The Monster's Daughter (41 page)

“Listen, Professor, I almost flunked biology in high school, so just answer my question in plain English.”

Koch sighed. “I can't. Not with any degree of certainty.”

“Okay. Let me put it this way. I have a photograph here of what looks to be a three-year-old girl before the First World War. This same girl is a teenager in the next photo, but it was taken in the late thirties. I have one of her in her early twenties, but her hair is in a beehive and she is wearing a miniskirt. In what looks to be her late twenties her bangs are teased so high she might have blown away if the wind caught her at the right angle. Now my fashion sense is dubious at best, but I don't think anyone has gotten a perm on purpose since the early nineties. Shall I go on?”

“You're sure it's the same person? Not a family resemblance?”

“I'm not sure of anything anymore, but it looks like her. I need you to tell me if it's possible.”

Koch was silent for a moment. Alet heard his breathing, the sound of pages being turned. “According to a recent study, older males have longer telomeres and this causes them to produce offspring who live longer. If there was a mutation of the sperm, the effect might be greater. I don't know. This is speculation.”

Alet scribbled “telomere” in messy script on her notepad. “Can you confirm this from the victim's DNA?”

“Doubtful. Another possibility is jumping genes. The signal to age might have been blocked. There are very rare cases of this happening, but it is usually accompanied by severe retardation.”

“Just tell me, is what I'm proposing possible?”

“Anything is possible. We haven't even started glimpsing the possibilities of gene manipulation.”

“Okay. Thanks. Please let me know if you find anything else. Oh, and I'm sending you all the crime-scene evidence I could find on the older victims. Perhaps you can pull DNA, see if they have the same … jumping thing going on?”

Alet hung up. If Trudie had aged more slowly than normal humans, it meant that she really was Lilly Maartens. Alet was wired. She needed to clear her head. She thought for a moment about the shooter from the previous night, put her holster on, and went for a run.

He woke up shivering on checkered linoleum. A generator droned outside the building. Above him a single fluorescent bulb flickered and buzzed. He tasted blood. Why was he naked? He struggled to remember. The ghost of electrodes on his penis, under his arms. The pain as the circuit was completed, electricity coursing through his body. He had bit his tongue. The man in shorts and
vel
shoes flipped the switch. There were three of them, maybe four, coming in and out, dust and burrs clinging to their socks. He had struggled to understand them.

“You don't speak Afrikaans, my boy? You going to learn fast, hey.”

A buzz. Muscles contracting, threatening to snap, the sting rippling thick under his skin.

“For starters, why don't we give you a nice Afrikaans name? What is with this English Jacob
kak
.” He sneered. “You look more like a Jakob to me. Plain old proper Boer name. YAH-kohp,
ja
?” Another buzz. His heart pounded, his veins on the edge of bursting.

The other man hunched down, looked him in the eye. “He looks like a
moegoe
to me, Goose. How's about we up the juice. You'd like that, hey Jakob?”

“Nee, Baas.”

Buzz.

He had cut the wire fence, limpet mines in a sack flung over his shoulder. Letso crawled through first, then held the wire back for Jacob and the others. They planted the mines on gas tanks and watched from afar as the whole plant went up in flames, patting each other on the back for hurting the enemy where it mattered. Jacob had never seen fireworks, but in his mind that was what they looked like, a fireball lighting up the sky for freedom.

Letso was with him when the police found them. The other MK members had left for Mozambique already, but Letso wanted to see his girlfriend. At first the policemen seemed confused, as if they were expecting someone else at the Soweto house.

“What did you say your name was?” The clutch plate squinted, asked him to repeat. He called over to the other Dutchman. “His passbook says he's Jacob Morgan.” Then, suddenly, they got excited, speaking goat among themselves. Jacob Morgan, known MK terrorist. They arrested him and Letso, took them with bags over their heads to this place. When was that? Days? Weeks? When the electrodes didn't break him, they brought in a cattle prod.

“You going to help us, Jakob.” The man had caressed the shaft with fat fingers. His face was sunburned and he reeked of beer and
braaivleis
smoke. Two other men lifted Jacob out of his chair, holding him down prostrate over the table. “You see, my boy, I don't really care if you live or die. But perhaps you can be useful.” One of them pulled his underwear down, he could not tell which. Hands gripped his flesh, holding his buttocks apart. He felt the steel prongs resting on his skin, as if the man was deciding what to do. Then it penetrated him. He felt flesh tear deep inside.

“
Sis
, man. It smells.”

“He's full of
kak
,” one of them giggled.

It hit him, ripping through his spinal cord, crushing his brain, his body simultaneously shrinking and bursting into the room. His eyes couldn't see, his ears couldn't hear. All that existed was the pain's thick grip on him, its limbs entwined with his, pulsating, wringing, stealing his breath, his light. When darkness came, he gratefully gave over to it. But then he didn't die. He was still where they had left him, discarded flesh, used up, on the floor like dirty laundry.

A stranger sat on the chair, looking down on him. A rigidity prevailed in the way he dressed, the precise cut of his short hair and mustache, the calculating look. A man carrying death with him, Jacob thought.

“I know what you've done, Mr. Morgan,” the man said. “Your friend Letso told us all about it, see?”

Jacob lifted his head off the ground to look at the man, every tiny muscle protesting.

“But don't worry. I understand what the ANC has done to you and your people.”

The man didn't make sense. Jacob had trouble focusing on what he was saying.

“The people you think are liberating you, they are actually destroying you. You see, they are really the bad people here.” He smiled sympathetically. “They killed your mother, didn't they?”

“No.”

“They had people there in Soweto. Gangsters. They started the violence, so kids would get killed, so their cause would seem justified. Isn't that so?”

Not true, not true
.

“They had snipers there that day. Shooting everyone who wanted to leave, making it look like the police. That's what happened, isn't it Jacob? Your mom was shot when you tried to run away. The police didn't do that. It's the ANC that likes lots of black bodies for the overseas cameras. They lied to you, see?” The man got down on his haunches next to Jacob. “They don't care about you.”

The man put his arm around Jacob's waist and helped him to a standing position. He walked Jacob over to the chair and lowered him into it. Sitting up was painful.

“I bet you think I'm full of it, don't you? But Communists take the lives of innocent women and children. All I'm trying to do is stop them. Deep down you know that, don't you Jacob?”

Jacob trained his eyes to the ground, afraid to speak.

“What happened in the MK training camps, huh? When you were there. How did they treat their own people?”

Jacob had slept in a tent full of teenagers like himself when he first arrived at Quatro in Angola. Young people arrived daily, eager to join the fight. During the day they were drilled hard, taught how to build bombs, how to shoot, but at night he lay awake, listening to the women cry while the guards raped them. Lephutsi had been fifteen when they'd shot him. He was stupid as a pumpkin, one of the commanders had said, and the name stuck. Someone had accused Lephutsi of being a spy. Jacob never believed it, but they had dragged the boy away, his eyes pleading with Jacob to say something, to save him. “Comrades, no! Is not true. I am with you. I fight for Umkhonto.
Amandla. Amandla
.
Amandla
.” Lephutsi's desperate yells continued until a single shot rang out in the distance.

“You can work for us, Jacob,” the man smiled. “Be an
askari
. Otherwise the government will hang you for terrorism, you know. That job you pulled at SASOL? Bad news.” The man leaned against the table, staring Jacob down. “But maybe you think it's noble to die for the cause.”

Jacob wasn't sure what the cause was anymore. He swallowed the blood in his mouth. “What do you want from me?”

“We need someone in the ANC. You see what they're up to and report back to me.”

Jacob lifted his head, afraid to ask.

“My name is Berg. Don't talk to anyone else, hear? You help me, I'll treat you well. You have my word.”

Jacob nodded.

A doctor was sent in. He had confusing thoughts, unraveling as soon as they shimmered in his mind. Perhaps his interrogators used this same doctor for all their prisoners. Perhaps he even knew what they did to Steve Biko. Jacob asked, but the doctor told him to be quiet.

Jacob was helped to a room with a bed and a Bible. The door was left unlocked, but he had no desire to escape. He was in bed with his enemy now. There was nowhere to run.

A month later, he and Letso crossed the border into Botswana, armed with a true story of torture and a flimsy story of escape. They were welcomed as heroes in the camp, adoration in the younger boys' eyes, respect from the elders. Letso played the game well, lapping up the attention, but Jacob couldn't look his people in the eye.

“It's because of what they did to him.” Letso proclaimed when one of the commanders, Bongile, asked. “They do very bad things to comrade Jacob and me. But we never talked. He is a brave man, I promise you.”

Jacob could feel Bongile's distrust, vivid as a hand running down the back of his neck, eyes following his every move. Jacob knew that even when he was sleeping, Bongile kept watch in the dark. He thought about telling Bongile everything, taking his chances. But the Security Branch men had threatened him. The
askaris
called it “burning bridges.” Rumors would be spread in the community that they
were traitors so they could never go back. Jacob didn't think his dad would survive the shame of having a government spy as a son.

Within a week the order came that they were going back across the border, running a shipment of AK-47s to Johannesburg. Two other men, Rocky and Jonas, would go with them. Letso protested, but Bongile claimed he needed experienced men. They left at dawn. Letso sat in the front seat of the combi, Rocky drove. Jacob was in the back with Jonas, a surly older man. It was barely light out, heat squeezing the air dry.

“So you the guys who escaped from the Security Police?” Rocky rolled his window down, leaning his arm out the window, his hand resting lightly on the steering wheel. The drone of air rushing by swallowed his words.

“
Yebo
. That's us.” Letso had a glint in his eyes. Jacob had seen it often since their return. He sank deeper in his seat, cringing at the thought of what would follow.

“Those
ropes
let you walk out of there?”

“
Haw wena
!” Letso looked mortally wounded. “We were prisoners. Valuable! No way they let us go.”

A smile played on Rocky's lips. “Then how did you get away?”

Letso frowned, the cloak of drama and intrigue hanging over his suddenly erect shoulders. “We were cunning. Fast like the Thokoloshe.”

Jonas turned to Jacob, looking him up and down. Jacob broke eye contact first, focusing on the wind tugging at the edge of Rocky's shirt collar in front of him.

“But what did you do?” Rocky's tone shifted. “Exactly how did you escape?”

“I waited for night.” Letso seemed unaware of the menace Jacob felt from the other two men. “The whites were
braai-ing
. We could smell the food, hear them talk. They were drunk, very drunk, on spirits and beer. I knew it was our chance to
chaile
.”

That much of the story was true, but it wasn't just one night. The white policemen had a
braai
almost every night, thick steaks roasting on the open fire, empty bottles of brandy lining the walls of the compound. They let Jacob and Letso join them. There were other
askaris
too, men who had once fought for the ANC but now worked
for the police, sitting in a group to one side, part of the unit, but always separate. Berg sometimes made an appearance. He never got drunk. He only sat in the corner nursing a whiskey, watching the whites all act like idiots. The others talked about him in hushed tones. Jacob had wondered why Berg inspired such loyalty from men he had once tortured. One of the
askaris
, Kalo, was a former Angolan soldier who had served with Berg in Namibia. He told stories about how they kept scores of their kills on chalkboards at base camp, had some sort of competition going, Berg always in the lead. He never talked down at the black soldiers like the other policemen, but treated them with courtesy, Kalo said, made sure they had the same rations as the whites. The man was ruthless, but fair.

Rocky turned off the main highway.

“This isn't the road,” Letso said.

“Back way. We can't be stopped by the police,” Rocky said. “Go on with your story.”

Letso looked back at Jacob. “This man here, he is a brave man. When one of the crunchies walks past the window, he asks for a beer. The Dutchman he thinks it's funny, because he comes inside with two beers. When he opens the door, this man jumps him, knocks him out. No problem.”

“So you just walked out of there?”