| Wednesday, 17 June 2009 | 7 |
It was late but there was still time. De Villiers used his new cellphone and rang each of the names on the list of numbers Telecom New Zealand had provided. He had the names and they had the numbers. The dialling codes suggested the general localities where these sixteen soldiers now lived. All but two were at home and came to the phone. Each time De Villiers said that his cellphone was ringing and that he would call again. When he had finished, he had crossed fourteen names off the list. He eyed the other two names and rang the first for the second time.
A woman answered at the first ring. ‘Yes.’
‘It’s me again,’ De Villiers said. ‘Could you please tell me where he is and when he’ll be back? This is really important.’
‘Are you Sandy’s boyfriend?’ she asked.
De Villiers hedged. ‘Sandy?’
‘Yes, Sandy’s boyfriend.’
De Villiers played for time. ‘I know Sandy, but she’s not my girlfriend.’ He elaborated on the lie as he progressed. ‘At least, she doesn’t think so.’
The woman started crying. ‘He’s having an affair with Sandy, I’m sure. He said he was going pig hunting in the Ureweras, but I know he’s with Sandy.’
‘How do you know?’ De Villiers asked.
She sniffed. ‘I spoke to her school and they said she’d taken two weeks’ leave. That’s exactly what he’s done. Taken two weeks’ leave.’
They expect the operation to take two weeks, De Villiers thought. That is atypical for the recces, who specialise in surprise attacks and quick exfiltrations. There were Special Forces operators involved in Zoë’s abduction, but they were not behaving like typical recces.
He was forced to lie again. ‘Do you have the school’s number for me, please? I had it but I’ve dropped my phone and now it’s not working.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘But it’s in the book. St Peter’s College.’
‘Thanks,’ De Villiers said. ‘Did he say that he was going with someone else?’
‘He always goes with Mooikats,’ she said. ‘And he also cheats on his wife. With Sandy’s sister.’
‘Mooikats?’
‘Yes, his surname is Britz. Hendrik Britz.’
De Villiers didn’t have to write the name down. It belonged to the next number he was going to dial. De Villiers was now certain with whom he was dealing. Mooikats was the nickname of a legendary recce operator who, according to the legend, went about barefoot on operations in the bush as well as in urban counterterrorism operations. While it had never been formally admitted, not even to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Mooikats was credited with a number of assassinations both inside and outside the country.
The next lie came seamlessly. ‘Do you have a cellphone number for him? I need to talk to Sandy, but I lost her number when my phone broke.’
‘So you are her boyfriend.’
‘Not really,’ he lied again.
‘Hold on,’ she said. He could hear her fiddling with something and guessed it was her handbag. ‘Here it is.’
She repeated the number to make sure he had it down correctly. ‘And let me know if Sandy is with him,’ she said. ‘He’s in for a big surprise when he gets home.’
De Villiers took a chance. ‘And the number for Mooikats, if I don’t get through to your husband?’
She readily obliged. ‘They’ve been friends since their army days, and they always cover for each other.’ Recces to the death, De Villiers thought, even here, ten thousand kilometres from the theatre of war.
De Villiers looked at his watch. It was too late to catch Sandy’s school principal at work. He phoned him at home and lied.
An hour later he had four cellphone numbers. According to the principal, Sandy and her sister Cathy, a nurse at Auckland Hospital, had taken leave together to go hiking: tramping, in the vernacular. It had been a rather sudden affair and he had had quite a problem to find a locum PE teacher to stand in for Sandy.
One of the cellphones was on Telstra and the other three on Vodafone. He called DS Veerasinghe. She was the latest addition to his team and he was glad to have her. She was always first to arrive in the morning and last to leave. At the selection interviews, she had impressed him with what she called her father’s philosophy. ‘Never leave your desk in the evening until you have done all the work on it.’
Her husband called her to the phone. ‘I’m going to put your father’s philosophy to the test, Vaishna,’ De Villiers said. ‘I have another job for you and it’s urgent.’
He gave her the list. ‘I need the phone records for each of these numbers for the last three months.’
He waited for her to read the numbers back to him. ‘And then find out which cellphone towers are nearest to their current locations and, if they are moving, where they are heading.’
‘Is this still about your daughter’s case, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll get to it immediately.’
‘But this is off the record. I don’t want this to be logged in the investigation diary,’ De Villiers said. ‘This is part of something far bigger than my daughter’s case.’
She had children of her own. ‘Nothing can be bigger than the case of a missing child,’ she said without fear of contradiction.
‘Get on with it,’ De Villiers said. ‘And please keep me informed.’