Chapter 71

 

A nurse knocked on the door and cheerfully called out to Tabitha. She brought a breakfast tray to set beside the bed. Tabitha struggled to sit up and shake off the drugs of the night before. She got situated and the nurse placed the food before her. “You eat up now, so you have strength to leave today.” The black African woman threw open the green curtains and left with a light step.

Tabitha welcomed the vigorousness of the sun and found she was hungry. Before she was done eating, a man in a severe business suit entered and introduced himself as the official from the embassy. Good grief, Tabitha thought.

She answered questions about this “incident” as succinctly as she could.

“Since we had a complaint, and then you were hospitalized, we just needed to make sure there was nothing we failed to warn you of.” Tabitha almost laughed. Mr. Suit asked her for a signature on a form. She paused with the pen in her hand. “You’re not going to send any information about this back to my mother, are you?”

“Your mother?” He looked confused behind his beaky nose.

“I think she’s the one who called the senator. It’s just that I’m fine and I’m going home in a couple of days, and I don’t want to upset her unnecessarily.”

“We do have policies to follow. I’ll have to fax this to the senator’s office today.”

Tabitha sighed. “Of course you do. Fine.” Mr. Suit scooped up the papers and turned to go.

Rian Minnaar barreled through the door, carrying some flowers.

“Rian.”

The embassy man looked at Tabitha and she waved him away. “I’m fine.”

“I heard you had a tumble last night.” Rian scrutinized her.

“It was quite a night,” Tabitha agreed. She adjusted her sling and pushed away her food tray with her good right arm.

“I’ve actually been sent to interview you about what happened. Officially.”

Tabitha nodded.

“The flowers are unofficial,” he added, and blushed. His blond hair shone brighter against his reddened skin. He wore his official police department gray uniform.

“They’re a lovely gesture. Thank you.” Tabitha pointed to her water jug and he poked them down into it. “Let’s do the official part first.”

He took a seat and got out a pad of paper. “What happened last night?”

Tabitha smiled. “This is the official line of questioning?”

He nodded. “It is all so convoluted right now in official channels. No one can truly say what information we are trying to discover.”

“It actually started yesterday afternoon.” Tabitha told him about wanting to shoot at Lower Sabie dam and deciding to just go by and look at Vandenblok’s camp, and the protesters that made her move to spying from the nearby hill. “I guess I wasn’t as inconspicuous as I thought, because apparently one of Vandenblok’s minions followed me and told him where I was.”

“So there were two men down in the camp?”

“Yes. One was Vandenblok for sure. The other I didn’t know. A bulky blond man.” She said she’d tried to call both Rian and Mpande to tell them what she’d seen. “It was possible it was legitimate, I suppose, but after everything I knew it just wasn’t right. It was too secretive.”

“Did they confront you when you got back to camp?”

“No. I stopped to shoot pictures on my way.” She shook her head, thinking of Vandenblok’s destruction of her film. “I stopped to make calls to you and Mpande. And I went to eat before I went to my cabin.”

“How’d they find you, then? You didn’t open the door to them, did you?”

Tabitha groaned. “It was my own fault. I had no idea they might have followed me. I was so caught up in wanting to talk to you or Mpande that I left a note at the pay phones with my rondavel number and my name, in case you called.” She rubbed her good hand across her forehead. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. Until Vandenblok showed up at the door.” She told Rian all the details of the kidnapping. “I think he meant to hold me until he got out of the country, but he’d become so obsessed with getting away, I knew he’d kill me at some point.” Tabitha closed her eyes.

“Are you all right?”

Tabitha nodded. She told the rest of the night’s events with her eyes closed. Reliving it in detail. It didn’t seem real with her eyes open, except for the ache in her arm. She finally got to the end of the tale. She opened her eyes and blinked at the bright sunlight pouring into the room. The darkness truly had passed.

“What about Vandenblok?” she asked.

“Last I heard, he’s in a coma induced by the physicians.”

“So he’s survived?”

“So far. I’m going to go see about checking you out and taking you back to Kruger for your things.”

Nurses bustled around and found some scrubs for her to put on. The pajama pants and t-shirt from the night before were filthy with dirt and blood. Tabitha didn’t want to see them again.

Rian got her to the car and the highway, and the residual drugs in her system soon lulled her to sleep.

The car stopped and she stirred. They were at the Malelane gate back into Kruger.

She sat up and rubbed her eyes. Rian got back in the car after processing them at the gate shop.

“I wish I had the camera gear. I could use some more photos. Vandenblok stomped mine to bits in my cabin… yesterday. Wow, was that only yesterday? It feels like forever.”

They started the four hour drive to Lower Sabie, and saw a family of hyenas with a pup skittering alongside the road. They saw a tiny klipspringer antelope in a rocky ravine, and a bachelor herd of the huge Kudu antelope with their white stripes and curvy horns. Tabitha thought again of the contrasts of Africa.

Rian dropped her at her rondavel, which seemed to have been left intact for her despite the fact she’d planned to check out today. Rian was in a hurry to go attend to official duties. Tabitha wanted to tag along, but besides not being invited, her body seemed to hurt all over. She decided to get a meat pie at the snack shop and pack before bed. Tomorrow she would leave Kruger.