3rd November 1997
Latitude 4° 26' S; Longitude 39° 48' E,
Off the Coast of Kenya, East Africa
Clay trimmed the mainsail, checked the compass. They were making good time in a following wind, the lights of Pemba now gone under the southern horizon.
Crowbar took a swig of whisky. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, passing the bottle to Clay. ‘They’ll be fine, ja.’
Clay drank, felt the alcohol burn into the uncertainty. ‘Definitely.’
Before leaving Unguja, Zanzibar’s main island, Crowbar had gone ashore to find a doctor. Clay had gone back into town for Zuz’s grandmother. He’d taken Zuz with him, shattered though she was. Together, they’d convinced the old lady to leave the island and that both she and her granddaughter were in danger, real danger. The kind where you are killed quickly and without pity.
Zuz’s grandmother had a sister on Pemba, the northernmost island of the Zanzibar archipelago, remote and little visited. Later that night, Crowbar had returned, patched up and drunk, and they’d slipped anchor – Clay, Crowbar, Zuz and her grandmother – and set sail.
By morning, they’d reached Pemba, eighty nautical miles north. Clay accompanied Zuz and her grandmother to the sister’s village just outside Chake-Chake. He told them not to worry. Crowbar had learned that both Big J and Dreadlocks had died of their wounds, and that the police had dropped the case. Clay gave Zuz’s grandmother twenty thousand dollars in cash. He told her there was more for Zuz’s education, when she needed it. The girl was bright. If she studied hard she could go to university, learn medicine, languages, engineering, philosophy. He’d once had a friend who wanted to be a philosopher, he told them.
They’d promised to stay put, to be careful, not to be conspicuous with the money; never to mention any of what had happened. And then he told Zuz he would come back one day, when he’d done what he needed to do. Zuz had cried, and held him for a long time, her arms wrapped around his waist. And then he kissed the hooped wire piled on the top of her head and walked away and did not look back.
‘She’s a pretty little bokkie,’ said Crowbar. He lifted the bottle to his mouth and took two big gulps. Clay could see his throat working in the wan and fractured starlight reflecting from the dark surface of the water.
‘Smart, too.’
‘What happened?’
Clay reached for the bottle, drank hard. ‘I happened.’
Crowbar sat for a long time, saying nothing.
Clay passed him the bottle. ‘They’ll never stop, will they?’
‘No.’
‘I’m going to kill him,’ said Clay. Then it would be over. One way or another. The mainland was only half a day away, less if the winds freshened. ‘I don’t give a shit what they do after that.’
Crowbar tilted back the bottle, drained the last. ‘I spoke to Hope,’ he said, tossing the empty bottle over the side. ‘Called her when you took the bokkie and her ooma ashore.’
Clay waited for him to continue.
‘Told her to take Kip and get the hell out of Cyprus. Go to her mother’s place in California.’
‘Shit.’
‘Fokkers touch either of them…’ Crowbar trailed off into silence, stared out to sea, mouth set hard, eyes narrowed. Clay had seen that look before.
‘They’ll be good, oom,’ said Clay. ‘Hope’s smart.’
‘As they come, Straker. Definitely. But she couldn’t fight her way out of a baby shower with a Parabellum.’
Clay clipped back the early edge of a smile. ‘Mombasa is less than six hours away. Get on a plane. Go to her.’
Crowbar looked at him hard, didn’t let go.
‘What?’
‘There’s something else.’
‘Jesus, Koevoet. Just tell me.’
‘Hope spoke to Rania.’
Kinetic energy surged through Clay’s spine, fizzed in his extremities.
‘She’s in Egypt,’ said Crowbar. ‘And she’s in trouble.’
Clay looked out across the star-lit horizon, felt the water humming against the rudder, flowing across the hull, tried to process this.
‘She needs your help, seun.’
Clay stared at his friend, his mentor, his commanding officer once, in another life – and in so many ways, still.
‘That’s what she told Hope. She needs you.’
The human brain is a chemical reactor. Dopamines light up pleasure centres. Hormones regulate mood and desire. The amygdala sends bursts of proteins triggering flight and fear in ways that bypass deductive processes. It was as if all of it had ignited inside him at once, a simultaneous cascade of fear and desire and the deep, pure drive to kill.
‘We get to the airport in Mombasa, get out fast,’ said Clay.
‘They’ll be watching the airports.’
‘Good.’ The sooner he could get to Manheim the better.
‘Think it through, Straker. What’s more important? Get to Rania. Leave Manheim to me.’
Crowbar was right. ‘Overland?’
More than two thousand miles separated the port city of Mombasa from Egypt’s southern border. It would take them at least ten days, probably more, over some of the worst roads on the continent – through Kenya, Ethiopia and war-torn Sudan. But Flame was too slow. The journey by sea up around the Horn of Africa and through the Red Sea would take at least a month; time they, Hope, and Rania, did not have.
‘I know someone in Mombasa who might be able to get us a small plane. We could fly out of a private airstrip. Much less chance of being detected.’ Crowbar adjusted the sling that supported his right arm. ‘We could be in Cairo in four days.’
‘We?’
‘I’m coming with you, seun.’
‘What about Hope?’
‘Either way, we both have to get out of Kenya. Then I can deal with Manheim. We get you to Cairo, I go on to America. It’s the only way.’
Clay nodded. ‘We need to find somewhere on the coast where we can leave the boat.’
Crowbar went below deck, returned a moment later holding the chart. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Up the river at Funzi. About a hundred clicks south of Mombasa. A big estuary. Quiet. No villages.’
Clay nodded, pushed the tiller. Stars spun, Rigel notching a few more degrees to starboard, big and close to the horizon. He watched the compass dial swing behind the needle, this true and constant force in the world, this reliable magnetism. Zuz would be alright. Now, it was time to get to Rania.
Suddenly, four days seemed a lifetime.