MENTZ: No.
CHAIRMAN: Do you have any further questions?
MENTZ: No.
CHAIRMAN: Do you wish to introduce evidence regarding further questions, Mr. Radebe?
RADEBE: No, Mr. Chairman.
CHAIRMAN: Mr. Radebe, this commission of inquiry has no choice but to find you guilty of misconduct as noted. We take note of your presentation of mitigating circumstances. This commission is adjourned until 14:00, when we will consider actions to be taken against you.
As the woman drove out of the parking garage at Wale Street Chambers, Allison Healy followed her with her heart in her throat. Mpayipheli lay flat on the rear seat. They drove through the city always four of five car lengths behind, down the Heeren-gracht, onto the Ni, and then east toward the northern suburbs.
?Please don'?t lose her,? came the deep voice from the back.
It was Williams, who had begun the thing, who nearly ended it.
Williams who knew everyone, but no one knew him. Williams whom she had plucked out of the SAPS, an affirmatI've action appointee wasting his time behind a desk somewhere in the regional commissioner?s office. The rumors had spread over the Western Cape in fragments: twenty-eight years in the police and never took a bribe. If you want to know something, ask Williams. If you need someone you can trust, get Williams. A colored man from the heart of the Flats, joined the force without finishing high school and climbed the ladder like a phantom, without powerful friends or powerful enemies, without fanfare, the invisible man.
Just what she wanted, and it was so easy to get him. Merely the sincere promise that he would never again be chained to a desk did the trick.
?Janina,? he said. He had called her that from the beginning. ?Do you want his address?? His tone of voice was somewhere between irony and seriousness.
?Go for it,? she said, and picked up a pen.
?I expect that you will find him at the house of a Dr. Zatopek van Heerden, plot seventeen, Morning Star.?
?A medical doctor??
?That I cannot say.?
?How, Williams??
?They brought the motorbike in through the Martin?s Drift border post, ma?am. On a three-tonner, without papers, and the story that it belongs to a South African who had an accident somewhere in northern Botswana.?
?And they let him in??
?Money changed hands.?
?And??
?The driver had an address with him that was copied down.?
?How did you ? ??
?Oh, I hear things.?
46.
The Stasi records confirmed that Mpayipheli/Umzingeli was Marion Dorffling?s assassin.
I notified Langley, and the response from deputy director?s level was that the Firm was still very much interested in leveling the score. Two specialized field agents from the London office were dispatched to deal with the matter.
After the tip-off from Inkululeko, the agents flew to northern Botswana, acquired a vehicle, and made visual contact with the PIU Reaction Unit member who was waiting in ambush for Mpayipheli. They witnessed the arrest of the Reaction Unit member by Botswana authorities but, despite waiting at the roadside through the night, could not intercept Mpayipheli or the hard drive.
They returned to Cape Town and were about to leave for London when the urgent contact signal was received from Inkululeko (she leaves her car?s 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 Heerden?s kitchen. At Mpayipheli?s request, he had made coq au vin in the traditional Provencal 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 man?s 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.
