Trackers (30 page)

Like
his wildlife tales, he was building up to a climax.

'But it's not so much what Chitepo is doing now. The key to
all of this lies in his history, and the history of the region. You see, back
in 1998, President Laurent Kabila of the Congo needed an army. Urgently. His
former allies, Rwanda and Uganda, had just turned against him, they had reached
the outskirts of Kabila's stronghold in Kinshasa, and he was desperate for
help. So, Kabila called his old pal Mugabe. And Mugabe sent Johnson Chitepo
with a very clear directive: go and find out what's in it for us. As it turned
out, Kabila was more than ready with an answer. He offered a mining concession
at Mbuji-Mayi, in exchange for the loan of Mugabe's army. And you know what
they mine at Mbuji-Mayi?'

We shook our heads.

'Diamonds,' Ehrlichmann whispered.

'Aha,' said Lotter.

A slow nod. 'Diamonds,' he repeated. He downed the last of
his cognac. 'And that, I believe, is what our Cornel was smuggling out of
here.'

He let it sink in before stretching out his hand for the
bottle, picking it up and holding it out towards Lotter's glass.

'No thanks, I'm flying tomorrow.'

Ehrlichmann nodded and poured another
for himself.

I wasn't entirely convinced by his story. 'The war in the
Congo was ten years ago ...'

'Forget about the war. That's just where it started. Think now.
Think noose around the neck of Zimbabwe. Think millions of American dollars'
worth of diamonds extracted from Mbuji-Mayi over the years, and fewer and fewer
buyers. Because of the increasing isolation of Zimbabwe. There have been
sanctions, the EU has frozen all the assets of Zimbabwe's ministers abroad, and
the Kimberley Process is making it very difficult for them to find a market for
their dirty stones. And then, there's the weighty matter of international
terrorism. You see, there is a connection between the Mbuji-Mayi concession and
al-Qaeda.'

'You're kidding,' said Lotter.

Ehrlichmann shook his head. 'I'm not. Back in 1998, Mugabe
and Chitepo had one big problem: they didn't have the technical know- how to
extract the diamonds. But in Africa, carrion is always guaranteed to attract
the scavengers. Enter Mr Sayyid Khalid bin Alawi Macki, a businessman and
mining magnate from Oman, with all the technical expertise needed for the job.
Within a week, they had created a joint venture between Osleg, the business
wing of the Zimbabwean armed forces, the Zim government, and Macki. And our Mr
Macki, apparently, is the one with ties to al-Qaeda. Through his many
companies, he not only launders money for the terrorists, but also directly
supplies, funds, arms, and equips them. So now you will understand how difficult
it has become for Chitepo to get rid of the diamonds. Everybody has been
watching, including the CIA. All the usual channels are blocked, all the border
posts are being monitored. According to the bush telegraph, Chitepo is getting
more and more desperate to sell the diamonds, and time is running out. For him,
for Mugabe, for Zimbabwe. I mean, who knows where this new coalition government
will lead? It's every man for himself now, and even they are watching each
other like hawks ... Anyway, that night, during the Big Barbecue, Johnson
Chitepo was spending a lot of time with Cornel. As a matter of fact, when I
left just before midnight, they were sitting, just the two of them, heads
together, very deep in discussion. And I think I know what they were talking
about. I mean, she would have been perfect - a South African, white, no obvious
ties to smuggling. And using the rhinos ... Well, that's very, very clever.'

I asked him about the rhinos.

He said it was more than a year ago that word had reached him
that Diederik Brand, a benefactor to Zim farmers, was most eager to acquire a
breeding pair. When he came across the two animals in June, barely twenty
kilometres from where we now sat, he realised their chances of survival were
slim. Poaching of Black Rhino was intense, organised, and executed with the
full knowledge of the Zimbabwean police. That was why he sent word to Diederik
via the channels: if Brand financed the operation, Ehrlichmann would do the
rest to get the animals to the border. When a positive answer was returned,
Cornel van Jaarsveld was the obvious choice, because of her knowledge of
sedation of game in transit. He had dug up her visiting card and called her ...

'When was this?' I asked.

'Early July. Two days after I called her, she was here. Quite
the little negotiator. If I supplied a team to help load the rhinos, she would
organise everything else - the lorry, the drugs for the animals. But she didn't
come cheap. Two hundred and fifty grand ...'

Flea had nearly three months and a quarter of a million rand
to organise it all. And most likely the cooperation of Johnson Chitepo and the
Zim authorities, to have the plastic holders manufactured, to manipulate
roadblocks, to get them safely to the border. If Ehrlichmann was right.

'I kept track of the rhinos, we arranged a final date for the
capture, and last week, we did it. Cornel darted them, we loaded, and off she
went. Pretty uneventful, really. And those two hook-lips were in fine health
when she drove down that road,' he said, pointing in the direction of the jeep
track that led away from camp.

'When
she
drove down that
road?' I asked.

'That's right.'

'No driver?'

'She
said she had a relief driver waiting in Kwekwe. That's about 150 clicks from
here.'

Every person has
an individual mannerism in the way he or she walks, leaving a 'signature' in
his or her spoor.

The Art of
Tracking: Introduction

I couldn't sleep. I lay in the tent listening to the sounds
of Africa, recognising only the howl of a jackal. The other sounds were indecipherable:
birds, insects, night creatures living their secret lives in darkness. Like so
many of us.

Before we finally left the dying campfire, I asked
Ehrlichmann two more questions. The first was whether Flea ever talked about
her home, her background.

'Funny you should ask,' he said. 'The night before we
captured the rhinos, I asked her where she came from. And she pointed to this
red carry bag of hers and she said, "That's my home". So I said, no,
I meant where did she grow up? And she gave a rather strange laugh and said,
"purgatory". Never quite figured out what she meant.'

Then I asked him about Diederik Brand and the 'Kvaerner'
crates.

'Well...' he said, looking at his glass as though there was
something very significant to be found in it. 'This is Africa.'

Did he know they contained weapons?

'Yes, I knew.'

Where were the crates bound?

He stood up, not entirely steady on his feet now and said to
me: 'Come.'

He took a paraffin lamp from one of the tables and walked
away through the dust. I followed, Lotter remained seated.

He headed away from the tents, up the slope of the hill.
Behind dark thorn trees and a rocky outcrop, hidden in the dark shadows of
trees, were two low-roofed corrugated-iron buildings, the sort that construction
companies frequently used as temporary workshops. Painted a dirty green, the
strokes of hasty paintwork were visible. The double doors of one stood open. In
the faint light of the lamp I could see two Land Rovers, one raised on wooden
blocks. Parts, old tyres, tools. Ehrlichmann went to the other building, passed
the lamp over to me to hold, took a bunch of keys from his pocket, fiddled with
them and unlocked the door. He pulled the door open, took the lamp back and
went inside. He lifted a tarpaulin and the dust drifted up into the lamp beams.

'Here they are.'

The crates were there.

I looked. Two of the crates had been broached. The others
were still untouched. He opened one. Guns, packed in bubble wrap, a few gaps
where some had been removed.

'Are they for sale?'

'Do you want one?'

'Depends on the price.'

'Help yourself. It's free.'

I stared at him. He grimaced at my disbelief, bent, took out
a MAG-7, opened another crate and picked up a box of ammunition, propping it
all in my arms. He draped the tarpaulin over again and walked out. Outside he
put the lamp on the ground while he took his time locking up. We walked back.
Halfway he stopped, held up the lamp and had a good look at me. 'You are quite
a piece of work, you know. So righteous.' No reproach, just an observation. He
began to turn away, but reconsidered and confronted me again. 'I do believe you
have your own demons.' He lifted his other hand, and for a tiny surreal moment
I thought he would strike me. But he just loosened his ponytail, and shook his
head lightly, so the hair tumbled over his shoulders. He said: 'I distribute
the guns. Amongst my farmer friends. The few I have left. That's what Diederik
wanted. That is why he made this gift.'

Then he turned slowly and walked back to the campfire. To
Lotter he said, 'I bid you goodnight,' collected his staff and did his
dignified Rafiki shuffle over to the tents.

I lay listening and thinking of night animals and secret
lives. Of impressions. And the stories we weave, so frequently embellished in
the telling. Of the layer upon layer of camouflage we paint on, creating our
facades with such practised skill that the brush strokes go mostly unseen.

Diederik Brand. The rascal. The farmer con man. A 'character'
Lourens le Riche and Lotter had called him. Not the Black Swan I had taken him
to be. His paint was grey, the shades just light enough to evoke the
good-natured Bo-Karoo smile that said, 'Ay, that Diederik'. I suspected he had
created this image deliberately, his wicked deeds bordering on crimes, in the
barely safe no-man's-land of social acceptability. It was, as Emma would say
of her clients and their products, his unique selling point, the quality that
made him stand out from the crowd. His story.

Was he hiding his role of benefactor from Loxton
deliberately, the emergency aid to Zim farmers, the gift of a consignment of
MAG-7 shotguns, because it would alter his image, make him less interesting?

How strange. Will the real Diederik Brand please stand up. Or
is that who he
really
is, the sum of his
contradictions, the man who felt such contentment standing at the gate and
watching the two rhinos grazing peacefully, knowing
his
money saved them,
his
work,
his
intervention,
his
white lies and forgeries.

And Ehrlichmann, with his hair and bangles and long staff. A
trademark, unsubtle, unapologetic, the image strengthened and refined by his
sagacity, the mannerisms, emphases, voice, spellbinding tales. By nature I was
wary of his kind, always suspecting them of hiding something. Or at least
living in a fantasy world, either option a danger in my profession.

I do believe you have your own
demons.
That had
many implications: that he had his. That he had the insight - and interest - to
notice mine. That he wasn't judgemental. Characteristics that made him both
more interesting, more acceptable than the carefully cultivated, exaggerated
image. Which made me wonder:
Why
then?

The answer was, just as it was in Diederik's case, in his
desire to be noticed.

Emma had a theory that this need was at the heart of every
brand name - people's need to stand out, to escape from the homogeneity of the
masses. We wanted to create an image through all that we purchased, hold up a
placard of ourselves to the world that said 'this is me'. It was an
interesting, exciting concept to Emma. For me it was plain depressing, because
no longer were we defined by what we did, but by what we owned. It was the
engine of consumerism, superficiality and greed, the origin of all the lies
and subterfuge.

That, I realised, was what motivated Flea van Jaarsveld. It
was her remedy for the tragic past, the trauma, the humiliation. I remembered
when we talked about rich Afrikaners in the lorry. They are not all like that,
Flea had said. Because she so badly wanted to be one. She believed it would
ease her pain.

She was incredibly focused, relentless in her deception. In
my mind's eye I could see her throughout the elephant census, in her
tight-fitting clothes, busy, busy, busy, searching out opportunities, making
contacts. The disdainful cold shoulder for the useless, the warm courtship of
the useful.

She had manipulated me, and particularly Lourens, with skill,
handled us flawlessly through her suggestions, her careful approaches. She must
have been terrified, there on the ground in front of the truck, as Inkunzi and
his henchmen searched it, all her plans hanging in the balance, lives on the
line. But how quickly she had recovered and adapted.

The theft of my Glock. Was it the delay at the Knights of
Harley that gave her the idea I would come looking for her? So that she made
provision for that as well?

'She has such potential,' Ehrlichmann had said. But it was much
more than potential. She had set up the entire operation, planned it and
carried it through.