‘Fucking animals,’ the young soldier said, staring morbidly at the little screen.
‘Who’s that?’ Fraser asked.
Tom explained and the major said, ‘Sorry.’ It sounded like he meant it. Ego and bullshit aside, Tom guessed the prickly officer had himself probably lost friends and comrades. It came as a shock to him, despite Bernard’s warning, to see the blood streaming down Nick’s face from the empty sockets where his eyes had been. He saw the pistol — small calibre, and silenced, maybe a two-two — brought close to Nick’s temple and not a man in the room didn’t flinch when the pfft sound of the muffled shot escaped from the video player’s tiny speaker.
‘Bastards,’ another of the soldiers said.
Tom felt unsteady on his feet as another face flickered onto the screen. The video, like that of Nick’s killing, was grainy and jumpy, but there was no mistaking the identity of the man who was taped as the hand of an unknown assailant — his face out of camera shot — forced him to his knees. It was Robert Greeves.
‘This is what comes of stupid attempts at escape,’ a voice said in the background.
Tom, like Fraser, craned closer to the small screen, straining to hear every word, but there was no talking. Tom heard footsteps in the corridor behind him, but was too engrossed in the image of Greeves’s face to turn around.
Greeves stared at the camera, and his look was one of despair tinged with resignation and the last flushes perhaps of an angry response made before the camera started rolling.
As with Nick, a hand holding a small-calibre silenced pistol appeared, near Greeves’s left temple. There was no statement, no threat, no warning. Just a solitary gunshot. Unlike the tape of Nick’s execution, which had ended at this point, the camera kept rolling as Greeves’s head flicked to one side. Blood pumped from the small entry wound and Tom caught a glimpse of the bulk of a man behind Greeves, and of gloved hands under the minister’s armpits. The man was holding him up for the camera as the life force poured from him. The screen went blue.
Tom forced himself to analyse what he saw, even as bile rose in the back of his throat. He swallowed hard. It would have been a two-two hollow point. The narrowed lead walls of the bullet would have split apart on impact with the skull bone. The shock wave from the blast had turned the minister’s brains to mush, and as the projectile opened up inside Greeves’s head, the fragments would have bounced around inside, ricocheting off the insides of his skull but not exiting.
That was one reason why the assassins had chosen a small-calibre round. There would be no slug to dig out of a wall, and they would have picked up the ejected cartridge case. Professionals. Cut-down AK 47s for gunfights, and the two-two for the execution. Had the killing been planned all along? The man standing behind the seated politician had been there to hold him up for the camera — to give the world’s media the shot they wanted, if they were sick enough to use it. Tom knew that once the bullet had done its work Greeves would have fallen like a puppet whose strings had been severed. There was no slow, rolling, theatrical fall to the floor like in the movies. Death was instantaneous.
‘Replay it,’ Fraser said.
Tom forced himself to watch it again. As Greeves again died on camera, Tom heard a sharp intake of air behind him.
‘Bernard!’ It was Sannie’s voice and Tom spun around to see Bernard disappearing out of the room into the corridor. It had been he and Sannie who had entered while he was watching the video.
‘He saw it?’
Sannie simply nodded. They both had the same thought, rushing from the room together with Tom narrowly beating Sannie through the doorway.
‘Bernard!’ Tom called as he ran through the house towards the smoking back door frame.
‘There he is, heading for the dunes!’ Sannie called.
Tom realised it must have been the same route Bernard had taken on his escape, running from the room where he had tried in vain to free Greeves through the house and towards the sounds and scents of the ocean. Tom caught sight of his moonlit silhouette as Bernard crested a large dune at a run.
He and Sannie chased him, but their feet were slowed by the deep, warm sand that made every step an effort. Tom had had dreams like this in which he was trying to escape from some unseen, unknown evil, but his progress was hampered by mud or sand. He wasn’t running from evil now — just trying to avert its consequences.
Sannie caught up with Tom as he reached the top of the last dune. Spread out before them was the endless sea, its rippling surface flecked white-gold by the dying moon. Out on the horizon the sky was pinking as the sun waited to make another entrance.
Below them they saw the solitary figure slow as he reached the foot of the sandhill and walk out towards the water. The tide was turning, the patch of dark, wet sand widening with every small wave’s gentle lap and retreat.
Tom ploughed on down the hill, Sannie by his side. She called Bernard’s name again, but he ignored them.
‘Slowly,’ Tom whispered, placing a gently restraining hand on Sannie’s arm as they reached the flat sands.
Bernard was walking into the water. The foam was at his knees when he stopped.
‘There’s nothing you could have done,’ Tom said, his voice just loud enough to cover the distance between them. The water broke over his shoes and Sannie stood with a hand at her mouth.
‘I know, Tom,’ Bernard called, though still looking away from them, out to the first tiny fingernail of morning light.
‘We’ll get them, Bernard,’ Tom said.
Bernard shrugged, then finally turned and faced them. ‘Yes, I do believe you will, some day, but that’s not the point, is it?’
‘You did the right thing by going for help,’ Sannie said.
‘Yes, I know,’ he said to her. He looked at her for a couple of seconds and slowly nodded his head. ‘Yes, the right thing. I followed orders. His orders.’
‘That’s right,’ Tom confirmed. ‘I would have told you to do the same thing — you would have told him to do it if the positions were reversed.’
‘Yes.’
‘Come back, Bernard. We’ll go down to Sarel’s and get a cup of coffee, or something stronger,’ Sannie suggested.
‘A wake?’
She shrugged.
Bernard turned his gaze on Tom, who looked down at the automatic pistol hanging loosely by the other man’s side. ‘We let him down, Tom. You and me both.’
‘I know I did, but you didn’t. You were his best shot at freedom, Bernard.’
‘No, I let him down by doing the right thing. The right thing by the book. That was always me in the navy, you know. Plenty of them used to joke about it. They said I crapped by the manual. They were right. I always had to do it better than any other man, because of… because of who I am, what I am.’
‘Come on. Let’s go get a drink, Bernard.’
Bernard looked back out to sea, towards the molten ball rising from the waters.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Sannie.
‘I need to talk to you again, Bernard. I need you to take me through every hour, every minute, every second from the time they took you and Robert until the time you escaped.’ Tom stayed still as he spoke.
‘I’ve told you everything I know.’
‘There’s always something else. Trust me, I know. There’ll be some small detail that you’ll remember — something someone said or did, or didn’t say or do — that will nail them, Bernard.’
Bernard turned back to him and smiled.
‘No, I’ve done quite enough already, Tom. Or, more to the point, I’ve done not quite enough. I shouldn’t have left him.’
‘No.’
‘Yes, Tom. You know it and I know it. I ran.’
