Vendetta, page 10
‘Was that man armed, when you shot him?’ Tony asked.
Luiz came and dropped the launcher at his feet, next to the dead Angolan.
‘He is the one who wounded Hennie,’ Luiz said. Roberto looked on silently, his face impassive.
That was not what Tony had asked the tracker. He heard a hiss of static from the radio and Rossouw speaking softly into the radio handset.
‘Sir,’ Rossouw said. ‘It’s Ondangs. They’re looking for a sitrep.’
All this madness, and now the bloody headquarters at Ondangwa wanted a situation report from him. Tony ran a hand through his hair. He had been confused, then sick to his stomach seeing the injured South African, Hennie. Now he was dealing with the shock of what looked like a summary execution of a wounded man who was nowhere near his weapon. No one seemed to care.
‘Sir?’ Rossouw said.
Tony went to him and snatched the proffered handset. ‘This is Romeo-Mike-Zero-Nine. Confirm three, not two, enemy Kilo-India-Alpha, one friendly WIA. Where’s our casevac, over?’
‘Roger, Romeo-Mike-Zero-Nine, your casualty evacuation is on its way,’ the operations room replied.
Tony passed the handset back to Rossouw. He glared at Luiz and pointed a finger while he waited for the reply from base. ‘You . . .’
Luiz stared back at him, unmoving, unemotional.
‘Sir,’ Rossouw said softly. ‘These guys, they were Flechas, Portuguese special forces. For them killing is second nature.’
Tony turned on the signaller. ‘Shut your mouth. We’ll investigate this.’
Rossouw shrugged, then began picking his nose.
*
‘Tony? Are you awake?’ his election campaign manager, Lisa Ingram, asked.
He’d had his head resting against the cool glass window of the Uber Black, where he was sitting in the back seat with Lisa. He hadn’t been sleeping, just remembering that encounter with Luiz. It was hard to imagine him being dead, let alone him killing himself. Luiz had always seemed so devoid of emotion.
‘I’m here. Just lost in thought.’ He looked into her eyes and wanted to touch her long red hair.
Lisa reached out and put a hand on his thigh. ‘You OK? The schedule’s been gruelling.’
Tony’s phone vibrated. It was Sanette, his wife. Love you, good luck tonight, her message read.
Love you as well x, he replied.
Lisa squeezed his leg, then glanced up, as though checking to see if the Uber driver was looking in her rear-view mirror, then ran her fingers lightly along his suit pants, higher up his inner thigh.
He smiled but put his hand on hers, stopping her progress. He wanted to kiss her, but his profile was now high enough that he could not risk the driver seeing and recognising him. Lisa was being dangerous, but he had learned that she liked risk. It made her unpredictable and sensational in bed, but she, as his campaign manager, knew even better than he that a whiff of scandal could ruin his position as leader and their chances, already slim at best, at winning government.
‘Later,’ he whispered.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said.
He was stirring, and at least her attentions took his mind off Luiz and the others, if only for a moment. ‘I need to read over my speaking notes.’
He took them from the inside pocket of his suit jacket and tried to focus, but the dirty, unshaven faces of the men – his men – and the sounds and smells of Angola began invading his brain again, like a creeping Cuban artillery barrage. The Uber hit a pothole and he flinched.
‘You OK?’ Lisa asked.
He swallowed hard. ‘Fine.’
‘Are you sure?’ Lisa asked.
The Uber driver was indicating right, waiting to turn into the car park of the hotel where the fundraising dinner was being held.
‘Yes, just thinking about my speech.’
‘You never worry about your speaking notes and you weren’t even looking at the pages. Do you want to tell me what’s going on? Is it about us?’
‘No.’
He didn’t need this, not the memories of the war and Luiz, not Luiz’s funeral, not Lisa – not now.
‘I know you’re under a lot of pressure, and it’s only going to get worse,’ Lisa said. ‘You can open up to me.’
He looked at her. She was clever and funny and sexy and she desired him – at least, he thought she did. The Uber pulled up under the covered portico of the hotel and they thanked the driver and got out. The local party chairman, a balding businessman in a suit, and his pretty, younger wife were waiting to greet Tony and Lisa. A photographer, maybe from the local newspaper, snapped some pictures of Tony and the chairman.
‘Tony just needs to freshen up before the function and we need to go over his speech,’ Lisa said.
‘No problem,’ the chairman said. ‘Your rooms are ready and people are still arriving. ‘We’re not due to start for half an hour.’ He handed them key cards to their rooms, which were on the eighth floor.
‘Plenty of time,’ Lisa said.
‘Plenty of time for what?’ Tony said, lowering his voice as they went to the elevators.
In the lift, they kissed, pressing themselves against each other. She grabbed his arse and he raised the hem of her dress, which was the same colour as her eyes. The fabric was silky smooth, like her. She ground against him.
As the lift doors separated, they broke their embrace and straightened their clothes, then walked quickly down the corridor. Checking both ways, Tony let Lisa into his room and slammed the door closed.
‘There’s barely time,’ he said, in between kissing her.
‘I need your head in the game.’ She reached between them and unbuckled his belt.
His mind had been elsewhere, in the car, but Lisa had a way of bringing him back to the present, and to her. She was like an addiction – wrong, dangerous, perhaps a means of avoiding some other problem or issue, but he could not get enough of her.
Tony freed one of her breasts from her dress and bra and lowered his mouth to her nipple. Lisa threw back her head and moaned, then took his face in her hands and kissed him on the lips. She stepped back, smiled, and lowered herself to her knees.
He ran his fingers through her long red hair as she unzipped and consumed him. Tony closed his eyes, trying to surrender to the incredible softness of her mouth, to the illicit thrill of the moment. There was a full-length mirror on the other side of the room. He looked at their reflections.
It should have been enough to totally distract him, to take his thoughts away from the pressures of the campaign trail and the ghosts of Angola and his other life. He tried, emptying his mind and focusing on the sight and feel of her.
The guilt, however, swirled around his brain like a poisoned pill fizzing in water, turning clarity to a cloudy, deadly brew. It infected his soul and paralysed his body. Lisa stopped. Tony looked down.
She raised her eyes to his.
‘Tony?’ She had replaced her mouth with her palm and fingers, moving rhythmically, but it was no use.
He pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers.
Lisa looked up, and gave him a sympathetic frown. ‘It’s OK. It happens to guys sometimes. It’s the stress, that’s all.’
He lowered his hand.
‘Tony?’ Lisa got to her feet. ‘Are you crying?’
Chapter 10
Sannie walked along the beach, from Nkomba towards Pennington, sticking to the intertidal zone where the sand was wet and firm. Her GPS watch, a gift from the kids, buzzed and told her she had reached her daily step goal already.
It felt good to be walking. When she had lived in the Hippo Rock Private Nature Reserve, on the edge of the Kruger Park, her opportunities to exercise had been limited. There were wild animals about, and while one could walk on the reserve during daylight hours, there never seemed to be enough time. At any moment she could get a call-out about another rhino being killed and have to respond.
Here on the coast, her hours were more regulated. Sure, there was crime to deal with, but it was not as hectic as somewhere like Johannesburg. She nodded and said good morning to an elderly couple, out walking with their Jack Russell.
This stretch of beach was more than two kilometres long and was populated with just a handful of early risers. None of the houses in the area was more than two storeys high, and the narrow but thick belt of green coastal vegetation screened all but the odd roofline from view.
The Indian Ocean was calm, the morning sun dappling the blue-grey waters. A lone paddler on a wave ski cut his way towards the beach. At the far end, waves crashed on the red rocks of Umdoni Point. Sannie took a deep breath of clean air. This place was what she needed.
She thought again about the conversation she’d had with Mia. As a detective she did not believe in coincidences, but sometimes they happened. Sannie was looking at another house today, in Botha Place, so she would pass by Adam Kruger’s house.
She debated what she would say to him. By the time she reached the tidal pool, the man on the wave ski was riding a wave in to shore, expertly steering himself so that he made the high-speed manoeuvre look effortless. Sannie raised a hand to her eyes and looked at the tall, muscular figure emerging from the water.
‘Adam!’
He looked her way as he lifted his wave ski under one arm. She was still some way off, but she could see his smile of recognition. Sannie walked to him.
‘Good morning,’ she said.
‘Hi.’
‘That looked like fun,’ Sannie said.
‘Have you not tried it?’
‘No. But I’d like to.’
‘I’m just heading home,’ Adam said.
‘Mind if I walk with you?’
He smiled. ‘Not at all.’
Water beaded on his smooth, tanned skin and even though he was carrying the wave ski, which looked quite heavy, Sannie still had to walk quickly to match his long, even stride. He noticed, and slowed for her, which was nice.
‘I was on the phone last night with my friend at Dune Lodge. She actually worked very closely with your old army comrade, Luiz. He was her tracker. She wants to meet you, Adam.’
He stopped in the sand and looked at her. ‘Me? Why?’
‘She says you knew her father, during the war in Angola, and that you were maybe in the same unit. Her name’s Mia Greenaway.’
Adam closed his eyes and stood there a moment. Sannie wondered what memories the name had conjured up.
‘Mia’s dad also killed himself. Did you know that?’
He nodded and took a deep breath, as if to still himself. ‘I went to the funeral. I remember Mia.’
‘Do you still want to go to Luiz’s funeral?’
Adam chewed his lower lip. Again, Sannie wondered what was going through his mind. She had expected him to say ‘yes’ immediately, as he had already indicated that he wanted to go but couldn’t afford it. She wondered if money was still playing on his mind.
‘Did Mia say if she knew that Luiz had served with Frank, her dad?’
‘No,’ Sannie said. ‘From what I gathered it was a surprise to her.’
Adam started to walk again and Sannie kept up with him. It looked like he was turning the information over in his mind. ‘Do you believe in coincidences?’ he asked.
‘In my job, no, though I suppose things happen that defy logic.’
‘Like your friend ending up working at the same lodge as a San tracker who served with her father?’
Sannie shrugged. ‘Maybe. My first husband was always running into people he had served with in the army and not seen for years, or friends of friends. It sometimes seemed like everyone knew everyone who served in the army. Were you close to Frank Greenaway?’
‘That’s a good question,’ he said as they turned off the main beach and the narrow sand pathway through the green belt that led, Sannie now knew, straight to Adam’s house. ‘I knew him for six months in Angola, more than thirty-five years ago. It might be the same with the police, I don’t know, but what we went through back then was enough to tie us together for life. I only saw Frank a few times over the years, but every time it was as if we’d been lifelong friends, living next door to each other.’
‘When he killed himself, was it a shock to you?’
Adam stopped at the single-track railway line. He wasn’t watching for a train, just pondering her question in the methodical way he seemed to analyse everything. Sannie wondered if it was to do with his scientific, research-minded brain.
‘Yes and no. I’d seen him maybe six months earlier, and he wasn’t too bad. I don’t know what your friend Mia told you, but Frank was an alcoholic. Plenty of us who went through the war drank too much – I’ve had my ups and downs; I’m just lucky I can’t really afford it these days. But Frank was in a different league. The booze was his escape – the only way he could get to sleep, he told me.’
‘Nightmares?’
Adam nodded. ‘And “day-mares”. What the Americans call flashbacks. Frank had a lot to run from. When I first met him I was just nineteen – he was a sergeant, only a few years older than me, but he had an old man’s eyes, you know what I mean?’
‘The Americans also have an expression for that in my line of work – “cop eyes”. Seen it all.’
‘Ja, well I think Frank had seen it all and then some. He was on his second tour. We were tough, you know? And the Bushmen, the San with us, had been at war when the rest of us were still laaities.’
‘My first husband saw some action in South West,’ Sannie said, meaning modern-day Namibia, ‘but probably nothing like you guys.’
Adam carried on towards his house. ‘Frank had his demons, and I knew he was not well – post-traumatic stress, for sure. But he loved that daughter of his, and I think they became even closer after Frank’s wife passed.’
‘Mia told me she was more or less raised by her Shangaan nanny. She’s very close to the local people who live on the border of the Kruger.’
Adam nodded. ‘Yes, I remember Frank talking about Nokuthula, the woman who brought Mia up. But Frank wanted the best for Mia, so that’s what surprised me, when he shot himself.’
Sannie thought back to the time just after her second husband, Tom, was killed, when she had been at her lowest ebb. ‘Did you ever . . . I mean, think of taking your own life?’
He stopped again and stared at her. ‘Yes. Have you thought about it?’
She looked down, almost ashamed. ‘Yes.’
‘But you didn’t, clearly,’ he said.
She gave a little laugh. ‘No.’
‘What stopped you?’
‘Thinking about my children. I was in despair after Tom was killed, and I felt like I couldn’t go on, that there was no point. I was sitting in my car, overlooking the Skukuza golf course, in the Kruger Park – such a beautiful place – but all I could see was misery. My youngest son called me. I had my gun in my hand, and I knew I couldn’t do it to them, the kids.’
Adam nodded. ‘That’s what I thought, about Frank. As screwed up as he was, he had his daughter.’
They came to Adam’s house.
‘Ricoffy?’
‘Sure,’ she said.
They walked up the stairs and when he opened the door there was the now familiar smell of sawdust and paint. He went into the makeshift kitchen and put some water on. Sannie stood in the doorway.
‘Adam?’
‘Yes?’
He spooned the instant coffee into mugs. ‘Would you like to go to the Kalahari, to the funeral?’
This time he responded. ‘If money were no object, I would go. But I just don’t think I can afford to.’
‘I could take you.’
He looked into her eyes. ‘You hardly know me.’
‘Trust me, that thought crossed my mind. Especially since we only met because you shot someone.’
‘I’d seen you on the beach already,’ he said.
‘And? Were you planning on saying hello?’
He looked around, gesturing to the house. ‘I’m not exactly a man of means, so I thought I couldn’t very well just say hi, or ask you out to dinner.’
But the thought had crossed his mind. Sannie felt her cheeks burn. ‘Anyway, what do you think? I’ve got leave and I’m driving to the Kalahari. Mia’s using some of her bed nights – free stays they give staff – to put me up in Dune Lodge, and she says she can get you a room as well.’
The water boiled and Adam busied himself pouring. Sannie walked through the library-cum-office onto the stoep. It was a beautiful, calm morning and the glare off the ocean was almost blinding.
Adam brought the coffee and they sat down on cheap plastic chairs by a battered old table with rusting metal legs.
‘It’s very kind of you to offer,’ Adam said.
‘So, you’ll come?’
He sipped his coffee. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘What? Hey, I’m offering you a free trip across the country and a couple of nights at one of the most expensive luxury game lodges in South Africa.’
‘I’m grateful,’ Adam said. ‘Believe me, I am. It’s just that . . . I wonder who else will be there, and why.’
Sannie felt foolish. She had offered a virtual stranger, a man who had a violent past, the chance to spend two days in her car with her. What had she been thinking? He’d said he wanted to go to his friend’s funeral and now he was acting weird. Her coffee was half drunk, but she stood.
‘I should get going.’
Adam looked up at her, but made no move to stop her, and said nothing to make her change her mind.
*
Adam watched Sannie walk down the stairs onto Botha Place, and probably out of his life.
It was for the best. He had felt stupid, telling her that he had noticed her on the beach, and that he’d thought about asking her out. She was beautiful, and he’d learned from Pam – half real estate agent, half village matchmaker – that she was single. He hadn’t told Sannie that he had asked about her, because he didn’t want to appear like a stalker.
