David Gilman - The Devil's breath

The meat had cooked in the embers and, despite the charcoal taste, which reminded Max of one of his dad’s barbecues, the food nourished them. “Did my father send you here?” Max finally asked.

!Koga shook his head. “My father.”

“Your father told you to come to this place?”

“Yes. I did not know it was here. My father came to us, he had been gone a long time, and he gave me that thing which I took to the farm.”

“The skin? With the field notes?”

“The writings, yes. My father is old and he was tired because he had run for many days. And there were others before him. They brought the writings to my father and he put them in my hands. There was no food and no time for him to hunt. He ran all the time. He was very tired, and sick, but still he ran.”

Max tried to put the pieces together. His dad needed him to come to this cave, to tell him where to go, so he had sent word through the Bushmen, and eventually!Koga became the messenger and Max’s guide. Like a whale’s song in the ocean, the message had reverberated across the wilderness, and the Bushmen had understood and carried it onwards until finally Max had arrived. He watched!Koga eating, quick to avert his eyes when the boy looked up. He knew so little about!Koga. All Max’s attention had been on himself, his father, his problems, the how-tos and whys and wherefores. Somewhere out there,!Koga’s family roamed while their son honored his father and did his duty in bringing an unknown boy towards his own father, who had drawn these pictures which seemed to have convinced the Bushmen that he would help them somehow.

The day’s exertions finally claimed them and, before the last of the meat was eaten, they curled up next to the warm stones around the fire and slept.

A deafening crash snatched Max from his scattered dreams as a lightning strike hit the mountainside opposite. The boys were on their feet in seconds, alert for any danger, but, realizing it was only a violent storm, they moved to the mouth of the cave for a better look. A flurry of wind scattered the fire’s cold ashes; the moonlight shaped and reshaped the black rolling clouds, and the air was heavy with the threat of rain. As another lightning strike illuminated the mountain across the valley, Max could see a swarm of shadows scurrying in terror.

“He-who-sits-on-his-hands,”!Koga said.

Max didn’t understand, and then looked more closely. The lightning’s brief and intense floodlighting showed him more than a hundred baboons scurrying for shelter. Baboons!!Koga meant baboons. However, before he could watch them any longer a cloud tumbled down the mountain behind the boys and smothered them in a gray fog. The air chilled quickly as the wind tugged at the cloud, tearing it from the cliff face. Max held out a hand, feeling the damp air, wanting the rain, but none came; only a dewlike residue clung to the rocks. And then the brief swirling assault ended. The rolling storm passed and they were left with the crystal night sky and the first edging of dawn. The baboons had fled into the crocodile-toothed mountains.

Once again the vastness was silent.

Max gazed out into the night. The never-ending land crept into the darkness, beckoning him, daring him to enter.

An enemy in waiting.

The stench of disinfectant almost made Kallie gag. Used as she was to the unsullied air of the desert, the impact of the confined police station, with its claustrophobic corridors, noisy holding areas and humanity shoved together in close proximity, made her skin itch. This was a world she never saw in the wilderness. She tried to keep her eyes averted from arrested men shouting abuse at their captors or women screaming through their drunkenness; cage doors rattled closed, a cleaner mopped the floor and Mike Kapuo finally guided her through this maze into the sanctuary of his office.

Mike Kapuo was a bruiser who liked his food. He was a tall man whose belly hung over his trousers; his sausage-size fingers made the big handgun he carried look like a child’s toy. Despite his bulk, though, he could move fast when occasion demanded, and he had boxed for the police service until he was nearly forty years old, a record for a heavyweight. That was where he first met Ferdie van Reenen; they were opponents in the ring, and Kallie’s father was the man who had stopped him from becoming the champion by knocking him out in the fourth round. They had been good friends ever since. Nowadays Kapuo left the more physical demands, such as villain-chasing on foot, to younger men.

At fifty-seven years of age he should already have retired, but he loved the job and his staff loved him, even though he could be a hard taskmaster. Only the criminals were distressed by his staying on in the CID. Kapuo cared about people being hurt by the callous and self-serving attitudes of others.

“You shouldn’t be down here at this time of night,” he told her.

“Where else would I find you?”

He smiled. This was one determined girl; if he had been out on one of his deep-sea fishing trips, she’d probably have swum out to reach him if there was an important enough reason. And for her to be here, it had to be important.

“You weren’t just passing by, then?” he teased.

He poured her a cup of coffee which resembled river mud but was hot and tasted sweet, which was exactly what she needed.

“Your dad OK?” he asked. It wouldn’t be the first time Kapuo would have had to help Ferdie van Reenen. The last time Kallie’s father had tackled a gang of poachers-he went after them with a vengeance and a shotgun-he had got himself badly hurt. If Kallie hadn’t got to Kapuo and he in turn had not reached van Reenen, the poachers would have got a lot worse than the few years in jail they’d received.

“He’s fine. He’s up at Kunene with some birders.”

“Uh-huh.” Kapuo waited. She was sipping the coffee, first looking at him, then letting her eyes gaze away around the untidy room-not that Kapuo thought it was untidy. He knew where everything was.

“I think I’ve got a problem,” she finally said.

“More of a problem than my lousy coffee?”

“Worse.”

She hesitated. He waited.

“I think someone is trying to kill a boy I know,” she said carefully.

He looked at her. Kallie van Reenen was her father’s daughter and, like him, would never say anything just for effect. “And why would you think that?”

“Because I think they’ve just tried to kill me as well.”

Lucius Slye was an orderly man. He insisted on making his own bed in the morning because the servants did not fold the sheets correctly at the corners. His toothbrush, razor, hairbrush, toothpaste tube and hair gel were all neatly laid out next to his spotlessly clean washbasin. Neatness, tidiness, orderliness, cleanliness and attention to detail were exactly what Slye needed in order to function. He did not have the emotional resources of Shaka Chang which enabled him to adapt to any changing situation with animal cunning. No, Mr. Slye needed a controlled environment in which to function at maximum efficiency. Which was why he hated loose ends. And ever since the Gordon boy had been in Africa, loose ends were squirming like a basketful of snakes, not that he had ever seen a basketful of snakes-he would probably scream and faint if he did. Like many cruel-minded men, Slye was a coward at heart.

He had suggested that Shaka Chang might just consider following up the failed attempt on Max’s life at the airport with an attack on the van Reenen farm. But Chang had said no to that. It would attract far too much attention. At least the airport violence could be thought of as a personal attack, a mugging that had got out of hand. Chang did not want to complicate matters by causing harm to outsiders. “Let events unfold, Mr. Slye,” Chang had told him. “The wilderness or our men will finish off the boy.”