He wound down the window, telephone against his ear, still ringing. Tiny Mpayipheli started the engine. “What is it?”
“Where are you going?”
“My mother. They’re going to attack my mother.”
“How do you know?”
“I know, Bester. It was…a trap.”
“I have a helicopter, Van Heerden.”
“Where?”
“In the air. Behind Karbonkelberg.” Bester waved his hand toward the west.
“Carolina?” he screamed into the cell phone, hearing gunshots in the background, knowing he was right.
“There are four of them,” she shouted. “Four of them.” And then the phone went dead and he threw it against the front window of the Mercedes with all his might and roared something indecipherable and jumped out and grabbed Bester by the chest. “Are there soldiers in the chopper, Brits? Tell me!”
“Yes,” said Bester, softly and calmly, and pulled Van Heerden’s hands away from his jacket. “There’s a radio in the Unimog.”
¦
Hope Beneke tried to remember the names on Van Heerden’s list because the man at the other end was one of them, and she wrote:
“Have you got all the new names?” he asked.
“Sir, I’m not authorized to share the information with anyone over the telephone.”
“Please, I understand that. I just want…I have nothing to do with the will. How can I prove it?”
“By coming to talk to us, sir.”
“They’ll kill me.”
“Who?”
“Schlebusch.”
“You said ‘they.’ ”
“You know who. You know.”
“We can meet somewhere.”
“Is this line safe?”
“Of course.”
“Will you keep the photos out of the newspapers until we’ve talked?”
She had an inspiration: “I can only keep them back for today, sir. Tomorrow
“No,” he said, his voice filled with fear. “Please. I’ll phone again in an hour. I’ll meet you somewhere.”
The line was suddenly quiet. She smiled. This was better. Much better. Then pressed the button on the phone. She had to tell Van Heerden about this.
Her stomach contracted.
“The subscriber you have dialed is not available…”
¦
On his uniform the pilot wore the badge of the Twenty-second Squadron with the inscription UT MARE LIBERUM SIT. He turned the helicopter’s nose in the direction of Robben Island. “Eleven, twelve minutes,” he said.
“It’s too slow.” Bester’s voice crackled over the radio.
“It’s an old Oryx, Colonel, with a top speed of about three hundred. It’s the best I can do.”
“Bester out.”
The pilot pressed the intercom button. “Hot insertion, ten minutes,” he said, and heard the sudden activity at the back, fourteen men of the Anti-Terrorist Unit clicking clasps, cocking weapons.
? Dead at Daybreak ?
46
Her name was Nonnie and when she opened the door the wait of a lifetime was over – because I knew she was the One.
How can I describe that moment?
I’ve played it over and over in my head during the past years, that first, magical moment, that overwhelming awareness, that euphoric, immediate knowledge when I looked at her. My eyes drank her in with the thirst of thirty-four years, this gentle, gentle woman, her laughter. She stood there in a one-piece bathing suit because she had been lying next to the small, cheap plastic pool, and when she opened the door her eyes and her beautiful mouth had laughed (the one front tooth was just a millimeter askew) and her voice was sweeter than Mozart: “You must be Van Heerden.” And I looked into her eyes, deep and green and large and shining. There was so much life there, humor and sympathy and heartbreak and joy. I looked at her body, those curves – she was tall, feminine, fertile – and forgive me, but it seemed as if nature shouted out of her body, her divine hips, the handfuls of breasts, the small curve of her stomach, her legs strong, her feet small. She was a siren, irresistibly seductive, her short brown hair, her neck, her shoulders, her eyes, her mouth. I wanted to drink her, to taste, to swallow, to slake that unbelievable thirst.
“Come through, then we’ll have something to drink at the pool.” She had walked ahead of me down the passage, my eyes on her, past the bookcases, my eyes consuming her, the guilt scurrying through my head like a nocturnal animal, out to the backyard, where a book lay. A poetry book. Betta Wandrag:
I knew. She knew, in those first moments.
But I couldn’t understand it.
Why?
Why should the One’s name be Nonnie Nagel?
The wife of my friend and colleague.
? Dead at Daybreak ?
47
There was a tall, narrow window next to the front door and when he raised himself off the floor to pull away the blind with the barrel of the AK, they shot Billy September. He felt the bullet breaking through his collarbone, and the violence of it slammed him back against the entrance-hall wall, more glass in his face, his arm paralyzed. Again he reached forward, looked down, blood pouring out of his chest, out of his stomach. He groaned. His body, they were messing with his body, pockmarks in the wall, deafening noise, his blood on the floor. He was going to die, suddenly he knew it, this was where he was going to die, pressing his hand against the wound in his neck. So much blood, hell, he looked at the sun that shone through the holes in the door, and then a man burst in, stood in front of him, a big white man with a stubble beard and a grin, just for a moment, then moved away, to the living room. Billy September heard the thunder of the Remington, one shot. He turned, slowly, his arm dead, his body a long way away, pain in his stomach, turned slowly, saw Stubble Beard on the living-room floor, on his back, his face blasted away. Billy September smiled: you don’t fuck with a
The Oryx flew low, two hundred meters above the ground, over the coastline at Bloubergstrand, the big engines droning powerfully, fully open, the whole framework vibrating.
“Five minutes to insertion,” the pilot said over the intercom, and looked at the ground-speed meter, 309 kilometers per hour. “Not bad for an old lady,” he said, then remembered the intercom was still on. He smiled,
