Trackers (51 page)

He took the pistol out, tucked it
under his belt behind his back, zipped the bag closed again.

Then he peered around the corner of
the wall.

'We're going to walk calmly now. We
don't have much time ...' He held his left hand out to her.

'Where are we going?' She took his
hand.

'We need a car. We have to get away
from here.' He began walking up the pavement in the direction of the shopping
centre.

'Where will you get a car?'

'We're going to steal one, Milla.'

'Oh.'

Quinn pointed the laser at the big
screen, on which a map of the area was projected. 'This area is dune veld, up
to the R27, about a kilometre away. Here is a shopping centre, here is a town
house development. His other option is north, there's a small residential area
next to the Big Bay Beach Club. Tiger will try to cover the residential area,
we have asked the police to close off the town house complex, the R27, Otto du
Plessis north and south, and Cormorant Avenue east. They say it will take a
while to close all the gaps, however.'

'A while? How long is a while?' Mentz
asked.

Quinn shrugged. 'Ten, fifteen minutes
...'

'He knows what's on that computer,
Quinn. He told Osman over the phone ...'

'We'll have to get helicopters in
too. This whole section, up to Melkbos, is dune veld. And not much daylight
left.'

Becker decided on an old white Nissan
Sentra from the early nineties, dented in the front mudguard.

Sirens were wailing in the distance.

He stopped beside the car's rear door
and looked around.

Milla saw the nearest people were a
hundred metres away.

He took the pistol out of the back of
his belt, banged it hard against the window.

It broke with a dull crack. He
reached inside, unlocked the door. Milla ran to the front passenger door,
watched Lukas take the rucksack off and toss it on the back seat, then the
canvas bag, before he unlocked the driver's door and got in. He leaned over,
unlocked her door. She got in.

He put the pistol down in the foot
well in front of his seat, gripped the plastic under the steering wheel with
both hands and jerked. It came free. His fingers searched frantically through
the tangle of wires that hung there, followed it to the ignition. He picked a
wire, ripped it loose, bent, bit the insulation off. Then another wire.

Milla looked
up t
owards the
shopping centre.

There were people approaching, a man
and a woman with a full shopping trolley.

The Nissan's engine turned, and
fired.

Lukas took the steering wheel in both
hands, and jerked it hard and suddenly to the right.

Something snapped and broke.

He put the car in gear, and pulled
away. The tyres screeched. They shot past the couple with the trolley, watching
them wide-eyed. The sirens were louder now, closer.

Lukas raced to the exit, hesitated for a second then turned left
away from the sea, in the direction of the R27.

The roar and whistle of the wind
through the broken window, the high, determined revs of the engine, the
sun-cracked plastic of the instrument panel, the musty smell inside, the fine
network of bloody scratches on her forearms, handbag clamped on her lap. A
swinging, silver cross hung by a string of beads from the rear-view mirror, the
radio was missing the knob on the volume dial. Lukas crouched forward,
concentrating hard, the fabric of his shirt was torn, there was a small, dark
red mark where a bullet had grazed him.

It was surreal.

In this instant she remembered The
Bride at the dance classes. A lovely young blonde woman, about twenty-three,
slim, athletic and graceful, who had come to Arthur Murray with her fiancé to
learn the steps so the bridal pair could open the dance floor at their
reception. The aspirant bridegroom was somewhat shorter than the young woman,
with a chunky farmer's build. His face, Milla had thought at the time, was that
of a cartoon character, one of the smaller creatures that provide comic relief.
And he had absolutely no coordination, his movements across the floor were
rigid, clumsy, stiff, despite the enthusiasm, the frowning dedication. While
the instructor patiently coached him to one side, The Bride went through the
steps flawlessly in front of the large mirror - but lost in her own world, a
flight of fantasy about The Great Day, wishful

thinking of how it could be, her arms
bent as though a dream prince were leading her.

Now, in the valley of an adrenaline
low, Milla saw a vision of her own life, unexpected but clear as crystal, her
self-deceit, her acting out of how-it-ought-to-be, her blindness to reality.
The disillusionment was massive, it flooded and overwhelmed her so fast, it
made her feel useless and lost, so many years wasted. She longed, inexplicably,
for Barend, with a painful intensity, she wanted to go to him now and say she
was so terribly sorry, without knowing why she felt she should apologise to her
child.

Lukas spoke. She came back to herself
in the Nissan, realised her eyes were wet, tears running down her cheeks. She
wiped them away angrily with the back of her hand and said: 'What?'

'They saw you.'

She didn't understand, looked at him
in question.

'Osman's people saw you, Milla. We'll
have to drop this. Until... Until it's safe.'

Her understanding came slowly. 'Until
it's safe?'

He took his gaze off the road for the
first time and looked at her. 'Are you OK?'

'Until it's safe? Until it's safe?'
indignation exploded. 'Safe? What kind of word is that, Lukas, what kind of
word? What does it mean, in this country? Where do you find it? Safety?' Tears
of rage, she couldn't stop them. 'How could you
say
that? It
doesn't exist. You know that, you
know
that, but you
talk of "safe", it's empty, it's a naked word ...'

He put out his left hand, but she
slapped it away, her voice jumping half an octave higher. 'Don't, Lukas, don't
try to console me, don't...Why do you do it? Why do you try to exclude us, why
do you deceive us, we have a right to know ...'

He tried to protest, but she drowned
him out with her dark flood of words. 'You hide it from us, you men, who have
created this world. You, who made this country, this mess of hatred and envy,
crime and violence and poverty and misery. And now you're trying so hard to
cover it up, to disguise it behind stuff. You think you can give us shiny
trinkets, glitter, shops, magazines, hiding our heads in the sand, just don't
see the truth. It's lies, it's all lies and
now you
are lying
along with them. Safe! "Until
I'm
safe," is what you mean to say. Do you want to go and
pack me away somewhere, Lukas? Do you want to take me somewhere and brainwash
me and calm me down behind high walls and alarms and then you go creeping back
to their world? You want to drop this thing, because you have a
woman
in your
stolen car? It's not
your
choice. You
are
not
going to drop it and you are
not
going to dump
me somewhere, I want to see it, I want to see
everything ...'

She became aware of the pistol that
lay beside his feet, she reached down and picked it up. 'Look,' she said, 'I'm
not helpless, I can ...'

'Milla!' He grabbed her forearm with
his left hand, pushed it so the barrel swung away from him, she tugged, but he
was too strong. She pulled the trigger, nothing happened. 'Let me go,' she
screamed, wild, furious. She saw the safety catch, pressed it with her thumb,
pulled the trigger again. The shot boomed deafeningly, a star in the window,
and she squeezed it again. 'You see, I can shoot too,' but he braked hard, she
fell forward, he held onto her arm, the Nissan's tyres squealing off the tar
onto the verge of sand and grass. He let go of the steering wheel, took the
pistol in his other hand, twisted it out of her fingers and she hit out at him
with her fists balled, a lifetime of rage behind her actions as he raised his
arm to shield himself.

She wept and hit and screamed, deep,
unearthly cries that boiled up and out of her, filling the interior of the car.
And he just sat there and endured it.

'I think I know how they did it,'
said Rajhev Rajkumar. 'They're using another ship's LRIT and AIS transmitters.'

'How can they do that?' asked Mentz.

'The SOLAS treaty has a few
loopholes. The major factor to keep in mind is that the ship owners do the
actual tracking of their vessels, the SOLAS authorities just verify signal
authenticity against global position. So, let's say you're a ship owner in ...
Durban, for argument's sake, running a few boats in the greater Indian Ocean.
So I approach you, and I say, my Muslim brother, I want to borrow the AIS
identity of one of your ships for a month or so, and I'll pay for the pleasure.
So, I install the equipment on
The Madeleine,
and you turn
a blind eye to the movements of your tracking signal. SOLAS won't know a thing,
because the signal is for the route you filed with them, everything looks
kosher ...'

'What about my original ship? It will
show on the system, because it's not transmitting. The CIA would have picked it
up.'

'Only if your ship is actually in the
water.'

'But...'

'Ships must get serviced.
Refurbished, repaired, in dry docks. That is only filed with the local harbour
authorities.'

Mentz considered his argument. 'You
do realise you are a brilliant man,' she said, eventually.

Rajkumar nodded, self-conscious.
'There are a number of ways to narrow it down. The Committee would have had to
work with someone they know, and trust. The AIS will have to be attached to a
ship with South African harbour clearance, which normally operates in the
Indian Ocean, as far as the Arabian sea, and it would have to be a vessel of
the same tonnage, more or less, preferably a fishing trawler.'

'So let's start looking.'

They drove in silence, only the noise
through the windscreen and the open window behind. First along the R27 north,
and then right at the Melkbos traffic lights, to the N7.

Milla stared out over the wheat
fields in the twilight. She was empty, the emotion expended. On the other side
of the eruption she had found calm, a small hard nucleus of indignation and
determination. With her head turned away from Lukas, calmly and precisely and
loud enough to be heard over the wind noise, she said, 'The ship is arriving
early.'

He was slow to respond. 'No, Milla
...'

'Another email came for Osman. I
connected my cellphone to his laptop. I also know what they are bringing in.'

'What?'

She played her trump card. 'I'm
coming along.'

'No.'

She just stared at him.

His anger rose. 'Didn't you notice?
They shot at us.'

'You don't have the right to decide
about my life. No man has.'

'Christ, Milla ...'

'You are not going to shut me out.'

'When is the
ship arriving?'

She ignored him.

He drove in silence for a long time.
Then he said, 'OK.' 'Say it.'

'You're coming along.'

'I can't hear you.'

'You're coming along. We're going to
get the money.'

'On your word of honour?'

'Yes.'

She waited until he looked at her,
she gauged his sincerity. 'Tonight. Two a.m.
Arrival
of The Madeleine and Haidar now 24 hours earlier, at 02.00.
At the same
place, same coordinates. I don't know what OPBC means.'