The October Killings (38 page)

It was after ten when they crossed the Zimbabwe border and another half hour before they found the runway they were looking for. It was not unlike the one from which they had taken off—a strip of dry veld grass surrounded by bushveld. To guide the aircraft in, it had been marked by four brush fires made in old oil drums and positioned at the edges of the runway.

The landing was smoother than Michael Bishop had expected, and the pilot brought the aircraft to a halt not far from two parked cars where, if you looked carefully, two men could be seen waiting in the moonlight. Bishop paid first the pilot, then the men who had brought the car, both payments being in South African folding money. An hour later he was driving down a little-used dirt road off the national road between Bulawayo and Victoria Falls.

The full moon, the same one that flooded Abigail's bedroom with its light, was still overhead. He switched off the headlights and drove by the moonlight for a while. Even after the events of the last few days, the risk was invigorating.

He was alone. It was the first time in his adult life that he had been altogether alone. That Matthew was gone was bad enough, but the way he had been taken made it worse. And he had sat there, just down the road, and watched it. He could still see the face of the prison guard who had pulled the trigger. He would never forget it.

When Bishop finally reached his destination and brought the car to a halt, he looked at his watch by the light from the dashboard. Matthew had died only hours before, but it was already the twenty-third.

Also by Wessel Ebersohn

In Touching Distance

Klara's Visitors

The Otter and Mr. Ogilvie

Closed Circle

Divide the Night

Store Up the Anger

The Centurion

A Lonely Place to Die

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE OCTOBER KILLINGS
. Copyright © 2010 by Wessel Ebersohn. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ebersohn, Wessel.

    The October killings / Wessel Ebersohn.—1st U.S. ed.

           p. cm.

    ISBN 978-0-312-65595-2 (alk. paper)

  1.  Anti-apartheid activists—South Africa—Fiction.   2.  South Africa—Politics and government—20th century—Fiction.   I.  Title.

    PR9369.3.E24O3 2011

    823'.914—dc22

2010037509

First published in South Africa by Umuzi, an imprint of Random House Struik (Pty) Ltd.

First U.S. Edition: January 2011

eISBN 978-1-4299-9010-3

First Minotaur Books eBook Edition: January 2011