Blood Safari (32 page)

Somebody got out of the vehicle, which looked like a pick-up, and opened the gate, too far off to identify.

The pick-up drove through the open gate, lights on bright, and waited for the gate-opener to close it and get back in. Then it came up the track.

I avoided the bright light, trying to preserve my night vision, but I needed to know who was in the pick-up.

I hadn’t expected this. Not a direct assault. Out in the open.

There must be others; this would be the decoy to attract my attention. The others would stalk up through the night in dark clothes and balaclavas with night-vision scopes and sniper’s rifles. I turned my head away from the pick-up, my eyes and ears searching for stalkers. Let the pick-up arrive at the empty house, they would find nothing there.

The vehicle approached. It was dark inside the cab. I had a quick look. Couldn’t see who was inside. They drove past into the tunnel of trees, the lights flickering in the branches.

The others wouldn’t come in at the gate. They would climb over a fence, farther east perhaps, perhaps west. Five, ten or fifteen minutes later. I would just have to wait quietly. I checked the green phosphor of my watch hands: 20.38. Why were they so early? Why not wait until the early hours of the morning when I was fighting sleep?

Did they suspect that I was alone? Were they so confident, these experienced night stalkers, hunters of what they thought was unsuspecting prey?

The pick-up’s engine was hard to hear, and then it was completely quiet. They must have stopped at the homestead. Don’t go and look, don’t worry about them, just wait here. Wait for them.

Faintly, I heard them calling at the house. ‘Lemmer!’ The last syllable stretched out. They called three times. It was quiet again.

20.43. Nothing but the night sounds.

My night sight returned to normal. I looked slowly up and down the front, holding my breath so I could listen.

Nothing.

20.51 came and went.

I couldn’t work out their strategy. Why send in the pick-up for any reason besides diversion? Were there another three or four lying flat on the back, as if in a Trojan horse? That made no sense. You diverted attention so that you could surprise from another direction, another place, but if the timing was off, it fell flat. You had to keep the focus on point A while your buddies infiltrated at point B. If the focus shifted, the strategy failed.

21.02. I had to suppress the urge to get up and stalk over to a vantage point to look at the homestead. What were they up to? Why were they so quiet?

Were they inspecting the terrain? Did they have two-way radios to give the others instructions? We can see there is only one road in; you must do such and such.

I would just have to wait. There was no other way. But I was growing less sure of that. No, that’s what they want. Doubt. It generates mistakes. I had the upper hand. I had to keep it.

I heard them calling again, around 21.08, my name and something else that I couldn’t make out. I ignored them. The dock’s grip was sweaty in my palm and the stones and tree roots pressed uncomfortably against my legs and chest.

Silence.

By 21.12 they had been there for half an hour and there had been no movement, no sound from the boundary fence or the roadside.

Three minutes later I heard the pick-up engine again, soft at first, then growing louder. They were coming back. I saw the headlights through the bush.

The lights were plain idiotic. It deprived them of vision; they would be blind in the darkness. Why did they do it?

They stopped in the middle of the bush, switched off the lights and then the engine.

‘Lemmer!’

It was Donnie Branca’s voice.

‘Are you there?’

The bush fell silent, the nightlife intimidated.

‘Lemmer!’

He waited for a response.

‘This is Donnie Branca. We want to talk to you. There are only two of us.’

I didn’t look at them; I focused on the visible no man’s land.

There was nothing.

‘Lemmer, you’ve made a mistake. It wasn’t us. We would never harm Emma le Roux.’

Of course you wouldn’t. You are just innocent animal rehabilitators.

‘We can help you.’

They spoke to each other, not quietly, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

There was the sound of pick-up doors opening and closing.

‘Lemmer, we got out. We’ll just stand here by the pick-up. If you can see us, you will see that we’re unarmed. Have a good look. We’ll just stand here.’

Now was the time for the others to arrive; now that they believed they had my attention. I swung the barrel of the Glock from left to right, following with my eyes. No movement, no footsteps, not a twig cracking, just the silence and the insects.

‘We can understand why you would suspect us. We can understand that, we can see how it must look. I swear to God it wasn’t us.’

Ah, just swear to God? That will convince me.

Did they consider me a complete idiot?

But where were the others? Was there someone on the back of the pick-up? Were they creeping through the undergrowth to
surprise me from behind? I turned around slowly and carefully. It would be tough to hear and see them. That would be brilliant, keep my attention and stalk me from the direction I least expect.

I heard their voices in discussion again, but devoted all my attention to the thickets around me. The front was now 360 degrees, it was getting more complicated, but they didn’t know where I was or even if I was really here.

‘H. B. stands for “haemoglobin”,’ another familiar voice said. I couldn’t place it immediately and then I recognised its slow measured cadence. Stef Blinking Moller of Heuningklip.

Stef? Here?

There was a long silence. I turned around, the Glock in front of me. There was nothing to see, just the silence of the bush.

They growled something at each other. Donnie Branca called, ‘We’ll be on our way, then,’ with disappointment. I heard one door open and I shouted, ‘Wait!’ and stood with my chest against a tree trunk to reduce the angles by 180 degrees.

‘Lie down in front of the pick-up, on the ground,’ I told them, and moved north in the direction of the homestead, immediately, then east, closer to them. I found another tree as partial cover.

‘We’re lying down.’

I moved again quickly. I wanted to approach the pick-up from behind to make sure there was no one on the back.

‘I’m coming,’ I called, and ran, dodging through the trees to make a difficult target. I saw the pick-up, a Toyota single-cab. I stopped for a second and swung the Glock west then north, and then I ran for the back of the pick-up, pointing the pistol at it. If they got up now I would blow them away, before they got me. I reached the vehicle; there was nobody, the back was empty. I kept running to where they lay in front of the pick-up. Stef Moller was on the left, Donnie Branca on the right, and I pressed the pistol to Moller’s chest and said, ‘The idea is for you to lie face down, Stef. Don’t you watch TV?’ and he said, ‘Oh! Urn, no, actually, sorry,’ and he turned over. I wanted to laugh from the mixture of adrenalin and anticlimax.

I put my knee on Moller’s back and pointed the Glock at the back of his head and said, ‘Where are the others?’

‘There’s no one else, just us,’ said Donnie Branca.

‘We’ll see,’ I said. ‘Put your hands where I can see them.’

He shifted his hands far out ahead. ‘You’ve got it wrong, Lemmer. It wasn’t us that attacked you.’

I began to search Moller for weapons. I found none. ‘Yesterday you talked about an accident, now suddenly it’s an attack.’

‘I wanted to express sympathy yesterday, it was just a word. My Afrikaans …’

I went over to Donnie Branca and patted him where I thought he might have a weapon concealed. ‘Your Afrikaans is good enough when it suits you. Put your hands behind your head and turn over. I want to see if you’re armed.’

He did as I asked. ‘We’re not armed. We’re here to talk.’

First I made sure, but he was telling the truth. ‘Lie on your belly.’ I sat down with my back against the front of the pick-up, between them.

‘All right, then, talk.’

‘What do you want to know?’ asked Branca.

‘Everything.’

‘You said you knew everything.’

‘Tell me anyway.’

It was Stef Moller who began. ‘The sangoma and the vulture poachers were a mistake,’ he said.

‘You call that a mistake?’

‘We have rules. Principles. Murder is not part of them.’

‘We?’

‘Hb. Capital “H”, small letter “b”, no point in between.
The Lowvelder
got it wrong.’

‘What is
The Lowvelder?’

‘The local paper in Nelspruit. They printed it as capital “H”, point, capital “B”, point. That’s why they talk about the Honey Badgers.’

‘But Hb stands for haemoglobin?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘For many reasons. Haemoglobin is in our blood, in the animals’ too. It carries oxygen. We need it, the planet needs it. It is the opposite of carbon dioxide. It is invisible to the eye. It has four parts. So do we.’

‘And they are?’

‘Conservation, combat, communication and organisation.’

‘You sound like the Voortrekker Movement. Or the Broeder-bond.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Why are you telling me this, Stef?’

‘You said you know everything,’ he said with extreme patience. ‘Now you know we won’t lie to you.’

‘The sangoma thing. It was you.’

‘It was Cobie.’

‘Cobie is one of you.’

‘Cobie got carried away. He’s unstable. We realised that too late.’

‘You lied to Emma about Jacobus. Both of you.’

‘Not about everything.’

‘Tell me from the beginning, Stef, so I can understand which parts you lied about.’

‘Can I sit up?’

I considered and then said, ‘You can both sit, but over there. I want to see your hands.’

They shifted two metres back and sat with their hands on their knees.

‘Talk,’ I said.

Moller’s eyes began to blink behind the thick glasses. ‘He started working for me in 1994, as I told Emma.’

‘Yes?’

‘I … We, Cobie and I, shared the same concerns. About ecology, conservation, the threats.’

‘Wait, slow down. Where did he come from?’

‘From Swaziland.’

‘But he wasn’t born there. He didn’t grow up there.’

‘That’s what he told me.’

‘You’re lying, Stef.’

‘Cobie de Villiers is not Emma le Roux’s brother.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘I swear.’

‘Before God,’ I said sarcastically, but Moller didn’t get it.

‘Yes,’ he said solemnly. ‘Before God.’

‘Go on.’

‘When Cobie worked for me, we talked every single day for more than three years. We talked about the environment. Some
times all night. Someone had to do something, Lemmer. I want you to understand one thing, we are not political, we are not racist, and we serve only one thing. Our natural heritage.’

‘Spare me the propaganda, Stef. Tell me about Cobie.’

‘That’s what I’m doing. Hb is Cobie. It’s what he lives for. It’s all he lives for. You have to understand that. When they poisoned those vultures, it was as though someone had murdered Cobie’s family.’

He saw me shake my head and said, ‘I’m not condoning Cobie’s behaviour. I’m just trying to explain that his intentions were good. He and I started Hb. We were very careful. At first we were only seven or so, five in Mpumalanga, two in Limpopo. We were informal, it was only communication to start with, the exchange of ideas. It’s a funny thing, Lemmer. Every month someone would join. Everyone said talking would not help any more. Something would have to be done, because we live in a world where people are everything and nature is nothing. Nobody talks about nature’s rights. Everything is going backwards. That’s how it started. Then Cobie disappeared. We were just getting organised. I couldn’t understand it. He was more driven than I am, he felt more strongly, put more energy into it, and suddenly he was just gone. To this day, I don’t know where he went. Three years later he turned up at Mogale. Maybe Donnie should tell you the rest.’

‘When Cobie left you, did Hb survive?’

‘It’s bigger than one individual. When Cobie disappeared, there were more than thirty of us. All across the country. In the Kalahari, KwaZulu, the Karoo. But we were only focused on conservation, communication and organisation. We only added combat in 2001, when we realised that we had no choice.’

‘But all that is happening, Stef, without the need for secret societies. What about WWF and Greenpeace? Why didn’t you join up with Greenpeace?’

He sighed deeply. ‘You don’t get it, do you,’ he said.

Branca couldn’t stay quiet. ‘We told you, Frank and I. It’s chaos.’

‘A few land claims and a golf estate don’t sound like chaos to me.’

Branca made a gesture of futility. Stef Moller sighed and said, ‘That’s just the ears of the hippo. A million species, Lemmer. Do you know how many that is? How many animals and plants it represents? Have you any idea? That’s how many are going to go extinct in the next forty years, just from global warming.’

I had heard this old wives’ tale before. I shook my head in disbelief.

‘You can shake your head. You’re just like the rest of mankind. You don’t want to believe it. But someone must, because it’s a fact.’

‘And you’re going to stop global warming by sending letters and shooting dogs?’

‘No. We do what we can, here. We can only try to prepare for the mess that’s coming.’

‘Tell me about Cobie. In 2000 he turns up again suddenly. This time at Mogale. With Wolhuter.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where had he been?’

‘I don’t know. He wouldn’t say.’

‘Stef, I don’t believe you.’

‘Truth is stranger than fiction, Lemmer,’ said Donnie Branca. ‘We’re not lying. Cobie started working for Frank and he and I talked. He was very careful. It took nearly six months before he started to recruit me for Hb. Only then did he ask me to take a message to Stef. He asked me to tell Stef that he couldn’t talk about where he was, that he was sorry, but he had to protect Hb, that was why he went back to Swaziland.’