The Monster's Daughter (33 page)

The waitress brought the bill. Alet watched her blatant flirting with fascination as she reached for her third glass, and missed. The glass toppled in slow motion, the wine fanning into the air before the vessel disintegrated, shards spreading over the table and floor. The waitress squealed as a purple stain sprayed onto her white T-shirt.

“I'm so sorry. You should put that under some cold water right
away,” Alet said, feeling unapologetic. A busboy came over with towels, and Alet took her bank card out of her pocket.

“It's okay,” Mike said. He reached over the table, his long fingers folding over her hand. “It's on me.”

Heat rose to Alet's skin unexpectedly.

“Care for a nightcap?”

Alet hesitated, thinking of an excuse. “I have to head back to Unie at the asscrack of dawn tomorrow.”

Mike smiled without letting go of her hand. “Just one. Your hotel bar?”

The Cape night was cool, an ever-present haziness in the air. Mike tentatively reached for her hand once they left the restaurant. Alet felt a flutter in her stomach. She pretended not to see it and put her hands in her pockets. They sauntered back up Adderley Street, passing the dissipating crowd of the street festival, merchants breaking down their stalls, the smell of curry and grease clinging to their clothes. Outside her hotel, Mike stopped suddenly, pulling her toward him. Alet felt the heat of his body through her shirt, a muskiness on his skin, his face centimeters away from hers.

“I hope that wasn't too forward. I've wanted to kiss you ever since I saw you in Nico's office.”

Alet hesitated a moment too long. Mike put his hand behind her head. Alet gasped at the force of his movement. His lips were hard against hers, urgent. He held her fast. A couple walked past them and entered the hotel, the woman staring straight ahead, her lips pursed, the man lifting an eyebrow.

“How about we go to your room?”

Alet pushed away. “No.”

Mike gave a few steps back, rubbing the back of his neck. “I'm s-sorry … you called me. I thought …”

“I know. It's … hey, I've had a great evening, really. Thing is …” She sighed, feeling awkward. How to explain this? Mike looked expectantly at her. Alet shrugged. “I've made some bad decisions lately. About men, especially.”

Mike nodded, his expression unreadable.

“Well … good night, then.” Alet headed for the hotel's entrance.

“Alet?”

“
Ja?
”

“Listen, you think, maybe I can call you?” Mike looked vulnerable.

Alet suddenly felt irritated with herself. Mike Engelman was stable, smart,
and
available. He was the right kind of man, her mother would have said, a catch. Any other woman would have loved to get attention from him. What the hell was wrong with her?

“Okay,” she said. “You have my number, hey.” Alet went through the revolving door, looking back at Mike, his image distorted behind the glass as he waved goodbye.

Every tree, every dirt path, looked exactly like the next. The black tracker, Sipho, crouched down, studying a fork in the path. After a moment he lifted a finger in the air, pointing to the right. He looked at Benjamin for confirmation before the unit proceeded, picking up the pace.

“Berg! Stay on them.” Benjamin felt irritated with the rookie. He had seemed competent enough at the base, even got recommended by a commander for having smarts, but here in the bush his youthful arrogance led to mistakes, mistakes which could compromise everybody. The other two men in the unit were dewy-faced milk-beards who thought three years in the police was a cushier ride than two years of military service, not expecting the police to become involved in the Second Chimurenga, the Rhodesian bush war. The only men Benjamin seemed to be able to count on were the two black trackers who could find a target in kilometers of unchanging countryside. They moved with stealth and speed, undeterred by the crushing heat, communicating with hand signals only, so as not to alert the enemy. They trusted Benjamin. He spoke their language. But they were only better than him during the day. At night, he took over.

Benjamin smelled the water before the trackers cut through the last tree to reveal the river snaking across their path. Sipho signaled them to stop while Sechaba dove without bothering to undress, his movement marked by a slight plop, cutting through the water with grace, emerging on the other side in less than a minute. Benjamin scanned the river bank for movement, while Sechaba disappeared among the trees. The rest of the unit crouched down, following his lead. Radio communication with one of the SAP units, Delta four, had been lost
five days ago and Benjamin's unit had been sent in to find them. Two days ago they had found tracks belonging to the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army crossing paths with Delta four. From that moment on, their mission became a rescue operation.

Sechaba returned to the riverbank, slowly shaking his head. Delta four had either stayed on this side of the river or they realized they were being followed and moved downstream to lose the terries. Benjamin gave the signal and the unit moved south. Berg radioed their position in to the base, dodging tree branches as he went, but as usual, the radio only emitted static. The commanders expected them to risk their lives, but the equipment was always failing, support lacking. Benjamin's childhood fear of authority figures had turned to loathing here in the bush, and he found himself kicking against them every step of the way, hampering his chances of promotion.

Sechaba signaled from across the river. Benjamin picked up the pace behind Sipho until he came to the bend. Dark stains marked a collection of rocks where Sipho had halted. As he got closer, Benjamin saw a half-naked white man propped up against a boulder, his skull crushed, his face bloodied beyond recognition. A crumpled SAP bush uniform lay next to him.

“The others.” Sipho pushed aside the foliage behind them.

Four more bodies were piled up in the underbrush, each with a bullet wound to the back of the head. Benjamin recognized the unit commander of Delta four.

“What did he say, Captain?”

“It's them, Berg. Get that radio to work and notify base.”

“Why are they without clothes?” Berg stepped closer, his face suddenly pale.

Benjamin shook his head. “The stupid bastards went swimming. Probably didn't even realize they were being followed.”

“They headed south.” Sipho walked away from the bodies, examining the footprints in the mud.

“What about the other two policemen?”

Sipho shook his head. “Taken prisoner. One is wounded. They're a day ahead of us. If we move tonight we can catch up.”

“What about the bodies, Captain?” Berg's eyes were fixed on the body by the river.

“They're dead.”

Berg looked strangely at Benjamin.

“If we stay, that's us in a few hours,” Sipho said anxiously.

Benjamin glanced at the three rookies. He didn't know if they could hold their own in a fight, but if they surprised the terries ahead of them, they might just have a chance. “There's guerrillas on our trail, we move.”

“How do you know that, Captain?” Berg's attempts at being alpha male were starting to irritate Benjamin.

“Sechaba dropped back this morning. He says six, maybe seven of them.”

The other two privates looked as if they might piss themselves.

“It's getting dark.” Sipho headed south without waiting for an order. Sechaba swam back across the river and joined him.

“Stay close.” Benjamin signaled the unit. They waded through shallow water to hide their trail. As the sun cast long yellow fingers over the countryside, flaming to a deep red before disappearing beneath a violet sky, Benjamin silently took over from Sipho, pausing only to examine the telltale signs of his oblivious enemy in the bushes. He tracked them as far as the border when they started heading east, for Mozambique. Behind him, Berg and the two others were looking worse for wear, feeling their way through the grass, struggling to keep up.

Around 02:00, Benjamin told Sechaba to set up camp with the others, while he and Sipho went on. By 04:30, they found a fresh trail. One of the prisoners seemed to be bleeding badly, slowing them down. The enemy might decide that he wasn't worth their time. Benjamin picked up the pace. Sipho looked exhausted, but he remained half a stride behind Benjamin. They reached the guerrillas by 05:00. The ZANLA terries had taken up in a farmhouse, a stone's throw from the border. Benjamin and Sipho crawled through the long grass to the periphery of the farmhouse, darkness still providing cover.

“We go in.”

Sipho lay on his stomach next to Benjamin. “Sechaba and the others will be here in a few hours.”

“It will be too late, Sipho. We're losing our advantage.”

Sipho nodded, his surly demeanor giving way to fear. After four
tours in the bush, Benjamin had trouble remembering how that felt. They crawled through the grass to the periphery of the farmhouse, darting between chicken coops and outhouses. Sipho stopped suddenly, frozen to the spot near an old tractor at the back of the house. Benjamin's irritation with the tracker changed when he saw why. A white woman's body lay on the ground, her bloodied dress pushed over her head. Blood ran down the tractor's wheels and culminated in the smashed head of a toddler at its base. The child had thick bruises around both ankles.

The shot Benjamin fired into the guard's head at point-blank range woke the others up. Men shouted, firing blindly. Benjamin felt one with the darkness, moving between them, dispatching single rounds, bodies hanging suspended in the moment between life and death as he moved on to the next ones. They were not human to him, only a threat to be eliminated, no more, no less. It was over within minutes. Benjamin placed the barrel of his gun against the temple of the last man standing.

“Where are my men?”

The guerrilla lifted his chin and spat. Sipho hit the man with the butt of his own rifle, sending him sprawling. A dark patch of blood on Sipho's shirt betrayed the fact that he'd been hit. Benjamin couldn't help but be annoyed by this. A good tracker was hard to come by. He should have done this alone.

“I'm not asking again,” Benjamin said.

“Go fuck a monkey, white boy.” The treble in the man's voice betrayed his bravado.

“You're not worth a bullet.” Benjamin clamped his hand around the man's throat, pushing him up against the wall. “Where are they? Tell me and I'll make it quick.”

The man's nostrils flared. He tried to kick Benjamin. Benjamin banged his head against the wall. He tightened his grip, crushing the man's trachea. The more the man struggled, the more alive Benjamin felt. This was personal, a connection that bound them to each other, predator and prey. Jooste had once offered him power. Money, control—all these things were arbitrary compared to the true power of taking a life. He alone stood as the judge and jury, the Angel of Death, hiding in plain sight. Blood vessels burst in the guerrilla's eyes.
His body gave a last spasm and for the instant before he let the man fall to the floor, Benjamin permitted himself to think of Tessa.

Sechaba, Berg and the others later found the executed white policemen's bodies in the rows of corn. Benjamin noticed a hardening in Berg's expression. The boy was learning quickly. The other two walked around with dazed expressions, going through the pockets of the dead men, trying to find anything useful on the movement of the guerrillas.

As the others dug the holes, Berg approached Benjamin. “Sipho says you killed all those men by yourself, Captain. Says you moved like a ghost.”

“You like to listen to superstitious nonsense, Berg?” Benjamin ran his hand over the bushy beard he'd let grow the last three months, trying to decide whether he wanted to go through the trouble of shaving it off before he went back to Pretoria. At the
trek
centennial long ago he had stood in awe of the men who grew facial hair. Did he look like them now, an adult at last?

“How did you do it, Captain?”

Benjamin turned to Berg, paying real attention to him for the first time. Going by appearances, they were about the same age. Back home, if people saw them walking down the street together, they would assume they were friends, young men out on the town, one fair, one dark, two sides of the same coin. “There is no time to wonder whether you should shoot or not, Berg. Out here, you shoot. While you hesitate, your men die, you die.”

Berg nodded. “In college they showed us that video. About the black Communists. Killing nuns in the Congo. Slicing open pregnant women and stuff.”

“
Ja
.” Benjamin had seen the footage. Fearmongering by some Italian filmmaker intended to shock with its violent scenes. It was standard fare now during the first week of police college, made the new recruits pay attention, made them realize that this is the enemy, that he has no mercy. For most of the sheltered white boys, fresh out of high school, it brought the point home efficiently, so they could begin to understand the language of hate.

“Do you think that will happen back home, Captain?”

“That's what we're preventing, Berg. We stop it here, we show those terries back home what they can expect if they try to mess with us.”

“It's just … we say God is on our side. But while I was going through their pockets … I found a Bible. I mean, the terrie carried it with him. If he believed that God is on his side and we believe that God is on our side, who is right?”

“We know God is with us, because we are winning, Berg. We are fighting for our people, our way of living, our right to be in Africa. Our God-given right. God gave us this land. It is our duty to keep the black menace, the Communists, out.”

“I only … He had a Bible, Captain. He probably prayed this morning too.”