Trackers (19 page)

'Weighbridges,' Lourens said, but calm and controlled.

'Weighbridges?'

'Long distances are all about average speed, and nothing
breaks your average speed like a weighbridge. At every weighbridge you lose
plus-minus an hour, and there are five between Musina and Kimberley if we take
the N1 and the N12. In any case, this route is almost a hundred kilometres
shorter.'

I was proud of him: he would not let himself be intimidated,
his tone of voice was relaxed, he was not looking for her approval, merely
giving information courteously and pleasantly. Impressive for a young man already
blindly in love.

She traced the route with her finger again, shook her head.
'No. We will have to drive via Bela-Bela. I need light when I sedate them.'

He looked where her finger pointed. 'All right,' he said.
'We'll stop there.'

She folded up the map, smugly, as if she had won this round.
She put it on top of the dashboard, in the hollow behind the cup holders, drew
her legs up again and dropped her head onto her knees to discourage further
communication.

It was going to be an interesting trip.

The cornerstone of my profession was the art of reading
people. To identify threats, to understand the one you protected, to predict
situations and prevent them. It had become a habit, a ritual, sometimes a
game, to watch and listen and patch the bits of incidental information together
into a profile that was continually adapted and expanded, every time one step
closer to the truth. The problem, I had learned over two decades, was that we
are deceitful animals. We skilfully weave a false front, often extensive and
complex, fact and fiction in a delicate blend to accentuate the good and
acceptable, and to hide the bad.

The art was to analyse the front as well, since that largely
exposed what was hidden behind it.

There was a great deal that betrayed Flea van Jaarsveld: this
attitude of irritable superiority. The deliberate distance she maintained
between herself and us. The exaggerated use of learned medical terminology. Her
nickname. The insistence that she was now Cornel - ten to one her own twisting
of Cornelia, as it sounded much more dignified. Add to that the choice of
clothing that needlessly accentuated her assets. Because she was pretty,
despite the slight deficiencies. Or perhaps because of those negligible
imperfections.

The majority of Body Armour's clientele were attractive
people who had grown up in wealth. They generally had an effortless assumption
of privilege, a natural distance from the common crowd, an ease with, and often
a concealing of, beauty.

In shrill contrast with Flea. Therefore I guessed her
background was lower middle-class, blue-collar domestic, mine or factory
worker, naive, down-to-earth, a little rough.

Poverty is not necessarily a negative formative element. The problems
begin when the desire to escape it becomes all-consuming. In primary school she
would already have shown the academic promise that would eventually enable her
to be selected for veterinary school. 'You're clever,' her humble, but
inherently good parents would have urged her. 'You must get an education. Make
something of yourself.' Another way of saying 'you can get out of this'.

But it was the physical flowering that would have been the
breakthrough. By inference from Swannie's '
Jissie
,
you've changed,' she must have been ordinary at fourteen, dull even, with no
great expectation that she would be so genetically lucky. So the
metamorphosis, somewhere between fifteen and sixteen, would have taken her by
surprise, causing her to change gears swiftly in order to reconsider the
potential of it all. Clever and pretty is a strong platform from which to
launch yourself.

And she had.

So she would have advanced to this point with fierce
determination, and now had the realistic expectation of a Good Catch. She would
dream of a fairy tale wedding with the filthy rich owner of an exclusive
private game reserve, where she could manage the breeding programme of some
exotic threatened species, and occasionally pose photogenically on the cover of
conservation magazines, with her attractive, somewhat older husband's arm
around her, her own arms protectively cradling a cheetah cub.

But I knew from personal experience: you can't escape your
past. It lives in you, woven into every cell. You could say you had lost contact
with your parents, you could provide vague answers if Emma le Roux asked, 'What
was it like growing up in Sea Point?', you could hide yourself away in Loxton,
but sooner or later it catches up with you.

I believe Flea van Jaarsveld knew this, somehow. It was the
fear of
exposure that drove her, ate at her, it was the
mechanism that had turned her into this aggressive, determined young woman.

It was a sentiment I understood. So I
would let her be. Accommodate her.

But should I warn Lourens le Riche? Flea
would
break his
heart. No. Lemmer's First Law.

...
trackers must also be able to
interpret the animal's activities so
that they
can anticipate and predict its movements.

The Basics of
Tracking: Spoor interpretation

Gravel roads in Limpopo, the occasional
stretch of tar, everything deserted in the late night. The headlights of the
Mercedes were on bright, lighting up the dull grass at the edge of the road,
sometimes trees, cattle, donkeys, villages, poor settlements shrouded in
darkness. There was silence in the cab, because The Vet was sleeping.

She had fallen asleep quietly. Her
arms slipped off her knees and she concealed her moment's alarm by stretching
her legs out under the dashboard, shifting her back irritably against the rear cushion
and laying her head on the edge of Lourens's seat.

Only once we turned south on the
tarred R561, did Lourens whisper to me: 'Oom, can you get the coffee out,
please?'

I worked carefully so as not to
disturb her, got hold of one flask.

'The mugs are up there,' he pointed
at a shelf panel in the middle, and checked his rear-view mirror. I reached up,
unclipped the lid and found the mugs.

'Help yourself too.'

I poured, handed him a mug. He took
it, cast a tender look at Flea and said, 'She must be exhausted. I wonder if
she's been travelling with them all the way through Zim.'

'Must be,' I whispered.

'It must have been a helluva ride
...'

He was right. Perhaps I ought to
temper my opinion of her. Seven
hundred kilometres through Zimbabwe with an illegal cargo
would take its toll.

'Where did Oom Diederik find her?' he wondered. Then he
checked his mirror again and reduced speed, tested the temperature of the
coffee with his mouth, looked at his mirror again and said, 'Why won't this guy
come past?'

I poured coffee into the second mug.

'He's been behind us since the other side of Alldays,' still
speaking softly, so as not to wake her.

'How far back was that?'

'About fifty kilos.'

That had been gravel road where it was hard to pass, but now
we were on the tar and we were driving more slowly, just over seventy. 'What's
he doing now?'

'He's dropped back a bit.'

'Do you need this mirror?' I pointed at the one on my side.

'You can change it for now, Oom.'

I wound my window down. The night had cooled considerably
since we had loaded the rhino. I adjusted the mirror so that I could see the
road behind us. The blast of air woke Flea.

'What?' she said, wiping a hand over her mouth.

I shut the window 'Just fixing the mirror.'

She sat up, stretched as much as the limited room would
allow, and combed her fingers through her hair to neaten up.

'Would you like some coffee?' Lourens asked.

She nodded and rubbed her eyes, checked her watch.

I passed my mug to her and checked the mirror. There were
still lights behind us, half a kilometre back.

'Why are we driving so slowly?' she asked grumpily.

Lourens began to speed up. 'It was just to change the
mirror,' he said.

He caught my eye, conspiratorial.

The vehicle behind us kept its distance. That didn't
necessarily mean anything. Some drivers preferred not to pass at night, but use
the red tail lights as a guide.

When her mug was half empty, Lourens asked Flea. 'Was it
rough coming through Zim?' 'What do you think?'

He didn't allow himself to be put off. 'How do you know Oom
Diederik?'

'I don't know him.'

'Oh?'

'I know Ehrlichmann.' A concession.

'Who is Ehrlichmann?'

She sighed faintly and, with exaggerated patience, asked, 'Do
you know where the rhino come from?'

'Yes.'

'Ehrlichmann found them in the Chete.'

'He's the one who used to be a game warden?'

'Yes.'

'Aah.' Then in admiration: 'How do you know
him?'

Again the silent sigh. 'Last year there was a WWF elephant census
in the Chizarira ... that's a national park in Zim. I volunteered. Ehrlichmann
was part of the team.'

'OK,' Lourens said.

The lights were still behind us.

She emptied her mug and handed it to me, tucked her legs
under her in the lotus position, folded her arms under her breasts. 'Tell me
about Diederik Brand.'

'Oom Diederik ...' he said. 'Where shall I begin? He's kind
of a legend in the Bo-Karoo ...'

'Is he rich?'

Interesting question.

'Oom Diederik? Yes, he's rich.'

'How did he make his money?'

Lourens just chuckled.

'What does that mean?'

'Well, Oom Diederik, how shall I say? He's
a ...'
he searched for the right euphemism.

'Black Swan,' I said spontaneously.

They both turned to look at me.

It was because I had been thinking about Emma for the past
hour, before Lourens had asked for coffee.

'A black swan is an anomaly, a wild card that changes
everything,' I said, and tried to remember what Emma had told me sixteen hours
ago in the Red Pomegranate. She had been reading the book all weekend, making
frequent comments like 'incredible' and 'so interesting', until by Saturday
morning I
had
to ask her what it was all
about.

Lourens and Flea waited for me to explain.

'Before they discovered Australia, the Europeans knew absolutely
that all swans were white. That's how our brains work: we learn by observation,
we draw our conclusions from the weight of probability, we firmly believe that
is the only reality. If you only see white swans for hundreds of years, it is
therefore obvious that only white swans exist. Then they found black swans in
Australia.'

'What has this to do with Diederik Brand?'

Although her attitude was annoying, the question wasn't
unreasonable.

'All the Karoo people I know are painfully honest. Honourable.
They have a work ethic that says there is only one way to earn your daily
bread. I never considered that Diederik could be otherwise.'

'Is he?'

'Apparently,' and I looked to Lourens for help.

'He is.' Then he braked and put on his indicator light. 'We
have to turn off here.' He pointed at the road sign that indicated the D579, a
right turn to the Lapalala Wilderness Game Reserve.

Flea picked up the map, unfolded it. 'Are you sure?'

'Yip,' he said, continued to reduce speed and turned off the
tar onto a broad gravel road. He shot a glance at me, and we both looked at the
wing mirrors. He accelerated slowly.

The road behind us remained dark.

Lourens speeded up.

Still dark.

Flea looked up from the map. 'I still don't get this route,'
she said.

'We have to go viaVaalwater,' said Lourens. 'Then to
Bela-Bela. It's not a big detour ...'

And then he suddenly stopped speaking, as behind us
headlights popped up in the mirror.

...
if you are a keen
naturalist who spends a lot of time in the field, the chances of being bitten
sooner or later are not insignificant (especially if you try to track down
snakes).

The Basics of
Tracking: Spoor Interpretation