Trackers (40 page)

'It's very evocative ...'

'We Free Staters don't know such big words. Is that a
"yes"?'

'Where is Fisherman's Choice?'

On Quinn's computer screen the photos of the pages of Milla
Strachan's diary were displayed.

He read the entries for the past week first.

He saw she had already met Becker, for the first time, on
Friday evening at a dance.

Becker had orchestrated it.

He saw traces of Milla's conscience, saw how events pulled
her along. He went back
to
the beginning,
read the entries for the past six months. She was still a housewife then.
Lonely. Lost.

He followed the tracks of her words, to freedom, to the PIA,
he read about her struggle over her child, her intimate thoughts, her slow
emancipation.

Against his will he liked her. And he became all the more
convinced of her innocence. She was a chance piece of flotsam washed along by
the flood of Operation Shawwal.

Then his phone rang. 'Becker has just phoned Miss Jenny. They
are going to eat out again.'

Reinhard Rohn lay on the bed. Ansie, Head of Administration
at Consolidated Fisheries, rested her head on his stomach. She was smoking a
cigarette, the ashtray on the rounding of her body.

He said: 'I hear one of my old friends was here with you not
long ago.'

'Who?'

'Shaheed Osman. From Cape Town.'

'You know Osman?'

'More of a business acquaintance, to be honest. I happened to
mention to him over the phone yesterday that I was in Walvis Bay, and he said
he came and did business here a month or so ago. With you guys.'

'Small world,' she said.

'I didn't even know he imported fish.'

'He doesn't.' 'Oh?'

'What work does the Osman you know do?'

'Imports.' Deliberately vague.

'That's not what he said to us. He said he's a broker. A
speculator.'

'In fish?'

'No. In
boats. He bought one of our vessels.'

At the Cape Town Waterfront, where a thousand lights swam in
reflection in the still waters beside quay number four, Milla listened to
Lukas Becker. She listened to his voice, the tone and inflection - relaxed,
peaceful, soft. There was a hint of self-denial, as if he and his life only had
worth via her interest. And something else, a sense of being in tune that
resonated in her, a warmth, for her, for
them.

Tell me about the archaeological digs, she asked him, as
though she knew nothing about them.

He said they were among the most exciting experiences of his
life.

Why?

I would bore you.

You won't.

He ate a little more first. Then he said, have you ever
walked across the Free State plains and wondered what it looked like, 100,000
years ago? Have you ever walked in the veld and seen something shiny, picked it
up and rolled it around in your fingers? A piece of ostrich eggshell, rubbed
smooth, with a tiny hole through it, and wondered, who wore this around their
neck? What was it like, to live like that? When the springbuck in their
thousands trekked across the savannah, when people made fires at night to keep
the lions away, where now there are only sheep and cattle and civilisation.
Have you ever wondered why this world, this Africa, speaks to our hearts, we,
who are from Europe? I used to wonder, ever since I was young, about seventeen
or eighteen. Where does the love for this landscape originate? Why do we want
to
own
it? Why do Africans, and especially
the Afrikaner, have such a strong connection, such a deep longing for land. For
a farm, specifically. Where does that come from? My father had it and so do I.
And I went looking for answers and I realised, increasingly, that it is a new
thing. Ten, maybe 12,000 years old. Before that people were drifters, nomadic
hunter-gatherers who populated the whole planet while following their food
sources. Everything belonged to us, the whole earth. For 200,000 years, if you
just look at
Homo sapiens.
For two and a half
million years, if you include
Homo habilis.
The world was our home, the crossing of horizons, the freedom, the movement,
was in our genes, it drove us. And then, between eighteen and fourteen thousand
years ago, the Kebaran of the Levant made way for the Natufians' first sowing
of grasses ...

The Kebaran? (She asked in a whisper, a little apologetic,
because she didn't want him to stop talking.)

He walked her as far as the security gate.

She wanted to invite him in.

He said: 'Milla, I want to see you again tomorrow night.'

She said: 'That would be lovely.'

They
stood together a moment in silence. Then he said, 'Goodnight, Milla.'

7 October 2009. Wednesday.

Rajkumar knew it wasn't his technology that made the
breakthrough. It was the old-fashioned methods of Masilo and Quinn's man, the
middle- aged and practically forgotten operator, Reinhard Rohn. He tried to
make up for that, with information quickly collected that morning: 'We got all
of this from their systems. It's called a stern trawler fishing vessel, and
it's not a boat, it's a ship. Length of forty-four meters, breadth of ten
meters, draft of five meters. Quarters for some fifteen crew, it can carry
almost one thousand tonnes of cargo. But the real problem is, it's equipped to
stay at sea for up to forty-five days. And Osman's people took commission of
the ship on 21 September, so they've been out there for about three weeks. They
could be anywhere in the world,' Rajkumar said. Then, quickly, because Mentz
was glaring at him, 'I know that's not what you want to hear ...'

'You are missing the point.'

'Ma'am, there was no reason to look at ships they have sold
...'

'No, Raj, that's not the point either. You are asking,
"where?", when what you should be asking, is "why?".'

'Oh ...'

'Why do they need a ship this big? What do they want to
transport? Let us assume Tau is right, the target is the American soccer team,
or the Cape Town Stadium, or both. They don't need a thousand tonnes of weapons
and explosives ...'

'People,' the Advocate said. 'They're bringing in people.'

'Exactly,' said Mentz.

Raj brushed his hair back over his shoulder, angry at
himself.

'They're bringing in a hit squad,' said Mentz. 'Probably
al-Qaeda trained. The ship explains everything. It explains why they needed
that much money. Why Macki was so deeply involved ...They might have used the
diamonds as direct payment, Walvis Bay is a smuggling haven. It explains why
they had such limited contact with the Ravens ... But the main issue is, we've
been watching the Committee, but the Committee's role is basically over. They
can just sit back now and wait for the hit squad to arrive ...'

'With respect,' Rajkumar said, 'that makes the question of
"where" even more vital.'

'Absolutely right,' said Masilo.

'So how do we find it?'

Rajkumar was ready for the question. 'It's going to depend on
how much they want to be found.'

'Why?'

'SOLAS. The International Convention for the Safety of Life
at Sea. Since 2006, it requires all vessels bigger than 300 tonnes to operate
Long Range Identification and Tracking equipment, amongst other things. If they
have their LRIT and AIS transmitters switched on, we can submit a Chapter Five
request through the Minister - or any cabinet member - to the International
LRIT Data Exchange, to get their current position.'

'And if they are not running the transmitters?'

'Then we'll have to find reports of ships that have
disregarded the SOLAS regulations, which will take time. The only real solution
is to talk to the Americans, ask them to look with their satellites.'

'I'm not going to talk to the Americans.'

'I know how you feel, ma'am,' said Tau Masilo, 'but we have
no choice. We are running out of time. And they don't need a harbour to unload
a terror squad. They can be transferred at sea, to a smaller vessel, somewhere
- anywhere - off the coast. And we have a very long coast line.'

'Why is asking the Americans for help an issue?' Rajkumar
asked, in all innocence.

'Because they are snakes,' said Mentz.

'Oh ...'

'We have no choice,' Masilo repeated.

Mentz looked at the Advocate in disapproval, but eventually she
capitulated, 'Raj, prepare the Chapter Five request. I'll go talk to the
Minister.'

'No,' the Minister said, greatly displeased.

'Sir ...' Mentz said.

'No, no, no. What do we say to the Americans? Someone is
bringing a boat full of mad Muslims to blow up your soccer team, please give us
a hand? Because we are too useless to stop a bunch of old bearded men? Have you
any idea of the pressure at the moment, from the news vultures circling up
there in the sky, over this World Cup, all those Afro-pessimists? They
want
us to fail. So they can say, look, Africa is
still Africa, rotten with crime and corruption and stupid black people. Now you
want us, nine months before the tournament, to tell the Americans your team is
in danger and we are too stupid to handle it ourselves? The next thing would be
Obama announcing they aren't coming any more. The risk is too high, no, Janina,
no, no, no ...'

'Sir, no one has a greater distaste ...'

'Why didn't you just arrest the Muslims, Janina? When there
was time?'

'Sir, you know ...'

'I know what you are telling me, I trusted you.'

'We don't have to tell the Americans anything, sir.'

'Nothing? We ask them to turn all their satellites to look at
our waters and we tell them nothing?'

'Sir, we have a trump card.'

'What?'

'The CIA have just begun a process of infiltration. Of the
PIA.'

'You're not serious.'

'I am.'

'Do you have proof?'

She put the photos on the desk. Lukas Becker, at Cape Town
International Airport. 'He is a former South African with a military
background. In 1994 he left for the USA ...'

'In 1994?' Indignant. 'One of those who didn't like our new,
democratic South Africa?'

'Most likely. We are still busy investigating his ideology,
but we are reasonably certain he was recruited by the CIA in the period 1994 to
1996, because from 1997 to 2004 he was deployed in all the CIA focal points:
Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Iran and Turkey, under the cover of archaeological digs.
From 2004 till earlier this year he was working
full-time
in Iraq, as an "employee" of Blackwater. He has at least one American
bank account and two investment accounts, and his cash assets are over two
million, conservatively estimated. And a month ago he was suddenly back in the
country, and assassinated a major figure in the organised crime arena,
coincidentally, one that we were investigating for his connection with the
Supreme Committee.'

The Minister dropped back into his
chair, shaking his head. 'CIA,' he said, with new understanding.

'He is currently making himself
agreeable to one of our administrative workers.'

'And then they sit in the liaison
meetings and pretend they are our friends.'

'Exactly, sir.'

'How do you want to use this,
Janina?'

'Leverage, sir. I don't want to play the trump card before it
is necessary.'

'Shall I make us some coffee?' Milla
asked when they reached the security gate to her flat.

'Please,' he said.

She typed in the code and opened the
gate. Her heart thumped.

'Milla,' he said.

She turned to look at him.

'Will you tell me about yourself?'

The operator was a woman, thirty-four
years old. She was one of Quinn's trusted, dependable people.

At 22.48, in her cubicle at the PIA,
the surveillance team let her know Becker and Miss Jenny had just stopped in
front of her flat. Audio surveillance could begin.

She hurried to the Ops Room, strongly
aware of Quinn's orders: no recordings on the system. Just a digital audio file
on a memory stick, for his attention, on his desk. And a handwritten note to
indicate its importance.

She tuned to the correct channel, fired up the computer, put
on the headphones.