Hyena Dawn (18 page)

Just as she was thinking she could walk away undetected, she noticed that the guard at the fire had woken up and was watching her warily. The gun cradled in his arms took on a forbidding aspect. She pulled over an empty billy-can that was lying nearby and filled it with water from the bottle next to the tent. Then she put the billy on the fire and watched for the tiny bubbles that would rise to the top as it began to boil.

‘
You know, Miss Elliot, you are a very beautiful woman.’

She jumped with fright as she heard the deep voice behind her. She wheeled round to see Tongogara staring at her from his sleeping place, his body propped up on his right elbow. He was naked from the waist up, and his ebony skin was latticed with cords of muscle. The strong face was lit with a radiant smile.

‘
Thank you, Tongogara. This is a very beautiful place. But I don’t understand why there are so many Russians here. I thought your backing came from the Chinese?’

Tongogara laughed. ‘This is the thinking of the Smith regime. The two-pronged attack, Chinese to the right, Russians to the left. Unfortunately the reality is a little different - we take our support wherever we can find it. Our aim is simple: to overthrow the Smith regime, not to accept some phoney government imposed on us by British and American politicians. Our people long for freedom.’

Sam stared across at him, deadly serious. ‘And the poverty, the hunger and the death? These are real enough. Will they go away with “freedom”?’

His face hardened. Now he looked much older. ‘We have to accept suffering. We have lived with it since the white man and his strange god came to our shores. We are the ones who cannot afford to forget. We will never be repaid for our suffering. Thousands of us have had to die in order that we may win this struggle. We could win by sheer numbers alone, there are enough of us for that.’

She eased the billy of now boiling water off the fire and looked up into Tongogara’s eyes. ‘Your generation will not gain much from that victory, Tongogara.’

He picked up some sand from the ground next to the fire and crumbled it between his fingers. ‘Our children will grow up in a land that is their own, a society in which black consciousness has a pride in itself. Already the younger cadres argue that men such as myself are too moderate, that our energy has been sapped by the West. I cannot argue with them, they are my own flesh and blood.’

Sam watched as the cliffs behind them became a deep red in the first morning sunlight. Red, the colour of Africa. Tongogara held her spellbound.

‘
Who gives a damn whether it’s the Russians or the Chinese who are behind us? That disguises the real issue. I have faith in your intelligence, Miss Elliot, which is why I am going to make sure you get out of Mozambique alive. Perhaps you can tell the world of the real issue here in Africa. We have almost won the battle for Zimbabwe, but the wider struggle has only just begun. The country to the south, the country of the Afrikaner tribe, is our biggest enemy. Those people will take a very long time to defeat.’

The sunlight fell across Tongogara’s face, throwing his profile into dramatic relief. She knew what he said was true, especially about the suffering of his people. With his intelligence and integrity he would make a good ruler.

‘
Do you have any children, Tongogara?’

His face lit up at the question. ‘I have five sons, a tribute to my wife. They are all strong men who will become leaders.’

‘
And your wife?’

A cloud passed across his face, robbing it of its life and passion. ‘Do not talk of my wife, Miss Elliot.’

But Sam wanted to know, her reporter’s instinct demanded that she know. ‘No. You want me to tell the story of your people? Then you must explain it to me through your own history.’

He sat down cross-legged in front of the fire and gestured for her to do the same. For some time he stared at the burning embers, as if trying to find some essential message in the slow destruction that was the heart of the fire. She handed him a cup of black coffee and he sipped at it meditatively.

‘
My children are men now. My wife had the first when she was seventeen and the last when she was twenty-six. They all live in Soweto, the scar on the earth that lies south-west of Johannesburg. Egoli, the city of gold. I went there when I was young, I left Umtali and poverty to seek my fortune in the gold mines. I made money, I found a wife and I learned to hate the white man. Now my children live for the Revolution. I would like them to leave Soweto and join me in the new Zimbabwe, but they will not.’

‘
Surely they don’t all want to fight? There’s always one child different from the rest.’

He sprang to his feet like a giant cat and stared into the rising sun. His face reflected only bitterness.

‘
Yes, I was given five sons, but they were taken away from me. I was forced to leave South Africa and I will be imprisoned if I return there; I tried to start a union at the mine - a dreadful crime! I am the one who should be bitter, but my sons took my bitterness for their own. It is a long time since my wife died, but the memory of her death is still fresh to me, as it is to them.’

‘
How did she die?’ Sam asked softly, almost afraid of the answer he might give.

‘
She was murdered. She went to Maputo for the cause and worked with the white woman called Ruth First - I think you may have heard of her. Ruth had to go to Lesotho with my wife for a secret meeting, but Ruth became sick so my wife went alone. Neither of them knew it was a trap. She was killed by a bomb that went off in her hotel in Maseru.’

‘
Oh, Tongogara - ’

‘
A right-wing Lesotho political group was blamed for the explosion, but I did not believe this. For me it was a terrible blow, but for my sons it was the last straw. I had hoped that some of them might make it to university, but now they only live to fight. The South Africans must learn, violence begets violence. I refuse to degenerate to the level of the men who killed my wife.

‘
Perhaps I am stupid, but I do not want to see our new state of Zimbabwe begun in a bloody purge. Our children need education so that they can rule with intelligence and understanding, so that our civilisation can stand proud amongst the others of the world. I am over forty, and my chief skill is the effectiveness with which I command my men and wield my gun. That is no way to live.’ Sam stared up at him, almost in tears.

‘
I will tell the world your story, Tongogara. I will not try to escape from here, though I believe General Vorotnikov will try to kill you for rescuing me.’

‘
Generals are good politicians. Vorotnikov is no different. He will see reason.’

The sun was now well above the horizon and already Sam could feel the intense heat of the coming day. Tongogara walked over to the sentry and talked to him for a few minutes, then he turned away towards the main camp.

Sam went back to her tent. In the distance the cliffs glistened. She understood Tongogara’s yearning. How terrible it must be to live, and yet not to have a country one could call one’s own.

Deon

It had been a typical Saturday night. The usual procession of people who had had too much to drink had been brought in and put to sleep in the cells.

Four reports of break-ins had been passed on to the Flying Squad - one of the calls had turned out to be a hoax and another had resulted in an arrest. Then there had been a shoot-out; no one had been hurt but the robbers had got away. Deon remembered having read somewhere that white South Africans were the most heavily armed people in the world. Well, he could believe it.

It was two o’clock in the morning, and he was sitting with Captain Pinkus Smit of the Flying Squad over a cup of putrid canteen coffee. They were just getting down to a good heart-to- heart on who would win the next Curry Cup rugby final, when one of his men came in with a report of a break-in taking place at an expensive home on Westcliff Ridge. It was all the excuse he and Smit needed. They’d both had enough of sitting around John Vorster Square - the Johannesburg police headquarters - at that time of the morning.

Moments later they were flying down the motorway, sirens screaming. A second car followed. If there were still robbers in the house, they weren’t going to take any chances.

Captain Smit was a fast driver and the car was one of the new BMWs they’d just bought for the force. They were outside the house in five minutes. The story was typical, the owners had gone to Cape Town for the weekend, a neighbour had heard glass breaking . . . Deon had told his men to switch off the sirens as they came into Westcliff. If the robbers were still in the house, they wouldn’t know that the Flying Squad was now outside.

While Deon took a statement from the neighbour, carefully listing all the details, Captain Smit and a junior officer began investigating.

Captain Smit had located the window where the burglars had entered the house: typical point of entry, the kitchen side- window. A professional job - they’d bypassed the burglar alarm system easily. Sergeant Venter went in first and Captain Smit followed. Before Smit could say anything, Venter was through the hall and heading up the stairs.

Smit saw the muzzle flashes as Sergeant Venter was thrown down the stairs. He landed on a glass table at the bottom which exploded into pieces. Immediately Smit swung the riot-pump shotgun up at the stairwell and ripped off two shots. His ears sang with the noise of the explosion, but he still heard the sound of breaking glass at the top of the stairwell.

He ran up the steps and jumped over the blood-soaked body of the man he must have hit. He looked out of the broken window and saw a figure running across the back garden towards the bushes. Dropping to a crouch, he aimed carefully along the barrel of the shotgun and squeezed the trigger.

There was a muffled scream and the man toppled over. Another man came into view, and Smit was about to fire again when he realised it was Major Deon de Wet. Smit shivered involuntarily and relaxed his finger on the trigger. God, that was close!

Lights came on in the surrounding houses. Smit wasn’t surprised, the riot-pump made one hell of a racket. He searched for the light switch and found it, bathing the hall in light. He’d hit the man on the stairs in the face, killing him instantly.

Sergeant Venter was lying still in a mass of glass shards at the bottom of the stairs. Smit walked down and felt Venter’s pulse. Two shots in the stomach, the poor kid hadn’t had a chance. He walked over and opened the front door to find the drive was filled with people.

Before he could stop her, a woman ran into the hall, and the next minute she was screaming her head off. Then Major de Wet appeared in the doorway and carried her out. Captain Smit watched as he addressed the gathering of worried neighbours.

‘
I’m Major de Wet from the Murder and Robbery Squad. Everything is under control now, so I am asking you to please return to your homes. People have been killed here, it isn’t very pleasant. If you saw anything earlier that could help us with our enquiries and would like to make a statement, please contact me at John Vorster Square in the morning.’

Captain Smit admired the command with which Major de Wet always handled people. De Wet was a big man - he guessed he must weigh at least two hundred pounds. He admired De Wet’s dedication, his obvious belief that he had a mission to enforce the law. In the faint light cast by the lamps in the drive, he studied the face of his superior officer - a dark-skinned face, topped by a mop of brown hair. Individually the features might have been described as heavy: the hard jaw-line with the long, full lips above it; the prominent nose, the dark, hypnotic eyes recessed under huge bushy eyebrows, and the high, heavily lined forehead. On some occasions Captain Smit felt that de Wet looked more like a farmer than a police major. He certainly looked all his thirty-nine years.

Captain Smit watched the last of the people disappear into the darkness. Major de Wet turned to him.

‘
Good shot, Captain Smit. Perhaps too good. The man in the back garden won’t be telling us anything.’

‘
Unfortunately, Major de Wet, neither will the other man who shot at me in the house.’

‘
And Sergeant Venter?’ Captain Smit nodded his head. ‘Damn.’

‘
Major, you know what it’s like. He went inside ahead of me and charged up the stairs like an Afrikaner bull.’

‘
You tell that to his parents, Captain.’

The ambulance arrived five minutes later to take the bodies away. Why an ambulance, which was, after all, for the living? Deon could never understand that. He left the reliable Captain Smit to help the ambulance men, and began his search of the house.

It was a big place, immaculately furnished and with no bric-a-brac lying around. He felt curiously uncomfortable in it, an unusual feeling which he stored in his mind for future reference. Often such feelings came to have a direct bearing on a case.

The first thing that struck him as odd was the absence of servants. Usually in Johannesburg, a house of this size would have at least three servants resident on the property. He opened the kitchen door and walked over to the servants’ quarters.

The rooms were locked but it was obvious that the servants must have been on the property the previous day. There were clothes on the washing-line, and in the rubbish bins were remnants of recently eaten food. It would be natural for one or two of the servants to be out on a Saturday night, but not for all of them to have gone away.