The White Lioness (13 page)

I want to see my daughter, he thought. I miss her so much at times, it hurts. I have to find a black man missing a finger, especially if he's the one who killed Louise Akerblom. I need to know:
why
did you kill her?

I must follow up on Stig Gustafson, not let him slide out of the picture too soon, though I'm sure already that he's innocent.

He walked back to his car.

The fear and repugnance would not go away. The finger was still pointing at him.

The Man from Transkei

CHAPTER EIGHT

You could hardly see the man squatting in the shadow of the wrecked car. He did not move a muscle, and his black face was indistinguishable from the dark bodywork.

He had chosen his hiding place carefully. He had been waiting since early afternoon, and now the sun was beginning to sink beyond the dusty silhouette of the suburban ghetto that was Soweto. The dry, red earth glowed in the setting sun. It was April 8, 1992.

He had travelled a long way to get to the meeting place on time. The white man who sought him out had said he would have to set off early. For security reasons they preferred not to give him a precise pick-up time. All he was told was that it would be shortly after sunset.

Only 26 hours had passed since the man who introduced himself as Stewart had stood outside his home in Ntibane. When he heard the knock at the door, he thought at first it was the police from Umtata. Seldom a month went by without a visit from them. As soon as a bank robbery or a murder took place, there would be an investigator from the Umtata homicide squad at his door. Sometimes they would take him in to town for questioning, but usually they accepted his alibi, even if it was no more than that he'd been drunk in one of the local bars.

When he emerged from the corrugated iron shack that was his home, he did not recognise the man standing in the bright sunlight.

Victor Mabasha could tell right away that the man was lying. He could have been called many names, but not Stewart. Although he spoke English, Mabasha could hear from his pronunciation that he was of Afrikaner origin.

Mabasha was asleep in bed when the knock came. It was afternoon. He made no attempt to hurry as he got up, put on a pair of trousers, and opened the door. He was getting used to not being wanted for any thing important nowadays. It was usually somebody he owed money to. Or somebody stupid enough to think he could borrow money from him. Unless it was the police. But they didn't knock. They hammered on the door. Or forced it open.

The man claiming to be Stewart was about 50. He wore an ill-fitting suit and was sweating. His car was parked under a baobab tree on the other side of the road. Mabasha noticed the plates were from Transvaal. He wondered why he had come so far, all the way to Transkei province, in order to meet him.

The man did not ask to come in. He just handed over an envelope and said somebody wanted to see him on important business on the outskirts of Soweto the following day.

"All you need to know is in the letter," he said.

Some children were playing with a buckled hubcap outside the hut. Mabasha yelled at them to go away, and they disappeared immediately.

"Who?" Mabasha said.

He mistrusted all white men. But most of all he mistrusted white men who lied so badly, and made things worse by thinking he would be satisfied with an envelope.

"I can't tell you that," Stewart said.

"There's always somebody wanting to see me," Mabasha said. "Question is, do I want to see him?"

"It's all in the envelope."

Mabasha held out his hand and took the thick, brown envelope. He could feel that there was a thick bundle of money in there. That was both reassuring and worrying. He needed money. But he did not know why he was being given it. That made him uneasy. He had no desire to get involved in something he knew too little about.

Stewart wiped his face and bald head with a soaking handkerchief. "There's a map," he said. "The meeting place is marked. It's close to Soweto. You haven't forgotten the layout there?"

"Everything changes," Mabasha said. "I know what Soweto looked like eight years ago, but I have no idea what it looks like today."

"It's not in Soweto itself," said Stewart. "The pickup point is on a feeder road to the Johannesburg motorway. Nothing has changed out there. You'll have to leave early tomorrow morning if you're going to make it in time."

"Who wants to see me?" Mabasha asked again.

"He prefers not to give his name," said Stewart. "You'll meet him tomorrow."

Mabasha shook his head slowly and handed back the envelope.

"I want a name," he repeated. "If I don't get a name, I won't ever be there."

The man hesitated. Mabasha stared fixedly at him. After a long pause, Stewart seemed to realise that Mabasha meant what he said. He looked around. The kids had gone away. It was 50 or so metres to Mabasha's nearest neighbours, who lived in a corrugated iron shack just as dilapidated as his own. A woman was pounding corn in the swirling dust outside the front door. Goats searched for blades of grass in the parched red earth.

"Jan Kleyn," he said in a low voice, pressing the envelope back into Mabasha's hand. "Kleyn wants to see you. Forget I ever said that. But you've got to be on time."

Then he turned and went back to his car. Mabasha stood watching him disappear trailing a cloud of dust. He was driving far too fast. Mabasha thought that was typical of a white man who felt insecure and exposed when he entered a black township. For Stewart it was like entering enemy territory. And it was. He grinned at the thought. White men were scared men. Then he wondered how Kleyn could stoop so low as to use a messenger like that. Or might it be another lie of Stewart's? Maybe it wasn't Kleyn who sent him? Maybe it was somebody else?

The kids playing with the hubcap were back. He went back into his hut, lit the kerosene lamp, sat on the rickety bed, and slit open the envelope. From force of habit he opened it from the bottom up. Letter bombers nearly always placed their detonators at the top of the envelope. Few people expecting a bomb through the mail opened their letters the normal way.

The envelope contained a map, carefully drawn by hand in black India ink. A red cross marked the meeting place. He could see it in his mind's eye. Impossible to go wrong. Apart from the map there was a bundle of red 50-rand bills in the envelope. Without counting, Mabasha knew there were 5,000 rand. That was all. No message saying why Kleyn wanted to see him.

Mabasha put the envelope on the mud floor and stretched out on the bed. The blanket smelled mouldy. A mosquito buzzed around his face. He turned his head and contemplated the kerosene lamp.

Kleyn wants to see me, he thought. It's been two years since the last time. And he said then he never wanted anything to do with me again. But now he wants to see me. Why?

He sat up on the bed and looked at his wristwatch. If he was going to be in Soweto the next day, he'd have to take the bus from Umtata this evening. Stewart was wrong. He couldn't wait until tomorrow morning. It was 900 kilometres to Johannesburg.

He had no decisions to make. Having accepted the money, he would have to go. He had no desire to owe Kleyn 5,000 rand. That would be tantamount to signing his own death warrant. He knew Kleyn well enough to be aware that nobody who crossed him got away with it.

He took out a bag tucked under the bed. As he did not know how long he was going to be away, or what Kleyn wanted him to do, he just packed a few shirts, underpants and a pair of sturdy shoes. If the assignment was going to be a long one, he would have to buy whatever clothes he needed. Then he carefully detached the back of the bed frame. His two knives were coated in grease and wrapped in plastic. He wiped away the grease and took off his shirt. He took down the specially made knife belt from a hook in the ceiling and buckled it around his waist, noting with satisfaction that he could still use the same hole. Although he had spent several months until his money ran out drinking beer, he had not put on weight. He was in good shape still, though he would soon be 31.

He put the knives in their sheaths, after testing the edges with his finger tips. He needed only to press slightly to draw blood. Then he removed another part of the bed frame and produced his pistol: that, too, was greased with coconut fat and wrapped in plastic. He sat on the bed and cleaned the gun meticulously. It was a 9mm Parabellum. He loaded the magazine with special ammunition that could only be had from an unlicensed arms dealer in Ravenmore. He wrapped two spare magazines inside one of his shirts in the bag. Then he strapped on his shoulder holster and inserted the pistol. Now he was ready to meet Kleyn.

He locked the shack with the rusty padlock, and started walking to the bus stop a few kilometres down the road to Umtata.

He screwed up his eyes and gazed at the red sun rapidly setting over Soweto, remembering the last time he was there eight years ago. A businessman there had given him 500 rand to shoot a competitor. As usual, he had taken all possible precautions and had a detailed plan. But it had gone wrong from the very start. A police patrol happened to be passing, and he fled Soweto as fast as his feet could carry him. He had not been back since.

The African dusk was short. Suddenly, he was surrounded by darkness. In the distance he could hear the roar of traffic on the motorway headed for Johannesburg and, in the other direction, Durban. A police siren was wailing in the far distance, and it occurred to him that Kleyn must have a very special reason for contacting him of all people. There are lots of assassins ready to shoot anyone you name for 1,000 rand. But Kleyn had paid him 5,000 rand in advance, and that could not be only because he was considered the best and most cold-blooded professional killer in all of South Africa.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a car peeling off from the motorway. Soon afterwards, he saw headlights approaching. He moved further back into the shadows, and drew his pistol. He released the catch with a flourish.

The car came to a halt where the exit road petered out. The headlights lit up the dusty bushes and the wrecked car. Mabasha waited in the shadows. He was on tenterhooks now.

A man got out of the car. Mabasha could see at once that it was not Kleyn. He had not really expected to see him. Kleyn sent others to summon the people he wanted to talk to. Mabasha slipped soundlessly around the wreck and worked his way in a circle behind the man. The car had stopped exactly where he thought it would, and he had practised the flanking movement to be sure of doing it silently.

He stopped behind the man, and pressed the pistol against his head. The man started.

"Where's Kleyn?" Mabasha said.

The man turned his head carefully. "I'll take you to him," he said. Mabasha could hear he was scared.

"Where is he exactly?"

"On a farm near Pretoria. In Hammanskraal."

Mabasha knew right away this was not a trap. He had done business with Kleyn once before in Hammanskraal. He put his pistol back into its holster.

"We'd better get started, then," he said. "It's 100 kilometres to Hammanskraal."

He sat in the back seat. The man at the wheel did not speak. The lights of Johannesburg rolled by as they drove past on the motorway to the north of the city. Every time he found himself in the vicinity of the city he could feel a raging hatred welling up inside him. It was like a wild animal constantly following him around, constantly appearing and reminding him of things he would rather forget.

Mabasha had grown up in Johannesburg. His father was a miner, rarely at home. For many years he had worked in the diamond mines at Kimberley, and later in the mines to the north-east of Johannesburg, in Verwoerdburg. At the age of 42, his lungs collapsed. Mabasha could still remember the horrific rattling noise his father made as he struggled to breathe during the last year of his life, a look of terror in his eyes. During those years his mother tried to keep the house going and take care of her nine children. They lived in a slum, and Mabasha remembered his childhood as one long, drawn-out, and apparently endless humiliation. He rebelled against it all from an early age, but his protest was misguided and erratic. He joined a gang of young thieves, was arrested, and beaten up in a prison cell by white policemen. That merely increased his bitterness, and he returned to the streets and a life of crime. Unlike many of his comrades, he went his own way when it came to surviving the humiliation. Instead of joining the black awareness movement that was in its early stages, he went the opposite way. Although it was white oppression that had ruined his life, he decided the only way to get by was to remain on good terms with the whites. He started off by thieving for white fences, in return for their protection. Then one day, not long after his 20th birthday, he was offered 1,200 rand to kill a black politician who had insulted a white store owner. Mabasha did not hesitate. This was final proof that he had sided with the whites. His revenge would always be that they did not understand how deep his contempt for them was. They thought he was a simple
kaffir
who knew how blacks should behave in South Africa. But deep down, he hated the whites and that was why he ran their errands.

Sometimes he read in the newspapers that one of his former companions had been hanged or given a long prison sentence. He could feel sorry for what had happened to them, but he never doubted that he had chosen the right way to survive and maybe in the end start to build a life for himself outside the slums.

When he was 22, he met Kleyn for the first time. Although they were the same age, Kleyn treated him with superior contempt.

Kleyn was a fanatic. Mabasha knew he hated blacks and thought they were animals to be controlled by the whites. Kleyn had joined the fascist Afrikaner Resistance Movement at an early age, and in just a few years reached a senior position. But he was no politician; he worked in the background, and did so from a post he held in NIS, the South African state intelligence service. His biggest asset was his ruthlessness. As far as he was concerned, there was no difference between shooting a black and killing a rat.