The Disappeared (53 page)

Minki took
another step forward ... and took her mother’s hand.

‘I’m so
sorry, Estelle.’ Doctor Saul Tenenbaum was seated next to Estelle van Deventer
on the edge of her bed. ‘I’m so sorry that this terrible thing had to happen to
you ... to the town you love.’

The old
woman reached out and touched Tenenbaum’s arm. ‘You’re a good man, doctor Tenenbaum.’
She smiled at the Jewish doctor. ‘You have nothing to be sorry about.’

The doctor
chuckled. ‘Listen to me. Once again I am procrastinating. Please forgive me.’
The doctor swallowed hard. And became serious again. He grabbed the old woman’s
hand and stared at her fiercely. ‘You don’t deserve this. They were messing
around with things they should not have been. And now they’re going to get away
with it all – again!’

Estelle van
Deventer looked at the doctor with shock and confusion. ‘I don’t ... I don’t
understand.’

‘Estelle,
if I were in a different situation ... I would have told you. Don’t let this
go. Don’t let them get away with this. Make them pay.’

‘But you
said ... you said ... it was an accident.’

He jumped
up and walked towards the curve of the dome. ‘I’m making my problem yours.
Please ignore me. And once again, please forgive me. All you want to know is
what happened to the people you loved. And yes, you deserve it.’ The doctor
massaged his temples. Looking old and tired. ‘Please just understand how
difficult this is for me.’

‘Doctor ...’
Estelle let the word – the intention – hang.

‘Yes, of
course.’ He approached her bed. ‘You’ve been only patient. And me? Tedious and
annoying.’ He sighed deep burdens. It was no use trying to avoid the inevitable
anymore. The quicker he told the old woman the truth the quicker she could deal
with it. He looked at her. A steady gaze. ‘Estelle,’ he said with as much
tenderness as he could muster. ‘The disaster at Bishop ...’ He grimaced. ‘The industrial
accident that occurred in the morning hours of the twenty seventh of September
... resulted in massive casualties.’ He took her hand. ‘Estelle, I am sorry. I
am so sorry.’ He kneeled at her bed. ‘The entire population of Bishop perished
on that terrible September day, Estelle.’

‘No. No.
No. That can’t be. What are you saying?’

‘The
chemical compound was powerful ... incredibly lethal ... beyond belief.’ The
doctor looked at the old woman crying within for her pain.

‘Within a
few minutes after the explosion ... everyone was dead. You were the only
survivor, Estelle. The only one who was evacuated and brought here. No-one else
made it out. They’re all dead.’ He hung his head limply. ‘Except for you,
everyone in Bishop died on the morning of the twenty seventh of September.’

On the evening
of the twenty-seventh of September, the main retrieval unit of Alpha Team 9
entered Bishop. Top secret and highly specialised. Theirs was a grim duty
indeed. To retrieve the dead bodies following a Code 6 incident: massive death
due to a chemical weapons leak.

Earlier that
day – on that most fateful of days – the reconnaissance unit of Alpha Team 9 had
infiltrated the town to gather preliminary intel. Contrary to all expectations,
they had found a survivor. An old woman. Barely alive.

She was
instantly evacuated.

Now as night
settled over the small Free State town, the main retrieval unit marched
silently through the streets of Bishop. Moving in unison. In their one-piece Hazmat
suits they resembled aliens. Soon their work would begin.

Theirs was a
grim duty indeed.

They
systematically swept the town from east to west. Moving from house to house.
Soon the heavy transport choppers would arrive. To take the corpses to 3
Military Hospital in Bloemfontein. There were many dead bodies. And they would
be working throughout the night. Top secret and highly-specialised, they worked
under the cover of night.

They moved
from house to house. To retrieve the dead.

In the
backyard of the old woman. The old woman who had been the sole survivor. They
found a young black woman. Lying dead on the bunk bed of a caravan. Naked
except for a pair of white panties. Beautiful. Serene. And dead.

They moved
from house to house. And found many dead.

In a beautifully
restored Edwardian house, they found a young girl of around ten years. Dead in
her bed. Her father in the room next door. Dead. Both.

In a modest
but pretty house. They found a beautiful voluptuous woman with red hair. Dead
on the cold tiles of her bathroom. The folds of her satin-soft night dress
caressed her cold body.

They found an
elderly couple. In a huge house on the beautiful banks of the beautiful
Elandsriver. Clutching each other in a death’s embrace. A wooden Star of David
on the wall above them.

They found a
man in a dirty vest and torn boxer shorts. Surrounded by the squalor of an
unkempt lounge. Footage from a CCTV camera was still looping in the DVD player.
Dead on his torn couch. His dirty penis visible through his torn shorts.

They went from
house to house. And found the dead.

In a huge old
Victorian mansion that reeked of history and money. They found two elderly
women. In adjoining rooms with a connecting door. Dead.

In a neat
house. Hanging with certificates and degrees. And smelling of air freshener. They
found a middle-aged black couple. Clutching at each other. Together. Dead.

In a side
street. Hanging through the open door of a white police van. They found a young
black policeman. Dead.

They moved.
Silently. In the black of the night. Theirs was a grim duty. They swept the
town from one end to the other. And found many. Dead.

The commander
of the local police station. His huge bulk lying sprawled across his bed. Next
to him a photograph of a beautiful middle-aged woman.

They found
almost four thousand corpses. In all the houses. Sweeping the little town from
one end to the other.

And when they
thought they had done. Almost by accident. They found the last corpse.

A young man. Lying
on the banks of the Elandsriver, near a duffel bag. A hitch-hiker they presumed.
A hitch-hiker who had slept outside. Someone who had been unlucky enough to
spend the night in a doomed town. With long blond hair obscuring his face, they
found him. Dead on the bank of the Elandsriver.

Dead all.
Killed in the toxic fumes that swept down the mountain. Within a few minutes of
the explosion that occurred at precisely 2:34 on the morning of the
twenty-seventh. All dead.

As the sun
rose from its evening grave. In the early morning hours. They had evacuated the
last of the corpses.

 Now phase two
would begin.

Specialised
units within Alpha Team 9 removed anything and everything that indicated the
presence of chemical weapons. For the next twenty-four hours, the engineers
would work to modify the infrastructure of Obsidian Technologies. New storage tanks
were flown in. Storage tanks containing the lethal X9 chemical agent, as well
as specialised equipment, were removed, replaced or modified. The world could
never know what the original storage tanks contained. Explosives experts
reconstructed the blast area, working with such precision that even tiny pieces
of rubble were repositioned. A team of fifteen computer engineers shredded the
contents of hundreds of  PC’s and re-installed several hundred terabytes of operating
systems, applications, files, folders, e-mails, Internet browser histories and log
files. Backdated to the very first day when Obsidian first began operating.
Even the network maintenance records and backups were meticulously modified to
hide the truth. In the dozens of offices on the upper floors, incriminating
documents were removed and replaced with others. Specialised forensic auditors
altered thousands of financial records to show a long history of transaction
performed by a very orthodox, very boring business venture – the manufacture of
industrial chemicals for the agricultural industry. The odometers of all the
fleet vehicles were altered to correspond to the new records. Curriculum Vitae’s,
personal and work histories, medical records, tax records and even the personal
correspondence of employees were replaced with copies. These faked copies had
been created years ago and had been meticulously maintained on a weekly basis.
Special sweepers combed the compound building, removing everything which may
have been saturated by the chemical agent on a molecular level. This included
toilet paper, tea bags, curtains, carpets and even spider webs on the periphery
of the compound. Plants were removed. Trees pruned or removed entirely.

And finally, a
special team scoured the entire area of Bishop and carefully applied large but
judicious amounts of Potassium Cyanide wherever it was needed.

They were
meticulous indeed. Failure would result in the biggest political scandal of all
times. Two democratic governments on either side of the Atlantic would crumble
and disintegrate overnight. There was no second chance to get it right.

By the time
they were finished, only a handful of people in the world would have been able
to say that Obsidian Technologies was anything other than a company
specialising in the manufacturing of industrial chemicals. Of that handful only
two were
not
members of Alpha Team 9.

By the early
morning hours of the twenty-ninth of September, the authorities informed the
international media of the tragic and regrettable industrial accident which had
occurred in the small Free State town of Bishop, South Africa.

The blame for
the ‘tragic accident’ was, of course, laid squarely on the ‘reckless behaviour’
of a certain George Russell Meyer, retired SANDF Lieutenant Colonel. Meyer had
been so ‘racked by contrition’ at the consequences of his actions that he had
taken his life shortly after the accident.

In the hours
that followed the announcement, a special team of United Nations investigators
travelled to the site of the tragedy. After a thorough survey, the UN team
confirmed the cover story so carefully composed by Alpha Team 9. Yes. The plant
had indeed been manufacturing chemicals used in agricultural fertiliser. And
the explosion that had occurred on that September morning had been responsible
for leaking Potassium Cyanide into the atmosphere.

For the safety
of the public, Bishop was declared a temporary quarantine area. A directive
enforced by a small garrison of troops.

Bishop was
dead. Long live Bishop.

SPECIAL
ACTIVITY REPORT

...

Bishop
Quarantine Garrison

CLEARANCE: 
Level 9

CC:      United
States Special Envoy – Africa

US Department of State

CODE:            CABLE
34XWY – 2G2G

DATE:                        04
November

RE:                  Anomaly
in quarantine area

                        BEGIN
ENCRYPTION

----------------------------------------------------------------

Patrol units
Zulu Six and Zulu Nine have reported a recurring anomaly in quarantine area. On
October 22 and October 24 as well as November 2 and November 3, the above
patrols observed unauthorised civilians moving around within restricted area.
While Zulu Six was unable to apprehend or establish the identities of the above
mentioned civilians, Zulu Nine noted the following physical descriptions:

1) Male,
Caucasian, early twenties, approx 1.89 metres in length, long blond hair,
wearing denims and light-brown lumber jacket.

2) Female,
African, mid twenties, approx 1.75 in length, medium length hair extensions,
wearing floral summer dress.

On all four
occasions, when patrols attempted to apprehend the unauthorised civilians, they
managed to elude capture, disappearing without trace.

Awaiting
further instructions.

---------------------------------------------------------

                        END
ENCRYPTION

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the lord my soul to take.

                                                                                                Luckhoff,
South Africa

                                                                                                January,
2011

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

   
If Vernon William Baumann had not been a writer he may very well have become a
Japanese panty-dispensing vending machine repairman. Or an accountant. The
thrills are pretty much on par, though accounting pays slightly better.
    In an earlier, more innocent (and less
hairy) time, Vernon William thought the opposite of expand was inpand. Which is
why the fourth career option of Professor of Thermo-Dynamics was maybe not such
a good idea.
    Vernon William has travelled extensively and
has seen most of the world. If, by most of the world, you mean Bloemfontein
(current residence), Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa.
But seriously. All jokes aside. What did the
Rabbi say to the Pastor?
    Vernon William spent several years as a
high-end, corporate rent boy, commonly referred to as an advertising
copywriter. Through subterfuge, gross obsequiousness and general copy writing
he managed to win an award or two, primarily a Pendoring. (Don't worry. No-one
else knows what it is either.)
    On most days, Vernon William can be found
attending Mickey Spillane recitals ... and grammar classes. He loves his wife
(to whom all is books are dedicated, both written and unwritten) his cats and
dogs, and his iPad. All 16 gigs of it.
    Between dodging car guards and assigning
imaginative names to his imaginary friends, he works as a lecturer at the
University of the Free State.

   
Vernon William would like to take this time to extend a huge thank you to all
those who purchased a copy of The Disappeared. Please look out for my next
novel, Daddy Long legs, appearing early next year. It’s the terrifying tale of
a serial killer who returns to haunt a small town in the Northern Cape after a
mysterious absence of twenty years.