Chicago. To a world of pulsing, moaning rhythms, sensual voices, and strange new experiences, a new uncontaminated life.
Focused on the music. Sleep was near. The prospect of a long, well-deserved rest. She wasn'?t due back at work until noon.
Where was he now, the big, bad Xhosa biker?
He was two kilometers from Leeu-Gamka, the headlights turned off, the GS standing in the veld a few hundred meters from the road. He stripped off the suit, locked it in one luggage case, put the helmet in the other, and began walking toward the lights.
The night air was sharp and cool, carrying the pungent scent of Karoo shrubs crushed under his boots. The weariness of the last fifty or sixty kilometers had invaded his body, his eyes were red and scratchy, he was thirsty and sleepy.
No longer twenty, his body complained. He knew he had been running on adrenaline, but the levels were running low. He knew the next few hours till dawn would be the most difficult. He walked briskly to get his circulation going, his boots crunched gravel on the road verge rhythmically. Lights from the petrol station on the right and the police station on the left of the highway came steadily closer. There was no movement, no sign of life, no roadblock or other indications of a search. Had the petrol jockey in Laingsburg said nothing? He owed him, he thought. It was so difficult to read people, how oddly they behaved. Why did the man not tell him he would keep quiet? Why keep him worrying? Was he still making up his mind?
He walked into the petrol station. There was a twenty-four-hour kiosk, a tiny cafe. Behind the counter was a black woman, fast asleep with her chin dropped onto her chest, mouth half open. He took two cans of Coca-Cola from the fridge, a few chocolate bars from the shelf. Behind her on the wall he saw the rack of road map books.
He cleared his throat. Her eyes opened.
?Sorry, sister,? he said softly, smiling sympathetically at her.
?Was I asleep?? she asked, baffled.
?Just resting a bit,? he said.
?What time is it??
?Just after three,? he said.
She took the cool drinks and chocolate and rang them up. He asked for a map book.
?Are you lost??
?No, sister, we are looking for a shortcut.?
?From here? There are no shortcuts here.? But she took the book down from the shelf and put it in the plastic bag with the other things.
He paid and left.
?drive safely,? she called after him, and settled back in her chair.
He looked back once he was a little way off. He could see through the window that her head had dropped again. He wondered if she would remember he was there, in case anyone asked.
Halfway back to the bike he popped open a can of Coke, drinking deeply, burped the gas, drank again. The sugar would do him good. He emptied the can, opened a Milo bar, pushing the chunks into his mouth. A white Mercedes flashed past on the highway, spoiling his night vision for a while. He put the empty can and candy wrappers back into the plastic bag.
He would have to inspect the map book. He had no flashlight. The moon gave less light now, almost setting in the west. He should have bought a flashlight.
Perhaps the moonlight was sufficient. He left the road, cutting across the veld, for the first time thinking of puff adders. The night was cold, they shouldn'?t be active. He reached the GS and took the book out of the bag.
The routes and roads were a spiderweb of alternatives, spooky-looking in the dim light. He strained to see, the moon cast a shadow of his head over the page, forcing him to shift around, his eyes irritatingly close to the page. He found the right page.
There was a road from there, from Leeu-Gamka to Fraserburg.
Fraserburg?
The direction was wrong, too far west, too few possibilities. He must go north.
He saw there were two additional routes from Beaufort West, snaking threads to Aberdeen in the east and Loxton approximately north-northwest. That might do. He turned to the next page to follow it. Loxton, Carnarvon, Prieska. Too far west.
Paging back, he followed the N1 to Three Sisters. The road forked there. To Bloemfontein or Kimberley Paging on, he found the Kimberley route, traced it with his finger. Promising. Many more options.
?We will change it at Three Sisters, herr obergruppenfuhrer,? he said softly.
He would have to fill up in Beaufort West. He would ask how far it was to Bloemfontein, what the road was like. With any luck, the spooks would hear about it. And at Three Sisters he would take the road to Kimberley.
He took out the second can of Coke.
It was raining in the Great Karoo. The weather had rolled in over the plains, rumbling and spitting like some giant primordial predator, visible in the night sky only when lightning came searching in fantastic forms, and now here it was above them, the rains of Africa, extravagant and pitiless.
