The tollgate was a spoor that he would leave; people would remember a big black man on a motorbike, wouldn'?t they? Lord, he feared the pass in the dark on this thing. But beyond were more passes, more dark roads with sharp turns and oncoming freight trucks. What had possessed him?
What was he going to do?
A taxi was not going to work, not at this time of night.
Look at this positI'vely. He was on the move, on his way. Suppress the desire to get rid of the bike. Use the dark. Use the lead he had. Use the element of surprise. They had no idea, despite the two spooks in the car at the motorbike shop. It would be tomorrow morning before someone realized the GS was gone, he had?
He hadn'?t reset the alarm. That knowledge came out of the back of his head like a hammer blow. In his hurry and wrestling with the GS, he had forgotten to switch on the alarm.
Jissis, he had gotten sloppy.
By the time he passed the Stellenbosch turnoff, his anger at Johnny Kleintjes and the spooks and at his own stupidity had grown greater than his fear of the motorbike, and he cursed inside the helmet, in all the languages he knew.
?I don'?t believe it,? said Bodenstein. ?I bloody don'?t believe it.? They were standing in the showroom of Mother City Motorrad, the two agents and the owner. Bodenstein held out the piece of paper. ?Read what he?s written. Can you believe this??
Nathan took the note.
?You think you know someone. You think you know who to trust,? said Bodenstein.
?Which one is the GS?? asked Johnny, one of the agents.
?It?s that fuckin? huge thing, only yellow,? said Bodenstein, pointing to a silver motorbike on the showroom floor. ?He?s going to fall. Fuckin? hard. It?s not a toy. Can you believe it??
?See reality the way things are, not as you want them to be? is one of the principles of Janina Mentz.
That?s why she accepted the developments calmly.
She thought through the happenings while the Ops Room buzzed around her. She stood still, at the end of the long table with her hand on her chin, her elbow propped on her arm, head bowed, a study in calm pensiveness. Aware that the director would hear every word, aware that the way she responded and what decisions she made, her tone of voice and attitude of body, would all create an impression on her team.
Vision: In her mind?s eye she saw the road that the evasive persona of Thobela Mpayipheli must travel. He was headed north, and the N 1 lay like a fat, twisted artery stretching out ahead to the heart of Africa. The reason for his single-mindedness, the source of his motivation, was unplumbed and now irrelevant. She focused on the route: the implications, the countermeasures, the preventative and limiting steps.
In a soft and even voice she had the big map of the country put up on the wall.
With red ink she drew in the likely route. She defined the role of the Reaction Unit: they would be her net, the welcoming party seventy-seven kilometers north of Beaufort West, where the route forked and the possibilities doubled? Kimberley to Johannesburg left, or Bloemfontein to Johannesburg right.
She asked Quinn?s and Radebe?s teams to alert the police stations and traffic authorities along the route, to warn them merely to gather intelligence and not to act, because their armed fugitive was still largely an unknown factor, but they knew he could shoot.
Their ignorance of this factor lay heavily on her, and the next round of instructions must set that right: investigatI've teams to Miriam Nzululwazi, to Monica Kleintjes. The gloves were off now. Track down the fugitive?s family. His parents. His friends.
Get information. Who? What? Where? Why? How? She needed to know him, this ghost with the elusive face.
She had the power. She would use it.
Extract from transcript of interview by J. Wilkinson with Mr. Andre Bodenstein, owner of Mother City Motorrad, 23 October, 21:55, Oswald Pirow Boulevard, Cape Town:
w: What do you know of Mr. Mpayipheli?s previous employment?
B: He was a gofer.
w: Gofer?
B: Yes. For a car dealer in Somerset West.
w: How do you know this?
B: He told me.
w: What kind of gofer?
B: A gofer is a gofer. It means you do all the shit jobs that nobody else will.
w: That?s all you know?
B: Listen, I don'?t need a man with a bloody degree to wash the motorbikes.
