‘It’s not over yet, Jeanette. I have to go to the Cape tomorrow.’
‘What’s in the Cape?
‘I want the address of a Quintus Wernich, chairman of the board of Southern Cross Avionics. He lives in Stellenbosch.’ Jeanette Louw said, ‘Fuck.’
‘You know him?’
‘Jesus. He’s part of this?’
‘Jeanette, I haven’t got time now. I’ll tell you everything, but not now. You know Wernich.’
‘I met him when I made a presentation of our services to Southern Cross. After all that trouble the bastard said no thanks, they had their own people.’
‘Not any more, I don’t think. What else?’
‘I knew all about them before I talked to them, but that was months ago. Let me think … If I remember correctly, they made their name with new systems for the Mirage, the fighter plane. I still have the stuff here somewhere. I’ll take a look.’
‘Can you get Wernich’s address? And book a flight for me?’
‘I will.’ Then she asked sharply, ‘When did you last sleep?’
‘I can’t remember. Day before yesterday; something like that. I’m at the hospital. I’ll have a quick nap now.’
‘Good idea. Listen, you wanted to know about Stef Moller.’
‘Yes.’
‘Let me just get my notes. You must understand, what I found is mostly speculative. You won’t be able to prove it.’
‘I don’t want proof. He’s out of the picture, anyway.’
‘So, for what it’s worth, have you ever heard of Frama Inter-Trading?’
‘Never.’
‘I won’t bore you with details, but in the seventies and eighties the army was smuggling ivory and Frama was the front company. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of rands. In 1996 the Kumleben Commission investigated the whole business and their report said that there was possible corruption and self-enrichment on a grand scale. But as you can guess, no one wanted to point fingers. One of the names mentioned was a Stefanus Lodewikus Moller. He was Frama’s auditor. He was the one that moved the money around.’
I was too exhausted to digest all that.
‘Are you there?’ Jeanette asked.
‘I’m dumbstruck.’
‘Yes, Lemmer. This fucking country. But you go and sleep your sleep, I’ll call you tomorrow.’
‘Thanks, Jeanette.’
‘Before I forget,’ she said urgently.
‘What?’
‘You can’t take the Glock on the plane.’
‘Oh, yes. I hadn’t thought that far.’
‘Leave it with B. J. Fikter. I’ll get something for you at this end.’
I picked up my bag and went into the hospital. B. J. Fikter was on night shift. He looked fresh and alert and he took his hand off his firearm when he saw that it was me. The police constable was fast asleep opposite him.
‘Ah, how pretty you look, my dear,’ he said.
‘And I haven’t even put my make-up on yet. Any news?’
He shook his head.
‘The risk is considerably reduced. I wanted to let you know. Not completely eliminated, but I don’t imagine you’ll be bothered tonight.’
‘You got them.’
‘I did.’
‘Thanks for inviting your friends to the party.’
‘I know you’re not a party animal. You look so domestic’
‘Oh, the masks that we wear. What are you going to do now?’
‘I’m going to have a sleep on the VIP couch. I just want to …’I gestured at Emma’s room.
He said nothing, just grinned.
The black night nurse recognised me. She nodded. I could go in.
I opened the door and went over to her bed. She lay there just the same as ever. I looked at her and felt a great wearines corne over me. I sat down and stretched out my hand to rest on hers.
‘Emma, I found Jacobus.’
Her breathing was deep and peaceful.
‘He misses you terribly. He’s going to come here, maybe tomorrow. When you’re better, you can see him. So you have to get better.’
You can’t trust yourself when you haven’t slept for forty hours. Your head is a maelstrom, your senses betray you, and you live in a world where dreams and reality are indistinguishable.
So, when I imagined that Emma’s hand moved almost imperceptibly under mine, I knew that I was deluding myself.
Vincent ‘Pego’ Mashego took a course at the Mogale rehabilitation centre in the summer of 2003. One afternoon he was walking between the buildings and he saw a figure in the lammergeier’s cage that made his heart stand still.
The man was on his haunches scraping manure off the floor and Pego stared wordlessly. It was like a dream, unreal and incomprehensible.
The man looked up and he knew it was Jacobus le Roux.
Jacobus charged out, making the lammergeier flap her giant wings. They embraced fiercely, without speaking, seventeen years after they had parted ways in a nameless hamlet in Mozambique. Jacobus took him to his little house out of fear that someone would see them and that the evil would return to claim Pego, too.
They swapped stories. In 1986 Pego had stayed in Mozambique for six months and then went home to his people. Yes, there were white men who came asking for him, twice. But that was some months ago.
He had been frightened. He couldn’t tell the whole story to his family out of fear that someone would say the wrong thing somewhere. As far as they were concerned, there had just been some big trouble between him and the boere, trouble that necessitated that they should never know he had returned, trouble that dictated that he would not be Pego again, they would call him only Vincent, so he could begin a new life.
The boere hadn’t kept looking for him. Maybe they thought he wasn’t a danger to them. Who would believe a simple maPulana man’s stories about lights and cables in the game reserve, about people shooting at him and burning him?
Only late in 1987 did he get work in a private game reserve as a waiter. The owner soon spotted his knowledge of the veld and transferred him to assistant to the field guides.
In 1990 he married Venolia Lebyane and in 1995 he saw an advertisement put out by the Limpopo Parks Board. They wanted black people with Matric who aspired to become game wardens in the provincial game reserves. He didn’t have the schooling, but he went to see them in Polokwane anyway. He explained that his knowledge lay in the bush, not books. He didn’t have paper qualifications, but wouldn’t they give him a chance?
They had, because there were few applications. The people of Limpopo wanted work in the city, not the veld. So Vincent Mashego became a game ranger, and now he was the head of the Talamati Bushveld Camp in the Manyeleti Game Reserve alongside Kruger.
Then Jacobus told his story to Pego and the black man held him when he wept. He said he owed Jacobus his life. He would help.
Jacobus said there was nothing he could do.
There would be. Some time or other.
They had seen each other afterwards. From time to time Jacobus would travel to Manyeleti surreptitiously
