Those Who Love Night (3 page)

Until this moment, Abigail had not seen Robert's new
PA
. She would have been a surprise to most wives. It was not just the long blond hair, the milky-white complexion, the neckline that allowed her boss a view of just enough breast to keep him interested, the petite waist, the trim legs and tiny feet that fitted into stiletto-heeled shoes—the kind that showed both the toes and the heels, narrow leather bands encasing each ankle. Abigail was sure she had read somewhere that women who wore such shoes were on the hunt. It was not just the
PA
's appearance, though. As she came round the desk, a question in her eyes, Abigail saw something insufferably confident in them. If these offices were the caricature of corporate splendor, this girl was the caricature of the trophy
PA
.

How did we come to this? she asked herself; our ostentatious cars, our ridiculous home with its acres of garden, three entertainment lounges and five bedrooms—for two people. And now this
PA
 … worst of all, this
PA
. And to run into her today, after what she had already been through. On what did Robert base his hiring criteria? she wondered. Pictures in
Cosmopolitan
? More likely,
Playboy
.

Something had brightened in the
PA
's face. “Oh, you must be Mrs. Mokoapi?”

Mokoapi was Robert's surname. Abigail had never adopted it. “I'm Abigail Bukula,” Abigail said. “Is my husband here?”

To Abigail's satisfaction, the clear white skin deepened till it reached a full pink around the eyes and in patches on the neck. “I'm sorry, Mrs.…” She was visibly casting around in her mind. Clearly, Mrs. Bukula was not going to work either. “May I call you Abigail?” she asked.

But Abigail had not yet finished with the
PA
, she of the neat little white breasts peeping out at Abigail's husband. “Ms. Bukula will do,” she said. “Where is my husband?”

“Robert is…” she started, but stopped immediately. “Mr. Mokoapi is in a meeting with the chairman and some of the institutional investors. They should have been out already.”

“Tell him his wife was here.” As she turned to go, another thought, or perhaps just a barb, came to her. “Tell him also that I'd appreciate him being home on time tonight.”

“Yes, Mrs.… Ms. Bukula.”

Abigail stopped in the doorway of the office and looked back at the still pink face of the
PA
. For the first time she realized that the kid was no more than twenty-two or twenty-three. Jesus, Robert, she thought, what were you thinking? What part of your body were you thinking with?

3

The gates of Abigail and Robert's home opened at the touch of a button. The house was set back perhaps fifty paces into a garden that required two gardeners to keep it in trim. Abigail had tried to persuade Robert that neither a property that size, nor a house that magnificent, were necessary, but he had said the company expected it. If you were the beneficiary of an empowerment deal of this size, the company expected you to behave that way. What sort of impression would it make if the
CEO
lived in an ordinary town house? Where would he entertain clients and investors?

She still felt the same, but Abigail admitted both to herself and to Robert that she loved the garden. There was a beautiful lawn kids could play on, if there ever were going to be kids. There were summer seats in cool shady corners, hooks for a hammock, also in the shade, a spot in one corner that was sheltered from any wind but caught the winter sun for most of the day. She loved the flowers, the trees, the ponds with their frogs and crickets, and the birds that visited daily. She loved them not because they were hers, but because they were beautiful and they were alive.

The house too, needed two servants, both of whom had soon learned that the fact that they shared skin color with the madam did not mean that they were going to get away with anything. To Abigail it was not a family relationship. They were well paid by the standards of the city in which they lived, their hours were reasonable and they were expected to work well. The first one to overstep her boundaries by extending three consecutive weekends by an extra day each, without permission or satisfactory reason, had been fired, bringing home the nature of the relationship to the others. They, in turn, would have passed on the news to the replacement. Since then, Abigail had no real staff problems.

She poured herself a glass of fruit juice and sat down in her favorite recliner on the patio. From where she was sitting, she had a view of the drive so that she would see Robert's car when the gate opened. She could also see much of the garden where the two gardeners were busy closing up for the day. They were packing their implements onto the wheelbarrow to take them to the garden shed.

The worst thing about this huge house was being in it without Robert. When he was at home its absurd spaces did not seem that ridiculous. She hated being alone in the house, even if it was just for an afternoon. Very often she escaped into the garden or onto the patio on such days.

Abigail was a reader. She read novels, poetry, books about famous people and infamous ones, historical texts, wildlife studies, law reviews, case histories and newspapers. The newspapers she read were mostly those published by Vuna Corp., Robert's company.

She had brought a book of Robert Frost's poems out to the patio, but this afternoon the words made no sense. The picture of Robert's so-called personal assistant rose in her mind, but she dismissed it. Worrying about this kid was foolishness.

The other matter was not. Oh God, she thought, how could they do this? She knew that this was not just an objective assessment. The liberation struggle, in which both her parents had died, had been intensely personal for her. Now, she felt, its legacy was being sullied. In the Scorpions they had created a crime-fighting force that, Abigail believed, was second to none anywhere in the world. They had delivered leaders of organized crime to the asset forfeiture unit, where the criminals had lost their ill-gotten fortunes. More than three-quarters of their cases had been successfully prosecuted. But then they had started to root out corruption in the state machinery. And, seemingly, that had been unforgivable.

Abigail put aside Frost's poems and took up the afternoon paper. The front-page story was about the end of the Scorpions. Her eyes flicked across the columns, taking in the broad outline of the article. Opposition politicians were quoted as saying that this was a sure sign that government had no interest in bringing down the high crime rate. No spokesperson for either the Department of Justice, which was losing a division, or the police, which was gaining one, were available for comment at the time of going to press. A table compared the Scorpions' excellent record to the relatively poor one of the regular police. In a sidebar, a criminologist she had never heard of compared the Scorpions to the
FBI
, coming to the conclusion that they were in the same category.

As she turned to page two, her cell phone rang. The voice on the other end told her that the caller was Sipho Dabengwa of the
Sunday World
. Abigail switched off her phone and went back to the newspaper.

It was on page five that she saw a story that she did read carefully. The headline read “Seven Zimbabwean Dissidents Still Missing.” Krisj Patel had managed to get in something about seven dissidents before the lines had gone down. This seemed to be his reason for calling her.

Abigail knew Zimbabwe well and loved it more than any place other than her own country, having lived there for a little more than a year, before the first democratic election made it possible for her to come home. She knew as much as any outsider about the Zimbabwean people's struggle for their own democracy. Power was now being shared between the old dictator who had reduced the country to ruins, and the popular leader who, everyone hoped, despite the handicap of an unequal coalition, might have the strength and will to rebuild it.

According to the article, a few days earlier seven dissidents who had been particularly active before the power-sharing deal came into effect, had been picked up by the Central Intelligence Organization. She understood this body to be the political police that had often, during the previous twenty-nine years, been accused of providing violent solutions to the ruling party's political problems.

The head of the
CIO
was quoted in the article as saying that the whole thing was a vicious slander; that they had not touched the seven in question. Even a representative of the popular co-leader had said that it was possible that the seven had left the country. One of the dissidents, who had asked not to be named, had said: “They were picked up by the
CIO
. We have witnesses to the arrests. The agents who arrested them are known to us.”

Abigail closed her eyes and lowered the newspaper till it came to rest over her face. Oh, my Africa, she thought. I'd hoped we were getting past this sort of thing.

It was almost dark when she was woken by Robert's hand on her shoulder. He was bending over her. “Don't sleep out here,” he was saying. “Let's go inside.”

“Oh, you're here.” She scrambled to her feet and into Robert's arms. “Thank God you're here.”

“Sorry about the Scorpions,” he said.

“Oh, Robert, what are they doing?”

“Let's go inside,” he said. “It'll soon be cold.”

4

Given the chance, Abigail was quick to tell others that she was never late for work. And her boast was close to being true. She was almost always first into the office. Being at her desk an hour or two before the others arrived gave her a chance to assemble her thoughts and her documentation for the day ahead. On the other hand, if she did come late, she seemed to be trying all day to catch up.

This morning she was late though, not just five or ten minutes, but almost forty. The powerful drive that comes with having a purpose had deserted her. She had been up too late the previous evening, arguing with Robert about the problem of working for an organization she did not believe in.

As soon as she passed the open door of Johanna's office, she knew that something had happened to disturb her loyal assistant. Johanna was on her feet in a moment, her hands massaging each other in the way she had in times of crisis. “Gert's been arrested,” she said.

“Arrested? What the hell are you talking about?”

The anxiety in Johanna's face was so intense that she might have been the one who had been arrested. “The police were here; a lot of them, ten minutes ago. They took him away.”

“Where to?”

“I don't know. There were plenty of them. I saw one body-search him, right up between his legs. Then they marched him away, three or four in front and three or four behind. But I demanded to know what they were doing. I went right up to the head one and said, “What do you think you're doing?” It was a habit of Johanna's, when retelling an incident, to spend far more time on what she had done or said than on the other parties involved.

“So what did they say to that?” Abigail wanted to know.

“They said I should mind my business and go back to my work.”

“Sound advice,” Abigail said.

“But I didn't let them get away with that. I told them when my boss, Abigail Bukula, got back they would be in trouble.”

“Thank you, Johanna, but I'd rather you didn't try to build my reputation in quite that way.”

“But you should have seen them. The one behind even pushed Gert as they went to the lift.”

“I can't believe it,” Abigail muttered. Seeing Johanna's crestfallen look, she corrected herself. “Coming from you, I know it's true, but I still have difficulty believing it.” She was already on her way down the passage in the direction of the director general's office.

The director general's
PA
reacted as if she had been expecting Abigail's storming entrance. “He's not here,” she said, as she rose from her chair. “He's out, holding high-level…”

But Abigail was already past her and had thrown open the door to the director general's office. One step into the office revealed that it was indeed empty. The
PA
, a middle-aged woman of Indian extraction, had not moved from behind her desk. “Abigail, I told you he's not there,” she said. “I'm not one of those who lie about such things. You should know that by now.”

“Where is he?”

“I believe he's with the minister of police, trying to negotiate for Gert's release.”

“Negotiate?” Abigail said the word as if it had just developed a repulsive new meaning. “You don't negotiate for the release of innocent people. You demand it.”

“I'm just telling you what my boss told me.”

Abigail studied the other woman's face for a moment longer, then turned abruptly to leave.

“Wait. The minister is, in any event, the right one to deal with this,” she called after Abigail. “He's gone to the same meeting. There's no point in trying to see the
DG
.” Abigail had stopped in the doorway. “It's true. They're trying to free Gert.”

Abigail passed Johanna without saying anything. “What did they say?” Johanna was following close behind her.

“They say the minister and the
DG
are talking to the police.”

“But why…?”

Abigail waved her away. “Johanna, I don't know the answer to any of these questions. Don't ask me. And I want no calls this morning. None. Do you understand?”

Johanna retreated, closing the door behind her. After working with Abigail for some years, she knew when avoiding her boss was the best course of action.

Abigail hated the feeling of helplessness. She was not one to let the winds of fate decide her course. She felt that she was in charge of her own destiny and was determined to have an effect, wherever it was needed, on the destinies of everyone who crossed her path. And this was one of those occasions. She could not bear the thought that the
DG
and the minister were going to pretend to be defending the rights of one of their senior officers, arguably their best officer. Neither man, in her opinion, possessed the inclination to stand up to those in authority on matters of principle, or any other sort of matter.