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  The little fantasy passed and Zondi concentrated on the road that lay flat and straight. They did not speak. Kruger sat motionless, the only movement the swell of his chest and gut as he inhaled and exhaled in bronchial gusts through the thicket of beard.

  Unprompted, a memory came to Zondi, something from the scandal sheets years ago when a ridiculous bottle-blonde gossip columnist for one of Johannesburg’s English-speaking newspapers had traveled to the hick town where Kruger had made his home back then—these were still the Apartheid days—to interview the Boer icon and had ended up going on a weeklong brandy-fueled debauch with him that had culminated (or so she’d written) in a bout of midnight fucking on the steps of a monument commemorating some obscure Boer War battle.

  What’d lent her account veracity was the inclusion of a telling detail: when Kruger had shed his khaki pants in the headlights of his Mercedes Benz he’d revealed old blue underpants with sagging elastic and a tear large enough to allow his left testicle to droop into space like one of Salvador Dali’s soft eggs.

  Zondi laughed out loud, the ridiculous image allowing him to release the tension that had dogged him since the day before when he’d allowed the director to task him with this fool’s errand.

  He felt Kruger’s eyes on him, but the man left any question unspoken and Zondi returned his face to its default, as inexpressive as a Kabuki mask.

  The road, uncharacteristically, subsided suddenly into a small depression, as if an invisible plug had been pulled, the view behind and ahead lost for the first time. It was as if the car were sinking into the earth, and Zondi was thinking that this would be the perfect place for an ambush when he saw, to his right, a plume of dust tracing its way across the salt pan at speed.

  He checked his mirror and saw another trail of dust closing in on him from the rear.

  Zondi shifted down and floored the car which resulted in the puny engine screaming at him petulantly but no discernable increase in acceleration.

  A massive black pickup truck with fat tires and bull bars roared out of the dust and slewed to a halt, straddling the road.

  Zondi worked the brakes, knowing that the little car would flip and tumble if he slowed too fast. Kruger braced himself against the dashboard, his breath louder.

  Zondi checked his rearview: another truck right up behind him, like a mongrel nosing at the haunches of a bitch in heat. The car was slowing, juddering, quaking and he eyed the shoulder and wondered if he could take to the sand and swing past the pickup blocking him.

  He dismissed the thought.

  The moment the little car’s skinny tires found the sand he’d lose control and he and his passenger would roll and tumble to a spectacularly messy death.

  Zondi brought the car to a halt inches from the dented flank of the truck. There were two men in the cab and another three in the flatbed. All wore ski masks and carried rifles.

  The men spilled from the vehicle and surrounded the car.

  Zondi looked over his shoulder and saw another four men leave the pickup at his rear.

  “This isn’t very smart, Meneer Kruger.”

  “Believe me, this is not my idea,” the Boer said.

  Zondi believed Kruger, but that did nothing to cheer him.

  He cracked the door and stood, holding up his ID.

  “Get out of my way,” he said.

  A man stepped forward. A small, skinny, man. Zondi knew the type. The dangerous runt with all to prove.

  “You’re a kaffir dog and you’ll shut the fuck up,” he said in Afrikaans. He spoke to Kruger. “We’ve come for you, General.”

  Kruger hauled himself from the car, its springs sighing in relief.

  “Men, this is foolishness. Step back. I will go with this man and we will take this matter to the courts.”

  “Their courts. Kaffir courts,” the runt said.

  He kicked Zondi’s legs from under him and had the rifle to Zondi’s head, cocking it, and Zondi knew this was it, this was how it would end out here in the ass-end of the world, his death rattle muzak to the ears of these Boers.

  A shot rang out and he waited for the flash of pain and the plunge through the gaping portal of oblivion, but saw instead the windshield of the pickup star and disintegrate in a shower of shards.

  Another shot, smacking the side of the truck, and a whine when the bullet ricocheted.

  The men were in disarray, taking cover, shouting.

  Zondi got to his knees and scanned the horizon. The gunman was up on a low hill to the right, the sole high ground that commanded a view of the plain.

  One of the masked men fired at the hill and a round took his rifle in the stock and wrenched it from his hands and he screamed like a child.

  The man up there could shoot, deliberately choosing not to kill the Boers who were trapped like fish in a barrel.

  Kruger stood over his cowering men and raised his arms, his voice Messiah-like.

  “Go men. Please go. Your lives are not to be thrown away like this.”

  The runt was firing pointlessly, in premature-ejaculatory spurts that went nowhere and meant nothing and threatened nobody, but the others were starting to leopard crawl in the directions of their vehicles.

  When the runt came at Zondi and punched him in the mouth Zondi saw a tattoo, astonishing in its predictability: a crude blue-black swastika on the webbing between the man’s forefinger and his thumb.

  Then the small man stalked off and the two vehicles roared to life and creaking and rumbling, took off across the sand back toward the tragic little volkstaat.

  Zondi and his prisoner returned to the car and Zondi fired the engine and set off again for town.

  Kruger’s breath came in ragged gasps and Zondi could smell him, rank and sour.

  “I’m sorry,” Kruger said. “I would never have sanctioned that.”

  “I believe you. You’re not that stupid.”

  They drove a while in silence and then Kruger tapped the pocket at his thigh. A tinny sound.

  “I have a hip flask in here. I need to drink.”

  “Drink then,” Zondi said.

  The alcoholic freed the flask with shaking fingers and drank long and hard and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

  “I suppose you’ll take this from me? When we get to the police station?”

  “No,” Zondi said, “keep it. It’ll do you more good than that Boer Bible of yours.”

  Kruger said nothing, just drank again and then capped the flask and stowed it and stared out the windshield at the shacks of the black and the brown poor strewn across the red soil like detritus left in the wake of the winds of change that had blown no good for the forgotten and the dispossessed.

  TWELVE

  Joe Louw sat at the table in his hotel room and stared at the empty plates and, as he unbuttoned the waist of his suit pants and loosened the zipper, he felt a surge of self-loathing.

  He’d polished off everything he’d ordered from room service as an early supper: a T-bone steak the size of a lap dog, a log pile of fries, golden and crispy the way he liked them, a baked potato smothered in sour cream and a side order of five onion rings that had lain like the Olympic symbol on the platter when the waiter had wheeled the trolley in.

  Gone.

  Bugger-all left.

  A smear of ketchup on the plate and the crumpled foil that had held the baked spud the only evidence of what he’d eaten.

  Fuck eaten. Pigged out. Stuffed himself to try and obliterate his guilt. Washed it all down with a couple of Cokes from the minibar.

  And now he wanted to smoke. Of course he did. And although he hadn’t had a cigarette in two years—not since he’d made that deathbed promise to Yolandi—he always kept a pack of Camels with him. The same pack he’d had on him in her hospital room that day, fifteen left.

  Probably stale by now.

  But they’d become a kind of an amulet, a lucky charm.

  He fished the pack out of his jacket pocket and put it on the table and stared at the
camel and the pyramids and the palm trees, the nostalgic charm of the illustration ruined by the health warning. He was in a non-smoking room, but the temptation to fling open the window and sneak a couple of drags almost overwhelmed him.

  Then he saw his wife with her huge eyes, felt her fingers on his arm, made strong by her impending death, as if she were squeezing those promises from him.

  Promise number one that he’d quit smoking.

  Promise number two, Jesus . . .

  The thought of the second promise had Louw ferreting in his pocket for a Nicorette lozenge, unwrapping it and sucking on the foul thing, the sour tang of nicotine obliterating the aftertaste of his meal. But it muted the craving for a cigarette.

  He pushed his chair back and went and stood at the window and watched the hard sun beating yellow on the gray rock of Table Mountain. It was nearly six, but in summer in Cape Town the sun only set after eight, so the light was still fierce. No wind this evening, and the cloud lay still on the mountain’s flat top.

  The self-important fanfare of the SABC news took Louw across to the TV set, and he watched the anchor feast on the story of the president’s wife. As he expected the bulletin led with the press conference Louw had held in a conference room downstairs two hours earlier, the beige room cleared of its furniture save a lectern and microphone, crammed with media (all the foreign networks: CNN, BBC, SKY, Al Jazeera) lenses zoomed in tight on his face, smartphones thrust out at him like unwanted offerings while questions were fired in a Babel of accents.

  Steve Bungu had offered Louw the use of the president’s office, but he’d wanted to stamp his independence from the start, so he’d met the media here and had banned any representatives of the presidency from attending.

  Bungu had bridled at this, but he’d ended up nodding that huge scarred head, acknowledging that it was for the best. He’d reluctantly agreed not be in the hotel, warning Louw that he’d better sing from the fuckin hymn-book.

  Louw had.

  He was no stranger to press conferences. He’d been a frequent dour presence on TV back in the day, outlining in his slow, meticulous way the particulars of whatever case he’d been working on, his flat voice, stripped of emotion, somehow making the details more ghastly.

  Louw watched himself on the screen, not out of ego, but to see what a liar looked like. To see if his corruption was visible, like some mark of Cain.

  To his shame, it wasn’t.

  He stood in front of the lights wearing the dark blue suit he’d worn to Yolandi’s funeral. It was just a little tight across the shoulders and pinched the crack of his ass, but he looked okay, in the shirt that was close to white and a tie that wasn’t too frayed. He could’ve done with a haircut, the graying blonde thatch a little longer than he’d tolerated back in his cop days, but he was clean-shaven and if his sun-browned face could never be accused of being handsome it was square and solid and honest-looking and photographed well.

  He laid it all out quickly and methodically. The president knew that it was in the national interest that the investigation be handled in the most open manner possible. It had been a personal request from the presidency that Louw return from retirement to evaluate the evidence thoroughly and impartially.

  “But isn’t it open and shut, Colonel?” one of the hacks asked. “The bodyguard killed her and attempted to kill the president?”

  “That is the scenario, yes. It’s my job to investigate the background to the events of last night and make a detailed report.”

  “Are you saying that version of events is in dispute?”

  “I’m saying nothing of the kind. I’m saying that the president’s office is dealing with this as transparently as possible. I have complete access. When I have investigated I will make my findings known. Thank you.”

  The anchor was back on screen, describing Louw as “South Africa’s onetime super cop whose brilliant career was brought to a tragic end when he accidentally shot a Cape Town boutique owner.” Cue a photograph of Rose MacDonald, smiling at the camera, her hair a curly halo.

  Louw was reaching for the remote to kill the tube when the anchor moved onto the next story: the arrest of Magnus Kruger in Nêrens.

  Louw opened another can of Coke and sat on the bed watching as Kruger was escorted into the police station by a fat, self-important captain whose buttocks rolled like a belly dancer’s as he walked.

  Kruger, in his khaki clothes, strode calmly into the cop shop, saying nothing, but clearly relishing this moment, relishing being rescued from obscurity—a joke, a footnote, a fucking embarrassment to most Afrikaners—and given the spotlight once more.

  Louw’s cell phone rang and he silenced the TV and answered it, expecting Bungu, but a woman said, “Good evening Colonel, I’m Pam Hughes from the CFTR.”

  “The what?”

  “The Center For Trauma Resolution. I’m calling on behalf of Ross Murker.”

  “Who?” Louw asked, although he knew the name only too well.

  “Rose MacDonald’s husband.”

  Louw grimaced. “What do you want?”

  “It’s what he wants. Ross. He wants to meet with you.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s had problems moving on after his wife’s death. We feel a meeting with you could be constructive”

  “How so?”

  “To make peace with what happened. I facilitate this kind of thing all the time. Where victims meet perpetrators.”

  “Mrs. Hughes, I’m not a perpetrator.”

  “No, of course not. I didn’t mean . . . Sorry. He just wants to sit down with you. At my office, here in the city. I’m sure you’re terribly busy but would that be at all possible? It would mean a lot to him and since you’re here, in Cape Town . . .”

  Louw saw that woman lying dead, the blood, the broken wine bottle, and before he could tamp down his guilt he heard himself agreeing to a meeting the next night.

  Louw ended the call and, even with the vile Nicorette in his mouth, still eyed the pack of Camels hungrily.

  He’d been a two pack a day man.

  Three a day when the pressure had mounted.

  He saw his wife’s eyes and closed the pack and slipped it back into his jacket pocket.

  That promise he’d honored.

  The second, that he’d protect their fuck-up of a son . . .

  Well, that was the reason, wasn’t it, that he was in this hotel room wearing a turtleneck of shit?

  THIRTEEN

  “Hey, Assegaai, where’d you learn to shoot like that?” Zondi said, regarding the little man with the wizened bronze face, a face even more inscrutable than his own. He wouldn’t play poker with this guy.

  The cop hovered in the doorway of the office that Zondi had requisitioned at the Nêrens police station. It had a view of the locked door of the cell that held Kruger (in a drunken slumber now, wallowing like a beached bull seal on the Edblo Fantasy mattress that was still sheathed in plastic, the miserly captain clearly bent on returning it to the store when the Boer was kicked free after his bail hearing in the morning) and Zondi intended to sit vigil through the night, to make sure the Witsand rabble didn’t muster another drunken commando bent on freeing their leader.

  When he’d seen his prisoner secured in the now clean cell with its freely flushing toilet, Zondi had ordered the station commander to open the weapons arsenal. A Z88 pistol was in the top drawer of the desk and a locally-manufactured Musler 12-gauge shotgun—a favorite riot control weapon—lay on the desk top. He’d made sure it was loaded with live ammunition rather than rubber bullets.

  If those bastards came at him again he’d take some down.

  “Come in, man,” Zondi said and Assegaai walked into the room. “Sit.” Assegaai sat. “Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Assegaai. It could only have been you.”

  The small man shrugged one shoulder. “Shit hits the fan I’ll deny being there. Got me?”

  Zondi raised his palms the ceilin
g. “Sure. But how’d you know to take up that position? You psychic or something?”

  Deadpan the small man said, “Well you know us Bushmen, we get messages from the birds in the trees and the voices in the wind and the clicks of the geckoes.”

  “And Coke bottles dropped from the sky?”

  The cop laughed, his eyes disappearing into his creased face. “You saw that piece of shit?”

  “Ja, when I was a kid, on TV. The Gods Must be Crazy.”

  A dumb movie made by an Afrikaner about a bare-assed bushman in a loincloth out in the Kalahari who finds a Coke bottle dropped from a plane and thinks it’s a gift from the gods.

  “I still can’t drink Coke,” Assegaai said, “makes me wanna puke.”

  “I can understand that.”

  Assegaai removed a pack of Luckies from his top pocket and held them out Zondi who shook his head. The cop fired up, leaking smoke from mouth and nose.

  “So, how’d you know?” Zondi said.

  Assegaai shrugged. “I knew that because you went in alone for Kruger they wouldn’t mess with you inside Witsand. But there was a good chance they’d try to free him on the road into town. That little dip, Swartpan, is the best place for an ambush. And the hill was the place to be. So I drove out there and waited with my R4.”

  “You’re a fuckin good shot. Where’d you learn?”

  “You heard of 31 Battalion?”

  “The Bushman battalion that fought for the South Africans during the wars in Namibia and Angola?”

  “Ja. My father was in 31. I was born and brought up in a camp in Caprivi, on the Angolan border. The white national servicemen taught me Afrikaans and taught me to shoot. I was their pet.”

  “Jesus.”

  Assegaai shrugged. “Some of them were okay. One of them even took us on holiday in his car to see the ocean for the first time. Mad bastard.”

  “What happened to your father?”

  “Killed in action,” Assegaai said. “The Boers gave my mother a medal and some cash. She didn’t know about money and hid it in a tree and lost it.”