Frederick Ramsay_Botswana Mystery 02 (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-eight

Noga had his orders. Botlhokwa wished him to bring a shipment from Congo into Zambia at Kasumbalesa and see it through to Kasane. The material would be delivered to an address he would only receive after he’d crossed the border. Botlhokwa made it clear Noga did not need to know what the truck carried. His job consisted only of assuring its safe passage, no more. Noga was annoyed by this apparent snub by his boss. He had stared angrily at Botlhokwa for nearly a full minute before the latter spoke.

“So, you are angry at me, Noga? You think as one of my most trusted employees you should know what it is you bring into the country?”

Noga nodded.

“Yes, I suppose you would. But there is this small difficulty. I charged you, you recall, with finding out who introduced this man into the park only to give him over to be murdered. ‘Oh,’ you said, ‘I will find this man immediately.’ But you failed me in this. I am thinking this double dealer must be very clever to elude discovery by my man, Noga. It is surely a great puzzle. This is the very interesting part…you will appreciate this…that game ranger, Takeda, is taken to the police headquarters. Why is that, I ask myself. Then I remembered this is the man about which you have spoken to me in the past. ‘He,’ you told me, ‘secretes many people into the park for a small bribe.’ A pittance to what we might realize on the deal of that sort we agreed. And I sent you out to discover what this man is up to.”

Noga opened his mouth to speak, but Botlhokwa scowled and waved him to silence

“And here is a most peculiar thing. You do not return to tell me. So, now I am thinking, well he has some other matters on his mind, he will tell me eventually. It is, after all, no threat to our business. So I wait some more.”

Noga had no response for this. None was expected. Botlhokwa drummed his fingers on the polished surface of an elaborately carved antique library table. A remnant of past colonial overrule.

“I can add, Noga. I know that two plus two equals four. You decided to do some business on your own, something you have done before. I have overlooked this activity in the past. If it doesn’t hurt me too much, I can overlook a small loss of revenue that would ordinarily come to me. But this little enterprise went badly, I think. Did the cargo turn out not to be what your people expected and they want their money back? So it would seem.”

Botlhokwa leaned back in his chair and sipped mint tea from a delicate Royal Doulton cup. He waved his hand absently in Noga’s direction and shook his head.

“So that disagreeable man, Sczepanski, tells me. But you are not to be found, or rather the culprit who did the double deal is not to be found. It is very confusing. But you knew that, of course. And so, this odious man approaches me. This man with a strange name is a small fish, it seems, in a very large pond. A pond, I might add, filled with many such fish and a few dangerous and hungry crocodiles.”

Botlhokwa rose from behind the table and walked to the window where he paused staring out into the afternoon sun. Noga could not see what held his attention. Perhaps there was nothing, this was all to create an effect. He lit a cigar but did not offer one to Noga. A bad sign. He spun and faced Noga, and blew a plume of smoke in his direction. The grit on the warehouse floor scraped and ground as he pivoted.

“So, now I have a predicament, thanks to you. You did not find the double dealer, naturally, because you are the double dealer.”

“Rra Botlhokwa…” Noga began. Again he was waved to silence.

“What am I to do then? I could turn you over to those men. I don’t mean the Boers to whom you sold the information. I mean the men at the top.” Botlhokwa shook his head and drew on the cigar. “If I did, they would gut you alive, Noga, and before you passed out from the pain they would remove your eyes from their sockets with their thumbs. They are not nice people, I have discovered.”

“Rra, I—”

“Be still. But I must also see to my reputation. I do not collapse for these people so I cannot turn you over so quickly. I will have to rectify my position with these men and it will cost me. While I do that, you will remain out of sight and try to remember whose hand it is that feeds you. Here is how you will redeem yourself with me, at least for now. You must leave the country for a day or two and see to this shipment. I will negotiate with these men. You will bring in the cargo and deliver it to the consignee as I direct. What happens to it and to you after that will depend on whether they, and I, are satisfied with the outcome of some complex negotiations. It is best you do not know what you are bringing in. Temptation might trigger some rash action on your part that could only compound my problems. It is enough to know that it is very valuable, and therefore very dangerous to be in your possession. There are men who would kill to get their hands on it, you see? What you don’t know cannot hurt you. In the meantime remember this, you are alive because I permit it, and only so long as I permit it.”

Now, Noga sat in the passenger seat of the battered pickup. It had been marked with the logo of one of Botlhokwa’s construction companies. Botlhokwa had several businesses that covered a cash flow that would otherwise raise the eyebrows of the authorities if they were to be made public. In the truck’s bed were a miscellany of tools nestled in among some bags labeled
sable
and
ciment.
The truck’s suspension had been sorely tested by the weight of these bags innocently marked as sand and cement. Noga made a point of not thinking about their real contents. He did consider some alternatives and then let them go.

He sat stoically in the cab with the motor idling, one of a long string of trucks and cars in line of waiting to cross the river on the ferry into Botswana. They would have to clear a customs inspection before they did so. He’d timed the crossing so that he’d arrive when the ferry would be at its busiest and its inspectors most harassed. He hoped that would earn them a quick wave through. If there were trouble, whether they managed to get the bags to the other side depended on Noga’s connections with the locals. He had made a crossing of this sort before but usually in the opposite direction.

Noga did not recognize his driver. One of Botlhokwa’s new men. His shirt dripped with sweat. The ambient heat and humidity would normally cause that to happen but not so heavily. They finally pulled up to the inspection point. Noga did not recognize the officer. He tensed and felt for the roll of Euros in his shirt pocket. Would this man accept a bribe?

“What is in the bags?” The uniformed agent said pointing to the cargo behind the cab. Noga signaled the driver to be silent.

“As you can see, we are bringing some supplies in for a job in Kasane.”

“Oh yes? There is no cement and sand in Botswana and you must import it from the Congo?”

Noga smiled. “It is a special job. The rich American, you know the one who builds the casino, wishes concrete to be made with this special sand. He is very peculiar.”

“Special, is it? Please to show me.”

Noga could only hope that what the bags contained would pass for what their labels promised. He stepped from the truck and made a small slit in the topmost bag. Dark, coarse, granular material that easily could pass as inferior sand spilled out from the edge of the cut.

“You see, sand.”

The driver of a large tractor with its enormous trailer behind them revved its engine.

“Can we move along here, please,” he shouted, and tapped his horn.

The border agent waved Noga and his truck through. It would go more easily on the Botswana side of the river. His cousin, Danko, would be there to pass him through, minus a few of the Euros, of course. They disembarked from the ferry on the Botswana side of the Chobe. His cousin leaned on the door and accepted his present, then flagged them through.

Noga had gotten a good look at the “sand.” Although his experience with it was limited, he knew coltan when he saw it. Botlhokwa had been right; it might tempt him to do something rash, indeed. He would have to think about what, if anything, that might be.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Modise left Mwambe blustering about his reputation, his past service to the country, all of which he made clear had occurred before he, Modise, was born. Modise felt reasonably sure that the superintendent had no connection to Takeda’s petty criminal career, but he wanted him to stew a bit about his decision to not pull the little game ranger in earlier. It might not have made a difference, but at the same time it smacked of favoritism, and that did nothing to advance the image of the police. At least they now knew that there were two men involved in the shooting and that Noga was probably not one of them. Painter, the American casino builder, had seen the same two men at his skip. That connected the license number plate, albeit a stolen one, and the two men to the crime.

“Mwambe, when you have finished lecturing me on your history and patriotism,” he’d said before he left, “you will fill out a report with the pertinent facts in proper order for me. I have nothing but respect for you and your long service and I do not want to see it ended prematurely, so you will please indulge me in this. Before you do that, however, this man must be arrested and booked. He can call his solicitor or whomever he requires, but for the next few days I need him under lock and key and out of sight.”

“I do not see the need, Modise. If he can raise the necessary bond funds, I do not see why he cannot return to his home and duties.”

“I need him out of the way because I do not wish this Noga person or any others to have access to him until we can wrap this business up. An open warrant, Mwambe, please.”

He left the superintendent’s in a righteous funk but also with a directive to increase the surveillance for the Toyota and the two men.

His next stop would be with Sanderson to discuss her camera surveillance, and then on to Painter who’d called earlier about some crisis or another of his own. Perhaps he would remember something else about the two men.

Boers!

***

Sanderson waited for Modise in her office. Her aide, Charles Tlalelo, brought tea and sat with her.

“So, Sanderson,” Modise said as he breezed through her door. “I have given your problem some thought and I have brought you some paraphernalia. Do you have your camera equipment available?”

She pointed to the corner where Charles had assembled the apparatus. Modise strolled over and picked up one of the cameras.

“You must place these in service on a tripod with this attachment on the power switch. There is a place for it here, you see?”

Sanderson peered over his shoulder and Charles over hers. “What is this thing?”

“Ah, you will see in a moment. Now I suggest this camera be placed across the road from the gap in the fence.” He opened the tripod, affixed a camera to it, and set it up on one side of the room. “You must disguise it with branches. Also, I have brought a covering for the camera. It is called a ghillie suit, a thing that soldiers wear when they are hiding. Snipers mostly.”

He pulled material that Sanderson thought looked like a limp bush from a paper bag. Charles reached out and took the suit from his hand and flipped open so that it floated onto his shoulders. He grinned at the effect.

“You did that very well, Tlalelo, have you used one of these before?”

Charles grinned some more and slipped the suit off. “No sir. I saw it at the cinema, Mr. Tom Beranger and Billy Zane wore them in it and—”

“Yes, that is very interesting, but—”

“Where can one get these things, Modise? I think we might find them a very useful thing to have with the animals.”

“You can draw them from government stores with the proper paperwork. Here, I will write the number down for you.” He consulted the paper that had fallen from the bag when he’d withdrawn the suit and copied a number on a scrap of paper. “Now, drape it over the camera like this but be sure the lens is clear. You will note this lens has a non-glare coating on it and that is good.”

Sanderson had not noticed anything of the sort about the lens, only that there was a cap on it that must be removed at some time.

“Across the road?”

“Yes, facing the gap. Then you will place this,” he lifted a small box-like device from the assemblage of equipment and held it up, “motion sensor next to the fence aimed along its length. Disguise it as well. I will set it so that it will send a signal as long as there is motion and when there is no more, it will shut down.” He placed the sensor on a table on the opposite side of the room.

“It sends a signal? How?”

“It is a wireless device and this thing I just showed you that you must attach to the camera is the receiver. If there is motion at the fence, the camera will become live and record everything. Your equipment is fitted for night vision and the lenses are very good. Watch.”

He waved his hand in front of the motion detector. Sanderson heard the camera click and thought she also heard a hum.

“You see? Leave it to those people to have the very best equipment for their movie making. We should thank them.”

He did not elaborate on
those people
but Sanderson knew what he meant. She felt herself blush and hoped he did not notice.

“When there is no further movement after a full minute it will shut down.”

“That is very nice but I am afraid that camera will run all night or until the battery goes flat.”

“Why is that?”

“Animals, Inspector Modise. Night time for people means bed, for the animals, movement. There is a small group of kudu that are making that area their habitat right now. They may be moving about all night.”

“
That is why you must aim the beam from the sensor parallel to the fence. If the kudu are on the other side, they will not trigger the device you see, but an intruder must approach the fence, break the beam, drive through it and…well you see how it must be.”

Charles had listened attentively to Modise. He nodded vigorously. “I have it,” he said.

“You are certain, Charles?”

“Yes. I am. Do not worry, Inspector Modise. I have been studying this equipment and I have one of these TV cameras, well one similar to it, you could say, at home. I am familiar with the general principle.”

“Good, then it is settled. Unless you object, Sanderson, Charles will be seconded to oversee this project. After it is in place he can test it, and then we shall see who uses this entrance and perhaps even discover why.”

Sanderson was pleased that Modise handed the task off to Charles. He had promise and needed a chance to shine. Also, these cameras were a thing she did not fully understand.

“One last thing, Sanderson…”

“Yes?”

“Your ranger Takeda is under arrest and in jail for taking bribes and allowing unauthorized persons into the park, very possibly the cinema people who left us this very fine equipment. You will be short-handed, I am afraid.”

“He is arrested already?”

“Yes, Mwambe has already picked him up. Apparently they had a connection.”

“The superintendent also?”

“Yes, but peripherally. Your Takeda is also implicated with the murder you discovered. It seems he guided your dead man into the park.”

“He will lose his job.”

“If he is convicted, yes.”

“I have the report you asked for. Will you still be wanting it?”

“Yes, thank you, it is further evidence if we need it. Who knows what Takeda will say when he has had a chance to discuss his situation with his solicitor.”

Sanderson did not like Takeda and the news he might be less than honest did not surprise her, but the thought of his family and the shame he brought them saddened her.

“So, Sanderson, there is one last thing.”

“I thought you said that Takeda’s arrest was the last thing.”

“Yes, well…I am staying in Kasane for the time being, and I wondered if you might be available for dinner tonight.”

This time she really did blush. “Tonight? I would like to, but my daughter, my son, I must be home to…And the cameras must be placed.”

“If you permit, Superintendent,” Charles said with a grin, “I will be happy to attend to them, the cameras, and your children until you return. If you will call them to expect me—”

“That is very kind of you Charles, but I can’t—”

“It is settled then,” Modise said. “I will meet you at the Marina Lodge at seven. They say the food is excellent.” He left before she could protest.

“You need a break, Sanderson. Be happy. I will set up our surveillance equipment and join you at your house to look after Michael and Mpitle. Do not do anything naughty up there at the Lodge though.”

She smacked him on the shoulder.