The Soldier who Said No (41 page)

‘What is the purpose of this?’ the chairman asked. ‘I thought I had made it plain that this was a confidential enquiry.’

‘I’ve made my point,’ De Villiers said. ‘You can work it out for yourself from here.’

He stood up and led Emma and Zoë to the door. Zoë again headed for Kupenga, but De Villiers held her back. She waved at Kupenga and he returned her greeting with a smile. At the door De Villiers told Emma that he would be no more than ten minutes and asked her to bring her car around to the front of the hotel.

‘One last thing,’ the chairman said when De Villiers had taken his place again. ‘You haven’t dealt satisfactorily with the incident with the taggers, in my view. You’ve given no explanation for not following police procedure.’

De Villiers was about to answer when Henderson cleared his throat and stood up. He held a buff envelope in his hand and addressed the panel. ‘I apologise for interrupting, Mr Mason, but I have an instruction from the Commissioner to you.’

The chairman motioned to De Villiers to wait. Henderson continued, ‘I believe it has to be read before the matter goes any further.’

The envelope went from hand to hand until it reached the chairman.

All eyes watched as Mason opened the envelope and extracted a single sheet of paper. After reading it, Mason first turned to his right and held the document up for the members on that side to read it, and then showed it to Hotene and Guttenbeil on his left. De Villiers felt that for the first time during the enquiry all five members of the panel were looking directly at him.

‘I should read for the record what this letter says,’ Mason said. ‘It is a letter from the Commissioner carrying today’s date and it reads as follows:
The charges against Detective Constable Pierre de Villiers are withdrawn. The Enquiry is hereby terminated and its members discharged from further duty.
’

De Villiers looked at the list of witnesses he wanted to call. ‘You may go, Mr de Villiers. The enquiry is over,’ Mason said.

De Villiers immediately stood up and walked away. On the way out he stopped in front of Henderson. The plan had been to demand his backpack, but he found himself digging in his briefcase and handing a copy of his dossier to Henderson.

‘Here’s the report you asked for, Sir,’ he said. ‘I delivered the original to the Commissioner this morning.’

‘I know,’ Henderson said. ‘The Armed Offenders Squad and the Anti-Terror Unit are making arrests as we speak.’

De Villiers considered the implications. ‘All of them?’ he asked.

‘All of them, in the Ureweras and on the North Shore.’

‘Can I have my backpack?’ De Villiers asked.

Henderson nodded.

On the escalator down De Villiers fingered the shoulder straps of the backpack. There, deeply embedded in the webbing, his secret bow was again in its hiding place.

Ten time zones away in Durban it was just after midnight. Johann Weber had been working late. A movement at his door combined with the rattle of a teacup in its saucer caught his attention. Liesl stood in the door with a tray.

‘What?’ Weber asked. He folded his reading glasses and placed them on the desk.

‘What, what?’ she mocked him.

‘What are you doing up at this hour?’

Liesl Weber put the tray on the desk. ‘I couldn’t sleep. I’ve been worrying about Pierre.’

‘What’s there to worry about? Pierre’s a survivor. They couldn’t kill him in Angola, they couldn’t break him in Pretoria, and the cancer is now under control. People don’t die of cancer any more, you know.’

Liesl Weber studied her husband. ‘It’s not the cancer I’m concerned about,’ she said. ‘It’s that disciplinary enquiry. And what was he doing in Pretoria with your car? And why did your car come back with a girl and a bottle of champagne?’

‘Oh,’ Weber remembered. ‘He said there’s a note in the glove box.’ He stood up. ‘Pour the tea and I’ll be back in a minute.’

He went to his garage and rummaged in the glove box until he found the envelope under his car’s service record and instruction manual. Liesl was still in his study when he returned. ‘You read it,’ he said and handed the envelope to her. He picked up his tea. She read aloud.

Johann

A war is not over until both sides agree that it is over. And retaliation is a legitimate tactic to pursue in war.

The place and time were fixed when I was with you in your car and the announcement came on the radio that they had been employed as security guards by Sibusiso Sibisi and that they would be at Loftus for a soccer game. I chose the method of the tsotsis who used to ride the trains from Soweto with sharpened bicycle spokes in their pockets, paralysing their victims with a short jab in the spine before lifting their wallets. I had six spokes, two for each killer.

As arranged with Sibisi’s secretary, I picked up the pass for entry to the corporate suites at the main security office at the entrance behind the main stand. They let me into the suite and introduced me to Mr Sibisi. He told me to wait until half-time. I took my time to find the best seat for my purposes. The three killers sat together in the row in front of me. There were three more rows sloping down, each row with plastic seats bolted to the concrete floor, altogether five rows.

It was easy to pick them off, one after the other, all before the game on the pitch below reached half-time.

I tricked the first one into showing me where the toilets were. I tapped him on the shoulder and he looked me in the eye and said he had to go too, but he didn’t recognise me immediately. He had lost weight in prison, but the bloodshot eyes with brown growths between the iris and the tear ducts were the same eyes that had been behind the
AK
47 held against my head in my driveway, and when I jerked my head back, shot Annelise instead.

And then they had all started shooting before I could reach my pistol.

He went in ahead of me. The game was evenly poised and the men’s room was deserted. He went to the urinal and I followed him. I waited for him to open his fly and to get a good stream going and measured the spot just below his left shoulder blade between two ribs. He coughed and I hesitated a split second before I drove the spoke in hard using the hard web of my palm an inch from the wrist. He immediately straightened up and clutched his chest. His face was contorted with pain and he stepped back towards me.

I took his arm and asked him if he was alright. He couldn’t speak and I said I would help him to sit down. I led him into one of the toilet cubicles and helped him sit on the toilet. He started convulsing and kicking. He coughed blood. I locked the door from the inside after wrapping toilet paper around both my hands and lifted myself up and over the partition into the next cubicle.

A sharpened bicycle spoke works like a charm if you want to kill someone in a crowd. You slam it through the ribcage from behind. It will go through a rib if you put enough force behind it. It causes the heart muscle to go into a spasm – an instant heart attack. The spoke sits flush with the skin and there is no external bleeding. Whoever comes to help will turn the thrashing victim on his back and they’ll only find the spoke at the autopsy.

I eliminated the second killer in much the same way, except that I slammed the spoke home when he bent over to try and unlock the door to his colleague’s cubicle. I left the two of them, each in his own cubicle, and returned to the corporate suite.

There I slipped the third spoke in when a penalty was awarded and the Swallows supporters went wild, jumping on the seats, screaming at the referee and pouring beer on the spectators in the main stand below. I gave him a firm push at the same time and he toppled onto two other guests in the tier immediately below his, and they took another four people down with them before they landed in a tangle of arms and legs against the front parapet.

In the chaos I slipped out of the suite and left.

Liesl Weber started shivering and then broke down sobbing.

‘Oh no,’ she said.

Johann Weber took the letter from her and pulled her close to his chest. He could feel her shaking against him and her tears wetting his shirt. He held the letter as far as he could and strained to read the unfamiliar handwriting without his reading glasses. She pushed him away.

‘You were part of this, weren’t you?’

Weber shook his head but she was having none of that. ‘You knew and you lent him your car for this.’

She leaned forward and rested her head on his chest. He picked up his glasses and read the rest of the letter aloud over her shoulder.

That was my fantasy, how I dreamed and planned to kill them once I had been given permission to interview Sibisi at the game. Even as I sat there watching them from behind, I believed I could eliminate them in that fashion. It wouldn’t have been difficult. But I changed my mind while the killer stood coughing at the urinal.

What really happened was that I saw his blood splattering against the white tiles above the stainless steel and dribble down. He zipped up his fly and went to the washbasin. A rambling coughing fit overcame him and he spewed more blood into the basin.

I came up behind him and asked him if he was alright. He had
TB
, probably
AIDS
as well. I think in that moment when we locked eyes he recognised me and realised that I had come to kill him. At the same time I saw in his eyes the same look of resignation I had seen every day in the eyes of the patients at the oncology centre. He knew he was dying.

I pulled him into the first toilet cubicle and latched the door behind me. He was weak and limp and offered no resistance. I sat him down on the seat and said to him, ‘You know me?’

He nodded. I held the sharp point of the spoke against his throat.

‘Then you’ll know why I’m here.’ I said.

He nodded. ‘To kill me,’ he said.

‘Who sent you?’ I asked.

He started coughing again and sprayed blood on the front of my trousers.

‘Who sent you?’ I asked a second time. ‘I’m not going to ask again.’

I pushed the spoke in, just a little, so that he could feel it.

‘Mlungu,’ he said.

‘A white man?’ I asked. ‘What was his name?’

‘Angazi,’ he said.
I don’t know.

‘What did he look like?’ I asked.

It took some time to get the full description from him. At one point I had to cover his mouth with my hand when someone came into the room, but the details did come out eventually, one by one.

White man, Afrikaans. He never gave his name. Completely bald, between 45 and 50 years old. Pink eyes with white eyelashes. Said a general had sent him.

Johann, I think you’ll be able to work out who it was.

So I didn’t kill him, Johann, when I could so easily have done so. But it does mean that I have unfinished business with the major and the general.

I left him there and washed my hands and cleaned my trousers as best I could. Then I went back to the suite. The other two ran to his aid when I told them that he was sick and I lifted a bottle of champagne on the way out. But I didn’t kill them.

Killing them would have been too easy.

And they are just the foot soldiers.

I hope you won’t mind, Johann, that I let them go.

I enclose the visitor’s pass for the corporate suite. You may have it as a souvenir. And Marissa will deliver the champagne to you.

PdeV

Pretoria

28 June 2008

Weber sat down and lit a cigar. He put his feet on the desk. His wife pulled a face but sat down on his lap. ‘I think he’ll be okay now,’ she said.

‘For sure,’ Weber said. He blew a smoke ring towards the ceiling.

Henderson caught up with De Villiers outside. ‘Wait,’ he said.

De Villiers stopped in mid-stride, his hand in the air ready to grab the handle of the driver’s door.

‘Why didn’t you shoot him?’ Henderson asked.

‘Shoot whom?’ De Villiers asked, his head at an angle. ‘Shoot Robert Mugabe,’ Henderson said in a low voice which carried only as far as De Villiers.

De Villiers turned to face Henderson. It took time for him to find his voice.

‘He wasn’t a soldier,’ he said at last.

‘That’s not what they told me in Pretoria,’ Henderson insisted.

‘Pretoria lies.’

Henderson shrugged. ‘Maybe so. What did you do for the medal they gave you?’

De Villiers took a step backward so that his torso obscured Emma’s view completely.

‘I shot someone,’ he said, surprised at the ease with which he was able to make the admission.

‘A woman,’ Henderson stated without fear of contradiction.

De Villiers took a deep breath. ‘A Russian soldier,’ he said.

Henderson nodded. ‘Colonel Nankova, at over a kilometre,’ he said.

‘You mean, at Nankova?’ De Villiers asked.

‘No,’ Henderson said. ‘She was a colonel and her name was Nankova.’

‘Who told you that?’ The question had come out more harshly than intended.

‘Pretoria,’ Henderson said without elaborating.

For a time neither man spoke.

De Villiers took his escape in another topic. ‘Why didn’t you support the charges against me? You didn’t give any evidence to the committee.’

Henderson smiled. ‘Kupenga may be an asshole, but he was ready to withdraw his complaint when we returned to the enquiry. And then the Commissioner stopped the proceedings, as you saw.’

‘Come on Dad, we want to go,’ Zoë called from the back seat.

‘Who told you?’ De Villiers asked a second time.

Henderson hesitated before he spoke. ‘General Vandenburg.’

A bus roared past drowning out their voices.

‘I have to go,’ De Villiers said. He pointed at the manila envelope in Henderson’s hand. ‘The answer to the Prime Minister’s case is in your hand, Sir, but there’s still a lot of tidying up to do.’

I know,’ Henderson said, ‘but once we have them in custody, they are bound to break ranks and we’ll play them against each other, as we always do.’ He held out his right hand. They shook hands briefly.

De Villiers pointed at the manila envelope a second time. ‘You were right about something stirring in the South African community.’