They returned to Cape Town and were about to leave for London when the urgent contact signal was received from Inkululeko (she leaves her cars indicator on in her home driveway). When contact was established, Inkululeko supplied the address where Mpayipheli was apparently recuperating from wounds sustained during his cross-country flight. She granted us three hours before the PIU Reaction Unit would reach the same address.
The image that remained with Allison Healy afterward was the one of blood the carotid artery that kept pumping spouts of the liquid, first against the wall and later onto the floor, powerful jets in an impossibly high arc that gradually lessened until the fountain of life dried up with repulsive finality.
In long discussions afterward with Van Heerden she would try to purge it from her mind by reconstructing the events over and over again. Try to analyze her emotions from where they had stood as they ate their meal through to the end of it all one day later.
They sat at the table in Van Heerdens kitchen. At Mpayiphelis request, he had made coq au vin in the traditional Provençal manner. The serving dish stood in the middle of the table, steaming a heavenly aroma, golden couscous in a dish alongside. Three people in a happy domestic scene, the Xhosa mans hunger practically visible on his face, the way he eyed the food, eager posture, hands ready, impatient for her to finish serving.
It was a pleasant occasion, a convivial gathering, a mental photograph frozen in time to take out and remember with satisfaction later.
Don Giovanni
playing in the sitting room, a baritone aria that she was unfamiliar with but that fell with melodious machismo on her ear, the man she was beginning to love beside her, who continually surprised her with his cooking skill, his fanatical love of Mozart, his deep friendship with the black man, his ongoing teasing of the both of them. And Thobela, who carried his grief for Miriam Nzululwazi with so much grace how her perception of him had changed. A week ago on the plane he and his past had filled her with fear, but now tenderness grew in her out of the conversations on the veranda when he related his life to her. There were moments when he described how he had met Miriam and how their love and companionship had blossomed that she had to fight back the tears. Here they sat now on the eve of his attempt to claim Pakamile, the future full of promise for everyone and the world, a wonderful moment framed in the dark reflection of a red wine glass.
She would never be sure if she had heard the sound. Perhaps, but even if she had, her untrained ear could never have distinguished it from others, nor her consciousness read danger in it.
Mpayipheli had moved with purpose, one moment in the chair beside her, the next a mass of kinetic energy moving in the direction of the sitting room, and then everything happened at once. Chaos and noise that she could only sort chronologically with great difficulty after the fact. First the dull thud of human bodies colliding with great force, then the apologetic reports of a silenced firearm, a short staccato of four-five-six shots followed by the crack of the coffee table breaking, shouts of men like bellowing animals, and she found herself in the doorway of the living room, the only light shining over her shoulder, and all she could see was rolling shadows and half-light.
Mpayipheli and a man were on the ground, writhing and grunting for life or death, the silver flash of a steel blade in between, and another man, tall and athletic on the other side of the room with a gun in his hand, the long snout of a silencer searching out a target on the floor, but calm and calculating, unhurried by the frenetic motion of the two figures.
And then Van Heerden. She had not seen him leave the kitchen, was unaware that he had gone out the other door into the passage. Only when the tall man placed his gun on the floor did she realize that Van Heerden was holding the double-barreled shotgun to the mans head, and he called to her, Allison, go into the kitchen, close the door, but she was frozen. Why couldnt she move? Why couldnt she react? she would ask herself and Van Heerden over and over in the weeks afterward.
Mpayipheli and the other one stood up against each other; his opponent, the one with the knife, had small eyes close together and a thick neck on massive shoulders.
Tiny, Van Heerden called, and threw something across the room that the Xhosa deftly caught.
Tiny.
Everything regressed, everything rolled back to an ancient time, and the one with the neck said, Amsingelly with his head lowered and his broad-bladed knife weaving in front of him.
Umzingeli. Thobelas voice was a deep growl and then softer, much softer: Mayibuye.
What fucking language is that, nigger?
Xhosa. And she would never forget the look on Mpayiphelis face, the light from the kitchen slanting onto it, and there was something indescribable there, a strange illumination, and then she saw the object he had plucked out of the air it was the assegai, the one she had bought for him in the curio shop on Long Street.
This office has been unable to re-establish contact with the two agents and can only assume that the mission was not a success.
Inkululeko has been unable to supply any information as to what transpired at the house that belongs to a member of a local universitys department of psychology.
We will continue to pursue the matter but regret to inform you that we have to presume the worst.
Hes not here, maam, screamed Captain Tiger Mazibuko over the phone with a raging frustration that made her shudder.
Tiger
The doctor is here and he says if we dont leave within fifteen minutes, we will never see the hard drive again. And a redhead who says she is from the press. Something happened here, theres blood on the walls and the furniture is fucked, but the dog is not here and these fucking people wont cooperate
.
Tiger. Her voice was stern and sharp, but he ignored her, he was out of his mind. No, he said. I am finished. Totally fucking finished. Ive already made a cunt of myself, I am finished. I didnt sit for two fucking days in a cell in Botswana for this. I didnt sign up for this. I will not expose my people to this. Enough, its fucking enough.
She tried calm. Tiger, slow down.
Christ, jissis, he said, and he sounded as if he would cry.
Tiger, let me speak to the doctor.
Im finished, he said.
Tiger, please.
* * *
High on the slopes of the Tygerberg in the heart of a white neighborhood, he climbed out of Van Heerdens car. He was one block away from his destination, because there could be eyes, possibly two sets in a vehicle in front of the door and one or two bodyguards inside.
He moved purposefully to the dark patches on the sidewalk, because a black man here in the small hours was out of place. On the street corner he stopped. The Cape night opened up for him, a fairy tale of a thousand flickering lights as far as the eye could see, from Milnerton in the west the coastline swept down to the lit carbuncle of the mountain. The city lay there like a slowly beating heart, the arteries curling away to Groote Schuur and Observatory and Rosebank and Newlands, and from there the Flats made a curve east, through Khayalitsha and Guguletu to Kraaifontein and Stellenbosch and Somerset West. Rich and poor, shoulder to shoulder, sleeping now, a resting giant.
He stood, hands by his side. He looked.
Because tomorrow would be his last day here.
* * *
Somewhere between three and four in the morning a part of Janina Mentzs consciousness dragged her from a deep sleep. A sense that all was not right a panicky, suffocating feeling. She opened her eyes with a jerk of her body, and the big black hand was over her mouth and she smelled him, the sweat, saw the blood on the torn clothes, saw the short assegai in his hand, and she made a sound of terror, her body instinctively shrinking away from him.
My name, he said, is Thobela Mpayipheli.
He pressed the blade to her throat and said, We dont want to wake the children.
She moved her head up and down, pulling the sheets instinctively up over her chest where her heart leaped around like a wild animal.
I am going to take my hand off your mouth. I want only two things from you, and then I will leave. Do you understand?
Again she nodded.
He lifted his hand, shifting the blade away from her, but still he was too close to her, his eyes watchful.
Where is Pakamile?
Her voice would not function, it came hoarsely through her dry mouth that failed to form words. She had to start over. He is safe.
Where?
I dont know the exact place.
You lie. And the blade came nearer.
No
Welfare, they took him.
You will find out.
I will. I
there isnt
Tomorrow Ill have to
You will find out tomorrow. And her head worked frantically up and down in confirmation, her heart had slowed a fraction.
Tomorrow morning at eleven you will have Pakamile at the underground parking lot of the waterfront. If he is not there, I will send a copy of the hard drive to every newspaper in the country, understand?
Yes. Grateful that her voice flowed more easily now.
Eleven oclock. Do not be late.
I wont.
I know where you live, he said, and stood up. And then he was gone, the room empty, and she took a deep breath before slowly getting out of bed and going to the bathroom to throw up.
47.
B
odenstein saw the GS stop in the street just before opening, and he knew he knew the rider but recognized him only when Mpayipheli removed the helmet. Fuck, said Bodenstein, and went out, amazed. Thobela, he said. I came to pay you. Look at the bloody bike. A few scrapes. Its fine. A few scrapes?
Ive come to buy it, Bodenstein. You what?
And I need another helmet. One of those System Fours that we only have in small sizes left. There are still a couple in the storeroom behind those boxes the exhausts came in.
* * *
It was just Van Heerden and him in the parking garage. He stood by the motorbike; Van Heerden sat in his car with the CIA agents silenced machine pistol.
Allison had chosen not to come.
At one minute to eleven a black man came walking toward him from the shopping center entrance with a long, confident stride, and he knew instinctively that it was Mazibuko he matched the voice and the rage to the physical before him.
I will get you, dog, said Mazibuko.
Where is Pakamile?
Im telling you I will get you. One day when this data is not important anymore, I will find you and I will kill you, as God is my witness, I am going to kill you.
They faced each other and he felt the hate radiating from the man, and the temptation was strong, the fighting blood welled up in him.
The question you must ask, Mazibuko, is whether there is more in you than just the anger you feel. What is left if that is gone?
Fuck you, Xhosa. Spittle sprayed.
Are they using you? Are they using the rage that is eating you?
Shut up, you dog. Come, take me now, you fucking coward. Tigers body leaned forward, but an invisible thread held him back.
Ask yourself: how long until its no longer useful, before things change. A new administration or a new system or a new era. They are using you, Mazibuko. Like a piece of equipment.
Captain Tiger Mazibuko cracked at that moment, his hand went to the bulky bulge under his jacket and it was only the sharp voice of Janina Mentz that made him waver a moment, an authoritarian cry of his nickname, and he stood, torn between two alternatives, his eyes wild, his body a hair trigger, his fingers on the butt of the gun, and then Mpayipheli said quietly: I am not alone, Tiger. You are dead before you can point that thing.
Tiger, Janina called again.
Like a man on high wire, he struggled with balance.
Dont let them use you, said Mpayipheli again.
Tiger dropped his hand, speechless.
Where is the hard drive? he heard Mentzs voice from somewhere between the cars.
Safe, he said. Where is Pakamile?
In the car back here. If you want the child, you will have to give it to Tiger.
You dont understand your alternatives.
That is what you dont understand. The child for the hard drive. Non-negotiable.
Watch me carefully. I am going to take a cell phone out of my pocket. And then I am going to phone a reporter from the
Cape Times.
Mazibuko stood before him, watching his every move, but his eyes had changed. The wildness had gone, and there was something else growing.
