I once knew a guy who really, really wanted to travel to New Zealand from the United States, but the 24-plus-hour flight kept him from ever doing it. After flying from Iceland to Cape Town, South Africa, I can’t really say I blame him.
Even with my fancy first-class seat and absolutely delectable food, when I stepped off the plane I still moved like a sloth who had been hit by one of Wile E. Coyote’s anvils. With the added impact of a few hectic days in Reykjavik and the extreme need for a shower, I was pretty much a mess.
But that didn’t stop me from being nearly ecstatic when I saw my first view of Table Mountain on our way to our hotel for the night. I had been dreaming of going to South Africa, Cape Town specifically, for years and years, and now, here I was.
As we drove west toward the Mountain, I tried to take everything from the palm trees to the brightly-colored buildings to the people walking along. It was spectacular, and I could not wait to enjoy the city. My best friend Beattie and I had made a lot of plans for things we wanted to see and do, but first, I wanted to see the Atlantic Ocean from as far from the US as I could.
Our cab driver was happy to oblige when my boyfriend Adaire asked him to take the long way around to our hotel via the coast, and who could blame him? A better fare was a better fare.
The four of us—Aaron, Adaire, Beattie, and I—rode in silence through the growing cityscape, and I tried to soak it all in. But when I saw the brilliant blue of the water, so different from the dusky gray-green of the same ocean off the coast of Virginia where I lived, I gasped. It was striking, especially with the coastline curling around it. If I hadn’t been so very tired, I would have wanted to be on one of those beaches all day.
Our hotel, too, was striking: a spectacular structure of glass and concrete overlooking the harbor on the north side of the city. The windows bubbled out like domes from the top floors of the building, and as I stepped from the car I tried to imagine what those incredible windows would let me see.
I glanced at Beattie, who was standing slack-jawed in the middle of the sidewalk looking up at the building. “What is this place?” she finally stammered.
A man in a very fine suit walked up and said, in one of my favorite accents in the entire world next to the ones of Virginia, “It’s The Silo Hotel, ma’am. If I may, I’ll take your bag and tell you a bit as we walk.”
Beattie silently handed over her large suitcase but kept hold of our hamster BB’s carrier. A line of other men in suits took our other bags in turn as the four of us followed the first man into the building. “The Silo was built in the 1920s as a grain silo, and just a few years ago it was remodeled into two things: our hotel and the Museum of Contemporary Art Africa.”
He continued his description of the building—from the twenty-eight boutique rooms inside to the architectural windows and other features of the building—as he led us to the front desk, where our colleague Boone was already checking us in. We were ostensibly here on business to buy a few books for my uncle and his bookstore back in Charlottesville. After a series of wild and woolly events in our last two book-buying locations, however, Boone and his team—including our two new friends Ivan and Frank—had recruited Beattie and me plus our boyfriends Aaran and Adaire to help with some ‘government contracting’ work.
“Ah yes, Mr. Stallone, I see we have four of our rooms reserved for you,” the agent said as he took a very shiny card from Boone’s hand and ran it through his terminal. “Gregory here will see you up to your rooms. I hope you have a wonderful visit.”
Boone smiled and turned to us, passing out room keys. “We’re all on the same floor, and we have a small conference room reserved as well,” he said as we followed Gregory to the elevator. “Let’s plan to meet there in an hour.”
I shook my head. “No. I am going to enjoy a few days of R&R before any work. That was the agreement, and I will do no meetings until after I have had my vacation.” I could hear the whine in my voice, but I didn’t care. I was exhausted, and I was not going to have my trip to Cape Town derailed by Boone’s business.
“All right, Poe, that’s fine, then,” he smiled, “but I was only suggesting we meet so I could give you your per diem and tickets for the various sites around the city. If you’d rather not….”
I groaned. “Fine. I’ll take your free stuff,” I was still feeling whiny, but I was also happy to enjoy this trip on his dime. “But no business talk.”
“Understood,” he said and gave me a small salute by tapping the beanie that I had now come to understand was always on his head. I wondered if he was bald under there or something. It wasn’t a bad look for him, but for a high-powered spy of sorts it was a little odd. Still, he was kind enough and I found him strangely attractive, which surprised me because I didn’t usually go for the hipster sort.
That didn’t matter, though, because on the flight down, Adaire and I had finally talked about our relationship and decided to give it a go despite the fact that he was Scottish and I was American. Since we were, it seemed, going to be doing some traveling with Boone for a while at least, we figured we’d have some time to see how we worked as a couple and make further decisions later if need be.
Having a boyfriend was pretty exciting and a bit scary, too. It had been a while—quite a while in fact—since I had dated. And now, he and I were sharing one of the two bedrooms in the fancy suite our boss-ish person had just reserved for us. Thank goodness Beattie was going to be there too with Aaran because I was going to need a lot of coaching.
The elevator reached our floor, and Gregory and his band of merry bellhops carried all of the bags to our respective rooms, took our keys from our hands, and opened our doors. It was my turn to be left speechless. Our suite was magnificent with views of the entire city and waterfront as well as brightly-colored furniture and gorgeous art, which Gregory informed us was part of the museum collection.
“We are staying in a room with museum-quality art,” I whispered to Beattie.
“We aren’t in the Comfort Inn anymore, woman,” she said with a smile.
For most of the next hour, I wandered around our room in a state of stupefied bliss. I stared out at the view including three-quarters of the city and spent a fair amount of time watching people walk below me on the sidewalk from my perch at one side of our bubble window. I threw myself on the incredibly comfortable bed after marveling at the rain-head shower in the bathroom. It was more than incredible.
Then we had to go meet Boone. I wasn’t happy about that for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that I felt both intrigued and put off by the guy and I still wasn’t used to that. But he had free fun for us, and I wasn’t about to pay for experiences I didn’t otherwise have to. I just hoped his idea of fun wasn’t something like surfing. I was more of a ’sit on the beach and read’ kind of person.
Fortunately, when we arrived at the conference room on the second floor of the building, we found that Boone had done well by us. He’d had the hotel set out refillable water bottles and some pastries that looked like cinnamon twists had collided with honeybuns. I ate two before I even considered better of it.
I made my way to the display of tickets and brochures laid out farther down the table. As Boone watched from one corner of the room (a sort of hipster Daddy Warbucks it seemed), Beattie and I went gaga over our options. I immediately scooped up tickets for the aerial ride to Table Mountain, and I definitely wanted to do the penguin tour at the Cape of Good Hope.
I wanted to do everything, to be honest, but I also didn’t want to be greedy. I figured Ivan and Frank had their preferences, too, and I wanted to be sure to leave Adaire and Aaran space to pick their favorites for us to enjoy. So I stepped back and picked up another pastry to eat while everyone else made their selections.
As Adaire approached the table, I craned my neck to see what his first choice would be and tried not to be too obvious as he picked the tour of Robben Island and Signal Hill. My attempt at subtlety was not, apparently, effective because Boone said, “Poe, what are you doing?”
“Oh nothing,” I said as a flush crept up my cheeks. “I was just excited to see what Adaire picked.”
Boone tilted his head and looked at me. “Why?”
My blush got deeper. “Because that means I’ll get to go to Robben Island, too. I’ve always wanted to visit there, to pay my respects to the folks who were sold from those shores.” As a Virginian, I lived with the history of slavery on the daily, so the opportunity to learn more from another vantage point on that horrible trade felt important. In fact, I was wishing I’d chosen that tour as my own.
“I see,” Boone said as he stood up and walked toward the table. “You do realize there are tickets for everyone for everything here, right?” He picked up two tickets for the Robben Island tour and handed them to me. “Everyone can do everything if they wish.”
I stared down at the tickets in my hand for a moment and then looked up at him. “Really? That’s awfully generous of you.”
“Well, I appreciate the credit,” he said, “but thank the South African government. Our employers are most eager for us to be in a good state of mind for our project.”
I sighed. There it was, the hint of work that I had assiduously been trying to avoid. Boone had kept his word and not discussed the details of our assignment with me, and while I knew that Beattie had been emailing with my Uncle Fitz, she, too, had not talked about what we were doing here.
But now, though, with that tidbit of information in the air, I found myself even more curious about what exactly we were doing here. Beattie looked over at me from the corner of her eye and grinned. “You can’t help yourself, can you?”
“What are you talking about?” I said, trying to look very interested in the other tourist options in Cape Town. I studied the brochure for the Two Oceans Aquarium with intense focus.
“You want to know our assignment,” Beattie said. “I know you, Poe Baxter.”
“No, you don’t,” I spat back and then sighed because I knew she actually did. “Fine. Yes, I do. What’s our assignment?”
I looked at Boone, who shook his head. “Nope, I gave you my word. No work talk for three days.” With that, he turned and walked out of the room with a swagger that made my blood boil.
My rage didn’t last long, though, because I couldn’t believe I was going to get to do so many things I’d dreamed of for so long. Our first day was everything I’d hoped for and more, as the saying goes. My highlight was the penguin tour, of course, maybe because I convinced Beattie, Adaire, and Aaran that we needed to do the full-day excursion or maybe just because those birds are so darn cute... and throw in the background of the Atlantic coast, well, it was spectacular.
The next day, we took in the African art museum, and it was stunning. A few years ago, I’d heard a friend point out that Africa was a continent with hundreds or thousands of unique cultures. Since then I’d become one of those people who always asked “What part?” when someone said something about Africa, as if it were a monolith.
The Zeitz MOCAA drove that point home in more depth and breadth than I could have imagined. I spent almost half an hour just sitting on a bench and looking at a series of portraits done of people from the African diaspora. The images were close-ups, so I could see the lines in each person’s face and wonder at the emotion in their expressions. They called my mind to Dorothea Lange’s famous photos of the American Dust Bowl. I couldn’t look away.
That said, I was sad when I found my capacity for taking in the art hit its usual limit after about two intense hours. I’d learned that I couldn’t absorb more outside of that time frame and had long ago decided it was better to leave a museum than to force myself to take in more than I could handle. That wasn’t fair to me or to the artists.
But we still had plenty to do, and when we decided to take in the aerial view of the city, I found myself breathless in an all-new way. A little boy I knew often said he wished he were a bird so he could fly. This view of Cape Town reminded me why. There is something spectacular about seeing a place from a distance, and disconnecting from the sounds and smells helps me to understand the depth of a place’s story.
Much like in Edinburgh, I was swept up in the city’s blend of natural landscapes and the human-built ones melded onto it. I was swept up in the contrast between Table Mountain and the very modern shapes of our hotel as well as the perfect circle of the stadium near the waterfront...but it was the vastness of the ocean beyond the land that took my breath. I wondered, not for the first or last time, how we could know so little about so massive a part of our world.
At the end of the aerial ride, Aaran said, “I think I need to take the night off. Drink, eat, relax. Anyone else?”
Three heads bobbed in enthusiastic agreement, and we headed back to our hotel and the Granary Café, which the concierge assured us was wonderful. He wasn’t wrong, and between the three fruity drinks I had, the amazing gnocchi we shared as an appetizer, and the tastes I had of everyone’s food except Beattie’s because she had salmon, I was stuffed before dessert. But I didn’t let that stop me from ordering a lychee—spelled litchi there—dessert that left me so content I could have gone to sleep right there at the table.
Aaran and Adaire gently guided me to the elevator while Beattie charged the bill to our room, a privilege of which we’d taken full advantage. And we put our beds to good use that night, in more ways than one.
Despite our late night, we were up early for our Robben Island tour. It was going to be a sobering day, we knew, and we wanted to give the island and the people who had lived and died there our full attention. As our tour taught us, the island had been a place of pain and privilege for over four hundred years. For much of that time it was a forced labor, then was used as we knew it: the maximum-security prison where Nelson Mandela spent his sentence for protesting apartheid.
We spent the morning on the island taking tours of the various buildings, including a Muslim shrine, resting on the grounds in between to look out at the ocean around us when we needed a break from the pain that people had survived there. I hoped with all my heart that the prisoners there took solace from that water view, too. If they hadn’t, I had no idea how they’d survived.
By the time our return ferry to the mainland was boarding, I felt exhausted again. Beattie and I decided to wander the city for a while and then meet the guys for dinner at a local bar. The city was buzzing with people going to and from work and tourists in the streets. Beattie had already inquired at the hotel about where we might get a laid-back shopping experience, and the concierge had pointed us to Cape Quarter.
We spent the afternoon buying gifts for the people we loved, including a gorgeous hand-tooled leather wallet for Uncle Fitz. Beattie and I both bought ourselves necklaces in a great minimalist jewelry maker’s shop called A Bird Named Frank. The piece I purchased was called “Seeing Under Water,” and Beattie’s was “Sticks and Stones.” Both were made of gold and so striking in appearance that we put them on immediately.
Strolling the streets in the late afternoon, I found myself as taken by the place as I had imagined I’d be. The problem was that I was so wrapped up in the atmosphere that I became oblivious to everything but my own experience. So oblivious, in fact, that it was only when Beattie leaned over, took my arm, and whispered, “We are being followed,” that I came back to my wits. And I resented that in a big way, let me tell you.
“Are you serious?” I hissed as I tried to smile at the same time. “For how long? By who?”
“Whom,” Beattie corrected. “A man and a woman. They’re a few hundred feet behind us. I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t seen them lingering outside the shops each time we came out of one this afternoon.”
I wanted so badly to turn around and look, but of course that’s the first rule of spy craft: don’t look. So I kept my gaze casual and took in various shop windows as we passed, pulling Beattie over to a clothing store featuring hand-painted scarves that were profoundly lovely but not really my style. We stood a few moments and pointed out our favorites and then began to walk again. As we did, I glanced back and saw a couple turn from a window and fall in behind us.
“Yellow sun hat and brown linen suit?” I said to Beattie.
“Yep. Might be time to call Aaran,” she said as she took out her phone. “Hi, Love,” she said a little loudly. “Yes, we’re fine. Just taking in the sights, enjoying the people watching in Cape Quarter.” She put slightly more stress on the words people watching. “Indeed, very close to us. Shall we meet you?”
The meeting place set, Beattie hung up. “They’re just up the street at a little bar. Fancy a drink?”
I smiled and said, “You know it.” I meant it, too. I was so weary already. So very weary.
“At least we had three days of touring before we got back into this mess,” I said, trying to convince myself more than anyone. We entered the bar and saw the guys at the back. “Brown suit, yellow hat,” I said as I sat down. Clearly, I was confident the men would know what I meant. Either that or I was already exhausted.
“Thanks for the call,” Aaran said. “We’ve had our own company for the past two hours. White and pink dress and her friend.” He tilted his head just slightly toward the bar.
Just then, our own tails sat down at a table near the windows and ordered drinks. “Did you talk to Boone?” I asked.
“Yep. He’s on his way,” Adaire said. “With Frank and Ivan.”
Our drinks arrived and I took a long sip of my beer before sitting back and trying to look casual, trying not to stare at the people who were also trying not to stare at us. “So, what do we think?” I said. “They noticed our amazing hotness and couldn’t help themselves? We are dressed so badly that they’re filming us for their YouTube channels? We’re about to be invited onto a South African game show?”
“More like you’re being targeted because you’re Americans and staying at The Silo,” A familiar voice said from behind my shoulder before he pushed his way onto the bench beside me. “I wondered how long it would take before they’d find you.”
Aaran scowled. “So this sight-seeing jag wasn’t just a bit of generosity on your part after all.”
Boone shrugged. “You’re always on the clock when you’re with me, ole chap,” he said.
I winced at the insincerity of his tone in that colloquialism. “That wasn’t our agreement,” I said just before I finished my beer.
“No, it was. I told you I wasn’t going to talk with you about work for three days, and I have honored my end of the deal. I didn’t say, however, that you wouldn’t be working. It seems like you have done everything perfectly.” Boone’s voice was smooth as glass, and I had to resist the urge to slam my empty pint glass down on his fingers. He infuriated me to no end.
Beattie sighed. “So you might as well fill us in, then.” She ran a finger over the thin strip of gold that made up one-half of her new pendant. “Who are these people, and why are we here?”
My shoulders sagged as I gave into what was now inevitable—our new work was as book spies. I didn’t think I’d ever heard of such a role before, and the Enneagram 4 in me kind of liked that part because it was unique. But the practical, bookish, read at home on Saturday night for fun part of me really just wanted to go back to the hotel and, well, read. Still, I was a grown-up. I would handle this, too.
“You’re going to be helping the South African government break up a black-market smuggling ring specializing in ancient folklore manuscripts from across Africa,” Boone said.
Okay, I wasn’t sure I could handle this. A black-market smuggling ring. Ancient texts. Africa. I wasn’t processing the whole yet, just these huge parts. “What part of Africa?” I asked without thinking.
Boone smiled. “Good question. All of it. These books are from across the continent, and most pre-date the modern nation-states that we know. The South African government has taken the lead on the investigation and prosecution, and we have been brought in to begin the process.”
I swallowed hard. “And I take it, given our unwanted companions here,” I flicked my eyes to the couple near the window, “the ring knows we’re onto them. How is that going to work exactly?”
“Oh, they don’t think you’re working with the government. They think you’re here to join the gang.” Boone winked at me, and I felt my stomach drop.
“We’re going to be book smugglers?” Beattie asked in a hushed tone.
“No ‘going to be’ about it. As far as anyone knows, you are the best in the American business. We even have some folks in Scotland and Iceland willing to testify to your credentials.” Boone was practically grinning now.
“Oh, joy,” I said as I raised my hand to ask for another beer.