It would be strange to see her father again after all this time. She had followed his career in the press and seen countless photos of him, but she hadn’t actually spoken to him for over ten years. At times in her youth they had fallen out, but she had always admired him: his strength, his power, his integrity. She still hadn’t got over her disappointment at the way he had left the country after Martha died. Since then she had never really felt she could trust him. She wondered what his reaction to her would be.
She passed through the town of Franschhoek with its bijoux galleries and shops and its monument to the Huguenots who had settled there three hundred years before. She followed the road sharply upwards. As she crossed over the pass, the landscape changed. Before her was a bleak expanse of fynbos, punctuated by outcrops of grey rock, sloping down to a plain and a lake shimmering light blue in the distant sunshine. No signs of cultivation, or even habitation. It certainly was a lonely spot, and presumably that was why it had been chosen for the meet.
A couple of kilometres down the slope from the pass Zan reached a dirt track. She followed this as instructed for a further four kilometres and came to a halt at a turn-off. She checked her watch: twelve minutes early. The spot was out of sight of the main road, out of sight of anything but fynbos and bare rock.
She settled back to wait. She was nervous. She knew it was dangerous to meet here, in the middle of nowhere, but she was thoroughly prepared. It seemed worth the risk.
She heard a car behind her, a dirty blue Toyota, not the mode of transport of the man she was expecting. The car pulled up twenty metres away.
She got out of her own vehicle.
The man in the Toyota got out too. He was heavy set with close-cropped hair, a moustache and a thick neck, wearing an open-necked shirt and a coat. He began to walk towards her.
‘Stop!’ she said.
The man continued. Zan tensed. She hoped her preparations and the training she had received all those years ago in the ANC camps in Mozambique would be effective.
‘Where’s Dirk du Toit?’ she called out in Afrikaans.
‘He couldn’t make it,’ the man said.
Zan reached behind her for the pistol shoved in the waistband at the small of her back. The other man was quick. Before she could aim, he had whipped his own weapon out from a shoulder holster and was pointing it at her. He fired and she felt a thud in her chest as the round hit her body armour. She fell backwards, twisting as she hit the ground so that her own gun was pointed straight at the man who was lumbering towards her. She fired twice, hitting him in his unprotected chest. He slumped to the ground.
She scrambled to her feet and ran over to him. He was still breathing. His gun was an inch from his hand and she kicked it away. She pointed her pistol at the man’s head.
‘What’s your name?’
He shook his head.
She kicked him in the ribs, a few inches below one of the entry wounds. The man screamed in pain.
‘I said, what’s your name?’
‘Moolman,’ the man whispered.
‘Kobus Moolman? Colonel Kobus Moolman?’
The man nodded.
Zan remembered the name. He had been a leading member of the Vlakplaas death squad that had killed so many comrades in the struggle. And a minute ago he had tried to kill her; her breast still ached from the impact of the round on the Kevlar.
She glanced at his wounds. It was just possible that, if she called an ambulance, he might survive.
She pulled the trigger twice more.
27
‘If she’s going to come, she’d better hurry up,’ Cornelius said checking his watch. ‘The plane leaves in fifteen minutes.’
Calder, Cornelius and Benton were at Johannesburg airport waiting in the small but comfortable lounge of the charter company that was going to fly them to Kupugani. A group of four young German tourists were drinking beer at a nearby table: they were due to be dropped off at a game reserve eighty kilometres further on. The tension between Benton and Cornelius was unmistakable, but they had come to a kind of truce, burying their mutual suspicion in their joint desire to find the diary and the cause of Martha’s death.
‘Shall we hold the plane?’ Benton said.
‘No,’ said Cornelius sharply. ‘We want to make sure we have a chance to take a good look round before it gets dark.’
‘You haven’t seen much of Zan, have you?’ Calder said to Cornelius.
‘Not much, if anything at all. After Martha died I got the strong impression she was judging me for quitting South Africa. She’s a strong-willed woman,’ he smiled, ‘like her father, I suppose. We were both too stubborn to give the other a chance. That can happen in families.’
It certainly could happen in the van Zyl family, Calder thought. Outside on the apron he saw two young pilots, a man and a woman, climb into the Cessna Caravan and begin their pre start-up checks. It was a twin-engined aircraft which could carry ten passengers and was ideal for short runways.
Benton disappeared to the bathroom. Cornelius was leafing through a copy of one of the national newspapers. ‘It’s good to be back in this country, you know. I’ve hardly been here at all since Martha died.’
‘It’s a beautiful place...’ Calder said.
‘But? There was a “but” in there that you didn’t say.’
‘But it’s still screwed up, ten years after apartheid.’
‘I wonder what Martha would have thought of it today?’
‘She would have been pleased, wouldn’t she?’
‘Oh, yes, yes she would.’ Cornelius considered the question. ‘I guess she was right and I was wrong. South Africa’s still a violent place, but there hasn’t been the anarchy I expected.’
‘Do you regret leaving?’
‘Oh, no,’ Cornelius said. ‘I’m proud of Zyl News and what it’s done. But...’
‘But what?’
Cornelius glanced at Calder. ‘You know all our family secrets. You know about Todd and about Edwin. If I do win The Times, what will I do with it? I’m seventy-two. I might stay on a couple of years to turn the paper around, but then who runs Zyl News? Todd won’t have it and I’ll make damn sure Edwin doesn’t get his hands on it.’ Calder smiled and Cornelius noticed. ‘I’ve turned a blind eye to Edwin’s activities for too long.’
‘There must be some managers within the company you could rely on to carry on after you. Or you could hire someone.’
‘Yes, I could do that. I probably will do that. Want a job?’ Calder grinned. ‘I used to have a paper round when I was sixteen. I gave it up after a couple of months. I’m not a natural newspaperman.’
Cornelius smiled. ‘I wonder what Martha would want me to do.’
Calder fished a card out of his pocket and handed it to Cornelius. ‘You know what? When all this is over, give George Field a call.’
‘George? He’d never talk to me now.’
Calder shrugged. ‘He might.’
Cornelius put the card in his pocket.
Benton returned from the bathroom and the ground staff announced that the aircraft was ready for boarding. As they filed out on to the apron, Zan joined them, out of breath.
‘You made it,’ said Calder.
‘Only just.’
Cornelius turned to face her. The aircraft engines roared a few feet away.
Zan hesitated and then drew near to him. ‘Hello, Pa,’ she said, and kissed him on the cheek.
He smiled and they embraced. ‘I’m glad you could come,’ he shouted above the engine noise.
‘You look good, Pa,’ she smiled. ‘Better than you do in your pictures in the paper.’