An Ordinary Day (16 page)

Some of Durant and Shezi’s most successful operations were conceived, fleshed out, debated and planned at Horizons. It was free of interruptions and disturbances, and they felt focused when they sat and drank coffee from polystyrene cups at the tables outside the restaurant. They often used the cups, sugar sachets and plastic spoons to represent people or cars. Paper napkins became classified documents as notes were scribbled on them or organisational charts were plotted.

‘Impressive briefing the other day,’ Durant said, taking a sip of coffee from the plastic cup and wishing, as he always did, that they wouldn’t use instant coffee.

Shezi sat opposite him, gazing at the table distantly. ‘Thanks, it’s amazing how much information is out there if you know where to look.’

‘I wonder how we managed in the days before internet, databases, credit records, cell records and all that. It just seemed to take a lot longer.’

Durant saw Shezi rubbing something between his fingers.

‘What’s that?’

Shezi opened his hand to reveal a green key ring shaped like Africa.

‘I was told by a wise old man, many years ago, that this would bring me luck.’ He grinned widely, and the morning sun reflected off his gold tooth. ‘Well, I’m still waiting.’

‘I don’t know if a piece of old metal can bring you luck, Mike. Luck doesn’t just happen; you have to set it in motion.’

‘Look, Kev, sorry about the other day – taking off and all that. But I really didn’t feel well.’

‘You seem okay now. Are you okay?’

‘You know me. I can handle whatever life throws at me.’

‘And what has life been throwing at you lately?’

‘I have some problems, but I’m sorting them out.’

‘Tell me if you need anything, Mike. You know I’m here for you.’

‘I know, that’s why I’m handling it. I know you’ve got my back covered.’

‘Look, we need to separate our professional lives from our personal lives. They’re intertwined, but you have to pull them apart if you want to stay sane. We don’t live ordinary lives.’

‘Nothing about us is simple any more. Have you noticed? What happened to us?’

‘I don’t know. It’s this job. Look at me. I should be at home with my wife and baby, not sitting here drinking coffee with you.’

‘I have the same problem. Sometimes I’d rather be with you than Thandi.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true. I feel sorry for Stephanie – and Thandi for that matter. We lie and cheat and con people to get information – and then we have to be as pure as the driven snow when we’re at home. We can’t compromise ourselves.’

‘I love this job, but eish, sometimes it’s too complicated.’

‘Complicated is the situation I’ve got at home. It used to be so simple. We’d get home from work, have a chat about the day, have a cup of tea. Stephanie’s like a stranger these days, man – unpredictable, moody. And you know I don’t like that.’

Shezi nodded. ‘You like to plan and strategise and find solutions. I can see how this emotional stuff would throw you.’

‘Sometimes you need to get back to basics and just remember what’s really important.’

‘I hear you. Thandi doesn’t trust me; she thinks I’m having an affair.’

‘I’m sure she doesn’t, Mike. Don’t give her reason to suspect. When you’re not working, go home. If you are working, she can phone me any time and I’ll vouch for you.’

‘This work gets to me. Maybe I’m not cut out for it. I’m not going anywhere in the Agency anyway. I don’t know if it’s worth all this stress.’

‘Stress isn’t in the work, stress is in your attitude to the work. Stay who you are. Leave stress at your office door. Go home and enjoy your wife.’

‘You know, Kevin, you really don’t practise what you preach. I’ve never seen you so stressed.’

‘I’ve got good reasons, you don’t.’

‘The bank’s about to repossess my house and I don’t have a reason to be stressed?’

‘I didn’t know that. I’m sorry to hear it.’ He stared out at the shipping lane for a moment. ‘Mike, we all go through these patches. You need to sit down and really think how you can extract yourself from this situation.’

Shezi looked down at his cup. ‘I’ve already set some plans in motion to get out of this mess. Made some serious decisions. Hope it was worth it.’

Durant put his hand on Shezi’s shoulder. ‘You’ve got my support, brother. We go back a while; I won’t let you go down like this.’

‘I know.’

‘Talk to me when you need to. We’re a team – look how much we achieve when we work together. We’re on the brink of taking our main target down. You should be proud of your achievements.’

Shezi’s eyes welled up with tears. ‘I have no reason to be proud of myself, Kevin; I’ve done some terrible things.’

‘We all have, boet, I have too. But always remember that we’re the good guys. We analyse, study, spy on, surveil and eavesdrop on the bad guys, but we stay the good guys. Don’t confuse us with them. We’re not doing anything wrong. The right way isn’t always the easy way.’

‘Sometimes I feel like we’re becoming like our adversaries. The line becomes blurred.’

‘But we never cross it. Once we cross that line, we’re dead. The public relies on us to live and act according to our convictions.’

The two men gazed out towards the road and both wished they were somewhere else.

The main requirement of the townhouse was the effective video and audio monitoring of the residents and not the luxury fittings or superb views of the distant ocean, the very aspects the rental agent tried to point out to Durant. While she pointed out the magnificent views through the large French doors in the lounge, he scrutinised the ceilings for places where small wireless cameras could be installed. At one stage, Durant ascended a ladder and shone a torch around the ceiling space. The agent assured him the townhouse was only five years old and the roof timbers were fine. He barely even looked at the view. The agent eventually gave up trying to show Durant the usual features of the house, as it was clear he was no ordinary tenant. He was a nutcase. Possibly obsessive–compulsive. Then Durant produced six months’ advance rental in cash and signed the contract immediately. Now, for all she cared, Durant could have brought a spade and checked the foundations.

Within an hour of the contract being signed, a van bearing the legend ‘Star Finder Satellite Systems’ pulled into the driveway. Four men and a woman shook hands with Durant and followed him into the house.

Sam Mtshali, the technical team leader, was a well-built man whose flamboyant gold jewellery contrasted oddly with his Rastafarian dreadlocks. He had an infectious charisma about him and Durant could see he led a tight team. They wasted no time in drilling micro-holes and laying cabling in the ceilings for the nine cameras they expected would cover the main areas of the house. Four microphones would take care of the sound. The townhouse was spacious – in keeping with Dahdi’s cover story that he was a travelling millionaire; this in itself created a few problems. Five cameras had to be installed just to cover the basic living areas. Sound was another problem. Because of the large rooms and wooden laminate flooring, voices echoed and this was only solved by bringing in heavy curtains and thick carpets. There was little hope of staying in budget, and Durant was acutely aware that it was taxpayers who were funding the operation.

Although furnished, the townhouse needed some personal touches, and Dahdi was asked to provide a few artefacts to litter around the flat to reinforce the link to him. Dahdi sent a large box of ornaments and framed photographs of himself at various locations around the world, which Durant spent more than an hour arranging around the apartment. A framed photograph of a beautiful woman Durant assumed was Dahdi’s wife came out the box and Durant carefully mounted it above the dining room table. He grinned at the irony. Dahdi and his family would be watching Elhasomi in the apartment; the old spy would appreciate that. A beautiful Zulu figurine, bronzed and with multi-coloured beadwork, caught Durant’s eye; it looked particularly striking as a centrepiece on the sideboard beside the dining room table.

Durant stayed for the morning and observed the team at work. Watching Sam was frustrating; he was professional, and an utter perfectionist. It had taken him two and a half hours to match a paint colour so that it could be applied to a small section of cornice that had been removed and replaced with a built-in camera. Durant wasn’t aware that so many shades of white were visible to the naked eye.

Durant knew the deadline was going to be tight. He’d expected Elhasomi to give at least a few weeks’ advance notice of her arrival, which would have given them enough time to complete a flawless installation. When Dahdi sent word that Elhasomi was arriving in four days, Durant knew that there was a serious chance that the operation would fail. There was hopelessly too little time. It had taken the first day just dealing with the bureaucratic nightmare of justifying the entire operation and motivating for a budget. The lease was signed and the technical team arrived only the following day, and their equipment was far from state-of-the-art. The newer equipment, Sam explained, was tied up in a priority operation in Cape Town. Durant couldn’t help wondering what could be more priority than a Libyan diplomat meeting a local crime boss to discuss apocalyptic events.

Laying the cables and setting up the transmitters in the roof took longer than expected and the team worked all night on the first and second day. Early tests revealed that the transformers which drove the equipment and which were hidden in the ceiling were prone to overheating. Durant knew that Sam was under as much pressure as he was: a perfectionist with unreliable equipment, he was smoking more than the overheating transformer in the ceiling.

The most frustrating thing of all was that the transmitter wasn’t transmitting consistently; some sort of interference – possibly the Metro Police’s cctv camera – was shortening the signals’ range. The initial plan had been to transmit the video and audio signals to the operations centre at the office, but now they had to be relayed instead to a van parked in the street two blocks from the townhouse. If transmitting over this distance was a problem, Durant suggested to Sam, they could just send the signal to the target’s
TV
set and he could monitor himself. Sam didn’t laugh.

It was late afternoon, and Durant sat in the monitoring van with Amina and a member of the technical unit. He listened on a pair of headphones, tweaked a few dials, spoke into his radio and sipped a cup of strong black coffee. Durant had experienced this before. Everything went wrong and nothing worked, up until a magical moment when, as if some hidden switch had been flipped, everything suddenly fell into place. But this time he felt that they’d missed that moment. When he looked at Amina’s face he knew she felt the same way. She kept apologising, which made Durant even angrier; it wasn’t her fault. That was the problem in these situations – there was no one to blame.

Durant’s cellphone rang again and he shouted into it, ‘Still nothing!’ There was a soft sobbing on the other end of the line: Stephanie. Between the sobs, he heard three distinct words: ‘Come home, now.’

Durant made the twenty-minute drive home in just less than eleven minutes. With curious neighbours peering over their front gates, he made it to the front door in two strides and burst in, expecting the worst. Stephanie lay motionless on the couch. The baby was lying in her car seat, strapped in, apparently asleep. Durant felt his legs weaken; his body became incredibly heavy. He moved as if in slow motion to the car seat as a million thoughts and feelings blurred together in his head. He later remembered noticing a small spit bubble at Alexis’s lips pop and he knew she was breathing. He fell to his knees beside Stephanie and he instinctively felt her neck for a pulse. She mumbled and rolled over towards him. Durant fell backwards, his eyes wide and his heart pounding. Her eyes fluttered open and she smiled before closing them again. She was alive.

‘You’re home early,’ she said.

Durant’s mouth was so dry it took him a moment to get the words out. ‘What happened?’

Stephanie looked surprised. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You … you called me, told me to come home, something happened. I thought you needed help.’ Durant was still crouching on the floor.

Stephanie’s eyes opened and a small frown appeared between them. ‘Did I call you?’ she asked.

‘You were crying, you said I must come home.’

Stephanie closed her eyes, yawned and rolled over on the couch turning her back on him. ‘Don’t believe me then, suit yourself.’

Durant sat on the carpet. With his sleeve he wiped the perspiration off his forehead. Was he the one who was going crazy?

Durant was surprised that for once somebody had remembered to light the braais early; he was hungry and didn’t want to stay too long. He didn’t really have time for the monthly office social, but Masondo insisted he should be there.

Durant looked at the office staff – operational members, administrative personnel, security officers, technical experts, vetting officers, investigators and managers. They all looked pretty ordinary to him. Could this group of loud, laughing, high-spirited men and women really make a difference to the country? The answer came as quickly as the question: yes, they could, and they did.