Tony Park - Silent Predator

Back at Tinga Legends Lodge she noticed a white Corolla parked outside the entry hall. As she stepped out of the Chico a man in a photographic vest also stepped out and started taking her picture, his expensive camera clicking as fast as an automatic weapon. Instinctively, she put a hand to her face. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘Eugene Coetzee, Independent News Agency,’ he said, still firing away as he walked backwards, in front of her.

‘Get out of my way or I’ll arrest you.’

‘Ah, so you’re police. Can you confirm it’s terrorists who have kidnapped Robert Greeves?’

Duncan was standing inside reception. Sannie gestured to the photographer with a thumb. ‘Who let him in here?’ The guide shrugged. ‘Well, get Carla to get him off the premises. Is she back from Narina yet?’

‘No.’

Damn it, Sannie thought. She should never have let Carla leave the lodge. There were too many things to do at once. ‘When she comes back — if she comes back, tell her Captain Tshabalala needs to talk to her. It’s very important.’

Tom was showered and changed into long pants and a blue cotton shirt when she reached his room. He was already packed. She warned him about the press photographer hanging around reception. He nodded and told her that an ambulance had come and gone, taking the Afrikaner safari guide to the hospital at Nelspruit. ‘He deserves a medal.’

‘Well, there’ll be no medals for us if we don’t get your man back. Only jail time, more like it. Let’s go.’

The photographer was still in reception when they strode through. Tom paused, standing in front of the man as he snapped off picture after picture. Sannie sighed. They really didn’t have time for this.

‘You’re the bodyguard, aren’t you?’ Coetzee said over the whir of his digital SLR camera. ‘How does it feel to have lost the man you were protecting?’

‘How does it feel? Something like how it’s going to feel when the doctor tries to extract that lens from where I’m about to shove it. Who are you working for?’

‘Eugene Coetzee, Independent News Agency. And you are?’

‘No, I mean who are you stringing for, Eugene. Don’t tell me you just hang around trying to get pictures of British politicians for the hell of it.’

Coetzee shrugged, as if there was no point in trying to hide who was paying his bills. ‘One of your English tabloids, the World. Journalist there by the name of Michael — ’

‘- Fisher?’

‘Yes, that’s the guy. Do you know him?’

Tom shook his head. ‘Bye.’

‘Hey, I was the one who was supposed to be asking the questions.’

As they got into the Chico Sannie ignored the photographer, despite the fact that he kept his lens pressed to the driver’s window, walking alongside them as she reversed, turned and then drove up Tinga’s driveway. In her rear-view mirror she saw Duncan laying a hand on Coetzee’s shoulder. ‘What was all that about?’

Tom shrugged. ‘Nothing. I don’t know. Greeves was being hounded by that reporter, Fisher, before we left London.

‘Is Greeves in trouble back in England?’

‘No, far from it. From what I’ve seen of him so far he’s a clean skin — no faults that I’ve read about. A few eyebrows raised about the number of overseas trips he takes, particularly to Africa, but that’s about it.’

‘Perhaps that’s why your tabloids are taking an interest in him — trying to find some dirt on a clean politician is their style, from what I know of them.’

‘Yeah. Impressive vehicle, by the way. Are we seriously going to be driving through the jungles of Mozambique in this?’

‘Don’t be smart. It was all they had. We’ll probably strike some bad roads, but a lot of money’s being spent in that country trying to fix things up. Shame — they were just starting to get themselves sorted out after the end of the civil war in 1992 when a cyclone came along in 2000 and flattened a whole heap of bridges and coastal resorts. Still, the country’s bouncing back again.’

Sannie had called her mother on the drive from Skukuza to Tinga and told her what had happened — it was all over the news now. She would collect her grandchildren and they would stay at her place until Sannie returned, though she was unable to say exactly when that would be. Her mother had seemed annoyed down the phone line, though Sannie knew she was really just worried about her safety. So she wasn’t the only one.

They followed the same route Tom and Duncan had taken earlier in the morning in pursuit of the terrorists. Sannie stuck to the main sealed road to make better time, though she refused to go faster than fifty kilometres per hour. ‘We want to get there in one piece, Tom,’ she had protested. ‘It’s no good if we hit something.’

The countryside became more open and drier the further north they headed on the H1-3 towards Satara camp. This was lion country, with open, rolling grasslands that provided good grazing for plains game such as zebra and wildebeest.

‘Why, Sannie?’

‘Why what?’ she replied as she slowed to negotiate her way through a traffic jam of cars and game-viewing vehicles — though not as bad as the one Tom had forced his way through on the bridge. As they passed, a man in a Kombi said, ‘There’s a leopard somewhere in the bush in there,’ but Sannie and Tom had no time to stop.

‘Why are you helping me?’

‘I have asked myself the same question many times already. It’s a combination of reasons, I suppose. I feel like our system was not good enough this morning, that we’ve let you down. Also, I can imagine myself in your situation. I know that you shouldn’t be doing any of this, and neither should I, but I can’t just sit around and hope it all works out for the best. We’re following the best lead available — someone has to.’

She thought about Carla and the smell of her perfume in his room. She continued to be angry at him, on a personal level, and there would be no going back to what might have been, but she still felt for him professionally.

They drove in silence, passing a herd of about two hundred buffalo, and Sannie explained to him that if they were encountered on foot, the huge black bovines were among the most dangerous and unpredictable animals in Africa.

It was a hundred and sixty kilometres from Skukuza to Letaba camp and another thirty-four beyond that to the Giriyondo border post and the crossing into Mozambique. At the rate they were driving, it would be close to four pm by the time they crossed and she was worried about driving the tiny car along the bush roads on the other side of the border at night.

He studied a map of Mozambique as she drove. He had found a southern African road atlas in the Tinga Legends library while she had gone to collect the rental car and he traced the route they had discussed. ‘If they’re terrorists, what do they want, what do they need?’

They had only a rough plan of where they would head at this stage — basically eastwards, to the coast, as soon as possible after they crossed the border. Sannie chewed her lower lip. ‘Privacy. Somewhere to hide.’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But that could be a remote camp in the middle of the Mozambican bush, or in a city where strangers wouldn’t stick out.’

‘They need a getaway, in case we find them again.’

‘Right.’ Tom moved his finger through the green swathes of wilderness on the map. ‘But if you’re about to be surrounded by police and you’re in the middle of the bush, then your only way out is on foot or by four-wheel drive.’

‘We’re assuming they picked up another vehicle across the border, but they won’t want to use it for long. Travelling those back roads they will have been noticed, and if there are police roadblocks they’ll be remembered.’