Mixed Blood (17 page)

After breakfast he returned to his meditation on the fingerprint. He knew somehow that this was important, that it could lead him to Rudi Barnard. Who had vanished.

Zondi had the photograph of the smiling men at the bush barbecue propped up next to the laptop. As he sipped his cup of Earl Grey, he allowed himself the indulgence of memory.

It was 1988. Zondi was eighteen, at university in Johannesburg, running with a crowd of youth activists. His best friend, Jabu, was a student political leader with a high profile. Zondi was at Jabu’s Soweto house one night when the security cops raided. Beefy white men in jeans and T-shirt, with blunt haircuts and shoulders like rugby forwards. One of them was the captain in the photograph. They threw Zondi and Jabu into a car and drove them to John Vorster Square in Johannesburg.

Zondi and Jabu were separated, locked up alone. Over the next few days a succession of men came into Zondi’s cell and tortured him, demanding to know the names of Jabu’s associates. Zondi didn’t know the names.

The younger Barnard had pulled a wet sack over Zondi’s head and then pushed his head into a bucket of water, until he was sure he was going to drown. Then the fat man had kicked him and stomped him. Barnard and another man tied Zondi’s legs together, kept the wet sack over his head, and carried on kicking him. Broke his ribs.

They pulled the sack off his face, just as he was about to lapse into unconsciousness. He was bleeding from the nose, mouth, and ears.

Barnard again demanded answers that Zondi couldn’t give him.

Barnard kicked him into unconsciousness.

Zondi woke up bleeding and wet, in the cell. He was held for another two days, beaten regularly; then without explanation they took him to a car. He was driven to Soweto and dumped in a field. Aside from the broken ribs, his kidneys were bruised and his right arm was fractured. But he was alive.

He never saw Jabu again.

Nine years later Zondi sat with Jabu’s mother and sister, in an anonymous Johannesburg office building, listening to the captain in the photograph offer his apologies before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. To avoid prosecution. On the tribunal facing the captain were an Anglican archbishop, a lawyer, a doctor, and an academic, their faces haunted by the horrors they had absorbed over the past years.

The captain, an ingratiating man with a shit-eating grin, told how Jabu had died during interrogation. His body was taken to an isolated spot and cremated over a log fire for seven hours until all traces had been destroyed. During the cremation a group of security policemen drank and cooked meat at a separate barbecue.

As Jabu’s mother folded forward in silent horror, the captain had provided more detail. While the security cops were drinking, cooking, and eating their supper, they would tend the cremation fire, turning the buttocks and upper part of the legs frequently during the night to make sure that everything burned to ashes. And the next morning, after raking through the ashes to make sure that there were no pieces of meat or bone left, they had all gone their own way.

When Zondi had been given the file on Barnard, he had not remembered him immediately. It was only when he read Barnard’s Security Police record and saw the ID shots from the eighties that Zondi had realized who he was dealing with.

Knowing who Barnard was changed nothing for Zondi. He was a professional. And he would behave like a professional. But Zondi knew he’d raise a glass of single malt to Jabu when he brought Rudi Barnard down.

C
HAPTER
15

Barnard reversed a brown eighties Ford out of the storage container, leaving it empty. He locked up and drove through rows of similar containers to the exit.

He had kept the Ford for just such an emergency, making a ritual of charging the battery every second Sunday. On those Sundays, while the battery charger ticked over, he had sat and cleaned and oiled a Colt Cobra .32 and a Mossberg 500 Special Purpose pump-action shotgun. The weapons, and the small stash of banknotes he had kept in the container, were in the trunk of the Ford.

After dumping his police Toyota in Goodwood the previous night, he had caught a taxi into the city center and booked into a cheap hotel, far from his usual haunts. He had paid cash in advance. He hadn’t slept well. Not out of fear; he didn’t believe the door was about to give way and Disaster Zondi enter like an avenging angel. No, it was the anticipation of what was to come.

In the morning he had caught another taxi to within a few blocks of the storage depot, waiting for the cab to disappear into the rush-hour traffic before he went to retrieve the Ford and the weapons.

Now, as he drove toward the city, he ran through a checklist of what had to be done. He had his plan.

He knew exactly what was in store for the American.

It was the toughest day of Burn’s life. It was the last day he would spend with his son.

Burn and Matt drove down the peninsula in the Jeep. Although the fires were dead, some still smoldered in places, the mountain looking like a lunar landscape. But the sky was blue and the wind had died. The ocean went from turquoise near the shore to a deep aquamarine farther out.

They were listening to the Beach Boys as they drove, singing along to “Good Vibrations” just as they always did.

Burn forced himself to keep it light, to keep Matt laughing. Otherwise he would start to cry, and he didn’t think he would be able to stop.

That morning Burn had selected a new identity from the safe. William Morton. He took the passport and a wad of dollars down to the travel agent in Sea Point and booked a flight to Denpasar, Indonesia, by way of Johannesburg and Singapore. His flight left Cape Town airport at 10:00 a.m. the next day. He had chosen Indonesia because it seemed a lot more hospitable than Algeria, Angola, Moldova, Yemen, Zimbabwe, or any of the other countries that didn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States.

Now that he wouldn’t have a pregnant wife or a small child with him, the sprawl of Indonesia seemed appealing. And there were worse places than Bali to stitch his life back together.

He had made peace with the fact that Susan was going to give herself up. He hoped the U.S. authorities would be sympathetic, and that Susan’s punishment would be light.

Sometime in the future they would be together. He had to believe that.

Burn and Matt stopped at a small harbor and walked out onto the pier, watching as men lazily fished from the breakwater. Brightly painted wooden fishing boats chugged in, loaded with their catch.

Burn bought a cod fresh from the ocean. Maybe he could cook it that night, as a kind of undeclared farewell meal. He intended to wait for Matt to go to sleep and then tell Susan of his plans. He would say goodbye to his son before he left in the morning. That was t only way he could imagine doing the unimaginable.

Matt held Burn’s hand and stared in fascination as a bronze-skinned woman in gum boots sat on a crate surrounded by fish innards and gutted their cod. She worked the filleting knife without needing to watch her hands, all the while flirting with fishermen in the singsong local patois. She had a raucous laugh, the kind that is marinated in cheap booze and cigarettes.

She winked at Matt. “Pretty boy,” she said in heavily accented English. “He got his daddy’s eyes.” Then she looked up at Burn. “He gonna break some hearts.” She laughed again as she scraped the last of the pink fish guts onto the ground.

Burn walked back to the car still holding Matt’s hand, carrying the fish in a plastic bag.

Barnard drove the Ford along Main Road, Greenpoint. He stopped at a red light and lit a smoke while he waited. He felt the nicotine infuse his system, slowing things down just a fraction. He knew he was hyped. Primed for action. That was good. But he needed to keep his focus. This was a critical time.

A police van stopped next to Barnard, the uniformed woman cop looking down at him. He returned her look and then stared straight ahead, feeling the sweat flowing down his chest, his jeans chafing his thighs. He had that fucken rash again, inflamed red pustules on his ocean of white flesh. He needed a shower, and to change into some of the clothes he’d brought from the container.

The light changed, and he pulled away slowly, working his way through the gears. The cop van surged ahead, getting lost in the traffic. Barnard passed a couple of teenage hookers in short dresses. One of them blew him a kiss. Any other day he would be out the car, flash his badge, and run them off. Scare the hell out of them. Not today. Today his profile was as low as that of a man built like a tank could be.

He saw a sign advertising rooms and turned off into a parking lot. The hotel was small, cheap, and nasty. Home to hookers and dealers and low-rent adulterers. It would suit him fine.

Barnard popped the trunk of the Ford. He had stashed the weapons, money, and clothes in a kit bag. He locked the car and went into reception, carrying the bag.

An unenthusiastic colored man sat watching cricket on TV. He hardly looked at Barnard, took the cash he offered, and slid him a key. Barnard humped his fat up a flight of stairs and into a cramped room. The air-conditioning was noisy, but it worked.

First thing, he stripped and headed for the shower. There was no separate shower cubicle, just a curtain around the bathtub. It was difficult to maneuver his bulk in the tight space, and the spray from the nozzle was weak and tepid.

But at least he was clean.

He parted his butt cheeks and slathered on his ointment. The hemorrhoids had been playing up, aching like hell. He lumbered naked into the bedroom and took a plastic container of baby powder from the kit bag and rubbed it under his arms and between his thighs where the skin chafed when he walked. Then he dressed in jeans, T-shirt, and heavy boots. He sat on the bed, the springs compressing under his weight.

He laid out what he needed. First the Mossberg 500 pump-action, barrel ch the length of the magazine tube. The stock was cut almost to the pistol grip. Barnard had taken it off a Flats gangster, forced him to eat the barrel, then pulled the trigger. He had liked the way it lifted off the top of the gangster’s head and decided to keep the gun.

He cleaned it, checked the action, and pumped two cartridges into the chamber. Then he cleaned, oiled, and loaded the .38 he’d been carrying for the past couple of days. Lastly, he prepared the .32 and strapped it into an ankle holster.

He took a roll of duct tape, a pair of surgical gloves, a piece of cloth, and a couple of black plastic cable ties from the kit bag and stowed them in the small waist bag he’d attached to his belt.

He shrugged on a shoulder holster and slid the .38 into place. He drew it a couple of times, adjusting the hang of the holster until it was comfortable. Then he wrapped the sawed-off in a garish beach towel he found in the bathroom and put it in the kit bag. He zipped the bag, checked around the room to make sure he hadn’t left anything, then headed to the door.

He wasn’t coming back.

If she didn’t go now, she would lose her courage.

Susan Burn walked to the front door, carrying a small overnight suitcase. Mrs. Dollie was washing the picture window in the living room, vigorously working newspaper across the glass until it offered an unblemished view of the world outside.

“Can I help you, Mrs. Hill?”

Susan shook her head. “No thanks, Mrs. Dollie. I’m fine.” Susan tried a smile, but she could see from the concern on the older woman’s face that it was unconvincing.

Mrs. Dollie hesitated for a moment; then she stepped across the employer-employee divide and gave Susan a hug. Susan almost gave in to her tears, wanted to clutch onto this kindly woman and pour her heart out, sob until she was as dry as that burned mountain looming over them.

But she freed herself from the embrace and managed a more effective smile. “Thank you, Mrs. Dollie. For everything. Tell Matt I’ll see him soon.”

Mrs. Dollie nodded. “You look nicely after you, okay?”

Susan maneuvered herself carefully down the stairs, unlocked the door at the bottom of the garden, and went to the waiting taxi. When he saw her bulging stomach, the taxi driver, a middle-aged brown man, hurried around the vehicle to open the rear door for her. He helped her with her case.

“Where am I taking madam?”

“Gardens Clinic.”

The taxi pulled away, and Susan shut her eyes, the air-conditioning taking the edge off the heat.

She had made the decision that morning before Jack and Matt had left her alone in the house. She was going to the clinic to have her baby induced. Her doctor would support her decision after the episode with the detached placenta. She could no longer stand the waiting. Or seeing the effect her fragmenting marriage was having on her son. God, she owed Matt that at least.

After her daughter was born, she was going to call the U.S. Consulate. By then she hoped that Jack would be gone, to New Zealand or wherever the hell he wanted to run to.

When she had said good-bye to her husband that morning, she had made up her mind that it would be the last time she would see him.

When Benny Mongrel reported for his shift in the late afternoon, he went immediately to the kennel to fetch Bessie. She lay panting on the floor of the cage, a dry water bowl in front of her. These bastards couldn’t even see to that. He filled the bowl at a tap and watched her lap all the water down.

Then he hooked her up to her chain and walked her toward the truck. A voice stopped him. Ishmael Isaacs, the shift foreman, calling for him to wait. Isaacs came striding across the yard, his paramilitary uniform sharp with knife-edged creases. He carried a clipboard.