Heart of the Hunter

rearview mirrors.

What had the petrol attendant done?

There was nothing behind him. They would have to drive to catch him. At 160 or 180, and even then the gap would not close quickly. Or they would radio ahead, to Leeu-Gamka or Beaufort West.

Probably both, a pincer with him in the middle.

They knew. The spooks from the Cape knew about him and the GS. They had guessed his route correctly.

Not bad.

And if the jockey had reported him, they would know he knew they knew. If the man had reported him. He couldn'?t read his expression; that nothing-to-do-with-me attitude could have been a smokescreen.

They say you?re armed and dangerous.

The pistols. That he didn?'t even have. Well, let them miscalculate. But

dangerous??

What did they know? Possibilities danced through his head and he felt the tension run through his body and then Otto Muller came to visit. In the night on a Karoo road he heard the voice of the Odessa instructor, the East German with the fine, almost feminine features below a grotesque bald head, nearly twenty years past. He heard the heavy Germanic accent, the stilted English.

It is game theory; it is referred to as the Nash equilibrium. When two players have no reason to change from their chosen strategies, they continue with those strategies. The equilibrium. How do you break the equilibrium? That is the question. Not by second-guessing, because that is part of the strategy and therefore part of the equilibrium. In a game of chess, you will lose if you think only of your opponent, think of every option, think of every possibility. You will go crazy. Think what you will do. Think about your strategy. Think how you can change it. How you can dominate. How you can break the equilibrium. Be the actor, not the reaction. That is the key.

Otto Muller. There was a bond between them; he was one of only ten operators, the rest from the Eastern bloc, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania. He was one of the chosen and he fascinated Muller.

I have never taught a schwarze before.

So he said,

I haff never taken orders from ze whitezer before.

Lord, he was full of fire in those days. Muller laughed at his put-on German accent.

You have the right? what is the words ? attitude?

He didn?'t tell the Stasi man he had been born with that

attitude;

he didn?'t have the self-knowledge then, his

attitude

engulfed him, his

attitude

was him, his complete being.

A month or so ago he had read in a textbook about enzymes, very large molecules in the human cell that elicit a chemical reaction by presenting a surface that encourages that particular reaction. He pondered this, found in himself the metaphor of this biology. His whole life he had floated through the bloodstream of the world with a surface that encouraged violence as a reaction, until that moment when it had made him sick, that moment for the first time in thirty-seven years when he could step back from himself and see and find it repugnant.

The difference was that enzymes cannot change their nature.

People can. Sometimes people must.

In a game of chess, your opponent is looking for patterns of play. give him the pattern. give him the Nash equilibrium. Then change it.

But to do that he needed information.

They expected him to follow the Ni. He could change this pattern only if he knew what his options were. He needed a good road map. But where on earth could he get one?

* * *

Her first impulse after replacing the phone was to be with her children.

She fought it, understanding the need, understanding that Masethla?s cutting words made her look for comfort, but her head said she must get used to it, she should have known that Masethla would not like being leaned on from above, would be incapable, too, from a relatI've position of power of taking orders from a strong woman.

They were all like that.

Lord, why did there have to be men, why did she have to fight against their weak, brittle, fragile egos? That and the sex thing, the one-way traffic of their thoughts? if you were a woman, you were prey. If you didn?'t give in and jump into bed, you were a lesbian; if you were a woman in authority, you had slept your way to the top; if he was a man with more authority, then you were screwable.

She had learned these lessons hard. A decade ago, after a long, frustrating, and even painful realization that she would have to live with a constant of overt and covert innuendo and sexual advances, she had taken stock of herself and pinpointed her two physical assets. Her large mouth, wide and full-lipped, white and regular teeth, and her bust, impressive without being excessive. She had developed a deliberate style: no lipstick; small, severe steel- rimmed glasses, and hair always drawn back and fastened; outfits never too formfitting, neutral colors, mostly gray, white, and black. And her actions, interactions, communications, were refined until eventually the volume of erotic interest was turned down to acceptable, manageable levels.

But about the other thing, the ego, she could do nothing.

That is why she forced her thoughts away from her children, stood up and straightened, brushing the wrinkles from her skirt, smoothing her hair.

Rajkumar brought a result. ?The other debit order, ma?am, the R129 per month??

?What?? she said, not in the present right then.