It was fun all the way. They woke up late that Sunday, with only time for a riotously sensuous shower together (‘What are we going to do with that, McQuade – we simply haven’t got time …’) before rushing to the airport. He had brought two bottles of champagne the night before and they drank the first one in the taxi and hurried last up into the aircraft. And to sustain them during that painful eternity before the air hostesses cranked up their trolleys, they opened the second bottle with a resounding pop and flying spume. It all seemed terribly funny. Mercifully the air hostesses reached them before the second bottle was finished and they bought a third. They changed planes in Windhoek and bought a fourth. They were feeling no pain at all when their aircraft finally bounced down on the desertous outpost of Walvis Bay. McQuade held a finger out at her: ‘Remember you only cry twice in Walvis Bay. The day you arrive …’
The taxi drove them past the only bit of greenery of the municipal gardens, down into Fifth Street, to McQuade’s house. ‘And the day you see the Railway Yard View.’
There was a letter from the Stormtrooper. He shoved it in his pocket unopened. ‘I’ll get some blankets and things for the road.’
He put his notes about Heinrich Muller in a box under his bed, and kept only the photograph. Twenty minutes later they were on their way out of town, the Landrover loaded with bedding, cooking utensils, canned food, cold beer in an icebox, wine and other booze.
It was holiday-mood all the way. He was vastly impressed at how much she could drink: she kept pace with him, beer for beer, glass for glass as they drove. She was delighted with this unexpected adventure, she was enchanted with the Germanic quaintness of Swakopmund, enthralled with the desert beyond, the vastness, the sand dunes, the crashing Atlantic surf. He had intended spending the night at the little hotel in Henties Bay, the last watering hole until they reached Damaraland, but she protested, ‘But we’re in Africa. I thought we were going to camp!’ At Cape Cross he drove down to the shore to show her the seal colony. This was where Bartholomew Diaz first set foot in Africa in the fifteenth century and raised a cross. As they approached, they could smell the rich ripeness of wet seals, and the air was full of their barking and bleating. ‘Oh my!’
Thousands of seals basked and flopped and quarrelled on the rocky beach. Great bulls reared and flashed their jaws at each other, contesting territory; calves scampered and wrestled or howled for their mothers, cows lolled and flapped and dozed. The rocks seemed a vast mass of seething, heaving, fat furry life, and the crashing surf beyond was black with seals hunting and surfing, crashing and skidding onto the beach. Sarah was enthralled, snapping photographs, and making notes into her tape-recorder.
The sun was getting low when he pulled off the road and drove down to the sea to camp. She grinned, ‘Last one in doesn’t get laid!’ She scrambled out and whipped her dress off over her head. She pulled her panties down her hips with a wriggle and ran for the beach. McQuade was tearing off his shirt as he ran after her, yelling ‘Unfair!’ He was still hopping and wrenching his trousers over his ankles as she hit the Atlantic surf in a crash, her body gleaming gold in the sundown. He went charging in after her, the cold hitting him like a blow. She broke surface beyond him and shrieked, ‘It’s freezing!’
He thrashed out after her, she flailed away from him, arms flashing and lovely legs kicking. He seized her slippery body and wrenched her satiny nakedness into his arms.
‘So I don’t get laid, huh?’
‘Nope, only I do!’
They came wading out of the crashing water, hand in hand, feeling braced, goosefleshed, happy. McQuade watched her as she wriggled fresh panties up over her thighs and he felt his heart turn over for the sheer curvaceous, athletic beauty of her. She grinned. ‘Something wrong with these panties?’
‘They’ll have to go,’ he said sadly.
They dressed up warmly, stunned almost sober and fresh by the Atlantic. He built a crackling fire out of driftwood, and they sat side by side under the stars, staring into it – sipping good Cape wine with the glow of the sea and fire, while lamb chops slowly grilled. The moon came up, lighting up the black Atlantic, silvering the silent desert and baskets of stars came out to match the lovely glow of the good wine. They ate a raft of succulent chops with their fingers, tearing the pink flesh and crispy fat off the bones, and it tasted like the best food they had ever eaten; they ate until they were both gloriously replete, then she collapsed back on the sand, her arms outflung and she smiled. ‘Oh – I’m so glad I came …’
She scrambled into the double sleeping bag – McQuade had artfully zipped two together – with a grin of pure pleasure on her face, and her almost girlish excitement at the whole adventure was just as sensuous as the sophisticated woman he had feverishly stripped the night before. Afterwards, lying flat out on her back, her hair spreadeagled, her breasts heaving with passion spent, she smiled up at the stars and whispered:
‘Oh, I’m so happy …’
The sun was up when they reached the lonely ranger’s gate to the Skeleton Coast. They crossed the dry, caked bed of the Ugab River. She made notes into her tape-recorder. ‘What magnificent desolation … Daunting vastness. The sun beating down, the dunes rearing up. A moonscape of blistering sand and rocks undulating. Just over there the Atlantic thundering and crashing. It is hard to imagine that there’s any life here, yet gemsbok and springbok and jackals live in this desert land, feeding on the small patches of green that line the dry riverbeds, and lions sometimes come down out of the faraway hills to cross the desert to feed on the seals.’
McQuade said, ‘And they’re very dangerous lions because they’re very hungry.’
She repeated the detail into her recorder, then sighed. ‘This is so harsh yet so beautiful …’
Just before Torra Bay they came to the road that led east, across the desert towards Damaraland. She said into the recorder, ‘We have left the sandy coastal road. Now the dunes are changing colour to crusty pinky brown – this is gravel which the wind has swept up onto them. Now the land is losing its moonscape quality and turning into a flat hard brown stoniness that shimmers in the distance. Here and there are massive sprawling plants with fleshy, tentacle-like leaves that lie on the earth – these are welwitschia, and they are over two thousand years old.’
Now, on the horizon, hills were rising up, under the mercilessly blue sky, jumbled mountains of many different shapes, carved by the winds, gleaming iron black under the searing sun, and there were shimmering mirages on the hard earth between them: it was afternoon when they came to the Springbokwasser gate. McQuade went into the ranger’s office and signed out of the Skeleton Coast.
They drove into the jumbled hills of Damaraland. It was late afternoon when they reached the oasis of Palmwag. Tall palm trees rose up, and clustered around them were half a dozen thatched huts. A thatched gateway bade them welcome to the Palmwag Safari Lodge.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it’s delightful!’
Heavy greenery clustered under the palms. There was a thatched bar and dining hut. Amongst the palms were small swimming pools where the stream came out of the ground.
They were the only guests. The floors of the huts were raw cement, and the walls were made of cane that let daylight through. The whole place was delightfully African and tranquil. She said, ‘This country gets to you …’
They plunged into the blue cool pool and he took her in his arms. They held each other, hands laced behind each other’s necks, and she slipped her legs around his hips and they just grinned at each other in sheer happiness; and he slipped his hand under her bikini and felt her soft cool nakedness, and she slipped her hand inside his swimming trunks. They wallowed in the beautiful pool, sharing the excitement of each other, the sheer pleasure and anticipation of what they were going to do. She grinned at him with sparkly eyes: ‘I’m having a lovely time …’ and it seemed McQuade had never been so happy. He had lived long enough to know that these things take time, but it felt as if he was head over heels in love.
Early next morning he drove to Jakob’s kraal. He left Sarah still deep asleep in their hut. He took the photograph of Heinrich Muller. An hour later he ground up the track to Jakob’s cluster of stone huts. The scene was exactly the same as last time: the cooking fire smouldering, the goats wandering and the chickens scratching. Jakob came out of the dark hut, looking astonished. ‘Goeie more, Jakob!’
Jakob took the photograph in gnarled fingers. He looked at it only a second.
‘Ja.’
McQuade felt triumphant. Oh yes! ‘Ja, what?’
‘Ja.’ Jakob nodded at the photograph. ‘This is the man who came out of the sea.’
‘How can you be sure? Here he is neat, his hair combed. When you saw him he was wild.’
Jakob said: ‘I am sure.’
McQuade was satisfied. These natives could describe the markings of an antelope they killed ten years ago. ‘Jakob, have you told anybody about this, since last I saw you?’
Jakob shook his head.
‘And Skellum? Where is he?’
Jakob waved his hand eastwards. ‘In the towns. Working.’
‘Which town?’
‘I do not know.’
McQuade didn’t like that, Skellum slobbering around civilization with his big drunken mouth. And no way did he want to double the risk through Jakob. ‘Jakob, I need a man to work for a month or two. If I come back to fetch you in three days, will you come to work for me? I’ll pay four hundred rand a month.’
Four hundred was untold wealth to Jakob. He said emphatically, at McQuade’s chest, ‘Ja, Meneer.’
‘Good. And don’t repeat any of this to anyone …’
McQuade was feeling very pleased with life as he drove back to Palmwag. He had been right, he had stumbled upon something very big indeed. And it was a glorious morning and he was driving back to his glorious woman and they had four glorious days together before the Bonanza came back, and next week he was going to be a multi-millionaire. Then he was going to cover himself in glory by being the man to find Heinrich Muller, the most-wanted war-criminal today.