The Delta (32 page)

Between the army encampment and the construction site proper there was a vehicle park, a large cleared area surfaced with gravel and surrounded by a diamond-mesh fence topped with barbed wire. Inside was a fuel tank mounted on stilts, which in turn sat in a large plastic bath, which she imagined was to catch any leaks. It was a sop to environmental protection, which Sonja considered tokenistic given the dam project was probably going to ruin an entire ecosystem. Parked in the yard were dump trucks,
bakkies
and what looked like a fuel truck. She refocused the binoculars to get a better look and saw a large red warning sign on the side. Interesting, she thought.

Sonja shifted her view again and doubled back over the path she had followed with her binoculars. She had missed something or, rather, she had seen and ignored what looked like a small clump of bushes. Here and there small pockets of natural vegetation had escaped the bulldozer's blade. The odd mature tree still standing had been commandeered by workers on breaks as a place to sit in the shade and eat or drink, but the shrubs Sonja had seen were too small to provide much shade. She focused her binoculars on the one that had caught her attention again. The bush moved, and an African man emerged. He was stripped to his waist and although it was at the extreme range for her pocket binoculars she could tell his trousers were not the blue or bright orange of the overalls worn by the construction workers she had seen so far. They were camouflage.

The man urinated in the open, then climbed back into the copse of bushes. However, now that she knew what she was looking for she saw it was not a stand of thornbush but a prepared position: a foxhole covered with a camouflage net. The man pulled aside the net and for the briefest moment the sun flashed on something. Sonja lowered the glasses again to rest her eyes.

The words of Gideon, the Lozi man she had met outside the Spar supermarket in Maun, came back to her. He'd said the Caprivian force that attacked the dam had been lit up by mortars firing illumination rounds, followed by deadly high explosive. The mortar pit was well sited and when she looked again she saw two other camouflaged positions. Mortars were indirect-fire weapons, which meant they had to fire their bombs high into the air to give them time to arm – they couldn't shoot in a flat trajectory. Therefore, they needed to be as far away as possible from the dam in order to bring fire to bear on them if insurgents breached the perimeter defences. The pits were at the extreme end of the compound, which made sense.

‘So, do you have any questions?' Deiter Roberts asked Sam and Cheryl-Ann. Sonja moved back to the camera crew, as she didn't want the engineer seeing where she was looking.

‘Deiter, what about the environmental impact of the construction project on the river downstream. What can you tell us about that?'

Roberts held up a hand. ‘Like I said, I cannot comment on environmental matters or reduced flows in the Okavango Delta. I mean … I cannot comment on issues some people are raising.'

He'd made a slip-up and Sonja could see his embarrassment as his already red face coloured some more. He'd brought up the thorny question of the effect the dam would have on the supply of water to the delta without even being asked. Sam or Cheryl-Ann would surely exploit this opening.

‘No,' Cheryl-Ann said, ‘I think you misunderstood. I wasn't asking about water flows, just about how you were handling runoff from the site and water-quality issues associated with the construction phase.'

‘Oh!' His relief was obvious. ‘We are following every environmental regulation and safeguard to ensure all contaminants are contained on site and nothing harmful escapes from the construction site into the river downstream.'

Except, Sonja thought, for plastic bags, sewage, rubbish and diesel slicks she'd seen in the river in front of Ngepi Camp.

‘That's great, Deiter, just what we need. Thank you,' Cheryl-Ann said.

‘You will edit out the part where I talked about reduced flows, yes?'

Cheryl-Ann nodded. ‘Will do. Leave it with us. And you'll get to see a transcript of the interview before it goes to the final edit.'

‘Good,' Roberts said. ‘That was not as difficult as I imagined it to be.'

‘You were great,' Cheryl-Ann said, touching him on the forearm as he led them towards the vehicles. ‘Real good natural talent, as we say in the industry. Perhaps we can use a bit more of you in the video?'

He frowned again, but said, ‘We will see. For now, we must go and see the Nampower man and the lady from the consortium.'

Sonja opened the door of the Land Rover and got in and started the engine. She was puzzled. Either she had just witnessed the softest ever television interview of a man involved in the building one of the most environmentally controversial dams in the world, or there was something else in play here.

Rickards was, literally, in the child's face. The lens was just a few centimetres from the little boy's nose, close enough to see the flies crawling in and out of his nostrils and eyes.

Sonja turned away from the gratuitous intrusion. The bureaucrat from the Namibian power company had not been at the site office when they returned from their tour of the construction works. He had been delayed by car trouble. Deiter Roberts had phoned the woman from the dam consortium. She was not due to meet with the TV crew for another two hours, but she offered to meet them at a nearby village. The plan had been for her to brief them at the site office first, and for them to end their first day with a trip to the village, but if they reversed the order they could film around the community first and she would meet them there. Cheryl-Ann had been quietly fuming, but to Sonja this was just another day in Africa, where things rarely went according to plan.

Sonja's mobile phone vibrated in her pocket and when she took it out she recognised the number. She let it buzz silently in her hand for a few seconds while she walked away from the camera crew.

She pressed the green button. ‘What?'

‘That's not a very polite way to answer a telephone,' Martin Steele said.

‘They're filming,' she said in a low voice.

‘Can they hear us?'

‘No, they're busy getting shots of children with distended bellies and mothers carrying plastic containers of water on their heads.'

Steele laughed, but Sonja didn't find any of it amusing. ‘Martin, they may as well be making a bloody propaganda movie for the dam consortium, defending what they're doing up here. It's disgusting.'

‘I don't know that you or I are in any position to make moral judgements on anyone, my dear, but does it make you hate them even more than before?'

‘Yes.' He could still put a smile on her face.

‘Good. Tell me what you've got.'

She looked back at the crew, who were still busy recording misery. ‘Here, now?'

‘I doubt anyone's tapping you up there in the middle of nowhere. Yes, what have you seen so far?'

‘Why the rush?'

He paused. ‘Timing's been brought forward.'

‘Why?'

‘I told them we could put something together in six weeks – and that would give the other element time to train up some new people.'

‘
Ja
at least.' Sonja knew he was talking about the remnants of the CLA, hiding somewhere in Botswana. Gideon had told her there was no shortage of recruits willing to fight for Caprivian independence, but Martin was right: it would take at least six weeks to get men with no military experience ready to go to war.

‘Our paymaster spoke to me today. He says a couple of the others are getting cold feet – your ex-boyfriend included. He's pushing to go within two weeks, before they have time to back out of their deal. They've got an update meeting planned for a fortnight's time.'

Sonja looked back at the camera crew. Via an interpreter, Rickards was organising a procession of village women to walk down a path with plastic water containers on their heads. ‘Shit, Martin. Why don't you just walk away from this one?'

‘
You
know why. We're going to be short fifty per cent of what was promised for your last job.'

She smarted from the implication that the doublecross in Zimbabwe was somehow her fault. ‘It's too risky.'

‘We need the money, Sonja. Simple as that. So, what's your assessment?'

She drew a breath then exhaled. ‘There's a company plus dug in here, with armoured support – at least one BTR 60 that I can see, probably a couple more in the bush somewhere if you assume they've allocated a troop. They've also got mortars. Using standard odds you wouldn't get through to the wall with less than a battalion, supported by heavy weapons.' One of the basic ratios that all military planners worked on was that an attacking force taking on a prepared enemy position needed a numerical advantage of at least three to one.

‘Hmmm. What about a small team, infiltrated onsite covertly?'

Sonja had already thought about that option. ‘Their civvy security is sharp – better than the local police and military checkpoints further out. No one, not even the bosses, gets onsite without a thorough check of their ID. The perimeter is covered by cameras, vehicle patrols and dog teams. It's mostly for show, I guess, but if the perimeter is breached the army guys inside will be ready for action. You'd have to know someone to get inside here.'

Steele paused for a couple of seconds and Sonja, realising her mistake, knew what he was going to say next.

‘Then get to know someone.'

‘No. I'm not going to do that. Not ever again. No matter how much you pay me.'

‘I didn't say fuck someone, Sonja. I just said get to
know
someone. Someone senior, in case you need to come back one day soon.'

‘I thought I was only doing a CTR.' She felt a tightness in her chest and then her heart started beating fast, pumping a hot shot of adrenaline all the way out to the tips of her fingers and toes. Steele was playing her, and she knew she should call a halt to this game right now.

‘We don't have a battalion, Sonja – not even a battalion minus. You'll see that when you meet them. I'm trying to work a miracle and you're the angel on my shoulder.'

She scoffed at his poor attempt at poetry and flattery.

‘Whatever,' he said. ‘If you can get back inside you can get a small team in there and do the job. Of course, if you think doing a dam is too big a job for a … for you …'

The clever, charming bastard was playing every angle and pushing every single button – and he was using a sledgehammer instead of his finger. Klaxons were going off in her brain and she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she should hang up, walk away from the dam and the Americans and Martin Steele and disappear into Africa.

‘It's a ticket out. For you and Emma. Your share will go up, of course, with the added responsibility. If you can handle it.'

‘Damn right it'll go up. A recce is one thing but what you're talking about is the main game, Martin.' She took a deep breath and knew she shouldn't ask the question. ‘How much.'

‘A mill.'

‘Pounds or dollars?'

‘Dollars. England no longer rules the world.'

‘Make it three then.'

‘One and a half, and that's as high as I can go,' he said.

‘Bullshit. I know you, Martin. Two or I'm hanging up.'

‘Sonja, be reasonable, that's—'

‘Bye, Martin.'

‘Wait, wait. OK. Two it is.'

‘Half now.'

‘All right. You drive a hard bargain – that'll eat up most of my advance and operating expenses. The money will be in your account tonight.'

‘Good,' she said. She smiled to herself. He liked playing her and she liked him paying her.

‘Instead of coming back to Maun the way you came, I want you to head down the Caprivi Strip to Katima Mulilo. Check things out there and cross back into Botswana. Have you heard of a place called Dukwe?'

She thought for a moment. ‘On the road between Nata and Francistown?'

‘That's the place. I'll see you there in five days' time.'

She did the distance calculations in her head. ‘Where in Dukwe?'

‘I'll find you. Oh, and Sonja?'

‘Yes.'

‘Be careful.'

He'd never said anything like that to her in the past. ‘Of what?'

‘Don't forget the Zimbabwean CIO is still looking for blood over the supposed assassination attempt. I'm watching my back and you should watch yours. They need a body, and they don't want people around who might tell the truth to the international media.'

She was confused. ‘Are you saying we should come clean and tell the world the assassination attempt was a fake?'

‘No, no, no. Christ, Sonja, the last thing I want to do is implicate you – or me – in trying to take down elected leaders, no matter how corrupt they are. Maybe after this current job is over
we can leak something. I don't want the CIO to think they can get away with using us like that and the world should know the truth.'

‘In time.'

‘Yes,' he said, ‘in time. When you're living the life of a rich, gorgeous single mum retiree.'

‘Whatever.'

‘Perhaps I can drop by and see you on your private island off the coast of Mozambique, or your luxury private game lodge in the free-flowing waters of the Okavango Delta?'

She laughed. ‘Fuck off, Martin.'

‘Love you too, babe.'

The consortium that had partnered with the Namibian government to develop the dam was called GrowPower, one word, with a capital in the middle. Sam was no pedant when it came to the English language but he didn't appreciate people messing with the natural order of letters and capitals, any more than he particularly liked them messing with the environment.

He wasn't thrilled by Microsoft PowerPoint presentations either. He was an outdoorsman and had never enjoyed being cooped up inside watching images on a wall and listening to someone drone on. All the same, Selma Tjongarero, GrowPower's Manager, Corporate Communications, was not difficult to look at. He guessed she was aged in her late twenties and she'd arrived like a visitor from another planet at the village. She was dressed in a well-cut business suit with a blood red silk blouse that matched her fingernails. She planted her patent leather high heels carefully in the dust as she eased herself out of her low-slung BMW ZX4 sports car and pulled her D&G sunglasses down off her tightly braided hair to shield herself from the midday glare.