The drive back from Louis Trichardt was noisy and uncomfortable. The wind howled through the bullet hole in the windscreen, and whistled out through the gaps in the back window. Nick drove cautiously, illogically worried that the fragmented glass would collapse inwards and they’d be left with no windscreen at all.
He didn’t want to stop off along the way. He wanted to keep going, to get his damaged car off the road as soon as he could. But he had no choice, because the petrol gauge was hovering on empty.
They pulled over at a petrol station forty kilometres north of Pretoria. Nick bypassed the pumps and stopped in the parking area, checking to see if anyone followed him down the ramp. Nobody did. The forecourt was empty apart from a deeply tanned old man handing a crumpled fifty rand note to the pump attendant. Then he started his elderly Datsun and pulled away with a belch of blue smoke.
Nick examined the front of the Jeep, popped the bonnet and checked the engine over, felt under the wheel arches and examined the rear. Then he took a torch from the cubbyhole, knelt down, and shone it on the underside of the car.
He could see nothing that looked like a tracking device. To be truthful, though, he had no idea what one might look like.
He walked over to the garage shop and bought a roll of sticky tape and a box of cling film. Not ideal, but it would do for now. He taped a triple layer of cling film over the back window. Now it looked as if he’d replaced the entire pane of glass with a layer of plastic sheeting. There were hundreds of other cars driving around with similar temporary repairs. It wouldn’t attract the attention of the police in the same way that a car that had obviously been in a gunfight would.
And if they drove back into the storm, the rain wouldn’t be able to get in.
He couldn’t do much about the windscreen, but he taped cling film over the bullet hole and the worst of the cracks that radiated out from it.
It was nearly five a.m. and he felt bone-weary. Laki looked haggard, drained, coasting ever more slowly on an ebbing wave of adrenaline.
Coffee was in order, for both of them.
He and Laki walked over to the 24-hour diner, where they ordered two giant-sized mugs and took them to the back of the empty restaurant. Their table felt sticky, and under the glare of the neon light Nick could see splashes and spills on its dull grey surface. He pulled out a scarred plastic chair and sat down where he could keep an eye on his car and see anyone who came into the restaurant.
He tore open three sugars and did his best to stir them with the narrow wooden stick that was the preserve of all roadside cafés. Even if he kept going until he scratched right through the cup, he knew there would still be a layer of undissolved sugar at the bottom. Across the table, Laki was doing the same thing.
‘This is an endless task,’ Laki said, ripping open another sugar and pouring it in. ‘But at least my hands are not shaking so badly any more.’
‘They’ll stop eventually.’
Laki sipped, frowned, and stirred again. ‘You killed three men tonight, Nick,’ he whispered. ‘If you hadn’t, they would have killed us, I know. But how do you sit there now with steady hands, and drink your coffee as if none of this had happened?’
Nick shrugged. ‘I was an army medic for ten years, remember. It’s all to do with training and experience. Same as my job now, only different skills and different situations.’
Laki nodded slowly. ‘I am not a soldier, Nick. Not a dangerous man like you. I have no army training. I am just a spoilt brat who joined the EMS as an act of rebellion, because I did not want to work in my father’s business and kiss the feet of government fat cats.’ He tapped a fourth packet of sugar into his mug. ‘This coffee is very bitter. It suits my mood. Right now I am thinking I am soft and useless. What would I have done if I had been alone when those men arrived?’
‘They weren’t after you. I think they were after me.’
‘Will you teach me to shoot?’
Nick’s lips twitched. ‘Laki, I’m the wrong person to ask. The guys in my old unit always joked that given the way I shot, it’s just as well I became a medic. They wouldn’t have wasted a single bullet in a gunfight like that.’
Laki made a weak attempt at a smile. ‘I’m guessing that we will say nothing about what happened. That we do not involve the police.’ ‘You’re guessing right.’
Back in Jo’burg, Nick dropped Laki off at his house. He was desperately tired. He felt as if he could sleep for a week, but he couldn’t afford that luxury. Rachel was missing and he was no closer to discovering why. More importantly, he was certain somebody was tracking his car.
He couldn’t do anything about Rachel, but he could do something about his Jeep.
A short while later, he pulled up outside the imposing gatehouse of an access-controlled housing estate in Sandton.
Johan Swanepoel was waiting for him at the bottom of his driveway. Despite the security at the gatehouse, Johan’s house was surrounded by a high brick wall topped with an electric fence. Inward- and outward-facing cameras were also positioned at strategic points.
Johan was a slim man whose spare build and disarming manner belied his awesome physical stamina and disproportionate strength. Once, during a mission in Angola, he’d run non-stop through the bush for eight hours, as silent as a cheetah. Then, using only a long knife, he had dispatched four Unita guards holding prisoners hostage, decapitating one of the guards with a single slash of his blade. Or so it was said.
‘Good to see you, Kenyon,’ he said.
‘Good to see you, too.’ Nick shook his hand.
‘Still working with the EMS?’
‘Yep.’
Johan shot him a sharp-eyed glance. ‘It’s a young man’s job.’
‘I know.’
‘Remember, my offer still stands.’
After their unit had been disbanded, Johan became a security consultant. They’d got together a few times over the years, mostly at the shooting range, and each time Johan had invited Nick to come on board with him and handle assignments. Nick wasn’t sure what the assignments involved. Looking at Johan’s manicured lawn and double-storey mansion, he guessed they were lucrative.
Johan always looked the same. Wiry, tanned, and casually dressed. This morning, just above the neckline of his black T-shirt, Nick could see the tip of the long, puckered scar that ran down his side – a relic of the landmine explosion that had almost killed him during their Angola years.
‘Being a professional soldier is like gambling,’ Johan had often said to him. ‘You play the percentages, calculate the odds. If the money’s worth the risk, you do it.’ He would then slap Nick on the back. ‘You’re our insurance. You’re the fallback when things go wrong,’ he would say, jokingly.
Now Johan glanced at him and touched the scar. Nick thought he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. Then he turned back to the car and frowned when he saw the bullet holes.
‘Busy night, Kenyon?’
‘Busier than usual, yes.’
Johan didn’t inquire further. ‘You need that glass replaced, I’ve got a contact you could use. I’m guessing you don’t want to get an insurance company involved.’
‘Appreciate it,’ Nick said. Johan took a small notepad out of the pocket of his jeans and scribbled a phone number down. He ripped the page out and handed it over.
‘So, somebody’s tracking you?’
‘Yes. I wasn’t physically tailed, I’m sure of that.’
‘Right. Let’s see what we can find.’ Johan turned and headed back towards the house.
Nick followed him inside. Early morning sunshine spilled through the east windows, warm as honey on the pale tiled floor. He could smell toast and fresh coffee and hear the muted noise of a television. Through a white archway, he caught a glimpse of a pretty brunette and a little boy sitting at a breakfast table. The boy was the spitting image of Johan, but without the same hardness in his eyes.
In the centre of the pool of sunshine, a slim brindled cat was carefully grooming its tail. In Sierra Leone, Johan had rescued a brindled kitten from an abandoned refugee camp. He’d taken it with him everywhere, perched on his shoulder like a little monkey, and smuggled it back through various borders by wrapping it in his jacket. Nick wasn’t sure whether this was the same cat or a descendant. When it saw Johan it stopped washing itself and rolled onto its back, stretching its paws into the air.
Johan paused to tickle the cat’s stomach. Then he unlocked a door and retrieved some items from inside the windowless room. A couple of small black objects which Nick identified as frequency detectors, and a narrow pole with a round mirror attached to the end of it.
Nick raised his eyebrows when he saw the mirror.
‘Didn’t think technology had advanced so far.’
Johan gave a small nod, keeping his expression deadpan.
The pretty brunette brought them coffee. Johan introduced her as Trudie, his wife, and the boy following her as Danie, his son. The boy stared shyly up at him. Nick gave him a thumbs-up sign. After a pause, the kid returned it.
They went back out to the Jeep and Johan ran the mirror under it, scrutinising the reflection closely. ‘Can’t see anything suspicious,’ he said eventually. He turned on one of the black scanning devices. ‘You got an existing tracking system fitted in this car? Any GPS devices currently in operation?’
‘No. The GPS is turned off,’ Nick said.
‘Right. So anything we find is a potential problem.’
It didn’t take Johan long to source the problem. He moved the scanning device slowly round the outside of the car. Nick watched him, occasionally glancing across at the boy, who’d followed them outside. He was running across the lawn, making mock-charges at two hadedas searching for insects, his footsteps leaving darker patches in the dew-soaked grass.
The big, heavy-bodied birds watched the boy. When one of his forays came too close, they unfurled their wings and flapped clumsily into the air, cawing to each other with their distinctive cry. Nick detected a note of reproach in it.
‘Leave the birds alone, Danie,’ Johan called, without looking round. Then, to Nick, ‘I think we’ve got something here.’
He checked the screen on the handheld device and moved it nearer the car. He opened the back door, leaned in, and fumbled under the front passenger seat. Then he put his finger to his lips and beckoned Nick forward. He pointed to a small black object wedged under the seat. It looked like the partner to the detection device he carried, as if they could have been sold as a set.
Johan closed the car door again.
‘It’s a GSM bug,’ he said. ‘Nice technology. They can track you from anywhere using a computer or a cellphone. That little device has got a SIM card inside it, so if they dial in they can listen to you, too.’
‘Right.’ Nick stared at the emerald green grass where the two hadedas had returned to resume their breakfast, keeping a watchful eye on the boy. Lucky birds, he thought. At least they knew who was out to get them. Who the hell would go to the trouble of bugging his car to follow his movements? And why? Was his brother involved in this?
He turned back to his vehicle. ‘Any way of telling how long that device has been there?’
‘Well, it was working last night, obviously. Battery life’s about ten days on a gadget like that. Less, if you’re dialling into it often. So, any time from yesterday to ten days ago.’ Johan switched off his bug detector. ‘What do you want to do? Leave it in there, try some misdirection? If you remove it, they’ll know immediately.’
Nick shook his head. ‘Misdirection’s pointless. I’ve got no idea who put it there.’
‘You leave your car unlocked?’
‘Never.’
‘Who’s been travelling with you, past week or so? Someone could have held it in their hand, slipped it under the seat.’
‘I’ll look into it. But take it out, please. Can you use it?’
‘Of course. Just need to swap the SIM card.’
‘Then it’s yours.’
‘I’ll give you some cash for it. They cost a few grand, new.’
‘No, have it, really.’
Johan shrugged. ‘OK. You need any more help, I owe you.’
Nick drove away in his bug-free car a few minutes later. Johan had checked for a second device, but found nothing.
Who had put the bug there? The question burned in his stomach. He kept his car locked and his keys with him at all times. The car had an alarm system, so even if somebody had managed to jimmy the lock while it was parked, the alarm would have gone off. And then, when he’d returned to the car, he would have known it had been interfered with.
The only people who’d been in his car in the past week were Rachel and Laki.
He couldn’t even begin to think about the implications. Both were impossible. Laki was his friend. Rachel was a teacher. What the hell would a teacher know about expensive tracking devices?
Prompted by that thought, he tried Rachel’s number again. It rang through to voicemail. Nick punched the steering wheel. What the hell should he do? She’d disappeared less than twenty-four hours ago. Too soon to start worrying seriously. Too late, he feared, to save her from harm, if harm had befallen her.
Where had Paul gone? Why had four gunmen tried to kill him in Louis Trichardt? Where was the shadowy Abraham Jonas who had vanished during Natasha’s accident? And how were all of these connected, if they were connected at all?
He dropped the Jeep off at the glass replacement shop and the man gave him a lift to work. Slumped in the passenger seat, confused and exhausted, Nick knew he needed to find out exactly what he’d got himself into, before he became a victim.