?He has always had the wrong motives, Mr. Director. That is why he is such an asset.?
They lay beside each other in the dark, she on her back, he on his side next to her, stroking her body, getting to know it from her neck to her toes. His touch was paradise, absolute acceptance. She had asked him when the perspiration and the passion had cooled and his palm was absently stroking over her full breasts and she felt the warmth of his breath on her nipples, she had asked him if he liked her body and he had said, ?More than you will ever know,? and that was the end of her fears for tonight. She knew there was one more up ahead, but that could wait until tomorrow; she wanted to experience this moment without anxiety. His voice was gentle, his head in her neck, his hand never stopped stroking, and he spoke to her, told her everything, opening a new world to her.
Captain Tiger Mazibuko crossed the border an hour after midnight. He was driving a
i
.8-liter GTI Turbo Volkswagen Golf. He had no idea how Janina Mentz had organized it: it was waiting for him at the police station at Ellisras, and the keys were handed to him at the desk of the charge office once he had shown his passport. Now he was in Botswana and he drove as fast as the narrow road and the darkness allowed in this other country, with cattle and goats grazing beside the road. He had made his calculations. Everything depended on the dog?s progress, but the injuries would hold him up. The pilot of the Oryx had spoken with him over the cell phone; they had their hate for Mpayipheli in common. The pilot said the wound was bad and the fugitive would not last the night on the motorbike. He was close to falling when he came out of the helicopter, and there were more shots fired, perhaps he had taken another bullet or two.
Let?s say the fucker was tougher than they thought; let?s say he kept going
Then Mpayipheli would be ahead of him. At least two hours ahead.
Would he be able to catch him?
It depended on how fast the bugger could ride? he had to eat, he had to rest, he had to drink and fill up with petrol.
It was possible.
Maybe he slept somewhere and then Tiger would wait for him. At the bridge over the Zambezi, just beyond the place where the waters of the great river and the Chobe merged.
A good place for a death in Africa.
Before he turned off the light and sank into the softness of the double bed, he sat staring at the telephone. His longing for Miriam and Pakamile was overwhelming? just one call, ?don'?t worry about the reports over the radio, I am okay, I am nearly there, I love you,? that was all he wanted to say, but if they had tapped the line, they would know immediately where he was and they would come get him.
If only he could contact someone and say the terrible information on your piece of computer equipment is destroyed, your dark secrets are safe and threaten no one, leave me alone, let me go help an old friend, and then let me go home.
Tomorrow he would be there, late tomorrow afternoon he would ride into Lusaka. He had read the signs? no roadblocks outside Gaborone, no hot pursuit by the Oryx, obviously they did not want to involve the Botswana government, they wanted to keep it in the family. Probably they were waiting for him in Lusaka, but that was good, he could handle that, he was trained in the art of urban warfare. Tomorrow it would all be over. He felt as if he were sinking into the bed, deeper and deeper, so weary, his whole body exhausted, but his brain was flashing images of the day behind him. He was aware of the physiology of the bullet wounds, the feverishness, the effects of the painkillers and four cans of cola and the brandy he had after his room service meal.
He could rationalize his emotions, but he could not suppress them, he felt so alone.
Not for the first time. Other cities, other hotel rooms, but that was different, there had been no Miriam before.
There had never been a Miriam before he had found her. There were other women; at Odessa there were the prostitutes, the official Stasi-approved whores to see to their needs, to keep the levels of testosterone under control so they would pay attention to their training. Afterward he was under instructions? don'?t get involved, don'?t get attached, don'?t stay with a woman. But his Eastern bloc masters had not reckoned on the Scandinavians? obsession with black men. Lord, those Swedish women, shamelessly hot for him, on his first visit in ?
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, three of them had approached him in a coffee shop in Stockholm, one after another until he had fled, sure of a plot, some NATO counterintelligence operation. Eventually, a year later, Neta had explained it to him: it was just a thing they had, she couldn'?t say why. Agneta Nilsson, long fine blond hair and two wild weeks of passion in Brussels until the KGB had sent a courier to say that was enough, you are trespassing, looking for trouble. He, Thobela Mpayipheli from the Kei, had eaten white bread, the whitest to be had, sated himself to the bursting point but not his heart, his heart remained empty until he had seen Miriam. Not even in ?
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had his heart been so empty, waiting for the call from a man who was now minister, waiting for his reward, waiting to be included in the victory, to share the fruits, waiting. Days of wandering the streets, a stranger in his own land, among his own people. He had thought of his father in those weeks, played with the idea of taking the train to visit his parents, to stand in the doorway and say, ?Here I am, this is what happened to me,? but there was too much baggage, the gulf was too wide to cross, and in the evenings he went back to the room and waited for the call that never came? rejected, that is how he felt, a feeling that slowly progressed to one of betrayal. They had made him what he was, and now they didn?'t want to know. Eventually he went to Cape Town so he could hear the tongue of his ancestors again, until he decided to offer his services where they would be appreciated, where he would be included, where he could be part of something.
It had not worked out as he thought it would. The Flats had been good to him, but he remained the outsider, still alone, alone among others.
But not so lonely as now, not like now. Fevered chills, strange dreams, a conversation with his father that never ended, explanation, justification, on and on, words flowing out of him, and his father receding, shaking his head and praying, and then he forced himself to wake up, sweating, and the pain in his hip was a dull throbbing and he got up and drank from the tap in the bathroom of the cold sweet water.
Somewhere in the predawn Allison Healy awoke from sleep momentarily, just enough to register one thought: the decision to withhold the information that he had given her was the best decision of her life.
Had she known, in those moments when she had to decide? Had she known despite her fears and insecurities?
It no longer mattered. She rolled over, pressing her voluptuousness against his back and thighs, and sighed with joy before she softly sank away in sleep again.
