Deon Meyer (6 page)

 

 

But he had to complete this task.

 

 

Johnny Kleintjes. The Johnny Kleintjes he knew would never have sold out. Something must have happened to change the old man. Who knew what was happening in the inner circles and walkways of the new government and the new intelligence services? It wasn’t impossible, just improbable. Johnny Kleintjes was a man of integrity. And loyalty. A strong man with character. He would ask him when he saw him, when the data was handed over and Johnny got his money. If everything went off okay. It had to. He didn’t feel like trouble, not anymore.

 

 

And then they were next to him, two gray suits. He hadn’t seen them coming, and as they appeared beside him he started at the depth of his thoughts, the blunting of old skills.

 

 

“Mr. Mpayipheli,” said one.

 

 

“Yes.” Surprised they knew his name. They were right against him, preventing him from getting up.

 

 

“We want you to come with us.”

 

 

“What for?”

 

 

“We represent the state,” said the second, holding a plastic ID up to his eyes, photo and national coat of arms.

 

 

“I have to catch a plane,” he said. His head was clear now, his body reacting.

 

 

“Not tonight,” said Number One.

 

 

“I don’t want to hurt anybody,” said Thobela Mpayipheli.

 

 

Two laughed, hee-hee, amused. “Is that so?”

 

 

“Please.”

 

 

“I am afraid you don’t have a choice, Mr. Mpayipheli.” He tapped the blue bag. “The contents …”

 

 

What did they know? “Please listen,” he said. “I don’t want trouble.”

 

 

The agent heard the note of pleading in the big Xhosa’s voice.
He’s afraid,
he thought.
Use it.
“We could give you more trouble than you would ever imagine, big fellow,” he said, and pushed back the tail of his jacket to display the pistol, steel butt in a black shoulder holster. He stretched out his hand for the sports bag. “Come,” he said.

 

 

“Ai, ai,” said Thobela Mpayipheli. In the time it took for the hand to reach the sports bag he had to make a decision. He had gleaned something from their behavior: They didn’t want to cause a scene. They wanted to get him out of there quietly. He must use that. He saw One’s jacket gaping as his arm reached for the bag. He saw the pistol butt, reached up and took it, turned, stood up. One had the bag in his hand, his eyes wide with shock. Mpayipheli leaned into him with the pistol barrel at his heart. Two was behind Number One. Other passengers here and there had not seen anything amiss.

 

 

“I don’t want trouble. Just give me my bag.”

 

 

“What are you doing?” asked Two.

 

 

“He’s got my pistol,” hissed One.

 

 

“You take the bag,” Mpayipheli told Two.

 

 

“What?”

 

 

“Take the bag from him and put your pistol in it.” He shoved the pistol in his own hand hard against One’s chest, keeping him between himself and Two.

 

 

“Do what he says,” said One softly.

 

 

Two was uncertain, eyes darting from them to the passengers waiting in the departure lounge, trying to decide. He made up his mind.

 

 

“No,” he said, drawing his pistol and keeping it under his jacket.

 

 

“Do what he says,” One whispered urgently, with authority.

 

 

“Fuck, Willem.”

 

 

Mpayipheli kept his voice reasonable, calm. “I just want my bag. I am not good with revolvers. There are lots of people here. Someone might get hurt.”

 

 

Stalemate. Mpayipheli and Willem intimately close, Two a meter away.

 

 

“Jissis, Alfred, do what the fucker says. Where can he go?”

 

 

At last: “You can explain to the boss.” He took the bag slowly from Willem’s grip, zipped it open and slipped his pistol inside, zipped it up and deposited it carefully on the floor as if the contents were breakable.

 

 

“Now both of you sit down.”

 

 

The agents moved slowly and sat.

 

 

Mpayipheli took the bag, pistol in his trouser pocket with his hand still on it, and walked, jogged, to the passenger exit, turning to check. One and Two, Willem and Alfred, one white, one brown, staring at him with unreadable faces.

 

 

“Sir, you can’t—,” said the woman at the exit, but he was past her, outside, onto the runway. A security man shouted something, waving, but he ran out of the ring of light from the building into the dark.

 

 

* * *

A bellow from the fat Indian—“I’ve got him”— and Mentz strode over to his computer monitor.

 

 

“Thobela Mpayipheli, born ten October 1962 in Alice in the Eastern Cape, father is Lawrence Mpayipheli, mother is Catherine Zongu, his ID number is 621010 5122 004. Registered address is 45 Seventeenth Avenue, Mitchell’s Plain.” Rajkumar leaned back tri-umphantly and took another sandwich off the tray.

 

 

Mentz stood behind his chair, reading off the screen.

 

 

“We know he was born, Rahjev. We need more than that.”

 

 

“Well, I had to start somewhere.” Wounded at the dearth of praise.

 

 

“I hope his birthday isn’t an omen,” she said.

 

 

Rajkumar glanced from the screen to her. “I don’t get it.”

 

 

“Heroes Day, Raj. In the old days the tenth of October was Heroes Day. When the Afrikaners celebrated their pioneers. That address is old. Find out who lived there. He’s forty years old. Too old to be Monica’s contemporary. Old enough to have been involved with Johnny Kleintjes—”

 

 

“Ma’am,” called Quinn, but she would not be interrupted.

 

 

“I want to know what that connection with Kleintjes is, Rahjev.

 

 

I want to know if he served and how. I need to know why Monica Kleintjes went to
him
with her little problem.”

 

 

“Ma’am,” called Quinn with great urgency. She looked up.

 

 

“We have a fugitive.”

 

 

* * *

He aimed for the darkest area of the airport and kept running. His ears expected sirens and shouts and shots. He was angry with Monica and Johnny Kleintjes and himself. How did the authorities suddenly know about Johnny Kleintjes’s little deal?

 

 

They had known his name, the two gray suits. Had tapped a finger on the blue bag. They knew what was in there. Were watching him since he walked into the airport, knew about him; must have followed Monica to his house, so they knew about her, about Johnny Kleintjes, bloody Johnny Kleintjes. They knew everything. He ran, looking over his shoulder. No one was behind him. He had sworn to himself: no more violence. Two years he had been true. Had not shot, beaten, or even threatened anyone. He had promised Miriam those days were gone, and within thirty seconds after the gray suits had reached him it was as if all the promises were in the water, and he knew how these things worked— they just got worse. Once the cycle began, it couldn’t be stopped. What he should do now was take the bag back to the woman and tell her Johnny Kleintjes could sort out his own mess. Stop the cycle before it went any further. Stop it now.

 

 

He pulled up at the wire boundary fence. Beyond it was Bor-chards Quarry Road. He was breathing hard, his body no longer used to the exertion. Sweat ran down his cheek. He checked behind again; the building was too far to distinguish people, but all was quiet, no big fuss.

 

 

Which meant that it wasn’t a police or customs operation. The place would have been crawling.

 

 

That meant…

 

 

Spooks.

 

 

It made sense, if you took into account what was on the hard drive.

 

 

Fuck them. He was not afraid of spooks. He jumped for the fence.

 

 

* * *

“Put them on speaker,” said Janina Mentz, and Quinn pressed the button.

 

 

“… he was just lucky, Control, that’s all.”

 

 

“You’re on speaker, Willem.”

 

 

“Oh.”

 

 

“I want to know what happened,” said Janina Mentz.

 

 

“He got away, ma’am, but—”

 

 

“I know he got away. How did it happen?”

 

 

“We had everything under control, ma’am,” said the voice in awe. “We waited until he sat down in the departure lounge. We identified ourselves and asked the target to accompany us. Control said we must keep it low-profile. He’s only a motorbike mechanic; he sat there with the bag on his lap like a farm boy, he looked so shy and lonely. He said he didn’t want any trouble. It was obvious he was scared. It’s my fault, ma’am. I wanted to take the bag and he got hold of my firearm—”

 

 

“He got hold of it?”

 

 

“Yes, ma’am. He grabbed it. I… um … his actions were … I didn’t expect it.”

 

 

“And then?”

 

 

“Then he took the bag, with Alfred’s firearm in it, and ran away.”

 

 

Silence.

 

 

“So now he has two firearms?”

 

 

“I don’t think he knows what to do with them, ma’am. He called my pistol a revolver.”

 

 

“Well,
that’s
a relief.”

 

 

Willem did not respond.

 

 

Quinn sighed despondently and said in a quiet aside to Mentz: “I thought they could handle it.”

 

 

“Ma’am, he just got lucky. Judging by his reaction, we’ll get him easily,” said Willem over the ether.

 

 

She did not answer.

 

 

“He even said ‘please.’ ”

 

 

“Please?”

 

 

“Yes, ma’am. And we know he’s not on a plane.”

 

 

Mentz pondered the information. The room was very quiet.

 

 

“Ma’am?” said the voice on the radio.

 

 

“Yes.”

 

 

“What do we do now?”

 

 

 

6.

T
here comes a time to show anger, controlled but with purpose, rejection not of your people but of their actions.

 

 

Mentz turned off the speakerphone angrily and walked over to her computer. “We were in control of this thing. We knew where she was, where he was, where he was going, how he was going to get there. Absolute control.”

 

 

Her voice carried across the room, the anger barely submerged. Everyone was looking at her, but no one made eye contact.

 

 

“So why did we lose control? Lack of information. Lack of intelligence. Lack of judgment. Here and at the airport. Now we are at a disadvantage. We have no idea where he is. At least we know where he is going and we know the quickest way to get there. But that is not enough. I want to know who Thobela Mpayipheli is and I want to know now. I want to know why Monica Kleintjes went to him. And I want to know where he is. I want to know where the hard drive is. Everything. And I don’t care what you must do to get that information.”

 

 

She looked for eyes, but they were looking at the floor.

 

 

And those two clowns, Quinn.”

 

 

“Yes, ma’am?”

 

 

“Let them write a report. And when that’s done …”

 

 

“Yes, ma’am?”

 

 

“Let them go. They don’t belong on this team.”

 

 

She walked out of the room, wishing there was a door to slam, down the passage, into her office— there was a door to slam— and dropped into her black leather chair.

 

 

Let the fools sweat.

 

 

Let them understand in the first place that if you can’t take the heat, Janina Mentz will remove you from the kitchen. Because, Lord knows, this was no place for failure. She would live up to her promises.

 

 

The director knew. He sat there in his office in his snow-white shirt and he knew because he was listening. He heard every word spoken in the Ops Room— and judged it: her actions and reactions, her leadership.

 

 

It seemed a lifetime ago that he had asked her at their first interview for the job: “Do you want it, Janina?”

 

 

And she had said yes, because as a white woman in a black administration, there were only so many opportunities, never mind that your IQ was 147 and your record one faultless minor success after another, with the emphasis on minor, because the big chance had not yet come. Until the director had taken her to lunch at Bukhara’s in the Church Street Mall and laid out his vision to her: “An intelligence service that is outstanding, Janina, that is what the vice president wants. A new intelligence service without a past. Next year he will be president and he knows he doesn’t have the Madiba magic, the charisma of Nelson Mandela. He knows it will be hard work against every form of resistance and undermining that you can think of, nationally and internationally. I have carte blanche and I have a budget, Janina, and I believe I have the architect here before me this afternoon. You have the profile, the brainpower, you have no baggage, you have the loyalty, and you have the persistence. But the question is: Do you want it?”

 

 

Oh yes, she wanted it, more than he realized. Because it had been eleven months since her husband developed an itch for young things and told her, “The marriage is not working for me,” as if it was her fault, as if she and the children were not enough fulfillment for him anymore, whereas the only fulfillment in question was the space between Cindy’s legs. Cindy. The pseudo-artist with dirty feet who peddled her fabrics to German tourists from her stall at Greenmarket Square and fluttered her big brown eyes at married men until she caught one in the snare of her firm, free, braless breasts. And then the happy couple moved to Pilgrim’s Rest to “open a studio for Cindy.”