Frederick Ramsay_Botswana Mystery 02 Page 19

  “I will look into it.” Modise took the slip of paper Painter handed him and placed it in between the leaves of this notebook.

  “I will be in touch if this turns out to be significant.”

  ***

  Sanderson hesitated to call Kgabo Modise. What could she say? She had the information from the incursion into the park, naturally. He would want to hear of that. She wanted to share it, but since the previous night…well, things had changed in their relationship. What should she call him? Should she mention dinner? No, definitely not. This must remain official business. What if he sounded intimate? What if he didn’t? She put her cup down and rapped a pencil against the desk top. She stopped when the graphite point snapped and bounced across the surface and onto the floor. She would make the call.

  “Modise here.” Very business like. Perhaps he hadn’t seen her name on the caller ID. Perhaps he didn’t have it.

  “Modise. Kgabo, um…Sanderson here. We have had a breach of the park fence to report.” Perhaps he would like to discuss it at dinner? No at lunch? Heavens above, what was she thinking?

  “Ah, Sanderson, I hoped you would call. A bright spot in a dull day. So you had a break-in. Good. I will slip by in an hour or two and we can talk. I can bring sandwiches or something for lunch. We could have a semi-picnic.”

  “I packed a lunch. I could share.”

  “Then I will bring something sweet to build it up.”

  “That would be fine.”

  She hung up. Something sweet? Her heart rate seemed to be elevated. You are so silly, woman. He is a colleague. No, not quite. Jesus save me, now what? And why didn’t she tell him the number of the truck? So slow you are today, woman.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Noga spat the blood from his mouth. One of his teeth bounced across the floor. He explored the others still in place. Two moved when he pushed at them with his tongue. Not good. His mouth tasted metallic from so much bleeding. Blood contained iron, didn’t it? He ached in a dozen places. They had beaten him for what seemed like hours but was probably no more than ten minutes. It had been enough. Finally he’d convinced them he did not know anything else about the fate of the coltan shipment that he hadn’t already told them. Now he sat bound to a chair, his chin on his chest, and waited for what came next. At least now he didn’t have to worry about the dog.

  He could hear, but not see, the haranguing the two Boers were receiving. Good. They deserved every bad thing that came their way, the bastards. The tall man, who seemed in charge, snarled at them in a mixture of languages. Noga could only make out a word or two.

  “You idiots.” He understood that part. “What did you do with these men?”

  “We looked in their bakkie and saw the trash, as we just told you.”

  “Jan broke one of the things. It was just rocks and sand.”

  So, one of their names was Jan. The other was who? Dolf, Pieter? They had found the “English” it seemed.

  “Kak vui mozhetay byt nastolko glupo?”

  He didn’t know Russian but he was pretty sure that was what he heard and it had something to do with acting stupid. At least he hoped so. Noga wondered if all the people who worked for this man were as dense as these two. No matter. He had his own problems to think about. If he could get out of this alive, he’d head across the border. He had friends in Harare. They could help him get a new start. And he had an idea where the coltan came from in the first place. That knowledge should be worth something. The getting out alive would be the difficult bit. He had no doubt that if they decided they were finished with him, he’d be dead in an instant. What could he do to stay alive?

  The man in charge shouted something else at the men, in Afrikaans this time. But there were more Russian words here and there. Russian. Botlhokwa had mentioned something about the Russians, and there was the Russian he’d worked with earlier. He tried to figure out if any of them were connected somehow. He couldn’t, but an idea began to come together in his mind, a plan. Perhaps he did have something to offer besides the coltan. In for a penny, in for a pound the English say. He’d never get out of this mess free and clear as it now stood. He needed something to bargain with. So, why not give them Botlhokwa? He would be his bargaining chip. If he had the chance, he’d serve Mr. Big up on a spit. That warthog was probably set to do it to him anyway, so he’d do it to him first.

  The two Boers left. Noga waited for what happened next. He didn’t believe this man in charge would be the one who pulled the trigger and no one else seemed to be around, so he had some time to think things through.

  Botlhokwa. With any luck today Botlhokwa goes down and I go free.

  ***

  The two “English” had returned the truck to the leasing agency just after nine when the lot gate opened. The “agency” was actually a used car dealer who had come to realize early on that most of his customers had neither the money nor adequate credit to actually purchase the vehicles they desired. Lease-to-purchase more nearly described the transactions. He accepted the truck back into inventory with some reluctance. The right door panel had acquired a new dent and the wheel wells were crammed with mud and branches. He started to say something but Jack made him an offer that made the dent disappear, so to speak. For cash and anonymity, he would purchase an old Volvo sedan. The cash and car exchanged hands, suitable number plates from a wreck on the back lot were affixed, and the transaction promptly forgotten.

  There are several lesser known lodges on the Chobe besides the four, soon to be five, internationally recognized hotels. Jack and Harvey booked into the seediest one just off the main road. Jack called his coltan buyer and they waited. Their need for invisibility rose from the need to avoid the Boers who’d they assumed had taken up the search for them, and the inevitable pressure from the men who’d financed the operation in the first place, and who would want to execute a quick payoff. With interest, of course. But, until Jack and Harvey received their money from the sale of the coltan, they could not pay the lenders. So, they hid out and waited for the call. The lodge had no room service and soon they would have to venture out to eat. But they felt safe enough for the moment.

  “We should have stocked up on beer and sandwiches. One of us will have to go for food soon.”

  “We’ll wait a bit, Harv. There’s water in that fridge thing there. This place isn’t much but it’s in pretty good nick and the desk clerk said there would be some snacks in the lobby area noonish. Right now, I am knackered. I’m for grabbing some kip. As soon as we hear from the buyers, we nip out, grab the loot, and fly away.”

  “Brilliant. That is if we hear from the buyers before the others ferret us out.”

  “Ah, there you go again. We have the GPS, Harvey. They daren’t do nothing to us as long as it’s under the bushel out on the island.”

  “But it’s not on the island or even under a bushel.”

  “They won’t know that, now will they. Stop worrying. It’s tight.”

  Harvey leaned toward the window and peered out. Several cars had arrived since they checked in and were parked near their Volvo. He didn’t like it. Who were these people? What sort of person checked into a hotel in the early morning? People like them, is who. People on the bunk. He didn’t like it at all. Too easy, he’d said. And it had been. Something bad was coming their way and he knew it. No sense talking about it though. Jack wouldn’t listen.

  A PT Cruiser pulled up and two men climbed out. Big men in black suits. What kind of men wore black suits in the heat and humidity of the Chobe. Not from around here, surely.

  “Jack, wake up.”

  “What?”

  “There are two big blokes in a sedan just pulled up. They don’t look right to me. We may have to pull out in a hurry. Where are the car keys?”

  “What are you on about?”

  “Come see.”

  Jack went to the window. Harvey pointed out the car. The two men exited the office and stood at the door. They spoke briefly then and glanced their way.

&n
bsp; “Criminy, we’re too late, they’ve got us.”

  “Who’s got us? Those two? Nah, they’re inspectors or something. You’re as jumpy as a girl on her first go, Harv.”

  The strangers stared at their door, nodded, and climbed back into their vehicle and left.

  “There, you see. What did I tell you. No mathata, Harvey.”

  Chapter Forty-two

  Modise arrived a little after noon. He carried a cake in a box. Sanderson retrieved her battered lunchbox and they settled at her desk. While they ate, Modise ran the number from the pick-up through the motor vehicle registration system. It turned out to be a rental from a company specializing in used, cheap to lease trucks and cars—very popular with border crossers. The names on the forms were probably fake but Modise ran them through Interpol anyway.

  “What do you think those men were doing in the park?” Sanderson wanted to talk but did not trust herself to venture anything more than the business at hand.

  “You noticed when they entered, there was a load of some sort in the back covered with a tarpaulin.”

  She had not. She’d been so outraged at the thought of people intruding into the park illegally that she’d concentrated on the men rather than the truck. She nodded anyway.

  “Good. And when they left, the bed was empty.”

  “So, you are saying they were bringing something into the park, not removing something.”

  Well of course. Why was she babbling away like this? Before last night she could speak to this man almost as an equal. But now…?

  “Precisely. The question for us to figure out is, what was the something?”

  “I am slow here, Modise. What?”

  “If they were smugglers or poachers, the reverse would be the case, would it not? They would have something in the truck bed on the way out, not the way in.”

  That made sense. But what could that be? “You were telling me about that orgonite business associated with the murder. Could this be more of that? Only this time they were successful? They were in the park for a long time. Perhaps they were placing the orgonite in the park in different places.”

  “Of course. That is brilliant, Sanderson. You must be right.”

  Two minutes ago I’m acting like a thirteen-year-old school girl around the star of the football team and now I am suddenly brilliant. “How can we find out? Oh, I can drive about in the park and see if I can find these things, some of them anyway.”

  “It is a big park, Sanderson. It would be like the needle in the haystack, I am thinking.”

  “True enough, but it is my park and I have an edge on anyone else who would want to search. I know where you can drive about easily and where not. I am guessing that unless there was a careful plan, these men followed an easy path here and there in their travels in the park.”

  “Do you have time for that?”

  “I will make time this afternoon. It is, after all, a serious intrusion into the park.”

  Modise wiped some powdered sugar from his lips and dropped the cake wrappings in the bin beside the desk. “You do that. I will ask Mwambe to put out a search for this truck and have it apprehended.”

  He stood and before she could react, leaned forward and kissed her quickly on the mouth. If she hadn’t been sitting, she would have collapsed. She looked out into the corridor to see if anyone had witnessed it. He stood to leave but she grabbed his sleeve, pulled him back down, and returned the kiss. She smiled.

  “Do we need another business meeting, Kgabo?”

  “I will call you. There are things I must attend to and I might have to fly back to Gaborone later.”

  “The Old House is very nice if you get there before the truck drivers.” She didn’t know if the truckers ate early or late or if at all at the Old House. But she liked the early part.

  “I will call.” This time he made it to the door and out.

  Would he?

  Sanderson wondered at her behavior. What possessed her to do that? She was becoming a fast woman. What if Mpitle had seen that? Well, so what if she was. No, that was not right either. It is all so confusing.

  ***

  As she’d promised, she drove out to the park and approached the breach from the inside. Once at the fence she checked to make sure the intruders had fixed it firmly in place. She backed around and drove slowly back along the track, her eyes focused on the ground on either side. Fifty meters from the fence she saw where the truck—she had to assume it was the truck and not some other earlier intruder—had pulled into the bush. She swerved to the right and followed this new path. As the Land Rover edged around a low stand of brush, she saw the first of the cones. The men, it seemed had stopped here. There were a dozen of them in two rough lines corresponding to either side of the vehicle. Smart, she thought. Smart enough not to risk leaving the safety of the truck. They must have pulled the items into the cab from the back through its rear window and then dropped them on the ground out of the doors. She eased open her door and retrieved two of the cones.

  She drove on. At one place, she noticed a paint smear where they must have sideswiped a tree branch. In the dark in the bush, that would be easy enough to do. Their path looped back and forth across the more beaten path used by others earlier. She found many more of the orgonite cones. She considered picking them up then decided they posed no harm to the wildlife and collecting them would be a huge waste of time. She made a point, when she could, of driving over some of them. The wheels crushed them into a flat, white pile of dust.

  After the better part of three hours, she decided she’d seen enough to report the probable extent of the cones’ distribution. These men had worked very hard the night before. She noticed that there did not seem to be a pattern to the drops. Just a dozen cones, more or less, and then a space, then another dozen or so. She didn’t pretend to know about the claims made by Operation Paradise but it seemed to her that if there was some energy associated with these devices, they would be laid out in a grid of some sort or at least a geometrical pattern. Not this batch.

  Did Andrew Takeda and Mwambe really believe this nonsense? People claimed it could effect great change in the nature of things. The weather, the ecology, even AIDs. That would be a good thing certainly. But such an idea that these ugly lumps of resin and black sand could do something like that was ridiculous.

  She headed back to her office. She would give the cones to Modise to examine. Perhaps she would keep one for herself. As a souvenir.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Modise called just as the sun set to tell Sanderson some important meeting had been scheduled and he could not meet that night after all. She didn’t know whether the feeling she had was one of relief or disappointment. She and Charles Tlalelo finished reloading the cameras and stood in the trees across the road from the gap in the fence. She realized that if many more vehicles tried to pass through, the ruts would soon be too obvious even for a careless crook and a new entrance would be established. Perhaps it already existed. Was there an alternative? And if so, who used it.

  “Charles, do we have enough equipment to set up surveillance at another location?”

  “Yes, if we can find more of the wireless activators. There are three more cameras and motion detectors for each of them.”

  “Let us drive slowly along this road. Keep your eyes on the fence, and shout if you see anything that even remotely looks suspicious.”

  “Do you believe there are still more entrances?”

  “It is not a matter of what I believe. It is a matter of what I think possible. That break-in last night could have been only one of many. We must be sure.”

  They stopped four times to test the fence. Places where it sagged too much, or seemed loose on the post. Three kilometers further west they found a second entryway. A new one it seemed. Only a single set of tire marks coming and going were visible. There may have been more. The light was fading and she couldn’t be sure.

  “Charles, mark this spot. It will be coming dark when you return.
Set up a second camera here. Let’s see who else is abusing our hospitality.”

  Sanderson returned home to her son and daughter and her routine. But something had changed. She had done this every night for so many years and never thought about it. Sometimes she would work late, but always the same work no matter what the hour. But since last night, it seemed so…what?…ordinary, so dull. Last night had been exciting and even dangerous. Now she discovered she had been spoiled for the everyday. Modise had shown her something new and, thereby, made her see her life for what it was. She pursed her lips. He was to blame for this.

  But when she pushed through the door. Mpitle looked up from her homework and gave her a wicked look.

  “Do not even begin with me, girl.”

  And then there was Michael’s smile and the frustration of the moment evaporated. She carried her cone over to him and placed it beside his bed. Orgonite was probably foolishness but it couldn’t hurt. When all hope has been taken from you, you will try anything to bring some back.

  “What is that?”

  “Good luck.”

  ***

  “It should be safe enough now, Jack. It’s nearly dark.”

  “Can’t be too careful, Harv. Have some more cheese crackers. We’ll wait a bit longer.”

  “That car with those two men are back. I swear they look straight at us every time. They know we’re here, Jack. We should get out while we can.”

  “Soon, Harv. When it’s dark, we’ll relocate to some other digs. That car salesman offered us his back room, for a price, naturally. Maybe we’ll take him up on that. What do you think?”

  “The people after us will go there, won’t they? They saw the number plate.”

  “Well, let’s suppose they did. How do they trace it? I reckon the coppers are on their trail same as they’re on ours. So, they can’t tap into the police for a vehicle ID. Also, remember, the bloody truck is sitting on the lot nice as you please. They may find it, but won’t expect us to still be in it.”