The youth looked at Kramer and said, “But here the people know you. There are initials for them I cannot remember now.”
Zondi was coasting in neutral, trying to catch every word and make sense of it.
“Secret police,” said Kramer, and yawned again.
As the Chev picked up speed.
Sister Maria, in a pretty dressing gown, tightly belted, opened the Funchal front door to their knocking.
“I’m sorry to wake you, Sister, but my boy here has just made a report to me that Mr. Da Gama should know about. It concerns-”
“I am sorry, too, but Mr. Da Gama is still in Durban. He is spending the night there.”
“ Ach, really?”
“Is a Sister’s word not enough for you?” she asked, with the same gentle humor she had used on the phone.
“It’s just-”
“He telephoned only an hour ago-no, less than that; I’m so sleepy, I’m getting confused-yes, about thirty-five minutes ago, and said I was to go ahead with the funeral arrangements, while he organized it so all the managers could be there on Monday.”
“God bless you,” said Kramer and raced Zondi to the car.
“The Munchausen and step on it. If it wasn’t through the gents’, then it’s something Gardiner missed.”
“But, boss, that is many men he killed for this plan.”
“Got eyes like a vet’s. No problem.”
“I mean, what we do now is maybe foolish. We run, run- when do we think?”
“About…?”
“It does not all tie in a string. Dubulamanzi and Mpeta- how does he know them?”
“Those answers he can supply.”
“Are you going to arrest him on suspicion?”
“Uh-huh.”
Zondi brought the Chev down to a crawl half a block from the Munchausen, then switched off the engine and braked where it stopped.
“What’s all this, then?”
“The drunk kaffir checks first,” said Zondi, getting out and doing his swaying, lurching walk, kept carefully from parody, down the pavement.
He came back on his toes, running swiftly.
“There is a light under the kitchen door, boss, and I can see a man is moving in there!”
“Hey?”
“And you see that car I pressed my hand on to stop from falling? That engine is warm inside.”
“He’s back, then!”
“Making the coffee?”
“Right! Any other lights?”
“ Aikona, just the one. The padlock is also off the front door and I think it will just open.”
“Expecting company, then. Come, we go together.”
“And the plan?”
“I’m going to take him. You wait the other side and follow his friend in. What’s the matter, man? Do you want to try for both at once?”
The door swung open at the press of his fingertips, and Kramer paused only to check that the feet were still in the kitchen. They were, and he could hear the clatter of a cup being placed in a saucer. When the boiling water was being poured-that would be the moment.
He advanced halfway across the rubber tiles, then stopped to listen. The sound took shape and he could pick out words being sung softly-words that had no meaning for him, as they were in Portuguese. Yet they gave him the final reassurance he needed.
A loud click came from the kitchen and the singing stopped. An electric kettle rang against a coffee jar.
In three strides he reached the door.
The water wobbled from the kettle’s lip.
Kramer burst into the kitchen and jabbed his gun into the man’s back.
Then saw the man was black and wore a scarf around his jaw as though he had a toothache. The dishwasher!
Who then attacked Kramer with sudden and terrible skill, uttering not a sound. Which only a faceful of scalding tea could stop before another neck was bruiselessly broken.
Kramer bundled the killer out into the cafe, registering as he did so that he’d lost his gun and two cups lay shattered on the floor behind him.
By then it was too late.
High above and in front of them, a rifle bolt was worked in a breech. A deliberate, alarming sound that jerked up the dishwasher’s head in a splash of light from the street to take the bullet right between his eyes. And level with the floor as he sagged to his knees.
Before the bolt could work again, Kramer had dived behind the counter.
“I will kill you,” said Da Gama’s voice from up in the darkened balcony.
“You have to,” Kramer replied. “Don’t worry, I understand.”
“Police?” asked Da Gama.
“Frelimo.”
“Your witness is dead?”
“Uh-huh.”
Kramer had by then heaved the heavy corpse in behind the chipboard of the counter and made himself a shield with it.
Da Gama, committed to destruction and escape within the least possible time, began firing into the counter. The chipboard proved just thick enough to slow the high-velocity slugs down and lodge in the dishwasher.
Either way, it was a matter of time, and Kramer hoped Zondi would appreciate that.
Zondi closed the door softly behind him, waited for a shot to ring in his ears, and slid the bottom bolt home to keep whoever it was up there outnumbered.
His PPK was already cocked, so he could move without making a sound into the middle of the floor.
The lieutenant was obviously pinned down behind the counter, but he saw no way of safely reaching him.
“It’s all up with you!” the lieutenant shouted at the balcony. “All up, do you hear? Up! ”
A heavier-caliber rifle cracked out its first shot above Zondi’s head, taking NO SALE out of the till. It would soon get its range.
“Up, up, up!” the lieutenant shouted. “You’ve got no hope left-no hope left. Do you understand?”
Zondi saddened at the thought a fine man should be going mad-then got the idea.
“That’s it! Right, Da Gama, this is when-”
That bullet brought a cough from the corner.
Then the lieutenant’s voice, a little croakily, began another string of defiant gibberish. “Stop! Stop! I’ll do anything. I’ll go back and say nothing. Stop! That’s dead right. Go on, shoot, you bugger! Shoot! You have been authorized.”
So Zondi shot straight upward into the thin floor of the balcony, grouping his bullets carefully, and keeping the ninth just in case it was still needed.
An act of thrift more than anything, as it turned out, because first there was a sharp, bouncing thud from above, and then a dull one.
“God in heaven,” said the lieutenant, staggering across with his brains showing. “Just wait till the colonel hears what you’ve done this time.”
Piet leaned his air rifle against the tree under which Kramer was sitting, and joined him on the grass.
“Tell me again,” he urged.
“Which one?”
“Oh, any.”
Kramer was not really in the mood for stories, and his leg, half encased in plaster, was irritatingly painful. Even after a whole week at Blue Haze.
“Tell me some jokes, then.”
“Hey?”
“The one about Mickey.”
“Zondi? He is a man, and you are a child.”
“All right, I know. The one when Zondi thought Gama had got you in the head, and you wiped some off and said you were so clever it sometimes came out of your ears.”
“Who told you that?” Kramer snapped. “Your ma?”
“Mickey did, when he came to help us with your suitcases and boxes. He also told me how you made him steer under the gun flashes, and how if you opened the windows then all the smoke would blow out. But aren’t you going to say the joke?”
“ Ach, man-you know it already.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“And it isn’t really funny because the dead man got nearly all his head blown off by the one bullet-which is why you must be careful with that thing.”
“Tell me again what that skabenga did.”
“Hell,” sighed Kramer, and then realized that his means of escape were nil. “The skabenga’s name was Ruru and he had once worked with Da Gama in a special sort of police force.”
“Like you and Mi-”
“Uh-huh. So when the terrorists took over in LM they ran away and came to this town, where-no, that’s wrong. First Da Gama came here and bossed an old man into making him his sort of son because the old man-”