Thirteen Hours (51 page)

The lift doors slid open. People were waiting to come
in. He walked out slowly, thoughtfully. He stopped in the entrance hall.

The lawyer who had been with him all day, the spectre
of a man, so grave. Mouton and Groenewald here, with Alexa. 'What can you
remember?' Why?

Was the drunk woman lying?

Adam phoned me last night, some time after nine, to
tell me about Ivan Nell's stories.
His cell phone rang. He saw it was Griessel, who
believed she was innocent.

'Benny?'

'Fransman, are you still at AfriSound?'

'No, I'm at City Park.'

'Where?'

'At the hospital. In the city.'

'No, I mean where in the hospital?'

'At the entrance. Why?'

'Stay there, I'll be with you in a minute. You're not
going to believe this.'

With the crooked pliers of the Leatherman that had saved
his life, Benny Griessel cut Rachel Anderson's hands free. Then he went and
fetched four sleeping bags, asked Vusi to call for backup and medical support,
spread two sleeping bags on the floor for her to lie on and covered her
shivering body with the other two.

'Don't leave me,' she said.

'I won't,' but he heard Oerson groan and went to find
the Metro officer's pistol before sitting down with her, taking out his cell
phone and calling John Afrika.

'Benny, where the fuck are you? I've been phoning ...'

'Commissioner, we got Rachel Anderson. I'm sitting
with her now. We're in Observatory, but I just want to ask one thing: send us
the chopper, she needs medical assistance, she's not bad, but I'm definitely
not taking her to Groote Schuur. ‘There was a heartbeat of silence before
Afrika said: 'Hallelujah! The chopper is on its way, just give me the address.'

'I'm sorry, Mr Burton, but I just don't believe you,'
said Bill Anderson over his cell phone. 'There's a warning right here on the US
consulate's website, stating that fourteen Americans have been robbed at
gunpoint after landing at the OR Tambo International Airport in the past twelve
months. I've just read that a South African government Minister has said police
must kill criminal bastards, and not worry about regulations. I mean, it's the
Wild West out there. Here's another one: "More police were killed in the
years since the end of Apartheid than in the previous period in that country's
history."

‘“Armed robberies at people's homes have increased by
thirty per cent." And you are telling me we won't need protection?'

'It sounds worse than it is, I can assure you,' the
American Consul reassured him.

'Mr Burton, we are flying out this afternoon. All I
want you to do is to recommend someone to protect us.'

Dan Burton's sigh was audible. 'Well, we usually
recommend Body Armour, a personal security company. You can call a Ms Jeanette
Louw ...'

'Can you spell that for me?'

Just then the house phone on Anderson's desk began to
ring and he said: 'Excuse me for one second,' picked up the receiver and said:
'Bill Anderson.'

'Daddy,' he heard the voice of his daughter.

'Rachel! Oh, God, where are you?'

'I'm with Captain Benny Griessel, Daddy ...' and then
her voice broke.

Griessel sat with his back to the wall, both arms
around her. She leaned heavily on him, her head on his shoulder, while she
spoke to her father. When she was finished and passed the phone back to him,
she looked up at him and said: 'Thank you.'

He didn't know how to answer her. He heard the sirens
approaching, wondering how long it would take the helicopter to get here.

'Did you find the video?' she asked.

'What video?'

'The video of the murder. At Kariba.'

'No,' he said.

'That's why they killed Erin.'

'You don't have to tell me now,' he said.

'No, I have to.'

She and Erin had shared a tent the whole tour.

Erin had adjusted easily to the new time zones, slept
well, got up with the sun, stretched pleasurably, yawned and said: 'Another
perfect day in Africa.'

Initially Rachel struggled to fall asleep at night.
After the first
week it improved, but every night,
somewhere between one and three, her body clock woke her. Later she would
vaguely recall moments of consciousness while she reoriented herself and wondered
at this astonishing adventure, this special privilege, of lying listening to
the noises of this divine continent. And she would sink away, carefree and
light as a feather, into cosy sleep.

At Lake Kariba the moonlight had taken her by
surprise. Some time after two in the early hours, near wakening, she had become
aware of the glow and opened her eyes. She thought someone had switched on a
floodlight. Then truth dawned - full moon. She was enchanted by its brightness,
its immensity, and was ready to drift back to her dreams. In her imagination
she saw the moon over Kariba, the beauty of it. She realised she must capture
it for her video journal. It could be the opening shot of the DVD she would
make at home on Premiere Pro. Or the background of her title- sequence
animation in After Effects, if she ever found enough time to unravel the
secrets of that software.

Carefully, so as not to disturb Erin, she crawled out
of her sleeping bag, took her Sony video camera and went out into the sultry
summer night.

The camp was quiet. She walked between the tents to
the edge of the lake. The view was as she had suspected, another breathtaking
African show - the moon a jewel of tarnished silver sliding across the carpet
of a billion stars, all duplicated in the mirror of the lake. She switched the
camera on, folded out the small LCD screen and chose 'Sunset & Moon' on the
panel. But the moon was too high. She could film either the reflection or the
real thing, but not both in one frame. She looked around and spotted the rocks
on the edge of the lake about a hundred metres away. An acacia tree was growing
out of them. It would give her height, a reference point and perspective. From
the top of the rocks she tried again. She experimented with the branches of the
tree, until she heard the sounds, below, scarcely fifteen metres away.

She had turned to look. Two figures in the dark. A
muffled argument. She sat down slowly, instinctively, and knew it was Jason de
Klerk and Steven Chitsinga at one of the trailers.

She smiled to herself, aimed her camera at them and
began to film. Her intention was mischievous. These were the chief teases, the
head guides who mocked the European and American tourists about their love of
comfort, their bickering, complaining, their inability to deal with Africa. Now
she had evidence that they were not perfect either. She smiled, thinking she
would reveal it at breakfast. Let them feel embarrassed for once.

Until Steven pulled open one of the large storage
drawers under the trailer and bent to get something. He jerked roughly at it
and suddenly the shape of another person stood between them, a smaller figure
beside the lankiness of the two guides.

A man's voice called out one word. Steven grabbed the
smaller figure from behind and put a hand over his mouth. Rachel Anderson
looked up from the screen now, dumbstruck, she wanted to be certain the camera
was not lying. She saw something shiny in Jason's hand, bright and deadly in
the moonlight. She saw him drive it into the small figure's chest and how the man
slumped in Steven's grip.

Jason picked up the feet, Steven took the hands and
they dragged the figure away into the darkness.

She sat there a long time. At first she denied it, it
could not be real, a dream, a complete fantasy. She turned off the sound of the
video and played it back. The image quality was not great, the camera was not
renowned for its results in the dark, but there was enough, until the truth
struck home: she had witnessed a murder, committed by two people to whom she
had entrusted her life.

The next day passed in a haze. She realised she was
traumatised, but didn't know what to do. She withdrew. Again and again Erin
asked her: 'What's wrong?' Later: 'Did I do something?' She just said: 'I'm not
feeling well.'

Erin suspected the first symptoms of malaria. She
cross- questioned her about symptoms and Rachel answered vaguely and evasively,
until her friend gave up. She wanted to report the murder, but to whom? There
were so many rumours about the police in Zimbabwe, so many stories of corruption
and politics that she hesitated. After a visit to the Victoria Falls, they left
the country and passed into Botswana. Then there was no more opportunity. Just
the dismay she carried with her and the knowledge that the murder in Zimbabwe
by Zimbabweans was not the concern of another country's police. Not on this
continent.

In Cape Town they went with a few others to the Van
Hunks nightclub, unaware that Jason would turn up later.

They had both been drinking, Erin with great fervour.
She began to scold Rachel in an escalating flood of complaints - at the table,
on the dance floor. At first just with words like razors, later with tears of
drunken melancholy. About friendship, trust and betrayal.

The alcohol had weakened Rachel's resolve. It made her
emotional, feel the urge to lighten the burden of her secret and deny the
horrible accusations against her. Eventually, with their heads close together
at the table, she told Erin everything. Erin calmed down. She said it couldn't
be true, it must be a misunderstanding. Not Jason and Steven. Impossible.
Rachel said she had watched the video many times over in the early morning
hours. There was no mistake.

Let's ask them, let's clear this thing up. This was
the reasoning of a fairly intoxicated, naive arch-optimist who never saw evil
in anyone. No, no, no, Rachel had protested, promise me you won't say anything,
never, let's go home, my father will know what to do.

Erin had promised. They danced. Erin went off
somewhere, came back to the table. She said Jason and Steven were here, she had
asked them about it, they said she was dreaming. Rachel looked up across the
sea of faces and found Jason's eyes on her. He had a cell phone to his ear, and
an expression of chilling determination. She had grabbed her rucksack and told
Erin to come, they had to get out of there, now. Erin had argued, she didn't
want to leave, what was Rachel's problem? Rachel had grabbed her arms and said,
'You come with me. Now!'

They were a few hundred metres from the club down Long
Street when Jason and Steven emerged. They looked left and right, saw them and
began to run. The other three had joined them from somewhere. Barry, Eben and
Bobby.

She knew they were running for their lives.

In the Toyota bakkie, Steven Chitsinga and Barry Smith
turned out of Scott into Speke Street and saw the police vehicles in front of
the African Overland Adventures warehouse, a horde of blue lights flashing and
uniforms everywhere.

Steven said a word in Shona; Barry was silent, braked
sharply so that the big off-road tyres squealed. He jerked the gear lever into
reverse, released the clutch, depressed the accelerator and shot backwards into
something. In the mirror he could just see the roof of the vehicle, only once
he turned his head in panic did he realise it was another SAPS patrol vehicle.
With an ambulance behind that was blocking most of the road. He ground through
the gears and shot forward. If he could go left into Stanley, and then left
again in Grant...

But Stanley was closed, police vans, Opels, blocked
the street. Uniforms came running with guns in hand.

'Fuck,' said Steven beside him.

Barry said nothing. He stopped the bakkie and lifted
his hands slowly off the steering wheel and held them above his head.

'He's coming with me,' said Rachel Anderson as they
carried her to the helicopter on a stretcher. She pointed at Griessel, who
walked beside her holding her hand.

'There's no room,' said the paramedic.

'Then I'm not going.'

'Rachel, I'll be there in a few minutes,' Griessel
soothed.

She fought to get off the stretcher. 'I'm not going.'