The Devil's Breath (18 page)

The old man had barely stopped talking and !Koga listened for a long time before translating, speaking as if he were the voice of his father. “Your father had an injured leg. But he was strong. He and the other man, they went away together after he gave me the papers which I brought to my son, who is young and who could make the journey, and who could speak to the whites. He took them to van Reenen. That is all I know. But we were told you would come.”

Max gazed down at the map. The best he could hope for was to determine just where he was and the direction
traveled that brought him there. North from Kallie’s place, then pushed eastwards by the gunmen. After that they had moved north-northeast to the cave, and then east again from his dad’s drawings. Given that he and !Koga had not gone in a straight line, the direction seemed clear on the map. Another four days’ walking would take them to where the Bushmen died. There was nothing on the map to indicate where that might be. The Bushmen had their own names for places. So if he continued on this heading, it might eventually lead to his father. Or to further clues.

!Koga’s father reached his hand out to touch Max’s face. Max didn’t flinch. The hunter’s hand caressed his cheek for a moment, and he gazed at him. He whispered something barely audible, but everyone heard and muttered some kind of agreement.

Here we go again
, Max told himself. This had something to do with the cave paintings, he was sure of it.

“Is this about the cave?” he asked !Koga, who nodded.

“Look … maybe it’s not as it seems,” Max said tentatively. !Koga did not understand. “I mean,” said Max, “perhaps those drawings were done by someone else. Like … my dad, maybe.”

“Your father?”

“Yeah, like a message.”

“Your father could not have done those things.”

Max looked at the hunter. “I think this has gone far enough,” he said. “My dad did those pictures to try and show me where to go.” His voice was edgy.

None of the Bushmen showed any reaction. Then the hunter took Max’s hand and held it between both of his. He
seemed very sad, as if he was saying goodbye. The group turned away, but !Koga had reacted to the gesture from his father and said something that sounded angry. Throughout their whole ordeal so far, Max had never heard !Koga sound so upset. The men stopped, spoke to !Koga, soothing him with their words.

What the hell was going on? Max could only stand and watch their body language and listen to the tone of their voices. Once again !Koga raised his voice, but the old men just shook their heads and, with a final, almost pitying glance towards Max, went back to the others. !Koga stayed, kicking the dust, venting his own frustration. Then he too turned away.

“Hey. Hang on a minute,” Max said.

!Koga turned to face him, and Max saw there were tears in the boy’s eyes. Max went to him.

“!Koga, what’s up? Did I say something to upset everyone? If I did, I’m sorry.”

The boy shook his head.

“What then?”

“It is not for the telling,” !Koga whispered.

Now Max knew he must have made an almighty blunder. “!Koga, you’d better tell me ‘cause I’m going to need help here. I’m going to need your father to take me to this … this ‘place where the earth bleeds.’ ”

!Koga shook his head and turned away.

Max grabbed his arm. “Tell me!” He loosened his grip. The two boys stared at each other for a moment.

“They say it was known you would come,” !Koga said, and then he paused before averting his eyes. “And they said
it was known that, when you came to us, then that was the time you would die.”

Max couldn’t quite take that in for a moment.

“I’m going to die? Well … we all have to die. And we’ve been close a few times these last few days…. Oh, come on, !Koga. You can’t always believe in that stuff.”

!Koga interrupted him, touching his arm, gesturing to the encampment. “Here. You will die here.”

Max took in the scene. It was probably the safest place he could be. A domestic gathering of huts, food being cooked, children playing, the sound of laughter. He was amid the gentlest and happiest people he had ever experienced. He was safe here.

“They’re wrong,” Max assured him.

“No. They said you would die here.” There was a different look in !Koga’s eyes. “And that I would kill you.”

Kallie van Reenen left the house while everyone else was still sleeping. She felt wretched. The photos of the dead Anton Leopold and the note to Peterson confirmed that Chief Inspector Mike Kapuo, the man she and her father trusted, was connected to those hunting down Max. Not wanting her absence to initiate a search, she left a scribbled message telling Kapuo that she had gone into the city for a few hours and that she would return to his office later that morning. She knew she could not simply disappear, she had to see this through, so she mustn’t arouse his suspicions.

Only Thandi Kapuo was awake when she left, and Kallie convinced her quite easily to let her use the girl’s cell phone to send an urgent text message to Sayid. Fourteen-year-old Thandi was currently grounded by her parents and no one was speaking to anyone, so helping Kallie was one way of
getting back at her parents. Kallie felt some sense of relief that she had at least managed to warn Sayid about Peterson and his connections.

By the time she reached the docks, the port was busy. Shipping containers were stacked high, and cranes plucked them one by one and dropped them onto the backs of waiting trucks. Released air brakes hissed like steam engines urgently wanting their power set free. With a shift into gear, the long-haul trucks eased away to take their cargo to its final destination.

Kallie unfolded the photograph she had taken from Kapuo’s file. It was a picture showing the location where Anton Leopold’s body had been found. It took her a couple of hours, but she finally orientated herself and found the place. She looked at the photo again and saw that his body had been moved gently by the tide so that it was caught against a ship. She knew about prevailing winds which could push a plane off-course, and tides did the same thing to anything afloat. The photograph was date- and time-coded. She checked her watch—about an hour and a half later in the day than when the picture was taken. The tide would have shifted quite a bit, but she could make allowances. The deep-water harbor would also have had a lot of shipping moving through the port, so the ebb and flow of the displaced water would have influenced where the body ended up, although there was no way she could ever work that out. She would stick with the tides, she decided.

“ ‘Scuse me, can you tell me when high tide is?”

The man with a clipboard, talking into a two-way connected to an overhead crane, had just guided a container down from ship to shore.

He looked at her, liking what he saw. She was attractive. The flying cap shielded her eyes, but he could see they were blue with a fleck of green, and she had a great smile.

“Why would you want to know that?” He smiled at her.

“My dad is buying me a kayak.”

“Lucky girl. But you should be over at the marina, not here.” The man couldn’t take his eyes off her. There was a squawk on the radio which he ignored. “You have to be careful out there. Tides are fast. And what with the trawlers over there and the seals, well, they bring in the sharks. You don’t want to get tipped into the water. You shouldn’t be wandering down here, either. Harbor’s a rough place.”

Kallie glanced around. Dockside workers were coming and going, forklift trucks ferried smaller crates around. She was sure that if anyone tried anything, there were enough people around to help.

“I’m just checking the place out, there’s a lot of shipping out there. All a bit scary.” She was unsure whether the look of worry on her face conveyed the right degree of helplessness.

“Yeah. It changes all the time. There’s usually a couple of meters between tides. Look, I’ve got my break coming up, why don’t we go and have a cup of coffee and I’ll tell you whatever you need to know.”

“Thanks, but my dad wouldn’t like that.”

“Well, maybe you don’t have to tell your dad everything you do.”

“He’d find out anyway.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. He’s head of police here,” she lied easily. She could barely keep herself from laughing aloud at the look on the man’s face. “But thanks anyway.”

She walked past him as he managed to mutter, “No problem.”

The quayside was one and a half kilometers long, divided into eight berths for the big ships. Kallie walked its length; every berth was full except for the one at the end, and two tugs were busy fussing and nudging a big container ship into place.

If Anton Leopold’s body had been found, or at least photographed, at the time the police said it was, it must have bobbed down the tide from one of these furthest points. A chain-link fence topped with razor wire stopped her getting any closer to the ship being edged against the quayside. This berth had its own unloading facility; a massive shed acted as an on-shore warehouse and she could see containers stacked inside. On the far side of the shed, a barrier, manned by an armed guard, was the only way in or out of the facility. An emblem was painted on the roof of the warehouse, identifying the company: a cobra, its fangs bared, entwined itself around a spear, which she recognized as an assegai, the short, broad-bladed stabbing spear used by Zulu warriors in their many wars. On each side of the spear was the letter S. She caught her breath. SS—
Shaka Spear
. Chang’s company owned the facility.

A shadow appeared. Kallie turned. The man she had spoken to minutes earlier was standing a few meters behind
her. She had boxed herself in—the wire fence behind her, stacked containers to her left and, to her right, the sea.

Now the man had an unpleasant smile—his tongue licked his lips nervously. “So, you’re more interested in Mr. Chang’s ships than in me.”

The big ship had been nudged against the quayside. She looked up at the name bending across the curved stern:
Zulu King
. Shaka Chang owned the shipping line and the warehouse, and he was bringing in hundreds of containers. If Anton Leopold had seen this, had it aroused his suspicions? Had he found out what was in that warehouse, or in the containers? As thoughts raced through her mind, the man reached out and caught her by surprise. Twisting her around, he dragged her into the stacked containers’ dark alleyway. She struggled, but he clamped his callused, oil-smeared hand, as rough as sand, over her mouth.

“You can scream as much as you want when I’m finished with you,” he growled.

The stench of his breath made her want to gag. She dropped her shoulders, reached behind her, dug her nails into his face and eyes, and then rammed her heel down his shin into his instep, just as her dad had taught her. The man yelled in pain, but still he kept hold of her despite her struggling. She sank her teeth into his hand, yanking his wrist down as she did so, and, as she held his arm as tightly as she could away from her mouth, screamed: “FIRE! FIRE!”

He tightened his grip on her but she kept screaming, “FIRE! FIRE!” And then she did what her dad had said might be the last resort in attack, she willed herself to relax every muscle in her body and collapsed in a heap. Even
strong men could lose their hold on a dead weight. She had to be ready to roll clear when she hit the ground. She went down; the sudden lack of resistance took the man by surprise and he failed to hold her.

She rolled. He stumbled over her, fell forward and tried to stop himself from slamming into the nearest container. His hand partially broke his fall, but he banged his head on the harsh, ribbed metal. It was enough for Kallie to break free, get to her feet and run.

As she raced back into the sunlight, three or four men were running from one of the ships being unloaded. In a split second she knew that if they were hostile she would plunge into the freezing water and take her chances with the current and the sharks. But as soon as they saw her, one of them shouted, “Where’s the fire?” A quayside blaze could be deadly serious, especially with a ship riding high out of the water, less than thirty meters away, its fuel tanks nearly empty except for highly explosive fumes.

Kallie pointed towards the containers and, as they went past her, she ran as hard as she could in the opposite direction. She wanted to get as far away from the danger and violence as she could. At least in the wilderness savage animals could be identified.

Max had spent the last few hours trying to come to an understanding about what !Koga and the others had told him. He had inherited his father’s sense of practicality, of not believing in any waffle or mumbo-jumbo about seeing the future, trances or séances or just about anything that he
couldn’t experience directly. Scientists liked to prove things, and if the data and research added up, then the results were duly accepted—up to a point, or until someone else came along with a better argument. But his dad had also taught him to respect other cultures. Emotional belief was a powerful force to be reckoned with and, if !Koga and the others believed that the
BaKoko
, the shapeshifter, could take on the form of animals, then Max was going to have a hard time convincing them that there was no reason on earth why !Koga would, or should, kill him.