The First Rule Of Survival (47 page)

He parks his car under a diagonally leaning car-port, unloads a single small suitcase from the boot, drops it on the stone doorstep of the cottage. He limps back to his car, takes a case of red wine from the back seat, and places that also on the doorstep. He nudges open the unlocked door, releases the group of flies at the kitchen window into the cooling evening air. He pulls a pair of navy shorts from his case, levers off his shoes and pulls away sticky socks from his tired feet, drops his trousers and switches into the shorts. Then, between three-metre-high reeds, he hobbles down the slatted wooden jetty to the boarded dock where a kayak and an old traditional rowing boat are moored. He sits down on the end of the dock, lowers his feet into the tea-coloured water. He takes a deep breath, listens to the silence.

Occasionally, there is a bird-call, a whirring of a passing insect, even the occasional muted splash as a fish breaches the mirrored surface. The tide is on the turn and there is not a breath of wind. In his brain, apart from the distant echoes of road noise from his journey, there is silence. No beating, no pulsing ache. He ducks his head and stares down at the water, but he cannot see the bottom.

On Sunday nights, the Casa Mexicana is busy with locals and regulars, soccer fans and students, who drink South American beer, eat sticky nachos and watch the English Premier League. In summer, the outside terrace is full of revelry but, this evening, the windows are steamed up, and the open fire is lit. De Vries sits at the bar with two drinking buddies whose names he does not know, watches the game, watches the girls, watches the waitress, watches the guy in the kitchen wipe his nose with the back of the hand with which he wraps enchiladas. De Vries watches women avert their eyes from him as they come through the door. He whoops when one team scores; he cheers when the other team scores. Later, he asks the greeter to book a taxi for him, specifically naming one company. Vaughn de Vries spends the whole evening there until everyone but himself is convinced that he is drunk.

It is strange, John Marantz reflects, that a process banned should be learnt in such detail. As if not knowing of it would make it more, not less, likely that you might unknowingly practise it. The speaker in the featureless room is a pale, bland man, an expert on torture and the effects of torture on its victims. The class of nine men and one woman sit silently, their pens hovering over notebooks, yet unmoving. That which should not be known should not be recorded lest it be known. Yet it must be remembered.

Dr Vincent Dayton speaks in a monotone, a transatlantic drawl, which both bores and mesmerizes at once. Terrible fact rendered banal.

‘Your colleagues may have faced death. By that, I mean known that death was inevitable. Even if they survived, they will not be able to describe it to you, because it is indescribably terrible, the ultimate personal tragedy, individual remembrance, peppered with fear so intense that it may kill you first: it is the most terrifying feeling you can imagine. To simulate imminent death, therefore, is torture, pure and simple.’

He takes a sip of water from a plain glass on the empty desk.

‘This action is deemed by some to be acceptable, used in short phases. But, as you will hear, whilst the physical damage may prove to be minimal, even over time, the psychological effects can insinuate themselves after the first administration. I have witnessed panic attacks, intense Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, permanent chronic depression of the most severe nature. These indications begin quickly and, years later, show no sign of abating.’

He drinks again, contemplates the glass afterwards. Marantz knows that this is as much to punctuate his speech as to cool his throat. It is a psychological test also. Marantz can see that the speaker watches all of them as he drinks.

‘It is well documented that for some victims, it becomes impossible to shower or bathe or swim. For others, the mere sound of rainfall can induce panic, shortness of breath, and inability to breathe normally. These are facts, ladies and gentlemen. They are denied, but they are true.’

All the time, the man is unconscious. He is laid on a dusty green velvet couch in a small back room, parquet-floored but sound-deadened by textile hangings on the walls, double-glazed windows overlaid with heavy drapes. The only light is from a small brass reading lamp with a green glass shade which stands at the far edge of the wide leather-topped desk.

The long plastic ties loop around his arms and wrists, separated from skin by his shirt and thick tweed jacket, under the couch and back again, a tight circle in which no movement is possible. The evenings are cooler now and an open fire is lit, the small grate piled high with eucalyptus logs, each cut evenly and to the same length to fit perfectly in the narrow fireplace. The unconscious man is unaware of it, would be unable to twist his head to see the crackling fuel. A band of plastic runs across his forehead, over two wooden wedges either side of him placed behind his ears, under the couch.

His ankles are bound also with plastic ties, one to each corner leg of the couch. At the end where his feet mark the corners, the couch is raised. A foot nudges a book in place beneath the first leg, then the second. The chaise-longue end rises again, and another hardback volume, similarly thick, is pushed on top of the first, both left and right, and the incline increases. Blood begins to pour towards his head.

The man takes the spectacles from the prone body’s face, places them gently on the desk next to two plastic syringes, two small glass bottles. He selects a syringe with a green label, inserts it into the man’s neck, slowly plunges the piston between thumb and first two fingers, and watches the liquid empty from the plastic reservoir into the man. In less than a minute, the man stirs, his eyes begin to flutter and try to focus, he half-heartedly tries to stretch, finds himself unable to move, groans, swallows hard, begins to pant as panic overtakes him.

The other man takes a thin cloth, a tea-towel bearing a faded picture of Table Mountain, places it gently over the prisoner’s face. He turns, picks up a clear glass jug of water, holds it some three or four inches above the man’s nose and mouth and begins to pour. After three or four seconds, the man gags. He is drowning. The trickle continues and the man begins to splutter, to scream hideously, to jerk in his shackles and try to shake his head. Water enters his sinuses, his pharynx, his larynx, his trachea. His eyes squeeze shut, yet beneath their lids they bulge in terror. Tachycardia is almost instant, the heart’s response to the threat of its stilling. Death confronts him and, in this form, there is no doubt.

‘Ironically, this process is unlikely to cause drowning. However, even a victim who understands this to be fact, who is convinced of this, will not believe it, and the time taken for his belief to ebb will be, not minutes, but mere seconds. As the victim fails to exhale air, or cough up water, his trachea and sinuses will fill with water, and his lungs will slowly, and appreciably to the victim – can you imagine that – collapse. Since chest and lungs are kept higher than the head, the coughing mechanism serves only to draw water up and into the lungs whilst avoiding terminal suffocation. In short, this is a prolonged prelude to death. It is now in the hands of the dispenser to end this sequence . . . Only knowing that it will be repeated minutes later.’

‘Dr Nicholas Steinhauer. In the minutes before you return to where you were, you have a chance to speak.’

Steinhauer sputters, chokes – says nothing.

‘A final chance.’

The man waits until he is certain that Steinhauer can speak. When he does not utter, he slowly folds the tea-towel back down over the captive’s mouth. From beneath the shroud, he hears one word.

‘No.’

The man takes the refilled jug, raises it above Steinhauer’s head and begins again to pour.

‘Even though this technique is designed to mimic drowning psychologically, rapidly bringing the victim to a perceived state of moving away from life and towards death, there are accounts of victims drowning, suffering heart attack, or permanent damage to the lungs so as to make normal respiratory function all but impossible. The threat of loss of consciousness, and therefore control over his fate, is constant, and, once unconsciousness occurs within the procedure, the likelihood of death is significantly increased. Remaining conscious, however, may lead to physical breakdown or a physiological resignation to die. It may be argued that skilled operators can predict such sequences and effectively halt the procedure just short of a fatal outcome. But note: the halt will merely be temporary, until the victim recovers enough strength to be able fully to experience further treatment.’

After the second phase, when the tea-towel is moved away from his nose, Steinhauer speaks.

‘I – I brought him out – Henderson. I recognized his need and set him within my experiment.’

His lips move, and the sounds form words, deep and croaking once, strained and falsetto the next. His eyes remain covered by the tea-towel, his nose drools liquid mucus over his upper lip and into his mouth, down his chin. In the silence between his words, he can hear drops of water hit the puddles on the wooden floor beneath, before his fractured breath drowns out the water.

‘Who else visited the site?’

‘I cannot say . . .’

‘You will say. This never ends. There is never respite. You have one chance only.’

‘. . . Dyk. Johannes Dyk . . . Ralph Kierson . . .Van Leuren . . .’

‘Good.’

‘Untie me.’

‘The audio tapes and files. You kept them. Where are they?’

‘No.’

‘
Where are they?
’

Coughs, snorts and spits, shakes and quivers.

‘The safe in my office.’

‘Combination or key?’

‘Both.’

‘Where is the key?’

‘On my . . . key-ring.’

‘Combination?’

Burning lungs, intense pain in his temples, behind his ears.

‘Thirty-seven . . . ten . . . nine . . . sixty . . . eight . . . thirteen.’

‘What is the significance of those numbers?’

‘What?’

‘What do they mean?’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because you are the same.’

‘The same?’

‘You are not unique. The numbers?’

‘My father’s birthday . . . my birthday.’

The man nods. ‘Inverted.’ He smiles thinly, looks down at the body prone. ‘Then this is done.’

He moves away from the couch, back to the desk. He takes the syringe marked with red, injects the liquid into Steinhauer’s neck, and watches consciousness leave him. He pulls away the tea-towel and stares at the man’s eyes.

He overloads the fire with fuel. He cuts the plastic ties, takes them, the tea-towel, the empty syringes and un-needed tiny bottles, places them all at the top of a small black rucksack. Beneath them lie jewellery and silverware, some foreign objets d’art, and a small, very old, wooden tribal mask.

He places a full glass of brandy on the couch next to Steinhauer, tips the open bottle over the table, where it runs onto the parquet flooring. Using the tongs beside the fire, he pokes the white-hot embers beyond the hearth, moving one large glowing chunk of wood beneath the African textile on the wall beside the curtains to the side windows. Even as he takes a final look about the room, a last glance at Nicholas Steinhauer, prone and beyond knowing, the flames begin the rise up the wall, engulfing the grassy textile, towards the wooden beams and the yellowwood ceiling.

He closes the door, retraces his steps to the back door of the house, lets himself out into the night, across the garden, and towards the common land of Constantia. No alarm sounds. By the time the flames appear at the side window, still unseen from the distant neighbours’ homes, he is already half a kilometre away, walking up to a dark anonymous motorcycle, parked on an unlit road, overlooked by nothing but an empty house, surrounded by tall trees, heavy with dry autumn leaf and abundant with fruit.

Vaughn de Vries is sober. He has been drinking all evening, but his head is clear and calm. After his braai, he has lain on his back on the jetty, looking up at the Milky Way, a splash of sparkling white across the blue-black of night. An occasional bird-call, a passing insect; only these have broken the near-perfect silence.

He slowly struggles up, his body heavy, aching, resisting each movement which brings him to his feet. He moves cautiously in the near-blackness, drawn only to the candle he has lit and placed on the kitchen table. Its light seems very dim beyond the tall reeds. From the jetty, he hears the breeze in the reeds, whispering. He stops and looks ahead. He is different; unexpectedly clear of thought, organized. He has remembered a pillow and bedding, so there are clean sheets on the bed. He has packed soap and towels; sufficient food for several days. He has everything he wants.

He steps into the kitchen, picks up the candle and walks it up a rickety wooden staircase to his bedroom in the eaves of the boathouse to the side of the main building. ‘Any time,’ this long-held acquaintance has told him, ‘this room is yours.’

He sits on the edge of the bed, deep in thought, yet strangely relaxed. To find some comfort from the interminable ache of his bruises, he lies on his back with his legs drawn up. He places a spare cushion under his legs and lets his head sink into the pillow. In the vaulted-roof room he is sweating already and he regrets pulling the curtains over the windows. He considers getting up to open them, to sleep with the cool night-time breeze on him, but he decides to stay where he is. He returns to his thoughts: what has he countenanced; what has he condoned? A tiny wave of panic passes over him; he does not know whether he will sleep.

Within moments, he is asleep.

I have received transformatory advice and guidance from Krystyna Green, Martin Fletcher, and much support from Duncan Proudfoot at Constable & Robinson.

The initial critique, and consistent support from my partner, Gareth Hughes, helped me to move forward logically. I would also like to thank Philip G., Erica, and my wonderful, ever-supportive parents.