Place of Bones (12 page)

The radio burst into life and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Parka! Parka! Parka!”

I lifted the microphone. “I have you, Parka.”

“Five minutes, Base. Will you mark now?”

“Roger, Parka...Hey, you lot! Get out of the way!” As the men scattered I yanked the cord on the canister. It began to billow thick blue smoke. Into the microphone I said, “You have blue smoke, Parka...Repeat. You have blue smoke.”

“Received, Base. Marker is blue smoke. Stand by.”

The chopper was a Russian-built Mica-Ten, and it had
SHAMA ESTATES
  marked on its belly. It settled into the cleared area and I saw Piet Vryburg’s smiling face in the open door. I also saw the face of the girl at the airport, which surprised me. Except that now she was dressed in jungle fatigues and carrying a machine pistol. The pilot’s face I also recognized; he was the man on the floor of the car. There was another man, too. But this one I hadn’t seen before. He appeared Chinese.

“Christ, man,” said Piet, pumping my hand, “I see you!” His usual greeting. Africaans origins.

“And I see you, Piet, you son of a bitch.”

He was dressed in casual civilian clothes. I had only - ever - seen him in some kind of a uniform. The effect was unnerving. But the funny thing about Piet Vryburg, the man, was that I never felt odd meeting him again after long intervals, the way I did with other friends. Here was the same old Piet Vryburg from way back. Ebullient, full of life, a friend to the world in general. His blonde hair, sun-bleached white in places, was as unkempt as ever, and his face was still as tanned as a face could be without singeing. I felt bucked just seeing him again, and my first instinct was to take him off to some corner and chew the fat. He started going on about the flight, and how they had stayed clear of the weather, drifting in behind it, when the girl stepped over.

“Hello again, colonel McCann,” she interrupted, holding out her free hand. She had a wry smile on her face, as if she wanted me to comment on the amazing change the uniform made to her. I took the hand and again felt sandpaper. “Hi,” I said, not unkindly. “Come to see how the other half live?”

The smile disappeared. “This,” she said, indicating the stranger, “is Doctor Tung Sai Ping. You requested him, I believe.”

I shook hands with the man; a little guy who looked totally out of his depth. He wore a combat jacket that did not fit and boots that waggled as he walked. He carried the classic doctor’s bag in his left hand. “Well,” I said,”I certainly requested a doctor...Hello, doctor. Thanks for volunteering. I hope we don’t disappoint you too much.”

The man smiled nervously, bowed slightly the way they do, then retracted his sweating hand. He said not a word.

“He speaks little English, colonel,” said the girl. She was not apologizing. “And,” she added pointedly, “he did not volunteer. He is the estate’s resident physician. He will remain until mister Luang can find a permanent medic for you.”

I nodded. “Fair enough.” I did not actually anticipate needing the services of a fully fledged doctor at the camp - though several could be needed later, in a different place - but you never knew, and I had been caught once before; a bad tooth had robbed me of a fine scout and we had been forced to move against the Simba in unknown territory. We lost.

“I think you know this man,” the girl went on as the pilot jumped out of the chopper and loped over, ducking slightly beneath the still-turning rotors.

“Colonel,” acknowledged the Englishman,” It’s nice to meet you at the horizontal, so to speak.”

We shook hands. “What do I call you?” I asked.

“Jack’ll do, sport.” Not English, then. He was an Aussie. The accent, now that I listened for it, was obvious. “But I’ve been called worse.” He smiled.

The girl took an envelope from her breast pocket and handed it to me. “From mister Luang, colonel. Information regarding fresh contact schedules and some instructions for...for the future.” She then indicated the Kangatzi, who had crowded in around the aircraft, discussing it excitedly, pointing at lumps and orifices and wheels like a bunch of kids. “With your permission, we have some stores to unload.”

I nodded. “Help yourself...Incidentally,” I added as she turned away, “and correct me if I’m wrong. But do I get the impression that you think you’re staying here?” It was an impression that had just struck me.

She nodded. “I do so intent, colonel.”

I looked at Piet and he looked at me, eyebrows raised but his face purposefully blank of expression. He was saying;
Yeah, I know!
I went back to the girl. “I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible, miss...ah, miss Chan, was it?”

Her face went steely and her eyes looked like the proverbial pissholes in the snow. In a voice as cold as her expression, she said, “You will find confirmation in the envelope, colonel. And, for your information, I am not a..a
miss
anything!” The words clipped out like bullets. “I am a major in the Chinese Nationalist Army, and must be regarded as such.” She added, “You may totally disregard my...my gender. It is unimportant and irrelevant here.”

I couldn’t help chuckling. “It may be those things to
you,
miss, but you try and explain it to three hundred sex-starved mercenaries - black ones at that! They’d probably get a hell of a charge out of raping a major in the Chinese Nationalist Army.”

Piet looked at the ground as if he had just seen an ant of immense interest to him, whilst the doctor, if not fully understanding the words, appeared to get the gist. He slunk away to the far side of the chopper. The pilot found something of interest in my jeep.

The girl did not get red-in-the-face angry. She looked at me for a long moment with those nothing eyes. At last she said, “As of this moment, colonel, you may forget I exist.” The words came out like a computer simulation, jerkily but bright. “I am not here to get in your way, and I will not. I am here as an observer only. But I
am
here. And here I stay!”

I shook my head. I was no longer amused. “No dice! The last thing I want on my mind is some liberated - “

The air was suddenly filled with the rattle of her machine pistol. The Kangatzi scattered, throwing themselves at the weapons they had left on the edge of the clearing. Since I had seen it coming, I didn’t move. Nor did Piet. The pilot, however, who had been ferreting around in the jeep, leapt a mile in the air and came down flat on his face. The smoke billowed up around the girl as her magazine expended itself. The smoke canister, which had extinguished itself some minutes before, was no longer a smoke canister. Now it was a tubular colander, and thirty feet from where I had jammed it in the dirt, having been carried there on a stream of.287 bullets. I have to say that her marksmanship impressed. Her methods, however, left me colder than the Arctic. But before I could speak, she said, “Do not concern yourself about
my
safety, colonel. And resign yourself to the fact that I am here. I had hoped that - “

I was suddenly madder than all hell. I cut in, “The next time you slip the catch on that pop-gun...
major!...
you’d better be prepared to use it on me. Because I’ll wring your scrawny neck. You listening? No-one...not you, not comrade fucking Luang, not God Himself! goes “off-safety” unless
I
tell him to! Is that clear?”

We stared at each other like stand-off tigers. On the edge of my vision I could see the men, frozen in various attitudes, but all staring at the girl, their arms stretched towards their weapons. It might have seemed comical. Except that I did not feel comical.

Piet, his face turned away from the girl, whispered, “Let it go, Robbie.”

I shot him a glance, about to explode again. But I saw something in his eyes. I did not know what it was, but it was a warning of some kind. And Piet had never before interfered on professional matters. Certainly he had never tried to cool me out of an argument. Anyhow, for whatever reason, that split second of hesitation defused the tension in the air. The girl, quieter now, less stiltedly, said, “We understand each other, colonel. I am sure of that. And I apologize for the theatricals. But I am more than capable of looking after myself. My training, six months of it, was amongst a lot more than three hundred men. And they became just as sex-starved as any African can get. I deal with it as a fact of life, colonel. You may also be certain that I have no
wish
to be here. I was sent. I merely obey orders.”

Suddenly I didn’t care any more. If the men took it into their heads to give her a seeing-to, then good luck to them. Also, she had made a good argument. I said, “You are not my responsibility, major. If the men - “

She raised her hand. “I understand completely, colonel. There will be no trouble, believe me. I repeat, I have operated amongst troops since my teens. And...” Here she actually smiled a smile as she raised her arms sideways away from her body. “..do I look like something to be ravaged?”

Calmer now, I looked. What had fooled me, of course, was the memory of the way she had looked at the airport. Now there was no trace of make-up, and her hair was all but invisible beneath the forage cap. Her battle-dress, loose fitting and dirty, might have hung on a boy’s body. Certainly I could see no signs of her breasts. In fact, if anything, she looked flat-chested. The combat boots completed the image. I tried to picture her as the men would see her. I laughed. Her smile broadened as she asked, “What’s funny, colonel?”

“You’re right. You look like a boy.”

She nodded, satisfied. “There you are, then.”

I turned to Piet. “What’s the ratio of homo’s to sex-starved maniacs in a black mercenary outfit, Piet?”

Piet looked relieved. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said, smiling. “About evens, I reckon. I’ve known some to go ape-shit for a young boy.”

The girls face reset itself in concrete. But I raised my own hand. “Okay, major. You stay. But you’re completely on your own. You don’t bother me, and I wont bother you. As for anything else...well, you’re on your own there, too. Clear?”

“Clear,” she agreed dully.

Incident over. I waved at the chopper and the men, who were picking themselves up. “Get your gear together.”

The trip back along the west track was worse than I thought it could be. Piet, sitting alongside me, was in the air as much as he was on his seat, and he had to grip the windscreen surrounds for grim death. What was happening in the back seat with the girl, the doctor and the pilot, I could not imagine; even if I’d the time or the inclination to think about it. The jeep bucked and slid crazily through the quagmire of the dripping, feebly lit jungle. I had my work cut out, even at the slow speed I tried to maintain, staying inside the flashes of red paint.

Where, before, the foot-thick crust of mud atop the clay had been substantially hard around the litter of rocks and boulders, disguising their presence in most cases, the recent downpour had exposed them completely. Plus, of course, Bjoran and his detail had not bothered to cut any growths below mud level, so we were constantly hitting branches and roots as well as the rocks. The main problem was that a certain amount of power was needed to lift the jeep over the larger boulders; power that worked against me the instant the rear wheels fell back into the mud. And to keep adjusting engine revs so minutely, on a platform that was bucking about all over the place, was the height of impossibility. The whole business had to be a delicate compromise in conditions that forbade delicacy. Also, according to the law of perversity, when the front wheels of the jeep - regardless of what was under the rear axle at the time - kicked sideways off an obstruction, it was on a portion of adverse camber! Several times already disaster had only narrowly been averted, and then only by chance itself, in the form of another boulder or root arresting the slide. At the wheel of an unsteerable, unstoppable machine, I had been powerless to do anything but hope. But we ploughed on, deeper and deeper into the swamps, seeing nothing but those life-saving glimmers of red reflected light.

Well over four hours later I skidded the jeep to a halt at the western perimeter of Camp-One. We were all of us covered in a thick layer of slimy mud. The jeep floor space was awash with the stuff. Go alone knows what we must have looked like, but Brook, who saw us come in, did not know which of the apparitions was me. He saluted the pilot.

“Christ, sir,” he said to the Aussie, “that bad, was it?”

I said, “This is me, here. And yes, it was...Okay, you lot, blow!” That last to a group of men who had gathered to see the new intake. “Where is everybody?”

Brook turned to me, smiling. “Well, sir, Bjoran is out at the river with Blue section, or most of it. Target drill.” Brook, in continuance of his methods, had split the force into three sections; Blue, Red and Yellow. And these sections were each divided into sub-sections; Red-one and -two, Blue-one and -two and so on. He had talked it over with me first, of course, and left to myself I would probably have done the same, in a roundabout way. But he seemed to have a knack for organization so I let him get on with it. “Augarde is sorting out the armory. Hell fire, sir! You look bloody weird!”

“I feel weird.” I said, adding, “Lay on some water to - “

He cut in. “I’ve got a sort of a shower rigged up, sir. Over by the latrine pits. You can be the first customers.” He glanced around at the others, who were trying, without much success, to wipe the mud from their eyes.

I said, “Introductions later, Brook. Let’s give this shower of yours a bench test. Oh,” I added, “You’d better make other arrangements for this one.” I pointed to the girl, who didn’t even look like a boy any more. “This one’s a female.”

“What!” Brook exclaimed, stepping forward and peering hard at the mud-caked figure.

I waited to see if our major of the Chinese Nationalist Army would insist upon equal treatment in the shower. She said nothing.

The story of how Piet Vryburg and I became friends is an odd one. We first saw each other over gun sights!

At the time, I was commanding one of Joshua Nkomo’s “Quick-Strike” commando based at Zumbo, on the
Lago de Cahora
; a lake-like section of the Zambezi, over the Rhodesian border in Mozambique. Piet commanded a mercenary company that was only loosely attached to Ian Smith’s Department of Defense. His base, on the slopes of Mount Darwin, some 200 kays north-east of Salisbury, had been strategically placed to counter our sorties into the area. We knew
of
each other then, but had never come face to face. I had been trying to get him for as long as he had been after my blood.

During an action close to the Ruya River I finally got a bead on him, at a distance of some three hundred yards. A second later, and he might have turned the tables. As it was I managed to send a round into his chest and he went down. I was as pleased as Punch!  He didn’t die - of course - and we took him back with us to Zumbo hospital where, a prisoner of “war," he began to recover. I dropped in on him out of curiosity one day and was surprised to find that we had a mutual friend; “Cat” Souchet. We talked a lot after that. There were no hard feelings. We were both mercenaries, and “Cat” was a solid link. I saw to it that he was spared the misery and cruelty of Nkomo’s notorious “
Enemies of Freedom”
camp in Magoe, arranging that he instead be kept in the relative comfort of the Zumbo guardhouse.

Nkomo, however, saw things differently when he heard about it, and he sent orders that I transfer Piet
immediately
to Magoe, threatening disciplinary action if I did not comply. I knew that Nkomo’s hatred of the Smith regime was exceeded only by his hatred of South Africans, so I knew what Piet would be in for.

My current
persona non gratia
in the new Zimbabwe is a direct result of the escape I arranged for Piet and several others, before I arbitrarily resigned my commission and slipped out of the country myself. We fought together many times after that. And, with “Cat," we drank ourselves under more tables than I kept track of.

The Congo River had risen two feet overnight. It was now a swift-running maelstrom of muddy vortices and debris-cluttered waves that ripped hungrily at the bank side undergrowth, undermining and carrying away more and more debris. Eventually, the Galewe Cataract, south of Mbandaka, would clog, and the thickly packed vegetation would back up for several hundred yards before the sheer weight of it all would burst through the dam, and the whole process would begin again at the next cataract.

The sun was low down and the trees on the eastern bank appeared draped in a thin, wispy veil of blood-red silk. I had to raise my voice to be heard above the rushing water.

“What is it, Piet? You didn’t drag me out here to discuss the finer points of the operation.”

“You always were a perceptive bastard,” said Piet, his thick Boer accent more pronounced as he matched my volume. “And you’re right.” He removed his forage cap and pulled his fingers through his tangle of hair. “But where the hell to start...”

I could not imagine what he had to say. Certainly I had never seen Piet Vryburg embarrassed. He was embarrassed now. I said, “Is there a bottom line, Piet? Or is it a long story?” It was very strange. Piet always came directly to his point, on any subject. Yet, here he was, tinkering around the edges.

He shook his head. “Both. But I reckon you need the long story first.”

I lit a couple of cigarettes and handed him one. “Then let’s have it from the top.”

“The top,” he repeated significantly. “Fair enough. The top it is. That was a phone call from our mister Luang.”

“And?”

“And nothing. Not then. I was pretty bucked.” He leant back on the bonnet of the now clean jeep. “The Ugandan thing was turning sour on me. Apart from which it was good to think we’d be working together again. So I start to straighten things out that end. Then I get a visit from a South African. He says he wants a minute of my time. A reasonable request, I thought, since he backed it up with a fistful of Rand.”

“A recruiter?” I thought I had it. He had been offered more money for another job. No sooner had that thought crossed my mind, I erased it. Money, for Piet - as for me - was not a reason; it was an excuse. Then again...

Piet shrugged. “Don’t know
what
the hell he was. At least, I didn’t then. Anyway, he takes me for a ride in his flashy new motor. Out into the bush.” Now he really looked uncomfortable. So it
was
money. I said, “You know you’ll have to renegotiate with Luang, don’t you?”

It was a stupid statement. Piet knew the rules as well as I did.

He gazed at me as if I had not spoken, and I knew I was off-track completely. At length, he said, “Guess who I found out there, Robbie.”

This was really weird. Piet playing guessing games? “I don’t have a clue, Piet. Who
did
you find out there?”

He stared at me, opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again, with another shake of his head. This went way deeper than money, and I suddenly had a strange feeling, a feeling that what he was about to say had something to do with my current predicament. I tried to discount that as ridiculous. There was no way he could know the first thing about it. Was there?

Piet reached into his tunic pocket and brought out a Polaroid photograph, which he glanced at briefly. “You’ve only ever
talked
about her, Robbie. So I don’t know. Is this Karen?”

I was totally unprepared to see Karen’s face staring out at me from a photograph handed me by Piet Vryburg, who had been hired by the
Chinese!
  But it was her. Dressed in blue jeans and blouse, hands planted defiantly on her hips. I looked at the picture, my mind now blank.

“For Christ’s sake, Robbie!” said Piet, “Is it her, or isn’t it?”

I was amazed that I could remain so calm, so detached from a situation that bordered on the ludicrous. “It’s Karen.” I looked at him. “In
Uganda?”

Piet let out a sigh. “Well, that puts it all on the straight and level. I tell you, Robbie, I was - “

“
You
took this picture?”

He shook his head. “No. This guy did. Called Ryan. But that’s my shadow you see on the ground beside the...beside Karen. You gonna explode soon, Robbie? Get it over with?”

I wished I could explode. But an explosion was not in me to come out. For the moment, this new twist, coming at me from out of the blue, seemed to demand nothing but dumb acceptance. “Why?” I asked. “I mean, why the picture?”

Piet shook his head wonderingly. “That’s all, Robbie? Just, why the picture? You got nothing else to say, man?” His tone told me that had the situation been reversed
he
would have had plenty to say. And he was right. Surely to God a real father would have found some emotion to unleash. Anger, maybe. Fine. But directed at whom? I said:

“Explosions later, Piet. I’ll find a quiet corner. For now, let’s hear the explanation.”

He nodded, his expression a picture in its own right. “Sure. It sounds like a real mess, Robbie. I don’t know how it got started, or where it’s going. And I might as well tell you right off that I’ve been paid to deliver the message. What happens from this moment on is up to you. But I will add this, we both know that I owe you. So you can count me in on anything. Whichever way you decide to play it, I’m with you. One hundred percent, right down the line.”

I said, “Thanks, Piet. But right at this moment I don’t know
what
the hell is happening. What does S.I.S. want now?”

Piet, in the act of flicking the cigarette into the river, did a double-take. “S.I.S.? The British? What in God’s name have
they
got to do with anything?”

That would be just like our mister Brown, I thought. All that need-to-know crap. I said, “Ryan has to be S.I.S. Didn’t he tell you that?”

Piet grunted. “Ryan may be many things to many people, Robbie. But one of the things he is
not
, is British! Ryan works for S.A.I. - my lot, Robbie - South African Intelligence.”

Piet went on talking but I was no longer hearing him. My brain had suddenly taken a spin and I stood there like an idiot. As I came back to earth, Piet was saying, “...and the fact that you didn’t know, explains a fair amount. It’s not a mess, Robbie. It’s a bloody free-for-all, with us stuck in the middle. I tell you true, they could pay me three times my going rate and I still wouldn’t want your decision. But that’s just what it is, Robbie; your decision. And I repeat; I’m here, I’m under your command, and that’s the way it’ll stay until you say different.”

Over the following seconds some of what Piet had said when I was out in orbit found its way back into the conscious part of my brain; mainly, that
SAI
now had Karen. I said, “Back up, Piet. Go through all that again.”

He did. Then he went on to say more. And the crude logic of it all became obvious. Disjointed still, but obvious. “And you say that what happens to Karen is up to me? No blackmail?”

Piet nodded. “That’s what they say, Robbie.” He reached into another pocket and fished out an envelope. “Am I glad to be getting shot of this stuff, matey. It beats me how these bloody spies get through their day. I thought
we
had it bad! Here,” he handed it over. “It’s a list of times and frequencies, plus a whole bundle of code phrases. All you have to do -
now
, if you like - is tell them where you want Karen taken, if anywhere. Ryan swears she’ll be safer left with him. He’s got a safe house organized, he says. All the comforts of home. But it’s up to you. Wherever you say take her, that’s where she goes. No hassle. No fuss. Anywhere on the globe. And wherever it is they’ll have her transmit a message to say she’s safe. They’ll even bring her
here
...if that’s what you want!”