Lord, he looked forward to it.
22.
The six-man team searched the house in Guguletu with professional skill. They took video footage and digital stills before they began so that everything could be replaced exactly where it had been. Then the methodical, laborious search began. They knew the hidey-holes of amateurs and professional frauds, no nook or cranny was left unsearched. Stethoscopes were used on walls and floors, powerful flashlights in the spaces between roof and ceiling. The master keys they had brought for cupboards and doors were not required. One of the six men was master of the inventory. He murmured into a palm-size tape recorder like a businessman dictating a letter.
It was a small house with not much inside. The search took 130 minutes. Then they were gone in the microbus they had arrived in. The master of inventory phoned his boss, Vincent Radebe.
?Nothing,? he said.
?Nothing at all?? asked Radebe.
?No weapons, no drugs, no cash. A few bank statements. The usual documentation. Mpayipheli is taking his high school equivalency, there is correspondence and books. Magazines, cards? sentimental love notes to the woman in her clothes drawer. ?From Thobela. To Miriam. I love you this, I love you that.? Nothing else. Ordinary people.?
In the Ops Room Vincent shook his head. He had thought so.
?Oh, one other thing. A veggie garden out back. Very neat. Best tomatoes I have seen in years.?
The trick at a news conference is to phrase your questions in such a way as not to disclose to the other media the information you have.
That was why, after the minister had read the prepared statement on the stormy life and violent criminal times of Thobela Mpayipheli and had responded to a horde of questions from radio, newspaper, and television journalists almost without exception with ?I am not in a position to answer that question, due to the sensitive nature of the operation,? Allison Healy asked: ?Is anybody else connected with this operation being detained at the moment??
And because the minister did not know, she hesitated. Then she gave an answer that would cover her if the opposite were true. ?Not to my knowledge,? she said.
It was an answer she would later wish with all her heart never to have uttered.
They brought Miriam coffee and sandwiches in the interrogation room. She asked when they would let her go. The food bearer did not know. He said he would ask.
She did not eat or drink. She tried to overcome her fear. The walls suffocated her, the windowless room pressed down on her. Tonight it was she who needed to go to her child, tonight it was she who wanted to cry out with a high frightened voice, ?Let me out.? She must go fetch Pakamile. Her child, her child. Her work. What were the bank people thinking? Did they think she was a criminal? Were they going to fire her? Would someone here go and explain to the bank people why they had come to fetch her?
She needed to get out.
She must get out.
And what about Thobela? Where was he now? Was it true what the white woman said, that he was in danger?
She had not asked for this.
Janina Mentz waited until everyone who had been resting was back before she gathered them around the table.
Then she told them almost the whole story. She did not mention that the director?s name was on the list, but she confessed that she had set up the operation from the start. She did not apologize for keeping them in the dark. She said they should understand why she had done it that way.
She described the meeting with the minister, the confirmation that Thobela Mpayipheli, code name Umzingeli, was a former MK operatI've, that he had received advanced training, that he was a dangerous opponent, and that it was of cardinal importance that he be stopped.
?We will waste no more time finding out who he was. We are going to focus on finding out who he is now. With his background, his behavior the past eighteen hours makes no sense. He has deliberately refrained from violence. At the airport he said, I quote, ?I don'?t want to hurt anybody? In the confrontation with two Reaction Unit members he said, ?Look what you made me do.? But at neither of these occasions did he give himself up. It doesn'?t make sense to me. Does anyone have an opinion here??
She knew Rajkumar would have an opinion. He always had an opinion. ?Escalation,? he said. ?He?s not a moron. He knows if he shoots someone, things will escalate out of his control.?
Radebe said nothing, but she had her suspicions. So she drew him out. ?Vincent??
Radebe sat with his palms over his cheeks, fingertips on his temples, and his eyes on the big table. ?I think not.?
?What do you mean?? asked Rajkumar irritably.
?Put everything together,? said Radebe. ?He left the drug work. Of his own free will. Orlando Arendse said he just left without explanation. He deliberately chose an occupation without violence, probably at a much-reduced salary. He begins a relationship with a single mother, lives with her and her child, enrolls in a high school correspondence course, buys a farm. What does that tell us??
?Smokescreen,? said Rajkumar. ?What about all the money??
?He worked for six years in the lucratI've drug industry. What could he spend his money on??
?A thousand things. Wine, women, song, gambling.?
?No,? said Radebe.
