Far Horizon (24 page)

‘I'm not sure. But Hess is a man who travels very light. The only things he didn't have on him of value were his pistol and his GPS. I think he was going back for one or the other, or both.'

‘A GPS?' she said, as they walked towards Nelson. Mike could see a few of the gang were gathered around, sitting on camp chairs or lounging in the back of the truck.

‘Global Positioning –'

‘I know what a GPS is,' she snapped. ‘What's so important about his toy?'

‘It may give us some leads about where they're really going and what they're planning. I think it also contains some incriminating evidence about where they've been. I took down one of his stored coordinates.' Mike fished
the sheet of notepaper out of his top pocket and showed it to her.

‘‘‘O”? What does that mean?'

‘I want to find out. Once I've checked out the coordinates I'll call Theron, the cop who's pulling my string.'

Linda stood up as soon as she saw them approaching. Mike could see that she was dressed for a night out. She had on a lime-green mini dress made of layers of some sort of see-through material.

‘Oi, here they are,' she called to the rest of the group. ‘Where have you two been? And, more to the point, what have you been up to?'

‘High tea at the Victoria Falls Hotel, if you must know. I was taking some more photos for my story,' Sarah added.

‘Really know how to have a good time, don't you,' Linda said, then lightened her tone. ‘Here, it's George's twenty-first birthday today. Terry just told us. He's in the shower and reckons he didn't want to make a big deal out of it, but Terry wants to wind him up big time.'

Terry chimed in, ‘Yeah. He's just being a twat. So I reckon it's party time for George. Linda's found a club up the road. Are you in, Mike?'

Mike had work to do, but he realised his passengers still had to be his first priority. After all, it was his job to look after them. ‘Let's do it,' he said, trying to sound enthusiastic. ‘Give me ten minutes to sort some stuff out.'

‘OK,' Terry said, ‘but you've got to be here in ten for the presentation of George's birthday present. I've
brought it all the way from England and he hasn't a clue. I told him I wouldn't make a fuss on his birthday. Bollocks to that.'

‘Mike,' Sarah said, ‘weren't you going to show me that promotional blurb about the company?'

‘Oh, right. Yes. I've got it in the cab. Come and take a look now, if you like,' he said, catching on.

Sarah sat beside Mike in the cab and he switched on the interior light, as it was nearly dark outside. He took out the canvas satchel containing his maps from behind the driver's seat. They were an odd assortment, ranging from highly detailed charts prepared by government offices to tourist maps that were little better than those in a junior school atlas. The map of Mozambique wasn't bad and at least it had lines of latitude and longitude on it. Mike unfolded it and checked the margins.

From the first glance he could tell the longitude of the point listed simply as ‘O' was somewhere in Mozambique. He found the Tropic of Capricorn and traced his finger across the page, getting a rough approximation of where the coordinates of degrees, minutes and seconds intersected the line of latitude.

‘Oh Christ,' he said, meaning it for once. He squeezed the thumb and forefinger of his left hand to his eyes to try to shut out the kaleidoscope of images that the list of numbers on a piece of paper had conjured up.

‘Mike, what is it?' Sarah asked.

‘It's them.'

‘Who's them?'

‘This spot. Point “O”. It's where the elephant was
killed last year. I know this area. It's where I was working.' He opened his eyes and saw little pinpoints of silver light flashing in from the peripheries of his vision. He felt weak and clammy, like he was going to pass out, but the weakness disappeared as quickly as it had taken hold. He clenched his right hand into a fist, balling the map with it.

‘Then “O”, presumably, is for Orlov,' she said triumphantly.

But this wasn't a game for Mike. ‘Yes. That's probably the spot where I shot him. Hess would have had to have given a precise location to the chopper pilot to pick them up.'

Sarah at last saw the quiet anger that was gripping him. ‘Mike,' she said softly, ‘I know you blame yourself for . . . for what happened afterwards. But you mustn't. You were under fire and you did the only thing you could have. The important thing is that we've got enough evidence now to nail the pair of them.'

‘Have we?' He doubted it would be enough for a court. But he was certain, now, that Hess and Orlov were the men he was looking for. And if the police couldn't catch them, then he would.

‘What did you make of that?' Hess asked Orlov as the Englishwoman and the Australian man disappeared quickly down the stairs.

‘Make of it? Nothing. A drunken whore. A whore of good breeding, for sure, but nothing more,' Orlov replied, though the beads of sweat on his forehead belied his nervousness.

‘What about their questions, and that remark about the rhino? What had you been talking about before I arrived?' Hess asked.

Orlov's face coloured with anger and he lowered his voice. ‘Listen, my friend, do not be accusing me of having a loose tongue. Remember, it is I who pay the bills and I who stand to lose the most in this venture.'

‘Of course, Vassily,' Karl said, rubbing his hand through his blond hair. ‘I didn't mean to suggest you had done wrong, but we must be careful.'

‘I realise this, of course. We were talking about the big five, and the difficulty of shooting a rhino these days. Harmless banter, nothing more. As for the woman, a man of my standing, my wealth . . . well, let us just say that I never have to try hard to win the ladies.' Orlov forced a laugh.

Hess didn't doubt what Orlov said. He was sure that back in Moscow, where he would be known by reputation, and where he probably wore his wealth like a cheap tart wears her perfume, the Russian would be surrounded by dozens of gold-digging women. But here in the hotel, Orlov looked like just another tourist and, thanks to his early morning hunt, like a bedraggled tourist at that.

‘The other thing that concerned me was how quickly she slipped from seductress to drunkard,' Hess said.

‘I've seen it happen,' Orlov countered. ‘Perhaps she was taking drugs as well. Ecstasy or cocaine, maybe?'

‘It's possible,' Hess conceded. Indeed, it was possible that the woman was just an innocent philanderer. However, Hess had not survived more than twenty
years in the African bush in war and peace by ignoring his instincts. Those instincts told him their armour had been pierced and their secrets compromised. ‘Please wait for me, Vassily, I want to check my room.'

Hess left Orlov in the corridor and worked the key card in the lock of his door. At first glance everything in the room seemed to be as he remembered it. He crossed to the bed and unzipped the holdall. The pistol was still there. The weapon was what he had been coming back to the room to collect, his urge to have the gun on him driven by nothing more than his instincts.

He took the pistol from the holster and pulled the slide partially backwards. Then he checked in the chamber, to confirm the weapon was still loaded, and eased the slide forward again. He replaced the weapon in its holster, shrugged his arms into the shoulder rig and continued his checking.

Hess was about to zip the bag closed again when his eye was drawn to his leather-bound personal organiser. Particular about most things, Hess was obsessive regarding zippers. He had seen comrades who should have known better discover venomous puff adders in their sleeping bags because they were too lazy to zip and roll them. He had heard his hunting clients cry out in alarm when they discovered a scorpion or spider in a tent because they had ignored his exhortations to keep their tents zipped at all times. The shiny brass teeth of the half-open zip on his organiser grinned incongruously at him. He unzipped the casing all the way and flicked through
his diary. He was not stupid enough to have left any incriminating information in the pages of the diary, and he next leafed through the notebook.

There, again, was another inconsistency. If Hess tore pages from the notebook he did so slowly and carefully. The last fresh page of the book was preceded by a ragged tear where a page had been hastily torn. There was a pencil in the centre of the organiser, next to the gold pen, and he slipped it from its elastic holder.

Hess switched on a bedside lamp and held the notebook near the light. He tilted the fresh page of the notebook until the light caught the faint indentations on its surface. Quickly he rubbed the pencil across the surface and swore silently when the figures and letters appeared, as if by magic, in white amid the dark rubbings.

‘Vassily! Come here, quick,' he called from the room.

He beckoned the Russian in and closed the door. Orlov did not want to believe the evidence he had uncovered, but Hess even turned on the GPS and showed him the coordinates.

‘Someone has been in this room. I can only assume it was the man, the Australian, and that the woman was a decoy to keep us distracted,' Hess concluded.

‘You kept the coordinates from Mozambique?' Orlov was unable to hide his incredulity.

‘I have coordinates in that thing from three years ago,' Hess replied. ‘The important thing, Vassily, is not what this man found, but that he knew what he was looking for.'

‘But you said you had my position, where I was wounded in Mozambique, listed only under the letter O, yes?'

‘That's correct,' Hess said irritably. He knew he had made a mistake, a rare enough occurrence, and he was as angry with himself as he was with the Russian for reminding him again.

‘Why would this man attach significance to a coordinate with a single letter for identification?' Orlov pondered aloud.

There was only one answer. ‘He must have recognised the coordinates as being in Mozambique.'

Orlov nodded, recalling the pain of his wound. How he had wanted to kill the man who did that to him.

‘Then they – whoever
they
are – now have proof of where we have been. And they may have worked out where we are going,' Hess said in summation.

‘They have no proof,' Orlov countered. ‘Delete the coordinates. Karl, I did not get where I am by turning back whenever I met resistance. I came here to hunt, and I mean to complete my hunting. This problem can be resolved, one way or another.'

Hess nodded, fully aware of the path Orlov was heading down. If they were police, then they were not South African Police. Interpol, perhaps? That meant the authorities already had a lead on him and Orlov, though how they had got this far he could not deduce. They had to find out who the couple were, who they were working for and how much they already knew. Orlov would get his hunt, and it would start immediately.

‘The man said he was taking her back to the wedding reception downstairs. That much we can check,' Hess said. He strode across the room to his suit bag and selected a lightweight tan sports jacket. He put on the coat in order to conceal the pistol in its holster.

Hess closed the door behind them and they walked briskly down the corridor to the stairs. They crossed the open foyer to the reception desk where a young woman was just saying her farewells to her similarly uniformed colleague.

‘See you tomorrow,' the woman said.

‘Excuse me, miss,' Hess said to the woman who was coming on duty. ‘I'm looking for two friends of mine who are attending the wedding function. Can you tell me where in the hotel it is being held, please?'

The woman checked a diary on the desk in front of her, but the departing receptionist, who was now on the same side of the counter as the two men, stopped and turned. ‘Hello. Mr Hess and Mr Orlov, isn't it?'

‘That is correct,' Orlov said.

‘The reception's in the main banquet room, just down the hallway there on your left. You can't miss it,' she said brightly. It had been a long day and she needed a drink and a long bath to soak her sore feet, but service was the name of the game in the hotel industry and she wanted to go far.

‘Thank you, my dear,' Orlov said. ‘Come, Karl.'

‘Pleasure,' said the girl. ‘Your friends did find you, didn't they?'

Orlov and Hess both stopped and turned to face the girl.

‘They were waiting for you this afternoon. Quite
keen to catch up with you when you arrived,' she continued.

‘Yes, they found us all right,' Orlov said, trying to suppress the mix of fear and anger boiling inside him. He fought to keep his voice steady and forced a benign smile. ‘Have you seen them just now?'

The woman paused a moment. In the hotel business there was a fine line between being helpful and being indiscreet. She couldn't lie to a guest, though. ‘Um, yes, they left a little while ago, in a cab.'

‘Ah,' Orlov said with a knowing smile. ‘Our Sarah, she likes a drink, I can tell you. Maybe Michael took her back to the hotel where they are staying.'

The woman was relieved that the two men obviously knew what was what. ‘Well, she was a bit excited. I don't know about a hotel, but I did overhear the man asking the concierge to hail a cab to take them to the Municipal Campground.'

‘Thank you for your help, my dear,' said Orlov, reaching for his wallet. He selected a crisp American ten-dollar bill and palmed it to the woman as he reached to shake her hand.

S
arah had managed to convince Mike that Orlov and Hess had no idea what they were up to and, after his fourth tequila slammer, even the memory of Hess's eyes was dimming. Her ebullience was rubbing off on him. She had stayed close by his side all night. Their shared risk-taking earlier in the day at least gave them something to talk about. He found himself not minding her constant presence, and that surprised him a little.

The party went from bad to debauched. They had started drinking at the camping ground and by the time Terry got around to presenting George with his birthday present, an inflatable sex doll, everyone was wasted enough to appreciate Terry's schoolboy antics. The doll, christened Britney by Linda, seemed to be enjoying the party as much as everyone else. George and Terry had snuck their new friend into the nightclub, deflated, and re-inflated her once inside.

The club was dark and noisy and smelled of spilled beer, as well as a faint trace of urine and a big
dose of sweat. The sound system pumped an eclectic mix of upbeat Shona music and the occasional thump of western techno. None of it made any sense to Mike. He had called Theron from the camping ground. The number he had for him was for a mobile phone and all he got was the detective's voice mail. Mike left a long message outlining what they had and hadn't discovered.

Sarah mouthed something, but Mike couldn't hear her over the music's din. The thumping bass of the techno was like someone tap-dancing on his temples.

‘What?' he screamed.

‘Next! What are we going to do next?' She had to move close to him so that he could hear.

Mike caught the heady mix of her perfume and perspiration, and tried to concentrate on his answer to her question. ‘Not much. We can't contact them here again – not anywhere. They'd be too suspicious, even assuming they bought that Hollywood performance of yours.'

She laughed. ‘I thought I was pretty good.'

‘You were, you were,' he said. He signalled to a passing waiter and ordered a beer. Sarah nodded and Mike ordered one for her as well. It had, in fact, been a hell of a performance. She had quite probably saved his life, and risked her own in the process. He thought, however, that she still underestimated what these men were capable of.

‘We've told the cops all we can at the moment, and that's a lot more than they knew before they sent us on this wild goose chase,' Mike continued. ‘From what you got out of Orlov, it's possible we might
bump into them again at Kariba. If they want to go to Tashinga they'll probably do it by boat from Kariba.'

‘Why?' she asked. ‘Can't they drive into the national park?'

‘They can, but it's a lousy road and there's no fuel or supplies in the park. They'd have to lug everything in with them. Besides, the best way to see game in that part of the country is by boat, when the animals come down to the lake shore to drink.' He wondered again what it was that had drawn Hess's interest to the remote national park.

Terry and George were posing for a photograph with Britney a couple of tables away. Linda was pointing the camera and a waiter was looking annoyed. Mike's crowd was getting restless and he wondered how long it would be before one or all of them were chucked out of the nightclub. At the next table along, Jane and Julie Muir were deep in conversation with a couple of tall, muscled men.

‘The Muirs have got lucky,' Sarah said, following Mike's gaze. ‘Those guys don't look like your average tourists.'

‘River gods.'

‘What?' Sarah yelled, as she moved even closer to hear Mike's answer.

‘River gods. That's what the white-water rafting instructors here like to call themselves. They do OK with the tourists, especially the female tourists, if you know what I mean.'

The Muir women had gone rafting earlier in the day and hadn't stopped talking about it, and their instructors, since. Jane was leaning closer to one of
them, a hugely muscled African, resting a hand on his thigh as they spoke. The other man had furtively slipped an arm behind Julie's back, encircling her waist without her mother noticing.

‘What are you smiling about?' Sarah asked, leaning close again.

‘Nothing.'

The rest of the crew were on the dance floor, screaming the words to a retro number from the movie
Grease
, which Mike remembered seeing on first release, before most of them were born. No one in the group was looking at Sarah and him.

‘Shit!' Mike said.

‘What?'

‘That guy. The tall guy over there. Recognise him?' The man was dressed in black from top to toe. Tailored trousers, black silk shirt and, incongruously considering the heat, a long black leather jacket.

It took Sarah a moment, then she said, ‘Christ! He was with Hess and Orlov today.'

The man hadn't seen them yet, but he was walking through the crowd towards Mike and Sarah. The ladies and gents toilets were on the far side of the packed room from their table, as was the exit. There was no way they could barge through the heaving dance floor without passing the man or attracting attention to themselves. Mike knew that if they stood and started to move, the rest of their party would call out for them to join their drunken gyrations, focusing all eyes on them.

The man was ten paces from them now, his eyes scanning the room from side to side like the needle
on a radar scope. Mike saw him reach instinctively under his left armpit, probably subconsciously reassuring himself his pistol was still there.

Sarah looked at Mike and he saw the earlier bravado drain from her face, along with all colour. ‘What are we going to . . . ?'

He reached his right arm out until it was around the back of her neck. Mike felt her recoil reflexively at the embrace, but pulled her forcefully towards him nonetheless. Sam had been sitting at their table earlier and had left his floppy khaki bush hat on his chair. Mike grabbed it with his left hand and pressed it to the back of Sarah's blonde hair, hoping the man had been given a suitably vague description.

Mike leaned back in the deep padded velour of the booth cushions, smelling years of stale body odour and tobacco, and pressed the back of his head into the fuzzy material to hide his ponytail. Sarah shrugged viciously for a brief second, then suddenly seemed to understand what he was trying to do. Mike's mouth was only two or three centimetres from hers. From the corner of his eye he saw Hess's henchman standing to one side, very near to them. He probably wouldn't have noticed if they weren't actually kissing, but Mike didn't want to take the chance.

He pressed his lips hard against Sarah's. Again she recoiled – whether from disgust or simple surprise, he couldn't tell.

Then her lips parted.

Their tongues met and he tasted tobacco and tequila. She relaxed slightly in his embrace and he tightened his arms around her. Her tongue was in his
mouth now, her eyes half-closed. The man looked around him again, turned on his heel and strode back to the door, pushing through the throng of dancers. He hadn't seen them, but Mike suddenly didn't want to stop the subterfuge.

Their teeth gnashed for an instant as she broke the kiss. ‘Is he gone?' Sarah whispered, for they were close enough now to hear each other and there was a brief lull in the music as the DJ fast-forwarded a skipping CD.

‘I think so,' Mike said.

‘Good,' she said. She placed her palms on his chest and gently, but decisively, pushed him away.

They both looked around to see who had noticed. No one from their group.

‘Sarah, I'm –'

‘Leave it,' she interrupted. ‘Had to be done. Um . . . good thinking, by the way.'

‘Yes, I suppose so.'

The waiter arrived with their beers, giving them both a reprieve from the awkward moment.

Sarah poured her Zambezi into a frosted glass, slowly, as if buying time. Finally, she said, ‘Look, nothing happened. It was just part of the act, right? I don't need this . . .
this
right now.'

What didn't Sarah Thatcher need right now? Mike asked himself. Him, he supposed was the answer, and he could understand that. Sort of.

‘No problem,' he called over the increasing din as the music returned.

‘Good. I'm glad to hear it,' she said, as if that was the end of the matter.

Sarah gazed out at the crowded dance floor to avoid meeting his eyes. Her cheeks were flushed red and her hand was a little unsteady as she raised the beer glass to lips still moist from his. Mike thought of Rian's golden rule again and realised now why it was called that.

‘I'd better get back to the truck. Nigel's been there all day. The poor bugger probably needs some sleep,' Mike said, leaning close to Sarah's ear again so she could hear him. Her perfume unsettled him, and he couldn't stay in the club anymore.

‘Sure,' she said, nodding her head. ‘Good idea. I'll head home with the others.'

‘Right,' Mike said. He didn't look back as he threaded his way to the exit. He wondered if she was watching him leave.

He was glad to get outside into the night air, away from the smell of body odour and stale cigarette smoke. It was warm out, but not oppressively hot and humid like the club.

Once he'd taken his fill of clean air, Mike pulled out a cigarette and lit up. It was only a short walk from the club back down the hill to the camping ground, just a couple of blocks. The tequila had left him feeling dehydrated and he wished he'd bought another beer for the road. He resolved to get one from the fridge in the truck, even if it meant conversing with Nigel, assuming he was still awake.

Mike snuck into the camping ground the same way that everyone else obviously did, over a side security fence that had been trampled down by a couple of decades of drunken party animals short-cutting
their way back from the nightclubs, not to mention the occasional thief. As he unhitched a rusty barb from his trousers he heard the distinctive whooping of a car alarm. He assumed the fool owner had triggered it by mistake and didn't know how to turn it off. However, when he heard the crash and tinkle of breaking glass he quickened his pace.

The camping ground was nearly empty. There had been another overland truck in during the day, but it had left in the afternoon. The only other vehicle that was still there when the group had left for the nightclub was a new-looking white Toyota double-cab four-wheel drive with a Jo'burg registration.

Mike rounded the shower block and saw the Toyota, its hazard lights flashing and its alarm whooping. This was no false alarm, he realised. The headlights were smashed and the vehicle sagged low to the ground – all four tyres had been slashed. A man emerged from the far side and, even in his alcohol-induced fug, Mike had no trouble recognising him – bald head, black trousers, black leather jacket. There was no mistaking his tall, hulking build, either. The man brought a long arm up over his head and the street lighting glinted on the length of pipe in his hand. The windscreen of the expensive vehicle shattered into a crazed spiderweb of broken glass.

Mike dropped his cigarette and stubbed it out. He briefly considered running to his truck and making for the police station, but dismissed the idea just as quickly. He – they – were on to Sarah and him, but there was nothing to suggest they knew they were
travelling in a bright yellow overland truck along with a bunch of tourists. Mike assumed Hess and Orlov now knew Sarah and he were staying in the camping ground, but how they had found out escaped him for the moment. Obviously the man in black thought Mike and Sarah were the owners of the Toyota.

Mike decided to fetch the police, or security, or whoever he could find. He turned and took a step, but the remains of a broken beer bottle crunched loudly as he lowered his foot. He looked over his shoulder and saw the man staring at him. They both started to run.

Mike had a good twenty-metre start on the intruder and, although he supposed they were about the same age, there was not an ounce of fat on the pursuer's long, lean body. He caught Mike a few metres short of the fence, beneath a broken streetlight.

They went down in a tangle of arms and legs, and Mike fell heavily on his right side, grazing his arm and elbow beneath his short-sleeved shirt. He curled into a ball and rolled to the left, quick enough to avoid the full force of the first blow of the pipe. The metal glanced off his left shoulder. No bone cracked, but the pain was enough to make him gasp in shock. The next blow was better aimed, landing just below the left side of his rib cage. The breath shot from his lungs with a painful burst and he lashed out uselessly with his legs.

He rolled onto his right side, gasping for breath, and felt something dig into his ribs. He flexed the fingers of his right hand feeling for the object, hoping to
find a weapon of some sort. His attacker straightened above him. The big man transferred the pipe to his left hand and reached into his jacket with his right.

‘Make a sound and you die here and now,' the man said in a deep, measured voice. ‘Now tell me, who are you? Who is the girl, and who do you work for?'

The man fidgeted for a second, as if he was undoing the clasp on a shoulder holster. Mike reckoned he had less than a second. His fingers closed around the object underneath him. It was a half-brick, heavy and jagged. He flipped his body to the left, using the momentum to add power to his throw. The brick scraped his fingers as it left them and glanced off the man's high ebony forehead with an audible thud.

The man staggered but didn't fall. Instinctively his free hand, the one that had been reaching for his pistol, moved to the painful wound on his head. Mike was on his feet now and he rushed the man, hitting him in the chest with a shoulder. The man flailed with the pipe, but couldn't move his arm high enough to swing down with any real force. Mike hooked the fingers of his left hand and gouged the man's eyes as he raised a knee hard into his groin. It was the assailant's turn to gasp now, but the blow from Mike's knee was not enough to fell him. The man threw his head back and Mike felt his short fingernails scratch harmlessly down his cheek. Before Mike could move his hand away the man had his index finger between his teeth. The pain was excruciating and Mike moved his whole body away to give weight to his bid to free himself from the other man's wildly grinning jaws.