And of course, you never know at the time. Decisions you make, with insufficient information, on a whim, in the cauldron of a moment, pivot the course of your life entire. Equilibria that have existed for months or years shatter, and new states are entered, where perhaps, like water, conventions are upended, and exceptions to the rule become the norm, the solid less dense than the liquid, and because of it, life is possible, or for some, impossible. The laws of thermodynamics require that it be so. And so, rather than married with a beautiful wife and three lovely children, living quietly in some happy suburb, you end up alone in a hotel room on the coast of Mozambique, a decade and a half later, with the barrel of a gun in your mouth, staring out at the desert of your life, wondering where it all went wrong. And in your pain, you realise that it all started right there, with that one choice.
No one moved. The Colonel staring down the muzzle of Clay’s R4. The air close and hot, potent. The woman splayed and whimpering, begging in Portuguese, por favor, me matar, me matar. Please, just kill me. A dozen men rooted to the ground, eyes flicking back and forth, their weapons scattered about the room. Eben talking to himself in a low whisper, a habit of the last few months: ‘Come on you bastards, fucking animals, come on, just try it.’ Some kind of mantra, a liturgy of hate, his R4 on full auto, at the hip, ready to cut down as many of them as he could in whatever time he’d have. Clay realising that Eben would do it – had the bossies, some of the troop said: bush dementia. Just the fact that they were here, now, proved it true.
Clay could see the Colonel shaking – with rage or fear or both, he couldn’t know. He was staring right at Clay now, deciding.
‘I’ll take the right,’ Eben said in English, breaking out of his trance, voice neutral.
Clay watched the Colonel registering these words, not understanding them.
‘You take left. Don’t hit the woman.’
‘There’s too many, Eben.’
‘Inside out. Do it. My signal.’
Clay flicked his R4 to auto, heart rate critical. Shit.
The Colonel’s eyes widened. He’d seen Clay’s thumb flick the lever, knew what was about to happen.
‘Give us the woman, and we go,’ said Clay in Afrikaans. And then louder, in Portuguese: ‘A mulher, e nós vamos. Last chance.’
‘He’s not going to do it,’ said Eben in English. ‘He can’t lose face. We have to hit first.’ That’s what they’d been taught, Crowbar pummelling it into their heads day after blood-soaked day. Hit first, hit hard. ‘Ready?’
Clay flooded his lungs, exhaled. ‘Start filling out the DD1,’ he said. The SADF’s punishment charge form. ‘That or the death certificates.’
‘On three.’
Clay nodded. How did it come to this?
‘One.’ Um. Een.
The Colonel tensed. Held his breath. Why now, here?
‘Two.’ Eben’s voice steady now, veteran. Dois. Twee.
Clay tightened his finger on the trigger, a void opening up inside him. No reason for any of it.
The Colonel opened his mouth.
Eben hung on it.
‘Que a mulher ir,’ the Colonel shouted. And then in Afrikaans: ‘Let the woman go.’
No one moved.
Clay felt something flood back into him.
Two men moved towards the woman, started untying her.
‘You will regret this,’ said the Colonel in Afrikaans, staring at Clay as if to peel back his scalp. ‘Believe me. You will.’
Clay said nothing, vaguely aware of some sort of life being restored somewhere within. He kept his sight on the Colonel’s forehead, where it had been for the last – what had it been? Seconds? Minutes? Half an eternity.
They had the woman up now, supported under each arm. Her hair hung over her face like a veil. Rope cuts bloomed on her wrists and ankles. Semen slicked down her dark thighs.
‘Bring her,’ said the Colonel.
The two men dragged her across the sand. She was limp, lifeless.
The Colonel straightened, pulled down the hem of his uniform jacket. ‘I formally remand this prisoner into your custody.’
The men threw her to the ground at Clay’s feet. She lay in a heap, unmoving.
Eben hissed between his teeth.
‘You have what you wanted,’ said the Colonel, gaze fixed on Clay’s jacket pocket. ‘Now return what is mine.’
Clay reached into his pocket, closed his fist around the bag of raw diamonds. Looking back, he wasn’t sure what had motivated him. It may have been avarice or greed; revenge perhaps – a need to inflict hurt. Whatever the reason, Clay withdrew his hand, left the diamonds where they were.
The Colonel’s eyes bulged. ‘Give it to me,’ he hissed.
Clay raised his rifle. ‘Consider it payment for services rendered,’ he said.
The Colonel took a step forwards but Eben checked him with a jerk of his R4.
‘That is my property,’ shouted Mbdele. ‘Mine.’
‘Cover me, said Clay,’ slinging his R4, kneeling beside the woman.
‘Your Liutenant will hear about this,’ screamed the Colonel, his whole body shaking.
‘Your best friend,’ said Eben, smiling big.
Clay lifted the woman, cradling her in his arms like a bride.
Eben indicated the entrance with his head, his R4 still trained on the men. ‘Get her out, back to our lines. I’ll stay here until you’re clear. Go.’
‘We go together.’
‘No way, bru. You carrying her? Too slow. We’d be easy targets. Get her out and back, I’ll follow.’
Then Clay realised: Eben was going to do them. He could feel it, see it in his friend’s eyes. Take out as many of them as he could.
‘Don’t do it, Eben. It’s not worth it.’
Eben stood, whispering to himself again, gibbering like some drugged-up township preacher.
‘Race war, broer,’ said Eben. ‘Not my doing. Been put here, bru.’
‘They’ll kill you. You can’t get them all.’
‘Go. Now.’ Eben was shouting now. ‘Go, damn it. There’s no other way.’
The Colonel and the other UNITA men stood motionless, as if sensing the tottering pile of stones on which their future was built, their fate if the thing tipped the wrong way.
‘I’m not moving, bru. Not until you promise me. Walk away. No shots fired.’
Eben stood muttering to himself, finger twitching on the R4’s trigger, shaking his head to the cadence of some opaque philosophy playing in his mind. ‘Go. Get her out of here.’
‘We go together.’
‘Consequences,’ Eben said. ‘I am only what I believe and what I do. Nothing more.’
Clay shook his head. ‘Promise me, bru.’
Eben glanced at him, at the woman, back at the soldiers. ‘Fuck me, Straker. Okay. Fine. Whatever you want. Just go.’
They were out of time. All of them. ‘Okay, Eben. Okay. No shooting.’
Eben sighed, as if letting go of something. ‘Okay.’
Clay turned, swung the tarpaulin aside and emerged into the star-lit clarity of night, some strange kind of threshold just crossed.
He ran as fast as he could, this stranger’s naked body heavy and close in his arms. Her eyes were closed but she was breathing. After a few steps she raised her arms, wrapped them around his neck, held on tight. Halfway across the airfield he stopped, turned back towards the bunker, listened, peered into the darkness. No sound. No Eben. What the hell was he doing?
It took Clay a few minutes to find his hole. As he approached, a voice rang out in the darkness.
‘Password.’ Afrikaans.
Clay stopped. ‘Fokken rool gevdar,’ he shouted back. The red danger. The reason they were all here. ‘It’s Straker.’
‘God verdoem, Straker, what are you doing out there?’ It sounded like de Koch.
‘Went for a kak. Eben’s following.’
De Koch muttered something.
Clay jumped down into his hole. Holding the woman with one arm, the weight of her on his knee, her arms tight around his neck, he fumbled with his groundsheet, spread it over the sand. He tried to lay her down, but she wouldn’t let go of his neck.
They stayed holding each other in the cold for a long time. He listened for Eben, to her breathing, felt the warmth of her, the smell of tears and sweat and dirt and sex and blood coming to him as catalysts, reactants bonding with his own damaged neurochemistry. She was shivering.
After a while her clench loosened. Clay whispered to her, gently laid her down. He grabbed his field blanket, wrapped it around her. She was awake now, eyes open.
‘Está certo,’ he said. It’s okay.
She nodded. Sat up. Brushed her hair from her face. He handed her his canteen. She took it in a trembling hand and drank. He gave her a biscuit from his rat pack. She took it and sniffed at it. He fired up Eben’s stove and boiled some water, made tea. She wrapped her hands around the steaming dixie and sipped.
A few minutes later, Eben jumped into the hole. He stood a moment catching his breath. ‘Jesus,’ he said.
‘Jesus,’ repeated Clay, handing him a dixie of hot tea.
Eben sipped. ‘That was close.’
Clay said nothing. There had been no shooting.
‘How is she?’
‘Alive.’
‘Like us.’
‘For now.’
‘Do you think he’ll tell Crowbar?’
‘No idea. Maybe.’ Clay looked at his watch: 0345. ‘Now what, bru? We have to be at the LP at 0400.’
Eben sank down in his hole, drank his tea. ‘We go out on LP. Towards dawn, we fire a few shots. Come back, say we captured her.’
‘What, naked?’
‘I’ll go get a uniform from one of those FAPLA dead.’
‘Jesus, Eben. You’ve gone bossie, bru. I swear it.’
‘“No promise has been given you for this night”.’
‘What?’
‘Seneca.’ Eben shot off a smile, clambered back out of his hole, slung his R4. ‘Back in a bit,’ he said, and disappeared into the starlit darkness.
Clay hunched down in his hole and glanced at the woman.
‘Obrigado,’ she whispered.
He nodded, wondering if she’d try for his gun; try to kill him, escape. The thought turned confused and uncomfortable inside him, at odds with everything he’d been taught growing up: a woman something sacred, to be protected always. And now she was so close, him having just carried her, as naked and vulnerable as ever a creature was. So to think of her as an enemy … He swallowed hard. The UNITA Colonel had said she was a political officer, whatever that meant.
‘O que você vai fazer?’ she said, handing him back the empty dixie. What will you do?
Clay hunched his shoulders. They could just let her go. Let her run off into the bush. No one would ever know. But she could be important, could have information that might save lives. And if Colonel Mbdele did tell Crowbar about what had just happened, they’d have to explain what they’d done with the prisoner.
‘Que está fazendo aqui?’ said Clay, his Portuguese poor. ‘What are you doing here?’ he repeated in Afrikaans.
‘Fighting for my people,’ she replied in Afrikaans.
‘Me too.’ That’s what they tell me, anyway.
She pulled the blanket around her shoulders. ‘I am not a soldier.’
‘MPLA?’
She looked down for a moment, then back up at him, her face now just visible in the pre-dawn retreat of constellations. Bruises, a cut on her swollen lower lip, big, dark eyes. ‘No.’
‘FAPLA?’
‘I said no.’
‘SWAPO?’ The South West Africa People’s Organisation, Namibia’s left-leaning independence movement, aligned with the MPLA.
The woman shook her head. ‘My name is Zulaika. I am from a small village near Rito.’
Rito, an Angolan town not too far from here, about 180 kilometres from the border. ‘What are you doing here, Zulaika? Tell me.’
She grabbed his sleeve. ‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘Let me go. I am not a soldier.’
‘You said you were fighting for your people.’
Slowly, she reached her hand towards Clay’s R4.
He pulled it away.
‘Not with this,’ she whispered.
Clay checked his watch. Eben had already been gone ten minutes. If they didn’t relieve Cooper and Bluey in the LP at 0400, they’d be screwed, put up on charges.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said.
‘Those men…’ she stopped, hid her face in the blanket.
‘UNITA.’
‘These are not soldiers,’ she hissed. ‘They are criminals.’
Clay said nothing.
‘And you help them. Give them weapons and money. Protect them.’
Clay shook his head. ‘Not me.’
‘South Africa. You.’
Clay looked down at the ground. ‘What they did was wrong.’ He could barely hear himself say it.
‘You must help me,’ she said.
Clay straightened, shook his head. ‘You’re a prisoner of war. We’ll hand you over to military intelligence. You’ll be well treated.’
The woman shook her head, wrapped her arms around herself.
Minutes passed. Eben was still not back. Clay scanned the length of the airstrip, the dull hulk of the UNITA bunkers just visible in the distance.
‘They are using drug weapons,’ the woman whispered.
‘What did you say?’
‘Drogas,’ she said. ‘Catalisadores. For killing people. Black people.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You must let me go. Please.’
‘Drugs for killing? Chemical weapons? Is that what you mean?’ There had been persistent rumours over the past several months that FAPLA had acquired mustard gas from the Cubans and Russians, and intended to use it against UNITA, and, if necessary, South African forces.
She shook her head quickly, two, three times. ‘No. Not that. Drugs. O Médico de Morte, he gives them.’
‘What?’ She was still in shock from what had happened. She wasn’t making sense.
She repeated it in Portuguese. ‘That’s what we call him. The Doctor of Death.’
The woman swivelled her head, put her finger to her lips. ‘Please. They will kill me. You must let me go.’
Clay was about to ask her what the hell she was babbling about when Eben jumped back into the hole. He was breathing heavily. Sweat poured from his face. He dropped a blood-stained uniform jacket and trousers on the woman’s lap. A cap with a bullet hole through the side.
‘Put those on,’ Eben said. ‘We’ve got to get going.’
The woman held up the trousers, looked at them both.
Clay and Eben turned their backs as she dressed.
‘What took you?’ said Clay.
‘Ever try undressing someone suffering from rigor mortis?’
Clay said nothing.
‘I’ll go and relieve Cooper and Bluey,’ Eben said, clambering out of the hole. ‘Hang back out of sight. Join me at the LP when they’re clear.’
A few minutes later Clay and Zulaika followed in the darkness, Clay leading her along by the wrist. He found the LP and pushed her inside. A shallow depression scraped in the sand, a double row of sandbags out front, the thing covered over with mopane branches. Eben said that Bluey had reported no activity overnight. The woman cowered in the corner, knees pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around her shins. Clay stood to next to Eben and gazed out into the night, watching the sky lighten. Somewhere out there, a battalion of FAPLA soldiers was intent on killing them.
‘We should let her go,’ said Clay after a while.
‘She’s a prisoner.’
‘She told me she’s not MPLA. Or anything else for that matter. Just a villager.’
Eben shook his head. ‘What’s she doing out here, then?’
‘If we let her go, now, no one will ever know. No rondfok. Like nothing ever happened.’
‘What if she is MPLA, gives away our position? No. It’s too risky.’
The woman was listening to all of this, silent there in the back of the hole.
‘She speaks Afrikaans,’ said Clay. ‘Well.’
‘Just a villager?’ said Eben. ‘Not a chance.’
‘That’s what she said.’
‘Crowbar will know what to do.’
‘And that UNITA Colonel,’ said Clay. ‘What about him? What if he comes out and starts bitching to Crowbar? If we have the woman, it proves the Colonel’s story. We’ll be so deep in the shit we’ll drown.’
‘We’ll say we captured her. Tell Crowbar the UNITA Colonel is a lying sonofabitch. Who’s he going to believe?’
Clay looked down the length of his R4, out into the bush as the sun’s edge bled into the morning sky, torching the horizon.
‘Listen, bru,’ said Eben, playing his R4 back and forth as he scanned the bush. ‘We did what we did out of principle. This place is so fucked up I’m surprised I even remember what that looks like. She’s a prisoner. We turn her in. It’s the right thing to do.’
And before Clay could answer, Eben fired off three quick rounds.
Clay hung his head. The woman sobbed.
Seconds later, the radio crackled. It was Crowbar.
Eben tagged the handset. ‘Wait one,’ he said in Afrikaans.
Time slipped away. The sun rose red and angry over the Angolan bush. The heat came, and with it the flies.
Eben looked at Clay a moment, raised his eyebrows, keyed the handset. ‘Contact,’ he said. ‘One prisoner. Appears to be a lone scout.’