now tenderness grew in her out of the conversations on the veranda when he related his life to her. There were moments when he described how he had met Miriam and how their love and companionship had blossomed that she had to fight back the tears. Here they sat now on the eve of his attempt to claim Pakamile, the future full of promise for everyone and the world, a wonderful moment framed in the dark reflection of a red wine glass.
She would never be sure if she had heard the sound. Perhaps, but even if she had, her untrained ear could never have distinguished it from others, nor her consciousness read danger in it.
Mpayipheli had moved with purpose, one moment in the chair beside her, the next a mass of kinetic energy moving in the direction of the sitting room, and then everything happened at once. Chaos and noise that she could only sort chronologically with great difficulty after the fact. First the dull thud of human bodies colliding with great force, then the apologetic reports of a silenced firearm, a short staccato of four-five-six shots followed by the crack of the coffee table breaking, shouts of men like bellowing animals, and she found herself in the doorway of the living room, the only light shining over her shoulder, and all she could see was rolling shadows and half-light.
Mpayipheli and a man were on the ground, writhing and grunting for life or death, the silver flash of a steel blade in between, and another man, tall and athletic on the other side of the room with a gun in his hand, the long snout of a silencer searching out a target on the floor, but calm and calculating, unhurried by the frenetic motion of the two figures.
And then Van Heerden. She had not seen him leave the kitchen, was unaware that he had gone out the other door into the passage. Only when the tall man placed his gun on the floor did she realize that Van Heerden was holding the double-barreled shotgun to the man?s head, and he called to her, ?Allison, go into the kitchen, close the door,? but she was frozen. Why couldn'?t she move? Why couldn'?t she react? she would ask herself and Van Heerden over and over in the weeks afterward.
Mpayipheli and the other one stood up against each other; his opponent, the one with the knife, had small eyes close together and a thick neck on massive shoulders.
?Tiny,? Van Heerden called, and threw something across the room that the Xhosa deftly caught.
Everything regressed, everything rolled back to an ancient time, and the one with the neck said, ?Amsingelly? with his head lowered and his broad-bladed knife weaving in front of him.
?Umzingeli.? Thobela?s voice was a deep growl and then softer, much softer: ?Mayibuye.?
?What fucking language is that, nigger??
?Xhosa.? And she would never forget the look on Mpayipheli?s face, the light from the kitchen slanting onto it, and there was something indescribable there, a strange illumination, and then she saw the object he had plucked out of the air? it was the assegai, the one she had bought for him in the curio shop on Long Street.
This office has been unable to re-establish contact with the two agents and can only assume that the mission was not a success.
Inkululeko has been unable to supply any information as to what transpired at the house that belongs to a member of a local University?s department of psychology.
We will continue to pursue the matter but regret to inform you that we have to presume the worst.
?He?s not here, ma?am,? screamed Captain Tiger Mazibuko over the phone with a raging frustration that made her shudder.
?Tiger ??
?The doctor is here and he says if we don'?t leave within fifteen minutes, we will never see the hard drive again. And a redhead who says she is from the press. Something happened here, there?s blood on the walls and the furniture is fucked, but the dog is not here and these fucking people won?t cooperate? .?
?Tiger.? Her voice was stern and sharp, but he ignored her, he was out of his mind. ?No,? he said. ?I am finished. Totally fucking finished. I?ve already made a cunt of myself, I am finished. I didn?'t sit for two fucking days in a cell in Botswana for this. I didn?'t sign up for this. I will not expose my people to this. Enough, it?s fucking enough.?
She tried calm. ?Tiger, slow down. ??
?Christ, jissis,? he said, and he sounded as if he would cry.
?Tiger, let me speak to the doctor.?
?I?m finished,? he said.
?Tiger, please.?
High on the slopes of the Tygerberg in the heart of a white neighborhood, he climbed out of Van Heerden?s car. He was one block away from his destination, because there could be eyes, possibly two sets in a vehicle in front of the door and one or two bodyguards inside.
He moved purposefully to the dark patches on the sidewalk, because a black man here in the small hours was out of place. On the street corner he stopped. The Cape night opened up for him, a fairy tale of a thousand flickering lights as far as the eye could see, from Milnerton in the west the coastline swept down to the lit carbuncle of the mountain. The city lay there like a slowly beating heart, the arteries curling away to Groote Schuur and Observatory and Rosebank and Newlands, and from there the Flats made a curve east, through Khayalitsha and Guguletu to Kraaifontein and Stellenbosch and Somerset West. Rich and poor, shoulder to shoulder, sleeping now, a resting giant.
He stood, hands by his side. He looked.
Because tomorrow would be his last day here.
Somewhere between three and four in the morning a part of Janina Mentz?s consciousness dragged her from a deep sleep. A sense that all was not right? a panicky, suffocating feeling. She opened her eyes with a jerk of her body, and the big black hand was over her mouth and she smelled him, the sweat, saw the blood on the torn clothes, saw the short assegai in his hand, and she made a sound of terror, her body instinctively shrinking away from him.
?My name,? he said, ?is Thobela Mpayipheli.?
He pressed the blade to her throat and said, ?We don'?t want to wake the children.?
