Blood Rose (38 page)

She wound her scarf tighter around her face. The series of regular impressions leading away from Mara’s body was nearly obscured. The lure of them, the possibility that they were footprints, that Oscar was alive, was overwhelming. Clare stood up and looked north, the direction into which the tracks vanished. There was a gulley on the other side of the dunes, and then nothing but an ocean of dancing sand. If she followed these ephemeral marks she would be lost in minutes. Oscar had survived the desert before. She had to hope that he could do it again.

She struggled up the incline, leaving Mara’s lifeless body to
be buried in the desert. Below, she could make out the broken spine of the railway line and the eucalyptus standing in solitary splendour, marking where someone had tried to make a home, or coax a crop out of the sand. Clare made her way down, zigzagging along the contour, dreading what she was going to find. The wind had sculpted the sand over the low scrubby bushes, rocks and any detritus that lay on this dry tributary. It moulded sand over everything, making the shifting landscape surreal, blurred by the whirl of fool’s gold.

Clare crouched as her eye registered a movement at the tree. A woman with her knees parted and bent just a fraction. The arms locked, clasped in front of her body. The man bound and watching the woman’s face as one would watch a weaving mamba.

Riedwaan.

Clare slipped the dust-sticky safety off Tamar’s gun. Before her mind had a chance to even register, she fired.

Riedwaan felt the blood spurt from his right wrist as he wrenched it free. He grabbed the metal rod beside him and brought it across the woman’s knees as she fired, felling her like a ham-strung animal. She lay across his lap, completely motionless. He worked his left arm free and slipped his arms around her. They were both slick with her blood. There had to have been two shots; Riedwaan was sure of it. That was the only thing that explained the sound. He turned Gretchen around to reveal a gunshot wound on her shoulder.

‘Well caught.’ The catch in Clare’s voice undid her attempt at a joke.

Riedwaan looked up. ‘About time,’ he said. The blood was rushing back into his arms. It was excruciating, but the sight of Clare was like a shot of morphine. ‘Who is this?’ he asked. ‘If you don’t mind me asking.’

Clare knelt beside the bleeding woman and turned her head towards her. The woman moaned.

‘The Blue Angel,’ said Clare. ‘I thought it might be.’

‘A friend of yours?’ said Riedwaan. He pulled off his shirt and wrapped it around Gretchen’s naked form.

‘In a manner of speaking. You could say we have a couple of mutual acquaintances.’

‘She’s not going to last long,’ said Riedwaan. He pulled out his phone and gave it to Clare. ‘You dial. My hands aren’t working that well at the moment.’

Clare took the phone and dialled Tamar’s number, ducking into the hut to get reception.

Riedwaan found his cigarettes. He put one between his lips and felt around for his lighter. It was gone.

‘You don’t have a light, I suppose?’ he said to Clare as she came out of the hut.

‘I do actually,’ she said, offering him the Zippo with the mermaid on it. ‘I picked it up outside the freezer just before Gretchen’s friend tried to push me inside.’

Riedwaan turned the lighter over in his hand so that he could read the inscription: Magnus Malan. He lit his cigarette. ‘On the
Alhantra
?’ he asked.

Clare nodded.

‘No sign of its owner?’

‘Just a trace of blood.’

Riedwaan took a deep drag. ‘How much will you bet that Darlene’s husband is freezing in the hold with his uranium cakes?’

Clare sat down next to him and watched him smoke. ‘I’m not much for betting,’ she said. ‘But if I were, the odds would be so low it wouldn’t be worthwhile.’

She thought about kissing him, but the sound of the helicopter approaching drowned out the wind and by then it was too late.

The bundle of dollars Janus Renko handed over to the port captain in Luanda meant that the
Alhantra
had no trouble docking at the Angolan port. He leant against the rail, waiting for his man. He had not met him before, but they all looked the same: shirt pressed and crisp despite the humidity, linen suit, shades mirrored, black hair precisely cut. He scanned the girls displaying their wares on the other side of the razor wire. There. Newly budded breasts. The girl held his eye, deliberately hooked a nipple on a barb. One crimson bead of blood spread across her tight white shirt.

‘Delivery complete?’

Renko turned towards the soft voice.

‘Of course.’ He took the case the man had placed at his feet and opened it. The diamonds, nestled on green velvet, winked at him, complicit, true.

‘You want to look below?’ Renko asked, putting his eyepiece away.

The man shrugged, his expression hidden behind his dark glasses. ‘It’s there. We checked.’

Renko handed over the ship’s papers. The keys. Docking papers. Orange roughy, such a delicacy. Especially the way this lot was going to be prepared. Renko disembarked, avoiding the filth on the wharf. The girl peeled away from the others. She fell into step beside Renko once he was clear of the docks.

‘You lonely?’

Renko checked his watch. He had a couple of hours.

‘A little,’ he smiled.

When his plane flew low over the Luanda Hilton, the sun was dropping westward, the roofs of the town shining in its light. In the east, darkness.

Hours later, the stars hung low. On the horizon, Scorpio setting as the plane touched down. Janus Renko’s shirt was white against the smooth, dark skin of his neck, despite the long flight to Johannesburg. He was tired. It took a second before he noticed the man in the black suit peel away from the shelter of the wall.

That fraction of time was all Phiri needed. The Browning was hard in Renko’s kidneys; his arms high up his back, the sharp intake of breath indicating just how far.

‘Funny,’ said Phiri, his mouth close to the man’s ear. ‘A perfect fit.’

Renko knew better than to fight. ‘Goagab?’ he asked.

‘Singing like a bird,’ said Phiri.

In the time it had taken Renko to get to Johannesburg, Goagab’s fear of prison had him confessing to every crime he’d ever even considered committing. The
Alhantra
, he told Karamata, had been ferrying six cakes of uranium 235. The highly enriched uranium had been siphoned off from Vastrap and buried in the Namib by Hofmeyr and Malan when they were in charge of destroying the nuclear programme in 1990. The cakes had been buried there for over ten years, waiting for Janus Renko to broker a deal with some Pakistani businessmen. When he did, Goagab had signed off the safe passage to Spain for a cut.

‘One city, one cake,’ Phiri said. ‘Enough highly enriched uranium to make dirty bombs for six European cities. Which were they? Paris? Berlin? Antwerp?’

‘You’ll be sorry for this,’ said Renko calmly, ‘when my lawyer gets hold of you.’

‘I hear the Americans are clearing a cell for you in Guantanamo,’
Phiri continued, unperturbed. ‘But I think that might have to wait a bit. That little mermaid you pulled out of the water in Walvis Bay, the one you got to shoot those boys who did your dirty work, she’s decided that her debt to you was cashed up when you left without her.’

‘A whore,’ said Renko. ‘Any lawyer would shred her in court.’

‘Hell hath no fury …’ Phiri let the phrase linger. ‘After Clare Hart put a bullet through her shoulder, and then kept her alive long enough to get her to ICU, it seems she switched allegiance,’ he went on. ‘Never underestimate a woman scorned. Dr Hart got the lot. You. Gretchen. The boys. Johansson, who incidentally looks like he’ll be testifying, too. Malan.’

‘Malan.’ The name erupted from Renko. ‘Too fucking lazy to do his own labour.’

‘We found him,’ said Phiri. ‘Not a pleasant sight. What did you use? A filleting knife?’

Renko was silent again, contained fury vibrating through his body.

‘Now, if you’ll excuse me …’ Phiri pulled out his cellphone and dialled the number. ‘Faizal,’ he said when Riedwaan picked up. ‘Tell Dr Hart we’ve got her man.’

Riedwaan put his finger on Clare’s lips, stopping her question. She waited impatiently, recognising Phiri’s voice on the other end of the line but unable to make out what he was saying amidst the noise of the restaurant.

‘They got him,’ Riedwaan said, snapping his phone shut. ‘And his cargo.’

‘I’ve had enough to eat,’ said Clare, relief washing over her. ‘Shall we go?’

Riedwaan signalled for the bill. He winced. The skin on his chest was healing and his shoulder had been expertly bandaged
by Helena Kotze, but even after three days in hospital, movement was not easy.

Outside the restaurant, it was clear, the sky heavy with stars. A curlew on the lagoon called, the sound piercing the cold night. Riedwaan put his arm around Clare’s waist.

‘Sexy dress this. I was wondering who you were going to wear it for.’

Clare unlocked her cottage door. Somehow, they had walked past Burning Shore Lodge.

‘You want some coffee?’ she asked, running a tentative finger down his neck.

‘Maybe a whisky.’

Clare poured two and took them through to the sitting room. ‘You didn’t miss these?’ Riedwaan put his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a scrap of silk.

‘Whose are those?’ Clare grabbed the black knickers.

‘Yours, I hope,’ he laughed. ‘I took them before you left Cape Town. A memento.’

Clare reached under her skirt and pulled off the pair she was wearing. ‘You want me to check?’

‘Not really.’ He caught both her hands in one of his. The other one he slid up her bare thigh. ‘I’d just have to take them off again.’

‘True,’ said Clare, pulling him with her onto the couch. ‘And that would be a waste of time.’

Oscar.

You hear it, your name formed as a series of soft clicks in the back of a throat. A drop, then two, of water on your lips, your eyelids. You open your eyes. The familiar weathered face: Spyt.

You try to say his name. Nothing comes but a croak. The man sweeps the flies sipping from your forehead, split by a rock. He disentangles you from the dead woman, Mara, lifting you into his arms, cradling you against his chest. He carries you to the cool shelter of his cave, out of the wind. The silence in the wake of the storm is overwhelming. Spyt lays you down, gentling his donkeys, restless at the intrusion, before he sets to work on you …

Three days later, the moon is full, obliterating all but the brightest stars. Spyt puts out a hand for you. Together you listen, ears catching the distant purr of an engine, which is nothing but a texture in the silence. You retreat deeper into the shadows when the lights break over the dune, sweeping across the moonlit sand. When the engine cuts, the restored silence is deafening.

Their voices are low murmurs as the couple unpacks, lights a fire. The pungent smoke purls into the sky. It is getting colder. The man twists the long rope of the woman’s hair in his hands. She sinks into him. The soft undulation of their bodies mimics the desert, radiating away from them. When they subside into sleep, the old man walks with you down to the dying fire. In sleep, the woman has turned her back on the man, but his hand rests on her hip. She is familiar, this woman, the woman who reads your mind. It is Clare. You have
watched her sleep before, standing by her window, tracing a heart in the mist your breath made.

Spyt crouches, holding your hand close to her mouth. Her breath is warm on your palm.

When the moon arcs up and over, sinking into the ocean to the west, the cold desert wind knifes down the gully, rattling dry grasses. She turns towards the sleeping man; you imagine her breasts soft on his chest. Spyt takes your hand, and the two of you leave. The man and woman will head south to Cape Town, and you, here, will melt into the sheltering desert.

A jackal cries, unfurling the rosy dawn. Scorpio defers to the new light and sinks below the horizon.

Walvis Bay is Namibia’s only deep-water port. It is situated on the mouth of the ephemeral Kuiseb River. This underground river, in effect a long linear oasis that supports an infinite variety of plants, animals and people, halts the restless, constantly moving Namib sand sea that flows up from the south.

The town is isolated: to the south lies the Sperrgebied, the Forbidden Territory, where diamonds have been mined for over a century. To the north is the Skeleton Coast. Here, shipwrecks slowly disintegrate along the elementally beautiful stretch of sea, sky and sand.

People have lived in and around Walvis Bay for about five thousand years. Hunter-gatherers, ancestors of the Topnaar people who live in the Kuiseb fished and harvested the !nara plants, as the Topnaars still do to this day.

The Portuguese named it Bahia das Baleas, the Bay of Whales. Diego Cao erected a stone cross to the north, at Cape Cross, but he sailed on, leaving the bleak and waterless tracts of land unoccupied. During the eighteenth-century whaling boom, American whaling ships filled the bay, decimating the animals that gave this remote place its name.

In 1793, Walvis Bay was occupied in the name of Holland, but in 1795, the British occupied the Cape and claimed the port at the same time. But it was only in 1878 that Walvis Bay and the surrounding land, now a busy trading port, was formally annexed by the British. In 1884, the scramble for Africa reached a feverish pitch and the territory that is today Namibia was claimed by Germany. The British proclaimed Walvis
Bay to be part of the Cape Colony, however, and it remained a tiny British enclave until 1915, when South African troops seized German South West Africa and imposed military rule. In 1920, after the defeat of Germany in the First World War, South Africa, then a British colony, was granted a mandate over German South West Africa by the League of Nations. Walvis Bay was integrated into the rest of the territory and it was known as the South West African Protectorate. South Africa’s segregationist laws, including the migrant labour system, were extended to the whole territory, including Walvis Bay.