Half an hour later, Crys was behind the wheel of the Land Rover, driving them back to the camp. Ho was slumped in the seat next to her, apparently exhausted by the walk back to the vehicle. Bongani sat behind him, covering him with the handgun. As they went, Crys tried to get information out of the man, asking questions in Vietnamese about where he’d come from and who the dead pilot was. Ho said nothing. Every now and again, he shook his head. It was as if he were drunk.
Half a million dollars in a briefcase, she thought. It had to be for something big. This could be the connection to Michael she’d been looking for.
‘Do you know a Michael Davidson – a reporter from America?’ she asked him in Vietnamese. ‘Tell me now!’
‘Don’t know any Americans,’ he replied, shaking his head again, and he refused to say anything else.
Crys felt her frustration building. Every time she felt she was getting closer to finding out something useful about Michael, the rug was pulled from under her. But he could be lying. She would question him again when they reached the camp.
After about ten minutes of rough bumping and bouncing, Ho let out a groan and leaned forwards. He put his head on his knees and let his arms hang down. It was clear now he was in a lot of pain. After another minute or so, he let out another weird, strangled groan and seemed to collapse further.
‘I hope he doesn’t die,’ Bongani said, leaning forwards a little. ‘The police will want him to talk.’
Crys shuddered at the thought of what Ho was in for if the police were anything like the anti-poaching team.
‘What were you asking—’ Bongani began, but suddenly Ho sat up. Crys glanced at him … right into the barrel of a gun. She froze, cursing herself for missing a second gun when she’d searched him. It must have been in an ankle holster. She gripped the wheel harder, looked forwards at the road.
‘Don’t move!’ Ho yelled at her. Then turned back to Bongani. ‘Drop gun, or I kill her.’
‘If you shoot her, I’ll kill you,’ Bongani shouted back, but there was uncertainty in his voice. Crys hoped Ho wouldn’t pick it up.
‘No problem. I die if police get me anyway. Drop gun. Now!’
Crys was beginning to panic. He was going to kill both of them. They bounced down into a deep rut and up again, Crys almost losing control of the vehicle. She tightened her arms and clenched her hands harder round the wheel.
Her mind raced through her options – none of them seemed good.
Think!
The moment seemed to stretch. The sun seemed suddenly hotter. The air thick and oppressive. She almost couldn’t breathe. And then an idea came to her.
‘Bongani…’ she said carefully, ‘he’s going to kill me. Drop the gun and grab the back of my seat so he can see your hands.’
‘Then he’ll kill both of us!’
‘Drop the gun, dammit, and grab the seat.’
She hoped he could figure out what she was going to do. She eased her foot onto the accelerator, letting the vehicle speed up, but not too much.
Bongani dropped the gun and, as soon as Crys saw Ho lean backwards to retrieve it, she slammed hard on the brakes. Ho spun forwards, lost his gun, and his head slammed onto the metal over the dashboard. He collapsed, sliding down so he was half on the seat and half on the floor. She grabbed the gun and jumped out of the Land Rover. Bongani followed, his eyes wide. He’d figured it out.
‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘That was clever.’
Crys took a deep breath. ‘I thought that was the end of us.’
He opened the passenger door and grabbed Ho, dragging him onto the ground.
There was no movement from the man. He fell into the dust like a rag doll. His arms were twisted and his legs bent awkwardly.
Crys suddenly had an awful feeling. She pushed Bongani aside and felt for Ho’s pulse.
There wasn’t one.
A wave of panic hit her. Had she killed him? Had she really taken someone’s life…? She stumbled backwards.
‘He’s … he’s dead.’ She turned to Bongani. ‘He’s dead. We killed him… I killed him.’
Bongani just stared.
‘What are we going to do?’ The panic was rising.
After a moment, Bongani said, ‘Why don’t we take him back to where he was hiding? If someone finds him, they won’t be able to tell we did anything.’
Crys put both hands on the side of the Land Rover to support herself, shaking her head, trying to think clearly.
‘No. It was self-defence. We’ll just have to explain it all to the police. I didn’t mean to kill him. You saw that. He pulled a gun on us! I was looking into the barrel of a gun. I had to do something.’
‘What about the money?’
She let go of the Land Rover. ‘The money?’ For a moment, she didn’t know what Bongani was talking about. In her confusion, she’d forgotten about the briefcase stuffed with dollars.
It came back to her. ‘We’ll give it to the police. It’ll be their problem. We’ll just tell them exactly what happened.’
Bongani shook his head. ‘You don’t know the police here. They’ll keep it for themselves. It’s a lot of money.’
Crys gaped at him. ‘They can’t do that! We know all about it. I’ll be writing about it in the paper. They’ll have to investigate it properly. And surely they’ll be more concerned that two men have died?’
Bongani was shaking his head. ‘They won’t care about the dead men. They’ll just want the money. We’ll just be in their way.’
‘We have to turn it in to them! It’s not ours. We can’t just keep it!’
He stared at her, still shaking his head, lips slightly pursed.
Suddenly Crys guessed exactly what he wanted. ‘That’s it, isn’t it, Bongani? You want to keep the money yourself!’
‘Don’t tell me what to do! It’s bad enough I’ve killed someone. And now you want to turn me into a thief?’
‘Crys, I know about this. You don’t. This is my country, not yours. The police—’
‘It’s not right, Bongani. I won’t do it!’ She was beginning to shout. ‘And anyway, as soon as you start flashing the money around, everyone will know it was you who stole it.’
They stared at each other. A stand-off.
Bongani broke the silence. ‘It’s not the money. I don’t want to steal it. I just don’t want to be killed by the police!’ His voice was angry too now, and he was clenching his fists.
Crys bit her tongue. She wanted to scream at Bongani, tell him that he’d wanted the money all along, that whatever was going on he was part of it. But if she was right about him, that could be extremely dangerous.
‘Crys, please,’ Bongani continued, more quietly. ‘You don’t understand. Last year, a jewellery shop was robbed in Johannesburg. They got away with diamonds and other stones, and a lot of Krugerrands. The police tracked them down to a town called Hoedspruit, near Phalaborwa, and raided a house belonging to the mother of one of the robbers. All the robbers died in the shootout. And the mother and the grandmother, too … The old lady was bedridden. Both women were shot in the head like the pilot. By the police – “for resisting arrest” the police said.’
She turned and walked away a few steps. She looked down at the man she’d killed. If the police here were so corrupt, how could she trust that they would understand that she’d acted in self-defence? How could she plead her case?
‘And the diamonds and Krugerrands?’ she asked, still looking at Ho.
‘The police said they never found them.’
At last, Crys realised what Bongani was saying: if the two of them weren’t around, they wouldn’t be telling anyone about the briefcase. She turned back to Bongani. She could feel herself shaking.
‘You mean … You must be kidding … They’d really just kill us?’
He nodded, but didn’t say anything.
Are the police really like that in South Africa? That corrupt?
Crys couldn’t believe it.
‘There are two of us,’ she said, ‘and I’m from the US and a newspaper reporter … They wouldn’t dare touch me, would they? There’d be … There’d be an international incident … Something…’
Crys put her hands to her head, as if she were trying to contain the realisation that was growing there. The police would use what she’d done against her – so they could keep the money for themselves. It was unbelievable.
Bongani pointed at the briefcase. ‘That money, Crys, it’s for the rhino poaching. Everyone is involved. Do you think they can operate without the police? The police get their share. Always. Think about what Hennie did the other night. Why did he do that, Crys? It’s because the police won’t do anything. And if anyone speaks up, they disappear. I know these things. I—’
‘How do you know that’s what the money was for?’ There was an accusation in Crys’s voice, and she moved towards him.
Bongani hesitated, then took a step back. ‘It’s such a lot of money. The police will want it. They’ll kill us. Nobody will know; nobody will find us.’
Suddenly Crys thought of Michael again. He’d come to this part of the country, found something big, and vanished. And the police said they’d discovered nothing. But had they looked? Or did they know what had happened to him all along?
She felt way out of her depth. It seemed she was either going to be arrested or dead. She turned away from Bongani and took a few steps down the track. She squatted down on her haunches and put her head in her hands. How had she got into this situation? She didn’t mean to kill Ho, and now she might be killed herself … for trying to help. This had to be a dream, a bad nightmare.
She stayed in that position for a couple of minutes, but then, instead of panic, and despite the heat, a kind of chill calm settled on her. There had to be a solution to all this. She stood up and walked back to Bongani.
He was standing watching her calmly, as if he knew she’d come around to his way of thinking eventually.
‘What should we do then?’ she asked flatly.
‘What I said – take him back to those rocks and leave him. But we keep the money.’
‘The Land Rover tracks, our footprints – we’d never get away with it.’
‘We’ll say we followed the tracks then gave up.’
She looked into his eyes. ‘It won’t work, Bongani. There are cartridges we won’t be able to find, bullets, DNA, fingerprints.’
He was silent for several seconds. ‘Okay. We bury the money here. We can come back for it later.’
She glowered at him.
Unless he wanted it all for himself. Then he’d make sure she couldn’t come back for it.
But she couldn’t read him; his face was impassive.
She had to trust him for the moment – play this by ear. And watch her back too. She had to make a choice. Now.
‘All right, all right, we bury it here. But we tell Johannes and Anton everything as soon as we’re back at Tshukudu. Make it their problem. This is too much for me. I’ll get the GPS co-ords so we can find it when we come back.’
Then an idea occurred to her – a little insurance policy. She leaned inside the Land Rover and took the briefcase out, opened it, removed a bundle of bills, counted out ten and gave them to Bongani. A thousand US dollars. That would help his family. And hopefully save her too, if he ever decided to say she was the one responsible. She put the rest back.
‘I’m sure you can use the money,’ she said. ‘Don’t tell anyone and be careful how you spend it.’
He nodded.
‘Okay, let’s bury the case.’
In saying that, Crys knew she was stirring up a hornet’s nest. The police would want it, Bongani would want it. And somebody had lost it and would want it back. She was betting that somebody knew something about Michael.
Bongani nodded again. He quickly unclipped the spade from the side of the Land Rover, walked about thirty metres to the side of the track, and started digging.
It didn’t take long in the soft sand to make a hole big enough for the briefcase. Crys threw it in, and Bongani covered it up, smoothing the surface and kicking leaves over it.
Back at the Land Rover, Crys grabbed the GPS and noted the coordinates of the hole. While she did that, Bongani used a dead branch to erase their footprints in the sand, walking backwards towards the vehicle.
‘What are we going to do with him?’ Bongani asked, pointing at Ho.
‘Put him back in the passenger seat. Just make sure he doesn’t fall out before we get back to the camp.’
Crys helped him lift up the body and dump it into the seat. Bongani closed and locked the Land Rover door, then climbed into the back. He clearly had no intention of driving back to camp sitting next to the corpse.
‘Let’s get going,’ Crys said. ‘We’re going to have to persuade the police we didn’t murder this man.’