The Top Prisoner of C-Max (16 page)

When he left the hospital, he drove slowly through the busy evening streets. He found the café he was looking for in Marabastad, a suburb of Indian shops, small businesses and petty-criminal activities. It had the distinction of having survived the apartheid authorities’ determination to move all who were not white out of the cities. Somehow, Marabastad had kept its character in the face of the Group Areas Act.

Dongwana ordered coffee and a sandwich at the counter, then sat down to wait. Half an hour later, the two men he was expecting entered through the front door. They noticed him immediately and came to sit down opposite him. He had no way of knowing that they had just made the delivery to Oliver Hall or that both had been active participants in the violation of his wife.

‘Here,’ said the one who had done the talking with Hall. ‘My boss wants it tomorrow.’

The parcel he handed Dongwana was what seemed to be a large, transparent plastic lunch box. Inside, it was lined with kitchen foil so that you could not see what it contained and the prison’s
X
-ray equipment would not reveal the contents. It was heavier than Dongwana expected. ‘And if they check?’ he asked.

‘Work it out. You take dagga in every day. It’s no problem for you. This is your lunch box. Put some bread on top. We left space.’

But it’s so heavy, he thought. If someone checks and feels the weight, they will know.

But arguing with these men would be fruitless. They were not interested in his problems or the dangers to which he might be exposed. He had to take it into the prison or something else might happen to Penny, something even worse.

The bunk Enslin Kruger was sitting on had more than one plastic foam mattress, one on top of the other. By C-Max standards, it was as comfortable a place to sleep as you were going to find.

Kruger was a man at peace with the world. He had no doubt that Hall would have received the money and would do as he had been told. He was equally certain that Alfred Dongwana would have received the parcel he was to smuggle into the prison. He would now not dare refuse Kruger anything. And for him to smuggle something through the
X
-rays at the gates was no problem. By lunchtime the next day, he would have the goods. Then there was Elia Dlomo. Kruger doubted that the wild man from the Twenty-Sixes would be able to do what he promised, but let him try. It was all right to have some insurance.

Tonight Jacky April was the only other occupant of the cell. He was sitting on the bunk opposite Kruger. April was not feeling good. He had his head in his hands and was wiping away strips of congealing blood from his mouth. The job Kruger’s men had done on his front teeth had not been a careful one. ‘Get your lips out the way,’ one had said. ‘Otherwise they go too.’

A single blow of his head against the edge of the concrete slab had destroyed the four middle teeth in his upper jaw. They had been less efficient working the lower jaw. It had taken three blows to get the effect Kruger desired. Some of the teeth had come out with the battering, but others had broken off. A trusty in the medical facility had removed the roots of the broken teeth without anaesthetic.

Kruger observed the little man with some annoyance. You would think the little queer was dying the way he carried on. ‘Come here and show me what you got now,’ he told April.

‘Mr Enslin must know I’m still bleeding.’

‘I don’ care about no blood. Come.’

‘Can’t I let it stop bleeding first?’

‘You can fucking come here. I tol’ you I don’ wan’ to feel your teeth. You wouldn’ listen. Now come.’

April wiped away a last strand of bloody saliva and crossed, sinking to his knees in front of the old man.

In the Scarborough bungalow an altogether naked Beloved Childe was seated in the armchair in her bedroom. The sleeping eighteen-year-old boy in her bed was a volunteer at the Freedom Foundation who had had sexual intercourse with her five hours earlier. Behind the curtains in the room’s only window the first grey signs of dawn had been visible before she switched on the light.

The boy, whose name was Albert, was breathing deeply, enjoying what is generally thought of as the sleep of the just. Beloved thought of it as the sleep of the recently fucked.

Her first evening at the foundation had been a success. Amy Morgan, middle-aged with greying hair dyed an almost-luminous blonde, had spent an hour telling the group of ten former inmates how to approach a prospective employer. When she finished, Beloved took over, telling them that great things were possible for all of them. She told them not to believe that they could do anything, but to find what they could do well, then do that with all their might and will, and that then they would find new meaning in their lives. When she finished, every one of them waited in the hall to thank her and ask if she would be coming to talk to them again. As she was leaving, Amy Morgan took both Beloved’s hands in hers. ‘That was so beautiful. You brought tears to my eyes.’

As a committed Christian, young Albert took seriously the Biblical injunction to ‘store up treasure in heaven’. He felt that by working to help the sinners that were the clients of the Freedom Foundation, he was doing exactly that. But sitting next to Beloved it had been hard to avoid sinful thoughts. When she offered him a lift, he had accepted readily. But when she brought him to the Scarborough bungalow, he was inclined to believe that he was receiving his reward right here on earth.

Watching him sleep, Beloved thought about Yudel. He was one of the few men who really interested her and that had nothing to do with the fact that they were of opposite genders. She saw in him a man who really had a worthwhile purpose in life and, in her view, she had not met many of those. He was also one of the few men she had met who might be able to challenge her intellectually and she had met still fewer of those.

But like other men, especially older men, Yudel was a fool for an innocent face, long blonde hair, a good figure and a virginal way of dressing. She believed correctly that in their few meetings she had learnt more about him than he had about her. Blinded as he was by her appearance, there was much about her he could not even guess at.

One of the characteristics that Yudel would not have anticipated was the power of her sex drive. Since, at the age of thirteen, she had explored that territory with an eighteen-year-old neighbourhood boy, she had been a victim of an insistent need that had to be satisfied at least weekly, sometimes daily. If Beloved went through a week without an orgasm, she suffered a growing torment until it was dealt with. Masturbation helped, but it was no more than a holding device to keep her going until she had access to the real thing.

Without moving from the chair, she reached out a foot and prodded the sleeping boy. He woke immediately, looking startled. At the moment his eyes fixed on her perfect body, he drew back. ‘I suppose you want me to go now?’ Before he had fallen asleep, she had made it plain that his performance had been substandard.

‘No.’

‘I thought you said I’m not big enough for you.’

‘You don’t listen, Albert. I said you were not enough for me. The equipment will do. The problem lies with the execution. The skill level needs drastic improvement.’

It was shattering news. He looked at her without speaking.

‘So, I’m going to educate you.’

‘Now?’ Had a clumsy lover ever been so lucky?

‘Right now.’

When the lesson was over, almost an hour later, Beloved had enjoyed an altogether satisfactory orgasm and Albert felt that he had died and been born into a new and far more stimulating world.

‘Now it’s time for you to go,’ Beloved told him.

‘Can I come back tonight?’ he asked.

A boy like you? she thought. Not with Oliver Hall on the way. ‘It’s over, Albert. You can’t come back tonight or ever.’

‘But I thought this time it was good.’

‘You better go now. My husband’s already on his way.’ She smiled in her most winning way. ‘And, in any event, you’re a much improved product now. Once the word gets round, you’ll have a problem accommodating all the girls.’

THE MEN
who usually worked the morning shift on the
X
-ray machine at C-Max were not the best the department had to offer. Director Nkabinde used them there because it was an uncomplicated job requiring no initiative and demanding no decision-making.

Alfred Dongwana was counting on their relative weakness to get him into the prison. In recent months the director had tightened up on security. If any member was seen letting in one of his colleagues without applying full scrutiny, he was in serious trouble.

The two Dongwana was relying on did what they had been ordered to do, but they did it badly. Objects in bags and satchels, that came up on the screen and that he would have examined more closely, were allowed to pass unchecked. And then there was the fact that he was senior to both of them. They would not expect him to be carrying anything that was not allowed. They would also be eager not to offend him.

He had prepared the parcel well. The lunch box the messengers brought him had originally been a small tool box. By the standards of lunch boxes it was big, but not ridiculously so. Tripled layers of foil lined the lower part of the box, enclosing two revolvers and twenty rounds. Both guns were three-eights and filled about a third of the box’s depth. He had packed cotton wool around them to prevent any movement, covered them with another layer of foil and packed sliced bread and fruit on top of that. The box would pass an
X
-ray examination and a physical inspection, as long as neither was conducted too carefully. It would be all right. It had to be. Enslin Kruger would get what he wanted.

Dongwana had taken another precaution. He was wearing his service revolver. Carrying a large piece of metal on his body would help to mask the contents of the lunch box, as long as he was not separated from it. Wearing service revolvers was rare for prison officers, but giving a plausible reason should not be difficult.

Leaving his car in the parking area, Dongwana took the lunch box from the boot and carried it by the handle. It was too heavy for its contents to consist only of fruit and sandwiches, but the men at the gate would not know that unless they took it away from him.

He was still some distance from the gate when he realised that the
X
-ray machine must be down. The men at the gate were using hand-held metal detectors that showed no image on a screen. They simply alerted the user to the presence of metal.

That was only part of the problem. The staff at the gate had been changed. Of the two men who were present today, one was a youngster who had only been in the service for a year, but the other was an older man, just months away from retirement and one of those who was suspicious of everyone. He seemed to think he was the only warder in the prison who knew the business and did his job properly.

It was too late to turn back now. Dongwana was within ten paces of the gate and much more than that from the car.

A group of three warders was ahead of him. He hung back until he was sure the older man was occupied. The young warder slid the metal detector down his left side, just as he had been taught, and found nothing, then down the right, where Dongwana was holding the lunch box against his revolver. The metal detector buzzed, but the young warder showed no further interest.

He had taken a step past the gate when the older man spoke. ‘A lot of sandwiches.’ His expression was entirely friendly.

‘I get hungry,’ Dongwana said.

‘Me too, very hungry.’ He had moved to block Dongwana’s path. ‘I had nothing to eat this morning. Do me a favour and let me have one.’

Could this really be what he wanted? Dongwana hesitated too long.

‘Come on, Alfred. I’m hungry, man. Just one.’

The handle of the lunch box was part of the lid. Dongwana had to hold the lunch box against his side with his right hand while with the left he loosened the clasp. The other man leant forward to see inside. Then he reached for a slice of bread. ‘Jesus, no meat, no cheese, not even butter. You eat your bread like this.’

‘On my salary …’ Dongwana let the rest of the sentence hang.

The old warder was still looking into the lunch box when Dongwana snapped the lid shut. It may have been that the plastic was twisted by the extra weight in the box or perhaps it was just the awkwardness of his position, but the clasp did not snap shut. The pressure of the lunch box on his side eased for just a moment, but it was long enough for it to slip to the ground, spilling out sliced bread, two apples, a banana, one revolver and three rounds. A moment later Dongwana had been pushed against a wall and his service revolver removed by the old warder. ‘Fucking bastard,’ he heard the old warder grunt.

Near Baviaanspoort Correctional Facility – 1 508 kilometres from the Freedom Foundation

Not far from Baviaanspoort Prison, the road dips and curves left. At that point, heavy brush skirts the road on both sides. In early morning the sun is in the eyes of a driver approaching the bend from the Pretoria side while the underbrush is in deep shadow.

The members of Elia Dlomo’s gang who were still free knew all this. It was for this reason that they had selected the spot. Five of them had avoided capture so far. They still had the
RPG
rocket launcher, more
AK
-47s than they needed and enough ammunition to run a small war. Recruiting an extra four young men had not been difficult. None of them had ever been employed and all felt that the new South Africa was treating them too much like the old one had. All were angry with an anger generated by a world that seemed neither to need nor want them.

The method the gang would use would be just what Dlomo had taught them: hit the truck head on with the
RPG
, then come at the guards, if they were still alive, with enough firepower to ensure that resistance would be brief.

Dlomo knew where they would strike and he knew how. He also knew that he might die in the explosion, but he was long past being worried about that possibility. He was going to deal with Oliver Hall, Enslin Kruger and all the Twenty-Eights or he was going to die. Life had been no picnic anyway.