the driver’s window, walking alongside them as she reversed, turned and then drove up Tinga’s driveway. In her rear-view mirror she saw Duncan laying a hand on Coetzee’s shoulder. ‘What was all that about?’
Tom shrugged. ‘Nothing. I don’t know. Greeves was being hounded by that reporter, Fisher, before we left London.
‘Is Greeves in trouble back in England?’
‘No, far from it. From what I’ve seen of him so far he’s a clean skin — no faults that I’ve read about. A few eyebrows raised about the number of overseas trips he takes, particularly to Africa, but that’s about it.’
‘Perhaps that’s why your tabloids are taking an interest in him — trying to find some dirt on a clean politician is their style, from what I know of them.’
‘Yeah. Impressive vehicle, by the way. Are we seriously going to be driving through the jungles of Mozambique in this?’
‘Don’t be smart. It was all they had. We’ll probably strike some bad roads, but a lot of money’s being spent in that country trying to fix things up. Shame — they were just starting to get themselves sorted out after the end of the civil war in 1992 when a cyclone came along in 2000 and flattened a whole heap of bridges and coastal resorts. Still, the country’s bouncing back again.’
Sannie had called her mother on the drive from Skukuza to Tinga and told her what had happened — it was all over the news now. She would collect her grandchildren and they would stay at her place until Sannie returned, though she was unable to say exactly when that would be. Her mother had seemed annoyed down the phone line, though Sannie knew she was really just worried about her safety. So she wasn’t the only one.
They followed the same route Tom and Duncan had taken earlier in the morning in pursuit of the terrorists. Sannie stuck to the main sealed road to make better time, though she refused to go faster than fifty kilometres per hour. ‘We want to get there in one piece, Tom,’ she had protested. ‘It’s no good if we hit something.’
The countryside became more open and drier the further north they headed on the H1-3 towards Satara camp. This was lion country, with open, rolling grasslands that provided good grazing for plains game such as zebra and wildebeest.
‘Why, Sannie?’
‘Why what?’ she replied as she slowed to negotiate her way through a traffic jam of cars and game-viewing vehicles — though not as bad as the one Tom had forced his way through on the bridge. As they passed, a man in a Kombi said, ‘There’s a leopard somewhere in the bush in there,’ but Sannie and Tom had no time to stop.
‘Why are you helping me?’
‘I have asked myself the same question many times already. It’s a combination of reasons, I suppose. I feel like our system was not good enough this morning, that we’ve let you down. Also, I can imagine myself in your situation. I know that you shouldn’t be doing any of this, and neither should I, but I can’t just sit around and hope it all works out for the best. We’re following the best lead available — someone has to.’
She thought about Carla and the smell of her perfume in his room. She continued to be angry at him, on a personal level, and there would be no going back to what might have been, but she still felt for him professionally.
They drove in silence, passing a herd of about two hundred buffalo, and Sannie explained to him that if they were encountered on foot, the huge black bovines were among the most dangerous and unpredictable animals in Africa.
It was a hundred and sixty kilometres from Skukuza to Letaba camp and another thirty-four beyond that to the Giriyondo border post and the crossing into Mozambique. At the rate they were driving, it would be close to four pm by the time they crossed and she was worried about driving the tiny car along the bush roads on the other side of the border at night.
He studied a map of Mozambique as she drove. He had found a southern African road atlas in the Tinga Legends library while she had gone to collect the rental car and he traced the route they had discussed. ‘If they’re terrorists, what do they want, what do they need?’
They had only a rough plan of where they would head at this stage — basically eastwards, to the coast, as soon as possible after they crossed the border. Sannie chewed her lower lip. ‘Privacy. Somewhere to hide.’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But that could be a remote camp in the middle of the Mozambican bush, or in a city where strangers wouldn’t stick out.’
‘They need a getaway, in case we find them again.’
‘Right.’ Tom moved his finger through the green swathes of wilderness on the map. ‘But if you’re about to be surrounded by police and you’re in the middle of the bush, then your only way out is on foot or by four-wheel drive.’
‘We’re assuming they picked up another vehicle across the border, but they won’t want to use it for long. Travelling those back roads they will have been noticed, and if there are police roadblocks they’ll be remembered.’
‘So they’ll want to ditch the vehicle soon and maybe get a new one, possibly steal one, but if they’ve got the money and connections for special forces weapons and white phosphorus hand grenades, then they can also afford to buy a couple of cars and have them pre-positioned.’
‘Which is easier to do in a larger town,’ she said, following on from where his reasoning was taking them, inexorably towards the coast.
His finger, she saw out of the corner of her eye as she geared down and waited for a herd of a dozen elephant to cross the tar road, had reached the blue waters of the Indian Ocean. ‘Where you also have a means of escape via the sea, through an established port or marina, and an airstrip if your budget extends to an aircraft.’
‘Xai Xai?’ she said. Following a straight line from where the gang had illegally crossed the border, the coastal town of Xai Xai — she pronounced it ‘Shy-Shy’ — fitted the criteria they had set for the terrorist group’s hideout. She wondered, however, if they had come to that conclusion simply because it gave them somewhere to go. ‘Or anywhere else on the two and a half thousand kilometre coastline.’
‘Yeah,’ he sighed.
The little Volkswagen town car had no airconditioning and Tom’s saturated shirt was plastered to his back. He was as relieved as Sannie to get out and stretch his legs when they entered Kruger Park’s Letaba rest camp.
He’d noted on the map of the park that the camp was nestled on the banks of a river of the same name. The foliage inside the perimeter was lush and green, typical of what he’d noticed along the other permanent rivers in the park. It was a welcome change from the dry, dusty browns they’d been driving through all afternoon.
While Sannie filled the Chico’s petrol tank she gave him directions to the camp shop, along with instructions to use his debit card to draw out some rand from the cash teller machine he would find at the store. As he walked he mused yet again how different from his expectations Africa was turning out to be. Here was a continent where people died by the million from malaria because they didn’t have mosquito nets, yet a game reserve had a cash teller machine in the middle of the bush. Bizarre.
On his way he was surprised to see delicate brown antelope wandering between the permanent safari tents and huts that made up the camp’s fixed accommodation. After withdrawing the equivalent of three hundred British pounds — the most his bank would let him take out in foreign currency in one transaction — he went into the shop. It was well stocked with frozen meat, soft drinks and alcohol, souvenirs, curios and all the little camping bits and pieces that a holidaying family might forget to pack. He grabbed a basket and selected a collapsible cooler bag, some cans of soft drink, a five-litre plastic bottle of drinking water, a six-pack of Castle beer, two frozen steaks, a bag of ice cubes, some potatoes, a cooking pan, salt and pepper, margarine and some canned peaches. It wouldn’t be a feast, but Sannie had told him to buy food for at least one night. He was paying by credit card when Sannie entered.
‘Got everything?’
‘Hardly seems like enough for a safari into the wilds of Africa.’
Sannie checked her watch. ‘Let’s go. Better move if we want to make the crossing before the border closes at four. Also, this will probably be the last place you can get cell phone coverage for quite a while.’
As she drove out the camp gate, Tom took a deep breath and dialled Shuttleworth’s phone. When the Scot answered he told Tom he was at Gatwick, waiting for his flight to Johannesburg. ‘Where should I meet you tomorrow morning?’ his boss asked him.
