Sandhurst’s wife, Margie, turned the beige 1992 Toyota into a gravel area beside a mobile tuck shop where there was little lighting, and stalled the car as she brought it to a halt. Sandhurst shook his head, clicked his tongue and opened the car door.
‘I’ll be five minutes. Keep your doors locked.’
The old lady nodded and reached into her handbag for her knitting needles. ‘Be careful, love,’ she told her husband as he climbed out, opened the boot and took out his metal walking stick. Margie Sandhurst watched as he walked briskly up the road and as soon as he was out of sight, returned to her knitting. She’d promised to have her granddaughter’s jersey finished by her birthday at the end of January. As sharp as his mind still was, Sandhurst could feel his body taking strain as he walked the fifty metres down the road and turned a corner. The grey-haired man jogged down a steep driveway towards a one-storey face brick building which a nondescript sign told him was the target. ‘S&D Pharmaceutical Distributors.’ Sandhurst felt a smile curl his lips. It was so easy. This brick building in Westmead held a weapon of mass destruction with the killing power of a ton of dynamite, and there wasn’t even a fence he had to scale. He went straight to the window he was looking for. It took him less than two minutes to bend the bars from the window frame using a crow bar and then dislodge some of the glass louvres. Sandhurst then left the window and went to a side door, which he quickly unlocked and went inside. So far, the storeman had delivered what was expected of him. The three keys had cost him R1 000. The insider had told him that the scheduled medicines were in a separate section of the storeroom and he identified the locked door by the number above it. The second key he’d been given opened this door and the torchlight soon fell on the mandatory steel cabinet which protected the scheduled drugs and kept the distributors compliant in the laws governing the storage of dangerous medicines. The third key unlocked this cabinet and the man’s gloved hands had the small packages he sought within thirty seconds. Less than three minutes later, he was gone.
Kevin Durant held onto the door and eased himself out of the car as Stephanie pushed the wheelchair in so that he could sit down.
‘I feel like an old man,’ he wheezed. ‘Geez, this is going to be hard.’
‘Well, you can be glad there are no stairs in the house. Oh, my banner’s gone. We put a banner up on the veranda; the wind must’ve blown it away.’ The disdain was clear in her voice. Everything had gone wrong since the shooting. She had always considered herself independent and self-sufficient, but Kevin being at the hospital had changed her perception of herself. She was used to making the decisions in the home because she figured he had enough decisions to make at work. She paid the bills, organised and ran the home and made sure the refrigerator always had food. But without him around, she struggled to make any decisions. The realisation hit her hard: you need two people to put up a banner properly.
‘What did the banner say? “Welcome to Shady Palms?”’
Stephanie laughed, relieved that Kevin hadn’t lost his sense of humour. ‘Something like that.’
‘It’s good to be home. A month of hospital food is just about all a man can take.’
Stephanie pushed open the front door.
‘Surprise!’ she said, and Alexis shot out the front door dressed as a bear cub. Durant smiled and gave his daughter the biggest hug he could without hurting himself.
‘I’m Mushkie Bear’s cub!’ she said excitedly. ‘Welcome home, daddy bear!’
Durant didn’t feel like a bear. He felt like a scarecrow that had had all its straw ripped out and then haphazardly stuffed back in again. The doctor had said it would take months for the wounds to heal completely and his life would probably not be the same again. It was starting to feel like Dr Abdul was right.
The Albert Park area of Durban has a notorious concentration of illegal foreigners, street thieves, hookers and drug dealers. On Friday nights, the casualty reception at King Edward Hospital is usually filled with stab victims, gunshot victims and assault victims as various stakeholders vie for business in the territory. Nigerian drug dealers compete with local drug dealers, competition which often ends with the sound of a gunshot or a scream. Thai prostitutes had running street battles with local women who considered the territory theirs. Into the mix, add junkies and hobos, drunks and street kids, and then combine poverty with desperation and you have the perfect environment to assume the identity and life of a person no one knows or cares about.
A 39-year-old immigrant waited at the front desk of a seedy hotel in St George’s Street. The money he’d brought with him on the ship had all but dried up and the sum of his existence was now wrapped in a black canvas bag which he dragged around with him from soup kitchen to shelter. He’d lived on the street for months, destitute, alone and rejected by society. His only real friend was Courtney; she was kind to him up to a point, but he wanted more than kindness. He just didn’t have the money for it. The lure of money is what had brought him to the country in the first place. The promise of a job in the shipping industry had faded soon after his arrival. Perhaps it was the scar on his face. Or the way he walked. The prosthesis wasn’t well made and he couldn’t lie to the foreman about the fact that he struggled to move around ships’ ladders and hatches. So much for a better life in South Africa.
It was the day after Christmas that he’d been approached and the offer had come as both a surprise and a shock. It seemed like easy money, more money than he could comprehend. He had nothing to lose, really. His identity document, birth certificate, qualifications; all these things were only useful if you were part of society and a useful citizen. He was an outsider, an alien, discarded and forgotten. He had always kept his records meticulous, certified, protected in plastic covers. He thought that this would benefit him one day. And today it would. He was selling his identity for R30 000. The immigrant had left the parcel with Mr Naidu at the front reception desk the previous day and today he received a box wrapped in brown paper. The storeroom of the hotel was under the stairwell and Mr Naidu let him sleep there on cold nights. He closed the door and switched on the light. He hadn’t laughed that much for years. It was a beautiful sight. The cash was in hundreds and two hundreds and his first thought was of Courtney. Nestled in the cash was a bottle of Johnny Walker. It couldn’t get better. A sip of whisky and a handful of fifties. He would head straight for Courtney’s room.
Across the road, a man observed the pickup. He’d left the parcel at the counter with the man’s name on it, being careful not to let the receptionist see him. In his rucksack was the folder containing his new identity and within a few days, his photograph would replace those on the documents. All that remained was for the immigrant to disappear. He reflected on the ease with which he’d achieved his first objective. The old Rhodesian and his fussy wife had delivered 15 ml of
M
99, but he doubted he would use even half of that amount. There was only an ampoule of
M
99 in the whisky, and 5 ml of this drug was enough to bring an elephant down within ten seconds. He’d done the research. From the morphine family, but just thousands of times more powerful,
M
99 was specifically designed and manufactured for veterinarians in big-game capture, and the injection of a drop into the bloodstream would kill a human being in seconds. The
M
99 would quickly find its way into the brain and bind to and activate a specific receptor in the central nervous system. The activation of these receptors would rapidly cause the immigrant to experience feelings of euphoria and then sedation as the heart and lung functions were suppressed. His last few moments would be characterised by difficulty in breathing, a rapid slowdown in his heart rate and then a painless death from suffocation – painless because the analgesic and euphoric effect of the
M
99 would actually make him enjoy the experience.
‘Ruslan,’ the man said simply, taking Sheikh U-Haq’s hand.
‘Salaam, you come highly recommended, Ruslan,’ the sheikh said, motioning to the man to sit opposite him at the desk. His office was neat and, above a credenza, there was a large picture of Mecca. ‘It’s not an extravagance that I have a driver, but a necessity. I never learnt to drive in Saudi and now I’m here and I’m too old to learn.’
Ruslan nodded. ‘It will be an honour to serve you, Sheikh. I shall be humbled by the experience.’
‘Some highly respected friends in Johannesburg referred you to me. My previous driver . . .’ The sheikh shook his head and groaned. ‘I am pleased you have agreed to this work. Where’re you from?’
‘I am from all over, Sheikh. I go where Allah sends me.’
The sheikh surveyed the man’s face. The blue-green eyes were handsome. The skin was like a highly polished ivory, flawless. ‘And he has sent you to me. Allah rejoices.’
‘I consider myself much blessed, Sheikh.’ Ruslan’s voice was soft, deliberate.
U-Haq frowned then pushed himself back in his chair. ‘I’m trying to put my finger on that accent. You’re not South African?’
‘I was born in Grozny, but I’ve been all over.’
‘Grozny.’ The sheikh walked towards the credenza. ‘It means “The Terrible” in Russian. This is Paradise here, but we’re one nation, one Ummah, different colours, different nations, different languages.’
‘Maybe it’s Paradise, maybe it’s hell. But I need to work and neither Allah nor Sataan care about money.’ The words were deliberate, almost tainted with annoyance.
‘Just so, my brother.’ The sheikh coughed nervously. ‘Anyway, you’re most welcome here.’ He opened the credenza and pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniels. ‘Have you seen my new car? She’s a pleasure to drive. Mercedes s600 and it’s the long wheelbase version, not many of these in the country. Twelve cylinders, top speed governed to 250 kilometres per hour.’ The sheikh looked serious for a moment. ‘But I don’t expect you to test her limits, you understand?’
‘Of course not, Sheikh.’
U-Haq laughed. ‘Ruslan, you and I don’t share a love for good cars, I see. How about a whisky?’
Ruslan narrowed his eyes. ‘Sheikh, I abstain.’
‘I’m blessed to have you, my brother. Myself, well, I take a drink or two, but privately. You’ll indulge me. It’s medicinal.’
U-Haq looked intently at Ruslan, a man in his thirties with a face which reflected sincerity, intensity and perhaps a little anger. ‘You condemn me for it, Ruslan?’
‘No, Sheikh. You are a man who has done so much for Islam, so who am I, a humble boy, to judge you?’
Durant pushed open his office door and put his briefcase on his desk. Five months since he’d been there. The office smelt musty and his plant was dead. Nobody had been into his office in that time; in the intelligence world your office is sacrosanct – it is only entered if the occupant is present. Or dead of course. His coffee cup still stood on his table with a hard grey residue at the bottom and he remembered this was his Christmas Eve cup before he left the office to buy Alexis a Christmas present. He probably should have washed the cup when he left, but he’d expected to be back after two days, not five months. He tossed the cup in the bin, hearing it shatter and finding a sense of comfort in the dissenting action. He felt like a stranger in the office, disoriented and uncertain what to do next. The office. In an instant a lifetime of fears and insecurities surfaced. Why had he chosen this profession in the first place? He’d always told himself it was to make a difference, now he wasn’t so sure. Perhaps it was a selfish motive, the rush of being a thief and getting away with it; the excitement of secret meetings and late-night encounters, like an affair, but staying faithful. The gratification that came with seeing operations succeed. It wasn’t about the work at all, it was all about him. And this selfish, almost nihilistic tendency had nearly got him killed.
The days leading up to his return to the office were a blur. He’d hardly slept and when he did it was a disturbed and troubled sleep characterised by nightmares. Storms were the worst. Up until March when there were still almost nightly thunderstorms he’d struggled to get the flashbacks of Christmas Eve to leave him. The flashes and bangs terrified him and the fact that he was so fearful dragged him into depression. The turmoil in his head settled a month earlier, but as his return to the office loomed nearer, so had the fear resurfaced. He wasn’t sure he was ready to get back to work. The doctor said it would take longer for the mind to heal than the body and he was right.
There was a brief knock on the door and Shabalala framed the doorway.
‘Welcome back.’
Durant didn’t shake his hand.
‘Thanks. I had to come back to this miserable place eventually,’ he said bitterly.
‘Post-traumatic stress. Twenty per cent of all—’
‘Thanks, Cedric,’ Durant said, easing himself into his office chair and lifting his eyes to the row of commendation certificates on the wall. ‘Only certificate I haven’t got is a death certificate. I’ve got the rest.’ His voice was soft, tinged with sadness.
Shabalala leaned forward and smiled disarmingly. ‘Everyone says you’re a fighter, Kevin. I want to see some of that fighting spirit. On a scale of one to ten, how do you feel?’
Durant sighed and tapped his fingers on the table. ‘I rate myself a four, but it’s still early. We might need to adjust the rating later in the day. Sorry I never returned your calls, but I really just wanted to be left alone the last couple of weeks.’
‘Nothing to be ashamed of, Kevin. I’ve been handling things around here. Mr Masondo made me the alternative handler to your agents. I’ve been looking after things around here for you.’
‘Great. Hope nobody shot at you.’ Durant could hear bitterness in his voice and he didn’t like it.
‘Fortunately not. I met Splinters; he’s doing fine, sends his regards. Disgusting fellow, hey?’
‘He’s a good agent.’
‘He’s got to be the dirtiest man I’ve ever met,’ Shabalala said with a grimace. ‘You understand now why I don’t shake hands with people?’