Frank
David loaded his bags into the back of Sipho’s old car and climbed into the passenger seat. Charlie’s bugs were in place and it was time to leave. Sipho had achieved miracles. The man was a genius. He had placed the listening devices in key places and hidden a small transmitter amongst the satellite dishes on the roof. It was linked in with their power supply. If the dishes were turned off the transmitter would be turned off too. That way it was less likely to be detected.
They had spent hours listening to conversations in the old house. They couldn’t see who was talking but it wasn’t difficult to tell one from another. Petra spoke with a soft, well-modulated voice. Uncle Henry had a gruff voice and made no secret of his desire to control the de Villiers’ fortune. Anna and Carla spent most of their time squabbling over the young guy Mario. The only time they heard Mario was when he left his room and asked the way to the toilet.
Sipho got into the car and took a slip of paper from his pocket. ‘Henry gave me this. It’s a pass to get back in. His Columbians are guarding the gate.’
David fastened his seat belt.
‘Are they checking on people leaving?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘That could pose a problem. I’m not meant to be here.’
‘If they ask, I’ll say you are a student with me at the university.’
‘Let’s hope they don’t.’
‘Yes,’ Sipho nodded. ‘If they are doing their job properly, they will be keeping a log of everyone who enters and leaves. Henry de Villiers is a hard man. He will want to see the log and he’ll want to know who you are.’
Sipho engaged gears and they moved off. The driveway curved away from the house and rose steeply towards the road. Two men were standing at the gate, dressed in bright yellow raincoats and wearing wide-brimmed hats. Both were armed with automatic weapons. Sipho pulled up and produced his pass.
David sat stony-faced and did nothing that might attract attention. It was raining heavily and the windows were misting up. He noticed that Sipho had made no attempt to clear them. One of the guards stepped forward and glanced at the pass.
‘Wait here!’
He held up a hand for them to stop. His other held a phone. David wondered if he had received a call from the house and been told to check them out. The man nodded as if receiving instructions.
David stared directly ahead. A car passed and a truck appeared, grinding its way slowly up the hill. It was followed by a school bus and a stream of cars. The guard continued to nod into the phone. From time to time he said the odd word.
Finally, he took the phone from his ear, stepped into the road, looked back and forth, and waved them on. David smiled. Henry’s Columbians weren’t checking on the occupants of vehicles leaving the grounds but they were checking to see that the road was clear and it was safe for them to continue. They had got that part of the operation right.
He sat back and began to relax. Sipho put on the fan and the windows cleared. The visibility was still poor. Rain was pouring down and the road twisted and turned. David couldn’t see far ahead but he knew what was there.
He had studied maps of the area and examined thousands of photographs. With the help of Google, he had driven down the road a score of times. That’s what you did when you were preparing for a mission.
The operational side fascinated him. There was pride in overcoming obstacles. He had to do that as a commercial diver, working at extreme depths, and he had to do it when on secret missions.
As a teenager, he had been fascinated by the cult of the warrior. His karate instructor practised Zen and preached it. He taught that the perfect warrior was an island to himself: a mysterious figure who appeared when needed, did great deeds and vanished back into obscurity.
David now considered such ideas as childish. True warriors were people like Richard de Villiers. They weren’t islands to themselves. They were dedicated members of the community with firm ideas on right and wrong. Richard died for what he believed in. Powerful interests eliminated him because he stood in their way.
‘Those are the botanical gardens.’
Sipho disturbed his thoughts. David glanced towards a slope covered in luxuriant vegetation. Banks of blue flowers lined the road. He recognised them at once.
‘We have them in Australia,’ he said, ‘but they are not as good. Those over there are just brilliant.’
‘They are called agapanthus,’ Sipho said. ‘This is where they come from. That is why they look so good. The conditions are just right. Once, they were only here … nowhere else in the world.’
‘You mean nowhere else except South Africa?’
‘No. Only here on this side of Table Mountain. Nowhere else. The climate is very special. On the other side of the mountain it is much drier.’
‘But not just in this one spot, surely …’
‘Yes,’ Sipho was adamant. ‘Table Mountain is where relic populations have survived. It was an island for a long time. Most of South Africa’s unique plants are found in a small area of the Western Cape … nowhere else.’
‘I thought you were an electrical engineer …’
‘Yes. But that doesn’t stop me from being interested in botany. Richard has programs to save threatened environments. The de Villiers Foundation has spent millions buying land and eradicating foreign species like pines from California and eucalypts from Australia.’
They drove on. Sipho was showing yet another side of his nature. David had thought of him as a bit of a nerd. There was clearly far more to Sipho Maduna than that.
‘That is the university over there.’
Sipho pointed to some buildings. David wondered about his family background. He always spoke so precisely. Perhaps he had learnt English from books and that was why. David pictured him as a studious little boy in a church school somewhere deep in the Xhosa heartland. He guessed that Richard de Villiers discovered him and took him to Cape Town where he indulged his passion for learning.
Sipho signalled to turn.
‘I will put you down at Observatory Station. You can catch the train into the centre of Cape Town from there.’
David knew about Observatory. It was one of Cape Town’s many suburbs. Sipho filled in the details.
‘The British established an astronomical observatory there when they captured Cape Town from the Dutch. The first director was a man called John Herschel and he founded Herschel College. Richard is going to pay for my daughter to go there when she is old enough.’
That was another surprise. David hadn’t thought of Sipho as a family man.
Table Mountain was wearing its famous tablecloth when David arrived at the central railway station. The clouds that were bringing rain to the landward side were flowing over the flat top and tumbling down on the seaward side. David had seen videos of the amazing phenomenon and was thrilled to see it in action.
He put down his bags and took in the view. Frank Nesbit’s dive shop was beside the harbour. Frank and Charlie were old diving buddies and Charlie was staying with him. David guessed that Frank had once been known by a different name.
He and Charlie had been in a lot of scrapes together. Their big coup was when they salvaged gold from Japanese ships sunk by the Americans during the Second World War. Both counties thought the gold belonged to them and were grieved when it fell into private hands. Frank and Charlie made some very dangerous enemies and had to find powerful friends to protect them.
David had a clear picture of how to get to Frank’s place and trudged towards it, ignoring the many offers to carry his bags. He felt sorry for the ragged individuals who wanted to earn money as porters but wasn’t going to let anyone lay hands on his precious cargo.
The dive shop was easy to find but not so easy to enter. Access was along a narrow walkway that stuck out over the water. David surveyed the impressive catamaran, moored at the far end, and concluded that Frank ran a highly profitable business of one form or another. On the face of it, he was a dive operator. In all probability, there was far more to his business than that.
He reached the end of the walkway and entered the shop. A genial face greeted him. David guessed his arrival had been followed on CCTV. A big hand stretched in his direction.
‘Davo!’
That was what his diving mates called him.
‘Frank!’
He went through the routine. A customer would have thought that two old friends were being reunited. There weren’t any customers. That didn’t matter. He and Frank were following the correct procedures.
‘Is Tom about?’
‘Yeah. Out at the back …’
Charlie was now responding to the name Tom. David wondered if he would rise to the same level of obscurity. Would he be sucked ever further into Charlie’s world and spend the rest of his life as a person with no fixed address and no fixed identity?
He followed Frank into the rear of the store and found Charlie sitting at a bench, working on a piece of electronic equipment. He looked up when David entered.
‘What gives, Davo?’
Charlie spoke with an American accent. David recalled that his present persona, Tom, came from the California.
‘I’ve been chucked out.’
‘What?’
David described how Henry de Villiers had arrived with his Columbians and seized control of the de Villiers compound. Charlie already knew part of the story.
‘We received news of Uncle Henry’s arrival,’ he said. ‘Frank has people at the airport. They keep us informed on the comings and goings. They say Henry was given VIP treatment by the airport authorities and met by a helicopter. You, on the other hand, were met by a young man in a battered old car.’
Charlie put down his soldering iron and examined a join he was making. David had never seen him in spectacles before. He looked quite distinguished: more like the high-ranking government officer he could have been if he had stuck it out in Canberra and not become involved in ventures that governments didn’t want to know about.
He removed his spectacles. ‘Did you plant the bugs?’
‘Yes. They’re all in place and operating.’
‘Good man.’ Charlie looked pleased.
‘I had a bit of help.’
‘You mean from Petra?’
‘No. Sipho.’
The smile faded from Charlie’s face.
‘Who the fuck is Sipho?’
‘The guy who met me at the airport. He lives with the de Villiers. He’s a sort of relative. Petra couldn’t make it and she sent him instead.’
‘That’s what she told you?’
‘No. I’ve not had a chance to talk to her.’
‘But you have seen her?’
‘Yes.’
‘How close?’
‘Through a window.’
Charlie looked as if he was about to explode.
‘You are telling me that you were met at the airport by a perfect stranger who claimed to be a relative of the de Villiers and he drove you to their residence.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘Sipho said that Petra was with her attorney and I would have to wait to see her.’
‘But you didn’t?’
‘No. Anna arrived with her Brazilians before I could do anything. I had to hide in Sipho’s cabin. Then Uncle Henry bombed in. He had his daughter with him. She’s called Carla and she got stuck into Anna over some young guy.’
‘What young guy?’
‘A young guy who was with Anna. I figured he was her toy boy. Anyway, Carla thought he belonged to her.’
‘What did he look like?’
David described the young man and said he was called Mario. Charlie seemed pleased with the answer. His next question was not so easy.
‘How did you come to tell Sipho about the bugs?’
‘Petra told him about me. She’s not told anyone else. He’s the only one who knows. She doesn’t trust Anna or Uncle Henry.’
‘Is that what she told you?’
‘No.’
David shook his head. ‘I’ve not spoken to her yet.’
Charlie’s eyes bored into him.
‘So you failed in your prime mission which was to make contact with Ms Petra de Villiers. Instead, you placed your confidence in a third party who claims to be related to her.’
‘Sipho is studying electrical engineering at the university?’
‘I don’t care a fuck what he’s studying.’
Charlie forgot his American accent and gave David a full blast of the voice he used when he was working in Australian military intelligence and debriefing rookie agents.
‘He planted the bugs in all the right places, Charlie.’ David tried to explain. ‘I couldn’t get into the house without attracting attention. Sipho could. Henry de Villiers said he could stay.’
Charlie considered the reply.
‘You say the bugs are in place and working?’
‘Yes. And I’ve already gathered a heap of intelligence. I’ve heard Carla and Anna arguing over that young guy, Mario. Petra sorted them out. She’s arranged for Mario to sleep in her study. He seemed to be happy with that arrangement …’
A broad smile developed on Charlie’s face.
‘Yes. I expect he is. Mario Mendez-Klein is heir to one of the world’s greatest mining empires. He is a highly eligible bachelor. I’m not surprised that the ladies are fighting over him.’
‘Sipho is going to set up a communications channel. We’ll be able to sit here and listen to what happens next. I’ve given him a scrambler. He knows how to use it. We’re lucky to have someone like him.’
‘Do you believe in luck, David?’
‘Yep. It’s the corollary to Sod’s Law.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘You should know. You told me.’
Charlie nodded thoughtfully.
‘Yes. I remember. I was on leave from Saudi at the time. You would have been about fourteen.’
‘You can’t lose them all. Sometimes you have to win’
Charlie remained thoughtful.
‘Never rely on Lady Luck, David. She is a mean bitch and she doses out her favours grudgingly. I’ll get the boys to check out your new friend. They’ll soon see if Mr Sipho is everything he claims to be. If he’s not, we’ll deal with him accordingly.’