Bongani and Crys sat under the jackalberry tree, waiting for the other Land Rover to return from Tshukudu with a member of staff who would help them strike camp. Bongani seemed comfortable to sit in silence, but Crys wanted to talk. She wanted to understand him better. There were things they needed to discuss, but she didn’t know how to start. Or how much she could trust him.
‘You have children, Bongani?’ she began.
He smiled. ‘Yes. Two healthy boys. The one is Tumisang – the first born. He’s in grade four now – very clever boy. I hope he’ll go to university one day. The other is Tlali. And we also have a girl. Her name is Puleng. It means “in the rain” because she was born during a big thunderstorm. She brought luck because after the good rains there were good crops.’ His eyes seemed to look to somewhere distant.
‘Does your family live close to Tshukudu? Do you see them often?’
The smile disappeared. ‘No, only when I have leave. Maybe once a month. They’re at my house in Mapata. It’s the village where I went for the funeral. It takes too long to get there from Tshukudu just for a weekend. It isn’t that far, but the roads are bad.’
She knew that many people lived that way, but it was sad that he saw his kids so seldom. But then she didn’t see her parents either. And her brother only occasionally. She looked at the ground, feeling the pain.
‘And you, Crys? Do you have children?’
Crys looked up and laughed. ‘No. First, you need a husband…’
He looked puzzled. ‘There must be many men who want to marry you. The men in America must be quite stupid.’
She laughed again, more warmly this time. ‘There are a few. But, maybe I don’t want them?’
He nodded. ‘You’re young, so you can wait for one you like, who has some money. But a woman needs a husband and children.’
She looked down again. She’d thought that Michael, maybe… That looked as though it was history now.
At that point, the remaining policeman, a Constable Ngweni, joined them.
Crys tried to strike up a conversation, perhaps because she wanted to give the impression of innocence, perhaps to distract herself from the dark thoughts in her head. But he wasn’t talkative and after a few minutes, she gave up.
‘Would you like a beer?’ she suggested eventually.
‘Yes, please.’
Crys fetched beers for the two men and a glass of fruit juice for herself, and then they sat in silence, lost in their thoughts.
Eventually, she turned to Bongani. ‘Surely the others should have arrived by now. Where do you think they are?’
‘Maybe the police were talking to them also.’ He paused, giving Ngweni a sidelong glance. ‘Anyway, even if they get here this afternoon, it will be too late to go back. We should start a fire, so we can cook some meat.’
He stood up and collected an armful of twigs, which he then arranged in a tent-like structure. When it was burning well, he added some small branches. Finally, he dragged over a big log of ironwood and put it on top. They’d used similar logs the night before, which had burned hot for hours. He sat back down, and they all stared into the flames. Silence reigned once more.
As dusk fell, Crys went to the kitchen and wrapped some potatoes in aluminium foil. She returned to the fire and dropped them on the coals. Then, she threw together a salad and grabbed two more beers.
When everything was ready, Bongani cooked the meat, and they all sat round the fire, drinks propped up in the soft sand. It almost felt like a normal evening. But Crys realised she’d done everything mechanically and didn’t really have any appetite.
As darkness fell, she heard a birdcall nearby – it sounded like a prrr.
‘Bongani, do you hear that bird? What is it?’
‘That one is an African scops-owl,’ he said, pointing into the darkness. ‘It’s very small.’ He held his hands about fifteen centimetres apart.
‘And that one is a nightjar.’ He pointed in another direction. ‘It’s called fiery-necked. I’m not sure why, because I’ve never seen any fire on it, or even red on its neck. They say he’s calling “Good Lord deliver us”.’
Crys listened carefully and nodded. It did sound sort of like that. She knew nightjars from the north woods of Minnesota and wondered whether it was of the same family.
Crys looked at Ngweni. His face was blank in the firelight, probably wondering why they were discussing birds, given the events of the past few hours.
When they’d finished eating, the constable said goodnight and headed to his tent. He’d obviously decided they weren’t going to make a run for it, and Crys guessed his instructions didn’t include eavesdropping on any conversation Bongani and she might have.
‘Mabula give you a hard time?’ she asked Bongani.
He shrugged. ‘Kept asking the same questions, over and over. That’s all.’ He poked at the fire with a stick.
‘You seem worried. Want to talk about it?’
He shook his head and gazed at the ground.
She decided to confront him with what had been nagging at her mind for hours. This could be her last opportunity to ask him. Once they were back at Tshukudu, or with the police in Giyani, she might not see him alone again. She looked up at the stars, figuring out how to say it.
She decided to just come out with it. ‘It’s because you were there, isn’t it, Bongani? For some reason, you were there when that plane crashed.’
He turned to her, his face a picture of astonishment.
‘It doesn’t take much to figure it out. You said the mourning finished early, but why didn’t you sleep there instead of driving back at three a.m.?’
At first, he didn’t reply, but she just waited. Most people need to fill a silence, and she thought he probably wanted to get whatever was bothering him off his chest.
‘Yes,’ he said eventually. He turned away from her and looked into the fire again. ‘Yes, I was there to meet the plane. They told me that all I had to do was drive one of the passengers to a house about an hour away, and he’d give me a thousand US dollars when we got there. It sounded pretty easy. And I really need the money, Crys.’ He looked at her sideways, his eyebrows raised, questioning.
‘Who told you to do it?’
Bongani stared back into the fire. ‘The people I talk to sometimes.’
‘What people?’
‘Some people in the village. They ask me questions, and sometimes I tell them stuff.’
‘Stuff? Stuff about what you’ve seen on the trips maybe? Stuff like that?’
He nodded.
For a moment, she was speechless. He was tipping off poachers! The safari was being used as part of their information network. Part of her wanted to hit him, but then she thought of Hennie and his team and what they’d done. She bit down on her anger.
‘Why, Bongani? Surely the Malans would’ve helped you if you needed more money. There must have been another way.’
‘The Malans do lend me money sometimes, but it isn’t enough.’
‘So, you spy for the poachers but then go and shoot and torture them? Whose side are you on, Bongani?’
‘You don’t know how poor we are out here, Crys. You live in America. We have nothing.’ He shook his head. ‘My brother doesn’t have a job, and he has three kids; my sister has AIDS; and I’ve got my own family. I’m the only one bringing in money for all those people.’ He kept his eyes on the flames.
He was supporting all of them on a miserable salary sweetened by tips. No wonder he looked for a little extra by telling his contact where to look for elephants and rhinos. Especially rhinos.
‘So that whole story about the funeral was just a lie to cover your job for the poachers.’
He shook his head. ‘No, there really was a funeral for my cousin.’ His voice dropped. ‘But … but they had no body to bury.’
Suddenly she had a sinking feeling. She knew who Bongani’s cousin was. She remembered how Bongani had walked away when he saw the man being tortured.
‘Oh no, Bongani.’
He put his face in his hands, then clutched his head as though he wanted to squeeze the pain away. ‘I set it up for him. He had no work. He begged me. He knew I know the people. I told him no. It was too dangerous. He would be put in jail, shot, killed, even tortured. But he insisted. So … so I set it up for him.’ His body shook now and his voice broke. ‘It was his first time.’
‘You can’t blame yourself.’
She put a hand out towards him. But he stood up with a jerk, as if jumping away from her touch. He walked away from the firelight, towards the trees.
She decided to give him his space and, for want of something to do, went to the kitchen and made coffee for both of them. As she waited for the water to boil, she leaned against the table and thought. Everything that had happened these past few days now began to make sense – it was a tangle of threads, and at the centre was a poor man trying to make money for his family.
But where did Michael fit in?
When she got back to the fire, Bongani was sitting down again.
‘So, what happened with the plane?’ she asked as she joined him.
He took the mug from her. ‘I was waiting there and saw the plane hit that elephant. I thought it was the end of them, but the plane didn’t turn over or catch fire. Then it just sat there; there was no sign of anyone. The elephants were going mad. I was scared. So, I decided to come back to camp as though nothing had happened, but on the way, I realised the people in the plane might be badly injured. I had to go back, but I couldn’t do it by myself. That’s when I woke you.’
‘You know, that elephant probably saved your life, Bongani. I don’t think Ho wanted a ride; I think he wanted a vehicle. You would’ve had a bullet in your head too – as well as the pilot…’
Bongani got up and threw another log onto the fire.
‘Did you tell the colonel any of this?’
He shook his head. ‘No. Too dangerous.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Let’s leave it that way.’
Crys sipped at her coffee and watched the flames begin to curl round the new log. She couldn’t condone what Bongani had done. But now she could understand it. She felt for him and his family and wondered what she would do in his situation. She knew she should tell the Malans about what he’d done – he’d betrayed them; betrayed their trust. But if she did, he’d lose his job at Tshukudu, and maybe worse. And then there’d be no money at all for any of the people he was supporting. And now his cousin’s family had lost someone who might have brought in some money. She couldn’t make their situation worse. She wouldn’t say anything.
Crys closed her eyes. It was one thing to be a reporter – rooting out the real stories, the real reasons for the poaching. It was another to be right in the middle of what was happening.
‘Bongani, I have to ask you some more questions.’
He shrugged and said nothing.
‘I asked you before about Michael Davidson, and you said you saw him at Tshukudu and that was all. But you did speak to him about the poaching, didn’t you?’
He nodded. Crys said nothing, waiting.
‘He asked me about poaching, and if I knew who the main people were around Phalaborwa or Giyani.’
Crys leaned forwards, expectant.
‘I said I knew a man in my village. But he worked with some other people that I didn’t know. White people. They collected the horns from him and paid him. Mr Davidson was very excited. He said they were the people he wanted to know about.’ He stopped as though that was all he was going to say.
Crys couldn’t contain her impatience. ‘And?’
‘He said he would give me a hundred dollars if I could find out any information that would help him meet them.’
‘He wanted to meet them?’ Crys felt a tingle of excitement. Maybe this was the link she was looking for.
‘Yes.’
‘And did you help him? Did you find out anything?’ Crys wanted to shake the information out of him.
‘I told him it was very dangerous, that it was better not to mess with these people. But he said he just wanted to talk to them for his article – that it would be okay, that he wouldn’t upset them. Or tell them where he got the information.
‘When I went home that weekend, I talked to the man at my village – about my cousin…’ His voice cracked, and it took a few moments before he continued. ‘I had to be very careful, but I asked this man and he said these people – he called them “the Portuguese” – would be driving in a white bakkie between Phalaborwa and Giyani on a particular day.’
Crys gasped.
Is it possible that Bongani sent Michael to his death?
She took a deep breath to calm herself.
‘A bakkie? That’s a pickup, right?’
‘And what happened?’
‘I told Mr Davidson, and he gave me the money. He said he would follow it up. Then I went on a safari the next day, and I never heard from him again.’
‘Did you hear what happened to him?’
He shook his head. ‘But when I went back to the village, the man told me I had to help him with something now. That I owed him a favour because he’d given my cousin a job. And I could make some money as well. I had to meet a plane when I was in the bush…’
Crys was stunned. It all fit together.
‘Can you tell me how I can meet these people?’
He turned and stared at her as though she hadn’t heard a word he’d said. Crys didn’t know what to think. He could tell her, but he wasn’t going to.
They said nothing for a few minutes while they drank their coffee. As they sat there, she began to realise how arrogant people were in the West. How out of touch they were with the reality on the ground in Africa. All they talked about was the extinction of the rhino – not the abject poverty and desperation of the people. Again, she wondered what she would do if she was in Bongani’s boots. She didn’t want to answer that question.
She was exhausted, and her eyelids were getting heavy, but there was one more thing she had to do.
‘We’ve got to dig up the cash we took,’ she said. ‘We won’t be able to in the morning with Ngweni around.’
Bongani nodded, and they walked over to the Land Rover. Parking it with the wheel exactly on top of the money didn’t seem so clever anymore. There was no way they could start the vehicle – Ngweni would wake up for sure. They would have to push it. Crys climbed in and released the handbrake, then they set to work.
It was hard to move it in the sandy ground. But with a lot of effort, and rocking it back and forth, they rolled it back about fifty centimetres. She jumped back into the driver’s seat and pulled the brake on again. Then, keeping as quiet as they could, they dug up the cash, shook the sand off it, and hid the bills under the old maps and junk in the glove compartment. The police had searched the Land Rover once. Crys was betting they wouldn’t do it again.
After that they headed for bed.
Before she could go to sleep, bad thoughts and images were whirling through her brain. It seemed certain that Michael was dead. And Bongani was involved in helping the poachers and may have sent Michael to his death. But did he have a choice?
And there was the tortured man on the ground in Kruger.
And dead rhinos.
Crys knew she had to calm herself. So, she spent fifteen minutes in a half lotus on the groundsheet, repeating her mantra.
When she eventually lay down, she was sure of one thing: she was going to find out who killed Michael and what had happened to his body.