He was far too young to understand.
Everything he had been taught to hold true lay shattered and broken as the rock beneath his feet. All those black-and-white certainties that had underpinned his life lay dead. Colour, crazed rainbows of uncertainty, flooded his cortex. He had nothing. No home, no country, no one to stand by.
The breeze was warm, blowing in from the east now, from Mozambique and the dark volcanic plain. There was ocean in it, too, humidity and faint whiffs of salt and iodine and the spice of the trade winds. He filled his lungs with it, let all of this provenance flow into him as if to replace all that he had lost.
Despite everything, he had survived. How many deaths had he witnessed? Kingfisher and Cooper, the piles of FAPLA dead at the airstrip, the poor unfortunates dosed and dying on the cargo deck of the Hercules, Vivian’s face slowly vanishing behind that veil of red earth. And how many had he slain? Murdered with his own hands? Faces and moments he would never forget, was destined to replay in his dreams for the rest of his life. Sin enough to drown in.
Jesus, help me.
His heart was pounding. The ground shifted under his feet, knocking him off balance. Clouds spun into cruel vortices. His throat tightened. He fought for breath, dropped to his knees, dug his fingers into the riven, degraded rock of this new country, sank his forehead to the ground. Sobs shook his body, shivered through those places in him that had been rent open and then, somehow, miraculously repaired.
For what seemed a long time he remained there, a supplicant prostrated before infinity, terrified of looking up into that blue-and-white depth. Tears streamed down his face, permeated the rock.
Slowly, his breathing eased. Panic receded. He stood, looked out across the folded rift to the forest stretching blue and unbroken to the eastern horizon. The sun glowed warm on his face. He was alive. And suddenly, it was beautiful. All of it. The dry and burning bushland, the blue horizon of an unknown country, the African sky spread above him like the promise of a different future, the as-yet invisible path down the mountain and across the plain to the coast and all that life might yet bring. He was young, and the world entire lay there, ahead of him.
It took him the rest of the day to leave the mountains behind and cross the dry bed of an un-named river to move into the flat, open mopane country north of Lake Massingir. He kept away from roads and major tracks, skirting any signs of human settlement or travail. This was a country at war. FRELIMO, the Marxist and ANC-leaning ruling party who’d taken over after the defeat of the Portuguese in 1972, were now fighting guerrilla opposition of their own, the supposedly South African-backed RENAMO. A civil war he wanted no part of. He was done with fighting. He would make his way east as far as the Rio Singuedeze and then strike south, skirting the eastern edge of the lake, and then south to the dam at Massingir. He estimated a little over a hundred and fifty kilometres by foot through the wilderness, allowing for the meanderings of the country. His knowledge of the geography of this new place was limited to what he remembered from school and Brigade’s crude directions. From Massingir, there was a paved road all the way to Maputo. If he couldn’t find some kind of transport, he’d walk. Once in the capital, he’d go straight to the British Embassy, quit Africa as soon as he could, leave the war behind, get to the UK. Maybe in London he might find some peace, learn a trade. In school he’d always been good at maths and physics, had thought he might be an engineer one day, like his father. Fix things. Build things rather than tear them down. Maybe. Maybe one day.
With the sun low in the sky behind him, he stopped under a sprawling mopane and pulled up his shirt. Blood slicked his side. He loosened the compress and inspected the wound. A gash about three centimetres in length had opened up at the lower end of the scar. The rest looked to be holding, but blood was seeping from the open part of the wound. It still looked clean, and there was no sign of infection. A few stitches, however crude, would close it up. Even a roll of tape, wound tight around his torso, would do. But he had no implements for the task, nothing to stop the slow loss of blood.
Clay waved away the flies, tightened the compress down onto the wound and kept going.
Shadows lengthened.
As the sun set he moved into more heavily wooded country. Mosquitoes came, ravenous squadrons of them. Waving them away put even more strain on his side, so he trudged on, tried to ignore them. With the sun’s disc edging the treetops, he came upon a family of leopards, three of them draped in the limbs of a sprawling fire-blushed jackalberry. The pink and bone-white carcass of a zebra hung lifeless nearby, carried up in powerful jaws and slung hoofs-down across a branch. The cats watched him pass, eyes narrowed in watchful repose. He was so close he swore he could hear them purring. In school he’d been taught that leopards and the other big cats couldn’t purr. So much for school.
Darkness came fast.
Clay gathered some wood, a few dry twigs, and using the matches from Brigade’s pack, started a small fire. He huddled to the warmth, took stock. Bedsides the Beretta and half a clip of ammunition, he had the matches, a bush knife, the diamond, the notebook and the film. There was half a bottle of water, but no food, and he was bleeding again. He guessed he’d covered twenty kilometres since parting with Brigade at the border. If he could cover forty kilometres a day, he was still at least three days from Massingir. Normally, that pace wouldn’t have been a problem. But weakened from loss of blood and with the danger of infection looming, it would be a tough go.
In the firelight, he searched inside the pack, checked the pockets for anything that might have been of use, found nothing. He pulled off his shirt, unstrapped the sodden compress and dropped it into the fire. It hissed and steamed in the flames. Using the knife, he cut strips from the hem of his shirt and used them to bind his side. It was crude, but by cinching down hard he was able to staunch the leakage of blood. He threaded what was left of the shirt over his shoulders and huddled up to the fire.
The sky was clear. Stars appeared. He knew he should keep going. Find water. Kill something for food. Make progress towards his destination. The stars were there, a multitude, so bright now, pointing the way. East, then south. Away from this place, this doomed continent. But exhaustion beckoned, bid him stay. All he needed was a few more minutes. A little more rest. A few moments more to warm himself, then he would go.
He lay panting by the fire, fighting back the dark edge of sleep. And that periphery of darkness was the forest itself, the collapsing cocoon of firelight that defined his world. Eyes peered in at him, a double semicircle of flashing, glinting faces. And then the laughing came, that mocking, hysterical bark.
Clay reached for the Beretta, chambered a round, pushed himself up to one knee, tried to stand. The first hyena burst towards him. Off balance, he fired.
Commissioner Ksole: What are these, Mister Straker?
Witness: These are prints of the documents we photographed at the Roodeplaat laboratory.
Commissioner Ksole: The quality of some of these prints is very poor.
Witness: Yes, sir. By the time I had the film developed, it was badly degraded.
Commissioner Barbour: But some of them are quite clear.
Commissioner Ksole: Tell us, Mister Straker, in your own words. Tell us what these photographs show.
Witness: The first photo is of a document. It is dated 5th March 1981. 7th Medical Battalion, SAMS. Operation COAST. Experimental Suite GR7-B. Objective: Development of a genetically specific targeted sterilisation agent to control and reduce the black population of South Africa and neighbouring territories. Chemical and biological options to be investigated.
Commissioner Ksole: Go on, Mister Straker.
Witness: SAMS is authorised to use whatever means needed to acquire necessary chemical and biological agents and other required technology overseas.
Commissioner Rotzenburg: How do we know these so-called photographs are not elaborate fakes? It would not be difficult to create such documents.
Witness: If the commission would formally investigate COAST and its operations, these photos could be compared to actual documents. You would see that they are authentic.
Commissioner Ksole: Please continue, Mister Straker.
Witness: Yes, sir. The second and third photos are of documents from the same dossier. They state: Human testing is essential. Authorisation to test promising formulations on enemies of the state. If genetic targeting cannot be developed in time, direct delivery methods are to be sought.
Commissioner Rotzenburg: If these documents are real, as the witness claims, then the question again arises, as it has before, of the witness’s own involvement in these activities.
Commissioner Barbour: Is that all, son?
Witness: No, sir.
Commissioner Barbour: Proceed.
Witness: Photograph Four: by authorisation of the President of the Republic.