Beneath the Ice (28 page)

It was bizarre, like a bird’s nest. Hundreds upon hundreds of plastic bags tied up with string surrounded a meticulously folded mattress dead centre. She must have used up an entire year’s worth of food bags from the kitchen, filling each with a random assortment of treasures. From screws to shredded paper, children’s sweets to discarded pens, her surroundings spoke of a mind that had long since lost its grip on reality.

After weeks of this seclusion and secrecy, Hiroko had become so removed from daily life at the base that Dedov had almost entirely forgotten about her. Now he stared at the hatch, wondering what on earth to do.

‘She won’t come out and the flight’s coming in early,’ said the injured man, gesticulating to the hatch. ‘We’ve got to get moving if we’re going to make it up to the runway on time.’

He banged his fist on the hatch. ‘You hear, Hiroko?’ he shouted, switching to his limited English. ‘Or you want . . . stay all winter?’

Dedov was about to tell him to be quiet when he suddenly stopped. ‘What do you mean, the flight’s coming in early?’

The man paled, looking to his companion to share the blame.

‘Just now I was running through the radio room, sir, and heard the message come through. Sergei was finishing something up before coming to tell you.’

‘How early?’

‘Two hours, sir . . . I think,’ the man added as if to distance himself from the information.

Dedov shook his head in annoyance. On top of everything else, he now had to contend with a genius-level Japanese woman who was too afraid of open spaces to climb down a flight of stairs. As if to reinforce the point, the wailing started up again, the sound even louder at such close range.

‘Tell Sergei to radio the tractor at the RV site and get the men back here immediately. We can’t wait for the British any longer.’

Then Dedov’s eyes turned towards the hatch. ‘And get that open. Cut your way in if need be, but that woman’s coming with us whether she likes it or not.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The base commander shook his head. By pulling back the tractor from the RV site, he couldn’t help but feel he had just condemned the Englishmen to their fate. Now they were truly on their own.

POLICE CARS REVERSED
in sequence, peeling back from the roadblock to make way for the three Mamba Armoured Personnel Carriers to pass, followed by a single Range Rover 4×4. The vehicles trundled along towards Nyanga township in tight convoy, the six chest-high wheels of the Mambas making short shrift of the potholed road. Through the narrow windows of toughened glass, soldiers could be seen sitting side by side. There were ten men per vehicle, each one anticipating the moment when the back doors would be flung open and they would be ordered out into the red-dust streets.

Kieran Bates stood at the rear of the last Mamba, awkwardly hunched in the low cabin. As he clung on to the guardrail for balance, his right arm was raised, revealing a large sweat patch fanning out from under his armpit. A faded bulletproof jacket covered the rest of his midsection, but it was at least a size too large and the padded collar ran high across his neck, making it difficult for him to tilt his head sideways. Bates had his eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched, trying to suppress the motion sickness that had started almost the moment he had clambered on board the vehicle.

Forty-five minutes into the journey, the claustrophobic heat of the cabin seemed to exacerbate every bounce and bump in the road. His already pale skin had turned a sickly white, and Bates knew that the other men in the vehicle would be confusing this with fear. It was entirely the wrong message to give out to a bunch of South African squaddies who, at best, were indifferent to his presence and, at worst, openly resentful.

The private seated just next to him looked up and straight into Bates’ eyes. He was young, maybe only nineteen, with a soft complexion and a thin, reedy moustache. He looked barely old enough to be out of school, let alone clutching a 5.56mm R4 assault rifle. Bates tried to smile encouragingly, but only received a look of ill-concealed contempt in return. Fair enough, he thought. He was an
Engelsman
and the reason why their unit was venturing into one of the most inflammable districts in the whole of the Cape Flats. If he had been sitting in that seat, he’d probably have felt the same.

‘This is a straight man-hunt,’ shouted the sergeant from the front passenger seat. He briefly swivelled back towards the cabin to hand around a stack of coloured photographs. ‘Alpha and Delta teams will set up a perimeter across the market square. Our job’s to give cover to the grab team chasing down her cell phone. But if necessary, we go door to door.’

There was a murmur of consent, but the prospect of kicking down doors in Nyanga was not something that any of them relished. Everyone knew the residents had a pathological hatred of the police and, by extension, the military. Only two weeks ago, the usual undercurrent of animosity had become supercharged after news broke that sixty miners had been gunned down by the police at the Lonmin platinum mine, north-west of Johannesburg. Some of the residents had family at the mines and as the massacre played out again and again on the local TV networks, the simmering hatred had boiled over into unchecked rage. Now, anything vaguely resembling an official vehicle was being instantly attacked.

Efforts had been made to restore calm, but recently police had simply declared the whole of Nyanga a ‘no go’ zone. When two of their number had somehow got separated from the main squad two days ago, they had found their bodies dumped in one of the filth-ridden streams that criss-crossed the neighbourhood. They had been stoned to death just by virtue of being there.

On board the Mamba, each soldier steeled himself for what he was about to face. They stared at the glossy image of Bear, committing it to memory, while Bates ostensibly did the same. But it wasn’t out of necessity. He knew every line of the image.

He had taken the photograph himself when he had been staying with Bear and Luca in Paris a few years ago. It had been winter, with snow on the ground, and the image showed Bear turned three-quarters towards the camera, with her long black hair spilling out across a soft cream jacket.

She was smiling but her gaze was distant, eyes blurring on some unseen object beyond the frame of the camera. There was something knowing about her smile, something enigmatic, and on the flight over from London he had spent hour after hour just staring at the image, sensing something familiar about it but unable to put his finger on what exactly it was.

With the image, memories had come flooding back of his time in Paris. He had only been there for a couple of days, but he remembered every detail. The three of them had strolled from café to café, chatting freely and laughing. Life had seemed light and carefree, so much so that he hadn’t even bothered to question why. Then he had realised.

It was because of Bear and Luca. They were so clearly in love. It was in everything they did; the way they glanced at each other, the way they stood close, just touching, whenever the occasion arose. Around them, life seemed that little bit lighter.

At first he had been genuinely happy for them both, but as time passed in their company, his happiness had cooled, to be replaced by an undercurrent of jealousy. He had realised that the look Bear gave to Luca with such ease and regularity was a look that he would never know. He wasn’t made to love or be loved like that. And the realisation seemed to throw the realities of his own marriage into focus. It all suddenly felt so bland, so mind-numbingly ordinary.

Bates had left Paris vowing to banish any thoughts of Bear from his mind and, after some time, had managed to do just that. But then that same photograph had flashed across his computer, and with it a sense of familiarity had resurfaced that seemed to stir something deep within him. There was something about Bear that kept on coming back to him.

As the sergeant handed out the last of the prints, Bates watched a couple of the soldiers grin and nudge each other like hormonal adolescents.

‘Don’t know whether to find her or fuck her,’ the nearest joked, before rubbing the picture on to his crotch and moaning in a high-pitched falsetto, much to the amusement of the rest of his unit.

‘
Fokken
joker,’ murmured the sergeant, ignoring him and turning back to the front of the Mamba.

Bates watched as the same soldier then raised the creased photo and stared more closely at it. His nicotine-stained fingers itched at the dark ring of stubble across his neck, while his eyes sparkled with libidinous glee. Bates could well imagine what grubby fantasy was being played out in his mind.

‘No one touches her,’ Bates suddenly ordered. Every soldier looked up, surprised by the conviction in his voice. It was the first time that they had heard the ‘civvy’ speak.

‘She’s an SSA priority 1,’ he continued, checking himself, ‘and wanted in connection with multiple bombings. She could be carrying any number of devices. If you spot her, you don’t get clever. You call it in and wait for the grab team.’

The order was greeted by silence. Bates glowered from one man to the next, his eyes eventually settling on the joker.

‘We clear?’ he shouted.

‘Yes, sir!’ came the chorus.

Bates nodded, more to himself than anyone else, and went back to willing the journey to end. Through the rear windscreen, he could see the Range Rover following a few feet behind, its sleek black bonnet dwarfed in size by the height of the Mamba. Inside was a specialist team he had met briefly at the American Embassy. All of them were professionals with at least two years’ experience in the field and Bates had been impressed by their resumés. But now, as they entered the outskirts of Nyanga, he wondered how they would fare in an environment as fluid and mercurial as an African township.

As the four vehicles passed into the sea of corrugated-iron shacks, Bates slowly shook his head. He had never seen anything like this. It was immense; an endless warren of dead-ends and potential traps. No wonder Pearl’s four-man security team had been taken to pieces. If his own team were going to get in and out before the locals realised what was happening, they would have to hit hard and fast.

From the front seats, Bates could hear the sergeant on the radio. He was being talked on to the location of Bear’s cell phone, and every so often his hand would jab right or left to direct the driver. The hulking frame of the Mamba turned into one of the narrow back streets, the gap so tight that its wheel rims scraped along the side of a low barbed-wire fence. For a brief moment the middle wheels spun, trying to gain traction, before the massive machine lurched forward, ripping the fence posts from the ground and dragging them a few hundred yards further down the alley.

The sergeant raised his hand. The signal was coming from the faded blue shack dead ahead. It looked identical to the ones either side, with a crooked frame and patchy tarpaulin roof held down by rocks.

The soldiers jumped from the vehicle with impressive order, grouping around the shack with rifles raised to cover the perimeter. The grab team then rushed forward with a heavy metal ram, splintering the door of the shack as easily as driftwood before streaming inside with their pistols at the ready.

As the last man entered, Bates caught sight of a syringe pen being held behind his back, while in his other hand he held a video camera with a live feed back to Langley. There was a clattering of pots, then a scream, before a woman was led out into the open street. Bates leant forward, pressing his nose against the windscreen as he tried to see whether it was Bear or not. She was hunched over with her face thrust down towards the ground, while her arms were pinned behind her back, bound by cable ties.

The woman was the right build, but her long black hair made it impossible to see her face. Bates could hear her screaming; a shrill, desperate note that was putting all the soldiers on edge. They clenched the butts of their R4 rifles tight into their shoulders, all of them aware that the noise was attracting far too much attention.

The woman let out another scream, this time louder. A second later the syringe was jabbed into her neck somewhere close to her carotid artery. Almost immediately, her legs buckled. Her limp body was then dragged round to the back of the Mamba and presented to Bates like some kind of hunter’s trophy.

He paused, so much of him not wanting it to be Bear. But all around him now he could feel the expectant stares of the soldiers. He knew how they would treat a suspect, female or not, and so put on a display of yanking back her hair roughly.

It wasn’t Bear. This woman was younger, with faux-gold earrings and tattoos lacing across her hands and wrists.

‘Shit,’ he cursed, staring down at the woman’s face. ‘It’s not Makuru, but load her up. I want to see what she knows.’

One of the soldiers emerged with the woman’s scant possessions, bundling them into large plastic bags and placing them in the back of the Mamba. He passed over Bear’s cell phone that they had been tracking and Bates immediately started scrolling through the call history. There was an incoming call from a satellite phone that lasted six minutes. Luca had obviously made contact.

Without another word, Bates climbed into the back seat of the Range Rover, pushing the legs of the unconscious woman over to one side to make space. He knew if he wasn’t here in person, the soldiers would have gladly taken this woman as enough of a prize and made any excuse to leave the township. But the fact remained that if he wanted to find Bear, they were going to have to stay a little longer.

‘We regroup with Alpha and Delta teams,’ he shouted towards the sergeant. ‘We’ll hold position there.’

The sergeant nodded, then glanced down at his watch. They’d been in Nyanga too long already.

The effects of the anti-serum were almost immediate. As soon as the syringe was pulled from her neck, the woman’s eyes flickered open.

Before she had time to utter a word, the agent seated next to her grabbed her face in his hands. The plastic of his surgical gloves clung to her cheeks as he shone a pencil torch straight into her left eye. The beam flashed across her dilated pupil and the woman moaned in discomfort, raising her hands in a pitiful effort to ward him off.