Beneath the Ice (22 page)

Sliding two credit cards from her purse, she quickly counted out what cash she had been carrying. She had nearly four hundred euros, but the crisp notes were as good as useless out in a place like Nyanga. No one here would even have heard of the currency. Other than that, there was some change in South African rand, only two hundred bucks at most. It’d be enough for a taxi ride back to the City Bowl, but that was it.

Just as she was about to leave, she crouched next to the old woman’s fire and dug her fingers into the burnt-out ash. She then rubbed it across her cheeks, greying out her clean, freshly moisturised skin and dulling the last of her lipstick. Emptying the remaining contents of her purse into the embers, she watched as the various receipts flared up in a quick orange flame and then, with a flick of her wrist, tossed the handbag into the interior of the shack. Bear only hoped that the old woman would figure out what the thing was worth. It’d buy nearly a year’s worth of groceries in this neighbourhood.

There was a yellow jerry can, stained and old, sitting on the ground nearby. Bear swung it up. She clambered back over the fence, and balanced the can on the crown of her head as she had done as a little girl in the Congo. Arching her back, she continued down the line of shacks with the ubiquitous gait of an African woman performing her daily chores.

A white Toyota Land Cruiser turned left out of the airport, its engine revving as it powered along the open road towards Nyanga. Inside were the four men from Hara Predesh’s security detail.

The driver, Johan Botha, was the only South African in the group. He had joined Pearl’s usual security team as a local ‘fixer’ and to help orient them on their arrival in Cape Town. But as he had soon discovered, the Americans were a tight bunch. They were all former US marines, two of them having completed a tour of Laghman Province in Afghanistan together before discharge when they turned to close protection. Johan had learnt a great deal about them in the last two days, with the Americans talking almost as much as they fidgeted with their weapons.

As they reached the outskirts of Nyanga, all four passengers stared out of the Land Cruiser’s windows, craning their necks to look down each street.

‘Shit!’ shouted the American in the passenger seat. His name was Darin Perez, a former sergeant in the US Marines and leader of the security detail. He was slimmer than the other two, with a pointed, rat-like face and pallid skin. His right knee bounced up and down with impatience as his eyes moved from one person to the next in the crowded streets, never settling for more than a second on each figure.

‘We’ve got to get closer to the airport fence line,’ he said, jabbing a finger against the window. ‘Take a left.’

Johan hesitated, not wanting to leave the busy flow of taxicabs on the main Terminus Road.

‘Come on! Left!’ Darin repeated, this time banging his fist against the glass.

‘Take it easy,’ Johan retorted, dragging the steering wheel round and turning them into the first of the side streets. Only a few hundred yards on the brick houses disappeared and the streets grew narrower, riddled with potholes.

‘You guys need to understand something,’ Johan explained as the rain began to drum against the front windscreen. ‘We stay in the vehicle at all times.’

He switched on the wipers, causing a smear of red dirt to stretch across the windscreen. Behind him, the two Americans on the back seat exchanged glances with one of them mouthing the words ‘Chicken shit’ to the other. They had seen nothing but women and schoolchildren out on the streets, with the only potential danger coming from the erratic driving of the local taxis.

The car drove on, bouncing slowly across the potholes as a group of about ten teenagers appeared, hanging out on the corner of the next intersection. They leant against a low wall smoking old cigarette butts and wearing a ragtag collection of school uniforms and hooded tops.

There was an air of listlessness over the entire group, all of them seemingly oblivious to the onset of rain. Their movements were slow and apathetic, heads bent low, chins almost touching their bony chests as if engaged in some kind of protracted prayer. Only two of the group were standing up straight, with the nearest teenager to the road openly holding a
panga
in his right hand. He waved the machete lazily from side to side, illustrating some point to his friend like a professor with a marker pen.

‘Kids,’ Darin muttered dismissively.

‘Yeah, they’re kids. But those are the Vatos gang from Zwelitsha.’

‘So? They got a couple of machetes. Big deal.’

‘There’ll be another twenty or thirty kids like that close by in the neighbourhood. And these have just scored a hit. That’s why they’re doped out like that. The
tik
makes them feel dizzy.’

The American shrugged, not knowing the local term for crystal meth on the Cape Flats, but it seemed to him that a drugged-out gang like this could only be to the visitors’ advantage. They needed to get in and find the girl. If they had to step around some doped up kids, then what the hell.

Johan jammed the gear lever into first as the front wheels of the Land Cruiser dipped into a muddy pothole.

‘But that’ll only last for twenty or thirty minutes,’ he continued ominously. ‘Then they’ll be fired up and awake for days. The
tik
makes them invincible.’

Darin raised an eyebrow.

‘I’m serious,’ Johan continued. ‘It took three of us to hold down a fifteen-year-old boy jacked up on that stuff a few months back. Fucking animal sank his teeth into my arm.’ He raised a hand, gently massaging the old injury. ‘Had to have a rabies shot and everything.’

Darin gave a snort, then half-turned towards his companions in the back seat.

‘Eyes open,’ he ordered. ‘She’ll have changed out of her clothes if she’s got any sense, but she’s tall and slim, and it looked like her balance was shot by the explosion.’

The car trundled on, pausing by the narrow opening to each shack. There were few occupants visible. Women sat by weak, smouldering fires, sheltering from the rain, while grubby children with lines of snot running from their noses stared from behind their grandmothers’ backs, surprised to see such a plush vehicle pass by.

The air felt close, the approaching thunder making the men’s shirts cling to their backs with sweat. The sky became darker still, turning the sea of metal houses into a uniform block of colour, while all around them the streets of Nyanga stretched on and on. Johan reached forward, cranking the air conditioning. Seconds later he sighed as the flow of cool air washed over him.

They followed the same narrow track until it led out on to an open area in the middle of Nyanga where they drew to a halt. A small crowd had gathered there. Judging by the brightly coloured clothing, most of them were women. They huddled around open barrel fires cooking meat in the
Tshisa
stands, sheltering under old tarpaulin that had been stretched across crooked wooden frames. A few of the taxicabs had stopped en route to allow their clients the chance of a quick meal.

The Americans stared out of the window, watching the locals go about their business. As the rain began to fall from the sky, some had raised umbrellas above their heads as they moved from one side of the square to the other, while others simply tried to shield themselves with plastic shopping bags. Along one side of the square was a line of small shops with adverts for Coca-Cola and MTN cell phones hand painted on their wooden walls. Behind the small hatches lay the shop’s entire inventory, with the shelving half bare.

‘This is where I’d come if I had to blend in,’ Johan said. Then, seeming to check himself, added, ‘If I were black, that is.’

‘What do you think the chances are she even came this way?’ Darin asked impatiently.

‘Fifty-fifty, but we’ve more chance of finding her here than going door to door. It’s a fucking rat’s maze out there.’

‘Why the hell can’t they just triangulate her cell phone?’

‘They’re working on it,’ Johan said, checking his own phone to see if any message had come through. ‘But you got to remember something, my China. This is Africa. Things don’t exactly run like clockwork round here.’

Darin snorted, his disapproval a broad stroke that usually encompassed anything not American. As the minutes passed he became more and more agitated, his knee bouncing in constant spasm, while an unintelligible mutter came from somewhere between his clamped jaws. Unable to bear it any longer, he threw open the side door and stood against the vehicle’s wide bonnet while he lit a cigarette. Ignoring the weather, he breathed out a cloud of smoke directly above him, expelling it high into the air as if trying to combat the falling rain.

Two schoolchildren hurried past the car, one boy sheltering another with the open fold of a newspaper. As they drew level, they suddenly stood still. Darin’s arm had crooked upwards as he raised the cigarette to his mouth and the younger of the two had seen the American’s sidearm under the flap of his flannel jacket. Darin spotted their expressions and, tilting his hips round a little more, held his arm aloft, allowing them a good look at his pistol. It was a Beretta M9A1, the trusted 9mm of the US military, and a weapon he had carried almost every single day since his discharge. He gave a self-assured smile, knowing how such firearms had impressed him as a child.

The two boys didn’t react, only scurrying on under the pouring rain. They rounded the side of the nearest
Tshisa
stand, waving away the plumes of meaty smoke. The elder of the two saw one of his uncles in a parked taxicab, passengers already crammed into the back seat waiting to be off. The child ran over to the open driver’s window and whispered something.

The uncle’s broad face remained impassive behind his fake Armani sunglasses. He listened to the boy before swatting him away with a flick of his wrist and letting his eyes slowly drag across to the other side of the square and the parked Land Cruiser.

Shifting in his seat, the man pulled at the front of the dirty brown singlet he was wearing, releasing the fabric from a patch of sweat that had collected at his midriff. He always wore a singlet and it was little to do with the heat. It made sure his upper arm was visible, in particular the number 28 crudely tattooed on it in dirty blue ink. The numbers related to his time spent at Pollsmoor prison, and signified that he had either been arrested for rape or murder. In fact, he had done both, but only been convicted of the latter offence.

The news that the
wazungu
were carrying pistols changed everything. A lot of the charities and NGOs used the same kind of white Toyotas and would occasionally pass through Nyanga, especially during the day. But invariably they had nothing to steal. Pistols on the other hand . . . they were more prized than drugs or money.

Picking up his cell phone from the well by the handbrake, the man quickly dialled a number. It connected through to another 28 from the neighbouring township of Khayelitsha and the taxi driver spoke to him quickly in his native Xhosa, telling him to bring the guns they had stashed away after a break-in, plus as many of their crew as were on hand. As the line went dead he stared enviously across at the
mzungo
standing outside the car smoking a cigarette.

A crooked smile appeared on the taxi driver’s lips, revealing the gap where his two front teeth should have been. He wanted that pistol. Pistols gave a man
power
. Then, as the side door of the taxicab slid open and a middle-aged woman peered in, the smile faded.

‘You going to Philipi?’ she asked, stepping halfway into the vehicle.

‘Voetsek
,’ the driver replied, not bothering to turn round.
Get lost
.

Without a murmur of complaint, the other passengers already waiting inside the taxicab slowly got up from their seats and dispersed into the crowd in search of alternative transport. Something was about to go down and they knew enough to be as far away from it as possible.

Bear stared through the haze of smoke rising up from the barrel barbecues. The Toyota had been waiting on the edge of the square for the last twenty minutes and she felt she was becoming more and more exposed. Predesh’s security team must somehow have found out where she was and were waiting for her to make the first move.

She had already bought a skewer of beef from the nearby stand. Holding it in her hand, she sheltered from the rain under some patchy tarpaulin. After chewing half-heartedly for a couple of minutes, she placed the dirty-looking metal spike on a nearby table and retreated a pace further back into the stand. She lowered her head, willing herself not to stare at the ratty-looking man who had just got out of the Land Cruiser and was now smoking a cigarette.

Bear took the mobile phone from inside her bra and, flipping it open, redialled Luca’s satellite phone number. It wasn’t the scheduled time for the call, but given the fact that she hadn’t got through on any of those occasions either, perhaps it was worth a try. There was a long pause as the networks searched for such a distant connection, then a monotone. The sound made her feel even more desperate. She tucked the phone back, telling herself she’d make just one more try at 18.00 GMT tonight. After that, she would ditch the phone altogether.

Bear then stared down at the yellow jerry can beside her. She knew that she should just balance it on her head and stride calmly over to one of the back streets and disappear, but each time she bent down to pick it up, she froze halfway. Her hands were trembling and she knew it was nothing to do with the effects of fading adrenalin. She was scared. And the more she looked at the Toyota, the more she felt that the men inside it knew exactly where she was. Like hunters, they were waiting for her to separate from the crowd.

Hunching her shoulders against a dribble of rain coming through a gap in the tarpaulin, she raised her arm, gently pressing her fingers against her side. The ache in her ribs was getting worse, while the thumping pain in her right ear had spread to her forehead and temples. She felt faint, clinging to the rickety shelter for support as she tried to figure out what the hell she was going to do next. She could wait for cover of darkness, but that was nearly five hours away and Bear doubted she would last another ten minutes without needing to sit down.