Dead Cat Bounce (29 page)

Part Four

NAMIBIA AND
ZURICH

Air Namibia flight
286 to Windhoek from Frankfurt landed four minutes late at eight forty-four
A.M.
on Sunday, September 21. Jonah still couldn’t believe that they’d come to Namibia of all places to escape. To think that a place where his dad had known such violence could actually offer safe refuge, that it could be safer than their home in London, was mind blowing to Jonah.

Upon arriving, Jonah and his father filed into a Toyota HiLux Twin Cab on their way to meet with Chippy, the Shona tracker who had helped David escape from Rhodesia after the slaughter of the children. He, too, had left the country when the war ended and now used his tracking and military skills on a conservation farm in Namibia.

At the beginning of the drive Jonah had been awake and alert, taking in their new surroundings. But the lack of sleep on the plane and the monotonous straightness of the road soon led him to close his eyes. He only woke once they left the smooth tarmac after a
further two hundred and forty miles of driving. Blinking quickly to clear the sleep from his eyes, he saw that they were now maneuvering along a wide, red sand road flanked on both sides by a high wire fence. Behind the fence was a landscape of grass and bushes, patchworked with low, flat-topped trees and occasional kopjes of rock. Everything was tinged with the red of the sand.

“Are we nearly there?” he asked his father, who, despite having the air conditioning on full blast, had the window rolled down and seemed to be enjoying the heat and dust coming through the opening.

“Not far now,” David replied and pointed out the window. “This fence marks the perimeter of the game conservation farm we’re going to. I’m looking for the gate. Here, let’s ask—aha!” David’s face brightened.

Jonah looked ahead to see who or what had caught his father’s attention. There was a black man squatting by the side of the road. He got to his feet as they drew up next to him, and Jonah could see that he was tall, dressed in khaki shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. He had a light beard around his chin and two parallel scars across his nose and left cheek. The most distinguishing feature was the man’s eyes. They were yellow. Like a leopard’s.

David stuck his head out the window, but before he could speak, the man greeted him with, “Masikati, David.”

Huh?
The man knew his father’s name?

David replied with, “Masikati, Chippy.” Now Jonah understood: This was Chippy, the man they had come to see.

He watched silently as the two men completed an elaborate handshake through the open window. First they gripped each other’s
palms in the normal way, then they angled their hands upward to grip the thumbs, and finally they hooked their fingers against each other before pulling away with a flourish. Huge smiles lit up both their faces, an expression Jonah had not seen on his father’s face for many years, or at least not to this extent.

“How did you know it was us?” David asked.

“Your spirit remains strong, David,” said Chippy solemnly and mysteriously, reminding Jonah that he was supposed to be a witch doctor, a Sangoma, although he didn’t look or sound like one. He spoke perfect English.

“And there is another, younger, forceful presence about you,” Chippy said, looking across at Jonah for the first time.

Jonah felt as if the yellow eyes were penetrating his very soul. “You could see our spirits coming?” he asked, mesmerized.

“I could.” Chippy nodded. But then the witch doctor grinned and held up a cell phone. “Plus, I have a friend who works in customs at the airport, and he sent me a message when you came through.”

David laughed and flicked his head to indicate the passenger seat. “This is my son, Jonah.”

“Of course. Good to meet you, Jonah. Welcome to Africa,” said Chippy, reaching through the window to shake hands.

“Hi,” said Jonah. “You too.” And he repeated the handshake his dad had done.

“Ya! You are African already!” cried Chippy, making Jonah chuckle. His face was so alive, so obviously ready to laugh at every opportunity, that Jonah instantly liked and trusted him.

“Jump in and show us the way,” said David, and Chippy climbed into the backseat and stuck his head between Jonah and his father.

Once they were through the gate, the road was reduced to two single sandy tracks, one for each set of wheels, with grass in between. The tracks were rough, and the car bucked and rolled as they drove on toward the camp. “Keep your eyes peeled for animals,” said Chippy. “There were quite a lot about when I came down earlier.”

Jonah scanned the thorn trees and grass, figuring that if he couldn’t spend time with Creedence or live his normal life in England, he could at least see lions, elephants, or any other of the many animals he associated with the African bush. But he didn’t get a good glimpse of anything exotic until suddenly David jammed on the brakes and Jonah was thrown forward in his seat. In front of the car, a massive antelope stood arrogantly on the track, a huge dewlap hanging from his neck. It had to be at least nine feet tall, and on top of its head, which was higher than the car, was a mass of fur below two scimitar-like horns. It stood and gazed at the car, unconcerned by its presence. “Phwor! What is that?” exclaimed Jonah in amazement. “It’s huge!”

“Eland,” answered Chippy. “They are the biggest antelope in the world.”

Wow
, thought Jonah. He’d never seen anything like it.

They lurched on for another twenty minutes, seeing a family of warthogs, some smaller antelope, and a Land Rover circling a muddy lake before Chippy directed them off the main track and into a natural garage within the thorn trees. When Jonah stepped out of the car, he felt the full force of the heat. It must have been well over one hundred degrees, and it was only eleven thirty in the morning. Jonah pulled at his jeans. His dad had said it would only get hotter as the day progressed.

David handed him the briefcase and signaled for him to follow Chippy, who was carrying the rest of the bags, along a narrow path that was completely shaded by the density of the vegetation and the ancient, black trunks of the thorn trees. Many of the trees seemed dead, suffocated by the lack of light and strangled by the lichens that clung to the branches. As they walked, a bird cried above them, giving the path an eerie, sinister feel. “Grey Lourie,” said David behind him, causing Jonah to turn his head.

“What?”

“That bird screeching is called a Grey Lourie. Doesn’t it sound like it’s telling us to ‘go away’?”

Jonah shivered. It seemed all too apt. “Oh. Thanks,
Doctor
Lightbody,” he said, trying to play it off. He turned back. “I’ll … ahhh!” he screamed and stopped dead in his tracks. In front of him was a bleached skull with two spiraling horns growing out of the top. It looked down from above a gateway in a corral type fence of black, pointed staves, its eye sockets empty yet seeing at the same time. “What is that?!”

“Kudu skull,” answered Chippy in a low, reverential voice. “It offers protection against evil spirits. The kudu is a great animal. Evil spirits will never dare to challenge him.” He bowed his head to it before stepping through the gateway. “Welcome to Main Camp,” he said when he was through.

Jonah followed as recollections of the previous three days careered through his head once more. The camp was in a clearing in which there was a long table, shaded by a wooden, slatted roof. The table and the chairs around it were rugged, and a dying fire burned to the right, the smoke hanging in the windless atmosphere, catching the sunlight that broke through the tree canopy above.

“Dining area and kitchen. There’s food and drink here for your lunch,” Chippy informed them before leading them back into the trees, along an even narrower, darker path until they reached a tent. It was a big tent, permanently fixed to a manmade concrete base. Chippy pulled open the flaps at the front to reveal two beds, covered with mosquito nets. “The presidential suite. Hot showers available through the back; star gazing included,” he announced with a big smile, putting the bags down. “And no telephone reception to disturb your peace and quiet. Make yourselves comfortable.”

“It looks great,” said David, but Jonah wasn’t so sure. He walked inside. It was hot and dark and smelled of dust. There was a toilet and sink through the back, which was open to the skies and buzzed with insects. Jonah wanted to flop on the bed to continue the nap he’d begun earlier, but there was a spider climbing up the mosquito net. He walked back outside. There he found Chippy talking to his father to about rhinoceroses.

“You have rhinos here? Aren’t they really endangered?” Jonah exclaimed.

Chippy nodded. “We have eight of them in all and yes they are endangered. But thanks to them, you two should be safe. We have twenty-four-hour security in the form of heavily armed anti-poaching squads.”

Jonah’s eyes widened. Those must have been the men in the Land Rover they saw on the way in. “Do they use crossbows?” he asked, pointing at the weapon in Chippy’s hands.

Chippy shook his head solemnly. “No, I left this here earlier. For the poachers we have to fight fire with fire, so it’s assault rifles, machine guns, and grenades. Rhino poaching is big business.” He
stood up. “Why don’t you two settle in? I will be back in about an hour,” he announced, melting away into the dark woodland before there could be any further discussion.

Jonah turned to his dad. “Well it puts a new perspective on getting away from it all,” he said drily and gestured at the tent. “It’s a bit rough, isn’t it? Presidential suite?”

“Welcome to Africa,” said David, chuckling.

“Well, I suppose it’s better than being hunted down and killed,” Jonah deadpanned.

“I’d say so.” David pulled some clothes out of a holdall and threw them at Jonah. “Now have a shower and put some shorts on. Then we’ll get some food before hitting those trading records.”

Jonah did as he was instructed and was pleased to discover that he felt a lot better after the shower, the change of clothes, and the food—he’d calculated that he hadn’t washed since Friday morning. He was ready to turn his attention to the laptop, which was on the dining table inside the briefcase. He removed the laptop and locked the briefcase lid in the open position. Then he pressed a small button on the inside, causing three solar panels to emerge from the sides. The larger one was a double panel that Jonah manually folded back so that it covered the lid. Next, he unrolled a thin cable from the inside of the case. “Can you get this up on the roof?” he said to his father. There was no electricity in the camp. Lighting came from candles and paraffin lamps, and the fridge was powered by gas.

“Sure,” David replied and climbed onto the back of one of the chairs, where Jonah passed the case to him. He placed it on the roof, and Jonah plugged the cable into the power port on the laptop
and switched it on. The desktop appeared, and in the top right hand corner it said “charging.”

“We have power!” he said and held up the iPod Touch. “Before we start I’m going to make a backup of the files, just in case something goes wrong.”

The Baron and Amelia were in Kloot’s house in Zurich when the tracker again went live. They had traveled there overnight from Amsterdam, despite the Baron’s aversion to getting his mentor involved, in order for the Baron to see Kloot’s private doctor: He would ask no questions about the gunshot wound.

Kloot had gone ballistic when he’d been told that the Apollyon files were now in the open. He had flown immediately from his home in South Africa, landing that morning, to take over the operation. He wanted the Lightbodys dead. No Drizzler and certainly no kid was going to jeopardize Apollyon’s plans. There could be no more mistakes.

Kloot addressed the Baron, who was twisting uncomfortably in his seat. “You will fly to Namibia immediately. The younger Lightbody was your recruit. Under the code of Apollyon, he and his father are your responsibility.”

The Baron nodded dumbly. Painkillers had dulled his senses.

“I have a man who will act as your guide.” Kloot pulled up an image of a burly-looking man on his computer. “His name is Klaasens. He is a professional hunter, amongst other things. I use him primarily as my chief bodyguard. He will find these people and ensure that your job is completed even if you are unable to do it yourself. He will also be able to extract from them how much information
they have managed to acquire from the files and what they have done with it.”

The Baron nodded again, seeing through the fog of medication enough to comprehend that Kloot was protecting himself by having this man Klaasens run the hunt. If the Baron failed, Kloot’s own position would be in jeopardy.

“I will arrange for him to meet you at Windhoek airport in Namibia. He will come prepared. Once the job is done you will come to Johannesburg. You cannot go back to London.” Kloot turned to his daughter. “Amelia, you will come back to Johannesburg with me today on the private jet. We will smuggle you on so that there is no record of your departure.”

Amelia nodded demurely. She never argued with her father. She’d learned that lesson at a very early age.

Once the backup
had completed, Jonah called his father over, wondering how he was feeling. David’s freedom sat somewhere inside these files. Or possibly it didn’t. Jonah watched as his dad walked around the table to stand behind him.

David was visibly tense, his face stern and his mouth firmly shut. He put a hand on Jonah’s shoulder. “Go on then. Let’s find out, shall we?” It seemed as if they’d been waiting their whole lives to discover the information hidden in this folder, though in actuality it had only been a few days.

Jonah ran the cursor over to the folder and pressed down on the trackpad. The whole desktop went black except for two short lines of text: “Red Baron A Fund” and “Apollyon Two.”

David read them out loud.