in Pretoria, he served with Mpayipheli in Tanzania and at a Kazakhstan military base in the former USSR, where Umkhonto we Sizwe soldiers were trained as part of Eastern bloc support for the Struggle in the eighties.
?In one instance, he almost beat a Russian soldier to death in a mess-room fistfight. It took the leadership weeks to repair the diplomatic damage done by this senseless act of brutality.?
Mpayipheli allegedly received sensitive intelligence data from his Cape Town employer and is heading north. He slipped through a military cordon at Three Sisters early this morning during a heavy thunderstorm. His current whereabouts are unknown.
In an issued statement, Brig. Morape goes on to describe Mpayipheli as a compulsive brawler who became such a problem to the ANC that he was removed from the training program. ?I am not surprised by allegations that he worked for a drug syndicate in the Cape. It fits his psychopathic profile perfectly.?
?Psychopathic profile,? she said softly to herself, and shook her head. Suddenly everyone was a psychiatrist.
How well the brigadier?s opinion fitted in with the efforts of the minister.
The wheels were rolling, the great engine of the state was building up steam. Mpayipheli did not stand a chance.
And then her cell phone rang.
?Allison Healy.?
?This is Zatopek van Heerden. You were looking for me.? The tone was belligerent.
?Thank you for returning my call, Doctor.? She kept the tone cheery. ?It is in connection with Mr. Thobela Mpayipheli. I would like to ask a few??
?No.? The voice was brusque and irritable.
?Doctor, please ??
?don'?t ?doctor? me.?
?Please help, I??
?Where did you hear that I know him??
?Orlando Arendse told me.?
He was silent for so long that she thought he had hung up on her. She wanted to say, ?Doctor,? or something again and was wondering how to address him when he asked: ?Did you say Orlando Arendse??
?That?s right, the ? um ??
?The drug baron.?
?Yes.?
?Orlando talked to you??
?Yes.?
?You have guts, Allison Healy.?
?Um ??
?Where do you want to meet??
Thirty minutes south of Petrusburg, just across the Riet river, the road curves lazily between the Free State kopjes, a few wide sweeping curves before it returns to straight as a die. Enough to draw his concentration back to the motorbike again; the engine was running optimally in the heat, a reassuring constant, tangible heartbeat beneath him. This extension of his body lent him security. It was the moment he realized he could keep on riding, past Lusaka, continuing north, day after day, he and the machine and the road to the horizon. It was the moment when he understood the addiction the white clients had spoken of.
It was that time of day.
The sun shone a benign orange, as if it knew the day?s task was nearly done.
He had discovered the magic of late afternoon in Paris, during his two years of desolation after the Wall had fallen. He had fallen, too, his lot inextricably entangled with the Berlin barrier, from celebrated assassin, the darling of the Stasi and KGB, to uneducated unemployed. From wealthy man of the world to the disillusionment of knowing that the thirty dollars in his account was the last and there would be no more income. From arrogance to depression, angrily and reluctantly accepting the new reality in between. Until he picked himself up from self-pity and went door-to-door looking for work like any lowly laborer. Monsieur Merceron had asked to see his hands??These hands have never worked, but they are built to work?? and he got the job, just west of the Gare du Nord in Montmartre, gofer at the bakery, sweeper of floury floors, bearer of sacks and boxes, scrubber of the big mechanical blenders, early-morning deliverer of baguettes, with arms full of loaves. In the winter the steam rising from the warm bread into his nostrils had become the fragrance of Paris, fresh, exotic, and wonderful. And in the late afternoon when the sun angled down and the whole city was in transition between work and home, he would go back to his first-story apartment near the Salvador Dali museum. Every day he walked the long route, first up the steps on the hill to the Sacre-Coeur, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, and went to sit right at the top, his body delightfully weary, and watched the evening claim the city like a jealous lover. The sounds rose up, the shadings slowly shifting to grays, the crouching mass of Notre-Dame, the twisting Seine, the sun sparking gold off the dome of Les Invalides, the dignified loneliness of the Eiffel Tower and in the east the Arc de Triomphe. He sat till every landmark disappeared in the dark and the lights flickered like stars in the city firmament, the scene changing to a wonder world without dimension.
Then he would rise and go into the church, allowing the peace of the interior to fill him before lighting a candle for each of his victims.
The memory filled him with a deep nostalgia for the simplicity of those two years, and he thought that with the money in the sports bag, if he kept the nose pointing north, he could be there in a month.
He smiled sardonically in the helmet? how ironic, now he wished to be there. When the one thing, the single
