Dressed only in stained boxer shorts, his feet caked in sand and blood, and his eyes wild with relief and lingering terror, he’d stumbled into a beachside bar attached to a small coastal resort. Tom heard the amazed response — loud talking in Afrikaans — as Bernard burst in on the owner, who was tending bar, and a half-dozen fishermen on holiday. There had been a pause as explanations were given and Tom heard one of the men saying they had just been watching a news item on CNN about the abductions.
Bernard had passed the phone to the bartender, whose English was passable but halting, so Tom had transferred the phone to Sannie, who spoke rapidly in Afrikaans as Tom bundled their gear into the back of the Chico. It turned out the resort was less than forty kilometres from Xai Xai and while the owner had been about to close the bar — in order to send the drunken fishermen to bed — he would certainly wait for their arrival. Not only that, but he would have to meet them on the road into his encampment as the last kilometre was through deep sand.
‘This is it,’ Sannie said, spotting a property development sign and another marking the end of the Distrito do Xai Xai, which the resort owner had described. Tom swung hard and skidded into a right turn onto the unmarked sandy track. It seemed the lodge’s owner was happy to promote himself by word of mouth only as there was no sign to his property, which was called Paradise Cove.
‘The police would never have come down here looking for them,’ Tom said.
Sannie nodded in agreement. Their luck had been in, though neither of them dared predict what the kidnappers would do with Greeves now that they knew their hideout had been compromised. Tom’s very real fear was that even though Bernard had escaped less than an hour ago, his abductors might have already shut up shop and be on their way to a new location.
They had called in at Xai Xai police station, but the female officer on the night shift, who had been dozing at the front desk, spoke no English or Tsonga Shangaan. Sannie and Tom had said Capitao Alfredo’s name over and over again and pantomimed using the telephone, but the female officer had steadfastly refused even to try to understand them. ‘Fuck it,’ Tom had said at last, unwilling to waste a second more. They were on their own again.
The first six kilometres from the main road were on a sandy but firm track through gently undulating dunes which were well stabilised with grass and small trees. With his window down, Tom caught the sound of cattle lowing in the distance. They passed a coastal lake, the light from the now risen moon reflecting off its mirrored surface and illuminating a raft of water-lilies. At another time he might have slowed to admire the countryside.
‘Right fork here,’ Sannie ordered, but Tom had already seen the sign to Paradise Cove. ‘Another kilometre and then he should be there waiting to meet us.’
Lights flashed ahead of them and Tom slowed. There was a cluster of three mud huts with thatched-reed roofs, a sleepy-looking African man and a white man. The white man stood next to a rusting red Nissan Safari four-wheel drive, whose headlights were turned on. Squinting, Tom could make out another figure in the front of the vehicle. The passenger door opened and Tom saw Bernard Joyce step out, holding a hand up to his eyes. Tom switched off his own lights and coasted to a stop.
Bernard hobbled three steps towards Tom as he got out of the Volkswagen and put his arms around him and hugged him.
‘My god, Tom. I never thought I’d see another Englishman again.’ Tom felt the sting of hot tears on his cheek. They were Bernard’s, not his, though he felt a lump rise in his throat. Bernard was wearing a pair of garish board shorts and a golfing shirt with the name of the resort embroidered on the left breast.
‘Sarel Bezuidenhout,’ the big white man said as Tom eased himself away from Bernard. They shook hands and Tom introduced Sannie to Sarel.
‘Was that you chasing us in the bush, in the gun-fight?’ Bernard asked Tom.
Tom nodded.
‘Bloody good show, Tom. Too bad the bastards got away, but I can’t tell you how good that felt, to know someone was coming after us. Did you get any of them?’
‘Two,’ Tom confirmed.
‘Arseholes. Have you got a spare pistol with you?’ Bernard looked to Tom and then Sannie.
‘I’ve got a two-two in the bar for monkeys and a nine-mil for the human thieves,’ Sarel said in heavily accented English. ‘I come with you.’
Sannie held up a hand. ‘Look, this is not my decision to make, but I think we at least need a plan.’
Tom agreed and suggested they all get inside. He had already spoken to Shuttleworth on the drive to the coastal lodge and had been told in no uncertain terms that he was expressly forbidden from launching any ad hoc rescue mission.
He had, however, told Shuttleworth that he was going to find the terrorists’ lair and get ‘eyes-on’ the target to confirm they were still there; his superior had not argued with this commonsense suggestion. ‘Just don’t go charging in there by yourself. You know the terrorists will kill Greeves as soon as they think someone is coming in.’
On the short drive in the old four-by-four down one steep sand dune and up another, Bernard filled Tom in on his discussions with the coordinator of the rescue mission, Major Jonathan Fraser.
‘Turns out I know him,’ Bernard said. ‘I worked with him and his chaps when he was a captain a couple of years ago, before I left the navy. Landed him on a coast somewhere in the Middle East. Good man. A hard bastard.’
Bernard had hand-drawn a map of the layout of the house where he had been imprisoned and faxed it from Sarel’s bar to the operations base at Hoedspruit. Bernard said that from his description of the surrounding area and the distance he had run — he’d had the presence of mind to count his paces as he ran through the water — Sarel had been able to identify the property.
‘It’s the only old house in the area for five kilometres. Used to belong to a Portuguese cattle farmer in the old days. It’s been empty since I came here three years ago. Good place for a hideout. Only accessible by four-by-four for three kays in — that’s why no one has developed it as a resort.’
Tom nodded.
‘Fraser’s calling back in thirty minutes with an outline plan. He said that if you were here, he wanted you in on the conversation,’ Bernard said to Tom.
Sarel navigated the Nissan around a tight bend and up yet another dune until they arrived outside his timber-clad bar. They all followed the owner up a flight of steps that creaked and groaned under his enormous weight. There was a verandah out front overlooking the inky, calm Indian Ocean. Inside, the bar smelled warm and musty, the building still holding some of the day’s heat. Sarel switched on the lights and turned on the ceiling fans. He also pressed a button on a remote control and a television high on a wall in the corner furthest from the bar came to life.
‘How long would it take us to get to the old farmhouse to check it out?’ Tom asked Sarel.
The Afrikaner scratched his beard. ‘Thirty minutes if you walk along the beach, ten if we take the quad bikes. Tide is going out now, so we can make it on the bikes.’
‘And from the beach?’
‘Another ten minutes’ walk.’
‘Sannie,’ Tom said, ‘you stay here with Bernard and wait for Fraser’s call. Tell him I’ve gone to check the place out. The best plan in the world is no good if they’ve already left the house.’
Sannie looked doubtful. ‘Perhaps I should come with you.’
‘They’ve got a US Navy FA-18 on its way to do a reconnaissance flight,’ Bernard said. ‘Fraser reckoned it would be overhead within forty minutes of his last call, which was fifteen minutes ago.’
Tom checked his watch. ‘High tech stuff is okay, but someone needs to get in on the ground and suss things out.’
‘Then let me come too,’ Bernard said.
Tom looked down at the bloody scuff marks on the timber floor of the bar. ‘Stay here and rest, Bernard. You’ll need to be here to talk Fraser through the layout of the house again. He’ll want to know it inside out and back to front, and he’ll have more questions for you.’
Bernard looked down at the floor. Tom could seen he was emotionally and physically spent, though he, like Tom, obviously felt he couldn’t rest until Greeves was safe.
‘I’ll be back in less than an hour. After that there’ll be a role for all of us in this rescue. Sarel, I’ve no right to
