cannot let that woman arrest me,’ Luis had said when Cameron told him Radebe was on his trail. ‘She is with Wellington – he bragged about having the police in his pocket, and his bed. She will have me killed on his orders.’

‘I can try the Hawks again,’ Cameron had said.

‘No.’ Luis had been adamant. ‘Wellington has been arrested for breaking into Hippo Rock. You have seen him, first hand, trying to kill you underground. The police here have enough to put him in prison. Not even this Colonel Radebe can stop that. Please, Cameron, let me go home and bury my wife and see my son. If you can set up immunity for me, if you need my testimony, I will return from Mozambique to meet with the Hawks. You have my word. But first, I need to get home. I’m worried Radebe will have people watching the border for me, and in any case I have no passport.’

Cameron had offered to smuggle Luis across the border. Kylie had quietly objected, saying it was putting Cameron at risk. ‘He won’t be able to make Miriam’s funeral any other way. If he walked through Kruger it would take him days.’

They had set out from Hippo Rock the next morning via Barberton, where Cameron had left Jess with her friend Mandy. He didn’t trust Sindisiwe Radebe to see through Wellington’s prosecution to a lengthy prison term, but at least he was behind bars for the time being so they could all sleep safe for a while. Why Kylie had decided to join Cameron on the trip, though, she still didn’t quite know. Now, at the border, she was again wondering why she felt this loyalty to these two men, McMurtrie and Correia, and regretting her impulsive decision to be part of this. They had to wait a few minutes at immigration. The airconditioner was thrumming and struggling and only one officer, who took her time, was attending to people leaving South Africa. Four others faced long queues on the opposite side of the room, trying to keep pace with the seemingly endless parade of Mozambicans waiting, with varying degrees of patience, to enter the land of gold.

A woman with a baby on her back, the child tied to her in a blanket, was explaining something to the immigration officer in their language. The baby looked at Kylie and she smiled at it. She had yet to feel clucky, but she didn’t dislike babies.

The woman moved and Kylie slid her passport over, remembering to greet the woman and ask how she was. The woman looked up
and returned the greeting and said she was fine. The passport was stamped and that was it. Kylie exhaled on the way out of the door.

They got back in the
bakkie
and Cameron drove slowly towards the boom gate. A SARS man, a customs officer, just waved them on. Another security guard took the stamped gate pass and they were through.

‘Phew.’ Kylie ran a hand through her damp hair.

‘It’s not over yet. Now the fun begins.’

Once through the boom gate they left Komatipoort behind and entered Ressano Garcia – another world. Immediately, everything was different. It was more like transiting to another world, another culture, another time than just another country.

The SARS and home affairs officers on the South African side wore blue uniforms, starched and cut with an almost Aryan precision, but the officials she saw now on the Mozambican side looked like they’d been outfitted with surplus clothes from some failed South American dictatorship. Men wore berets set at jaunty angles, fitted tight with small black bows at the backs of their heads. AK-47s seemed the accessory of choice.

Unlike the South African side there were people milling around the car park. Young boys rushed the pickup as soon as Cameron pulled into a parking bay; they were waving wads of
meticais
notes and offering to escort them through the border. A man in jeans and body-hugging black lycra tank top and thick gold necklaces was passing something to a uniformed official.

In front of where they parked was a row of half-a-dozen or more offices, each set up in porta cabins, advertising insurance and customs clearance. ‘Stay close, don’t talk to any of them,’ Cameron said as he got out of the truck.

Kylie followed him and was besieged by touts. ‘No thank you, no thank you,’ she said.

Cameron said nothing, and Kylie realised that even saying ‘no thank you’ was an encouragement to the chancers. Cameron pushed open the door of one of the porta cabins and held it for her.

‘Yes, madam, I work for this company,’ said one of the youngsters, trailing her closely. She squeezed past Cameron, eager to get inside. The airconditioning was almost as welcome as the relative silence.

Cameron greeted a man who rose from behind his desk.
‘Bom dia
, Mr McMurtrie.’

‘This is Freddy,’ Cameron said. Kylie nodded to a young man in a white shirt who wore his mirror sunglasses inside.

‘Did that boy say he worked for me?’ Freddy asked, his Portuguese-accented English sounding strange to Kylie, coming as it did from a black African. He pointed at the nodding, smiling face of the last youth to tug on Kylie’s sleeve.

‘Yes,’ she said.

Freddy turned to Cameron. ‘Hit him if he says that again.’

‘My pleasure.’

They sat down and Kylie soon gave up trying to keep track of the forms that were filled in and the monies paid to Freddy, and a runner who took all the paperwork across the car park while they waited in the refuge of Freddy’s office.

‘Customs?’ Freddy asked, leaning back in his office chair and lighting a cigarette.

‘We’re in a hurry, Freddy. We don’t want a thorough search.’

Freddy exhaled smoke through his nose. ‘I understand. You can make a donation to the customs officers.’

‘A hundred rand?’ Cameron asked.

Freddy shrugged. ‘It is up to you, but fifty would do.’

‘I want to make sure we get away quickly.’

Freddy nodded. ‘I understand.’

Kylie felt her anxiety levels rising. She was sure she would hear a shout from the car park as Freddy’s runner escorted them across to the immigration hall where they had to present their passports for inspection and where Kylie, as an Australian, had to pay for her visa. The immigration officer had her stand in front of a blue background while he took her picture with a camera linked to a computer. Next she had to place her left and right index fingers on a scanner.
It all seemed a bit over the top, to her, for a border crossing in Africa teeming with people who mostly didn’t seem to have a cent to their name.

While she waited for her visa to be produced her eyes were drawn to a flat-screen monitor showing a revolving series of advertisements and messages.
Do not become involved with illegal immigration
, said a message in Portuguese and English that seemed to be aimed directly at her. She swallowed her fear.

‘Miss Kylie,’ said the immigration officer at last. She took her passport and the runner escorted Cameron and her back outside. The advertising display was showing an Indian restaurant in Maputo which seemed to also do home-delivery pizzas.

Freddy and a short rotund woman in blue uniform slacks, shirt, tie and beret were standing an arm’s length from the
bakkie
. Kylie saw Freddy palm her Cameron’s hundred rand note. She slipped it into her pocket and placed her hand on the black vinyl covering the back of the pickup. Kylie imagined Luis in there, sweating under the cover. She and Cameron stopped. The woman was fiddling with the elastic cord that secured the cover to the hooks around the cargo bin.

‘What’s she doing?’ Kylie whispered.

‘
Sheesh
, no,’ Cameron said.

Freddy was talking in rapid Portuguese to the customs officer, but she shook her head and unhooked the elastic.

Freddy looked across at them and rubbed his thumb and fore-finger together, out of the woman’s line of sight.

‘I think she wants more money,’ Kylie said.

‘She could be suspicious because I told Freddy to give her twice the normal amount. Shit.’

‘Change some rand, boss?’ a young tout in a Blue Bulls baseball cap said.

‘
Fokof
.’

‘Madam?’

Kylie was as annoyed as Cameron by the invasive presence of the tout, who had no concept of personal space. The customs woman
was unfastening another hook and shaking her head at Freddy’s protestations. He looked to them, shrugging his shoulders. He probably figured they were just trying to get across the border with more tobacco or alcohol than was legally permissible. Kylie had a thought.

She reached into her pocket and then withdrew her hand. ‘My purse!’

The tout took a step back, shocked at the volume and pitch of Kylie’s scream. He looked puzzled.