CHAPTER 33
Sunday June 29th, 2014
Mpumalanga, South Africa
Both Sindi and Jonathan are waiting for them at the southernmost entrance gate to South Africa's largest wildlife preserve – the renowned Kruger National Park. Annie introduces Sindi to Jaco as 'Detective Sergeant' and Jaco to Sindi as 'our friend'. Sindi chooses to introduce Jonathan as 'my boyfriend', which makes Auggie want to smile. For Jonathan's sake.
They say their goodbyes. Jaco will be proceeding on to Christiaan's place after stopping by his own farm to collect his work vehicle and equipment.
"I think we're going to have to push through to Skukuza," Sindi says apologetically after they have transferred their bags and clambered into the vehicle she has borrowed from her father. "No stopping for game, I'm afraid. We have to get there before reception closes so you can book into your accommodation. Otherwise you'll be camping on my parents' floor."
"Story of my life," Annie says pragmatically. She is sitting close enough to Auggie that he can feel the shrug. "I travel a lot in this job, but sightseeing isn't usually on the agenda."
Auggie bites his tongue. Even though the blind joke is so ready to be made.
Talk turns to shop. To Christiaan Du Buisson. Small fry is the consensus. A pawn in a much bigger game. A game, it would seem, being played masterfully by Karola King.
"She's clever," says Auggie. "I've gone again through everything Langley dug up on her and through what was in the files from you, Sindi." He sighs. "She knows how to cover her tracks. And keep things compartmentalized." He can feel the wry expression on his face. "There's nothing concrete linking her and Christiaan Du Buisson except RhinoForce. That's legit."
He leans back into the seat. Folds his arms. An attempt to ameliorate his frustration. "And she has plausible deniability on anything we have so far that's admissible." He shakes his head. "Even the contents of his safe, even once they're in evidence, only prove a personal connection…that's all. Circumstantial…"
He pauses. Another sigh escapes him. "The only thing we have is an illegally recorded phone conversation – one side of it. Even if…" he corrects himself, "…when we get hold of the phone Christiaan was using, we can't prove Karola King was on the other end. It's all conjecture."
He breaks off, aware the agitation is creeping back into his voice. "And without that link we haven't gotten all that much on Christiaan either. Nothing connecting his M99 to poaching. And there's no way he's gonna voluntarily link himself."
Annie's hand is on his arm. She's picked up on his frustration. "We'll find, something, Auggie," she says.
He takes a breath, forcing himself to calm down. "I know," he says. "I just…" He sighs. Again. He's been doing a lot of that.
"Just wanted to find something that we could use before tonight?" she asks.
He nods. "Yeah," he acknowledges. "I want to keep Jaco out of this. To get to Christiaan. To force him to turn on her."
There's the sound of a throat being cleared in the front seat. "Um…" It's Jonathan. "Would it help if I told you I have the SIM card number from a phone Karola King keeps in her nightstand?" He sounds…diffident.
Auggie laughs out in sheer disbelief. "You're kidding me," he says. "How?'
Jonathan doesn't answer the how question. "I have these too," he says, shifting in his seat. "Here, hold out your hand.". He has twisted around to face them. His tone has moved on from 'slightly embarrassed' to 'quite pleased with himself'.
Auggie does as asked – reaching forward between the seats. Two thumb drives are pressed into his palm. He fingers them in semi-amazement. Frowns. Disbelief.
What the…?
Jonathan responds to his unspoken question. "I might have pulled some of the contents off her laptop and desktop," he says. There's a grin in his voice.
Annie is laughing, now. Maybe at Jonathan's satisfaction. Maybe at Auggie's expression. He has no doubt he is looking as stunned as he feels.
"Jonathan Stone," Annie says, in admonishing tones. "What have you been up to?"
At ten minutes past nine that morning, Karola King and her son Lukas had left Karola's home in Hazyview and driven to the Dutch Reformed church on Main Street. A discreet distance behind them an unremarkable beige Land Rover Defender had followed. Sindi Ncube had been at the wheel, Jonathan Stone beside her. Karola had pulled into the parking lot of the church. Sindi had parked on a grass verge around the corner.
Jonathan had opened the passenger door and started to climb out, reaching onto the dash for a Bible-sized, zip-close, leather book tote. For this task he'd been all on his own. South Africa, although twenty years on from the end of apartheid, still has its "whites only" pockets – not legally, naturally, but there nonetheless. Dutch Reformed churches in small towns in Mpumalanga definitely fall into that category. Jonathan (assuming he kept his mouth closed) had had a far better chance of blending in with the Afrikaner congregation than Sindi.
Fortunately, keeping his mouth closed had not been an impossible task. The setting had been stilted and formal. He'd been greeted at the door with four words in Afrikaans and a handshake. His return shake and nod had seemed more than satisfactory to the man doing the greeting. Karola King, slightly ahead of him, had been leading her son through a doorway off the foyer. The fact that other children were being towed by parents through the same door had lead Jonathan to deduce that in that direction lay the Sunday School.
He'd browsed through an unintelligible selection of tracts near the entrace until Mrs. King had re-emerged and entered the sanctuary. He'd followed and seated himself directly behind her.
During the first hymn, for which the congregation had all stood, the young visitor seated directly behind Karola King had developed an appalling fit of coughing. Initially he'd sat down. Then he'd bent over. The coughing had not stopped. Eventually, seemingly haven given up on trying to quell the coughing fit in situ, he had retrieved his Bible in its case from the floor and dashed out of the sanctuary, still coughing violently. He had exited past the bemused man at the door, and staggered out into the parking lot.
The coughing had stopped miraculously as soon as he'd been out of sight of the church.
Sindi had reached across to open the door for him. He'd clambered in and grinned at her.
"How was that?"
"Seventeen minutes," she'd replied. "Faster than either of our estimates."
"I was closer, then," Jonathan had said, tapping his cheek. "You owe me."
"Not until I have proof." She's no pushover.
He'd unzipped the bag. From inside it he'd pulled a set of keys, complete with two remotes, all on a 'King Security' key chain.
Sindisiwe Ncube had leaned across and kissed Jonathan Stone full on the mouth.
He'd handed the book in its leather carry case back to her.
"Tell your Dad thanks for the loan of the bird book," he'd said.
"From there it was easy," Jonathan tells them, winding up his tale. "Sindi thought it was unlikely a rich South African woman of Karola King's type would come home to wash the dishes and make Sunday lunch. She was right. Once we'd deactivated the perimeter alarm and I'd snuck through the gate, I checked out the kitchen and sure enough, there was a woman busy in there." He grins across at Sindi. "So, yeah. No alarm on in the house."
These two, thinks Annie, amused. She is reminded of her and Auggie's early days. The thrill of the discovery of quite how good a team they were.
"So I just picked the lock on the French doors off Karola's bedroom, and started looking around," Jonathan goes on. "The maid, it turned out, is a fan of gospel music. She had the radio blaring, was singing along, pots and pans banging and clanging. I honestly don't think she'd have heard me if I'd blown open the safe." He laughs. And then he catches himself, going quickly into professional mode. "Anyway," he says, "I found the phone in her nightstand, while I was waiting for the drives to do their business. Couldn't get past the lock screen but I knew the SIM card would give us a way to track the phone – see who it's registered to, get phone records to and from and so on…"
"Good thinking." Auggie has already pulled his laptop and headphones out from the messenger bag at his feet. He isn't going to be wasting any time getting down to having a look at what Jonathan's managed to pull off their target's computer. Annie can sense the quiet desperation in him. Mentally, for Auggie's sake – and Jaco's – she crosses her fingers and prays for a miracle.
Through the rest of the hour and a half drive she glances over at him periodically – studying his face. Hoping.
The only time Auggie's face relaxes again is when she leans over him to peer out through his window at a group of giraffes Sindi has pointed out.
That makes Auggie Anderson smile.
It's a fleeting change, though. The tension is soon back around his eyes and mouth.
The grim lines around his mouth only grow deeper.
Once settled into their tiny African-hut-shaped bungalow – 'rondavel' Sindi had called it – Auggie reports in to Langley, and returns to digging through Karola's computers. He's hoping for something - some tiny little slip-up. There almost always is one – humans are humans. The back-ups at Jaco's practice are a prime example. But Karola has been very, very careful, and, if there is something, he's just not finding it.
He only realizes Annie must have slipped out when she arrives back with a sandwich and a large cup of coffee for him. He accepts them gratefully.
"No luck?" she asks. It's rhetorical. There's no way she'll be missing the tension on his face, in his posture.
"Not yet," he tells her with a sigh. "But I'm gonna keep digging until there's no point anymore."
Until it all starts going down and Jaco's in the middle of it, in other words.
He feels her hand on his shoulder. No words accompany it – just gentle pressure.
He puts his headphones back on. Annie disappears from his world. Cut out by his focus elsewhere. Time vanishes.
And then an alert cuts across the other feedback from his machine. His awareness of space and time returns abruptly.
"Shit!" He rips his headphones off. Slams them down on the table. His gut twists.
"What?" says Annie. She's still there. He wonders briefly if she's been watching him all this time. Shakes his head at the foolishness of the thought. Not relevant, Anderson.
"M99's on the move," he says with a shake of his head. Deep disappointment. He searches the coffee table for his phone.
"You think this is it?" she asks him. Her voice is tense.
"Yeah." The knot in his stomach is not the usual one of excitement. Readiness to get out there. It's frustration, with himself, with the whole situation. He finds his phone on the table next to his laptop.
Annie is standing behind him now – hands on his shoulders. Probably watching the dot on his screen plotting the positions of the four GPS trackers she'd planted.
Auggie calls Sindi Ncube. He tells her the breaking news. "Yeah, just the M99…Christiaan's phone is still at Christiaan's place. So is Christiaan's BMW. Maybe someone was sent to collect it?...It's moving steadily…Between eighty and one hundred kph…main road out to Hazyview…"
"Not in a chopper then?" asks Sindi.
"No. Ground level."
"OK," says Sindi. "These guys don't use a ground crew – or they haven't up until now anyway. Choppers only. So I don't think this is M99 heading for a poach site just yet." She pauses for a moment. "My gut feeling is that it's headed for wherever that chopper is right now. So…" It's drawn out. Thoughtfully. "…Do we go after it?"
"It's had a helluva headstart," Auggie comments.
"I know." Sindi's sigh comes through clearly. "Ninety percent chance it'll be gone before we can show up." The line goes quiet for a moment. Then: "OK," she returns decisively. "I'll talk to the police in Hazyview. See if they can get someone in pursuit. And I'll see if the Kruger anti-poaching unit are willing to help out. They have a chopper." She pauses. "I think we must stay here – be ready to move if the stuff goes up in the air. Where's Jaco?"
"I'll call him next," Auggie tells her. "Appraise him of the situation."
"OK," replies the policewoman. "Sit tight. Jonathan and I will come over to you."
Jonathan and Sindi arrive at eleven thirty-six.
Auggie pulls his headphones down around his neck. Tells them the bad news. "Couldn't get hold of Jaco. He's not answering his phone."
"That's not good," comments Jonathan.
That's an understatement, Annie thinks.
"No. It isn't." Auggie's terse reply. "I'm trying to find him." He pulls his headphones back up and returns to his computer, fingers flying over the keys. Type. Pause. Type. Pause.
No one says much. They huddle around Auggie's phone instead, watching the one stationary dot representing Christiaan's BMW and the three clustered moving dots that are the M99.
Sindi stays in touch with the cops in pursuit – giving them directions as they go.
The dots stop. The cops are not close yet.
"Hang on." A heavily Afrikaans-accented voice comes through the speaker on Sindi's phone. "Let me just put this into my GPS."
They wait.
"I know this place…" The voice returns. "Old graveyard out of town off the Blyde River road. Tucked away behind the mountains. Roads are bliksemed, though. It'll take us at least half an hour to get there. Slow going in this blerrie car."
"Just try," says Sindi. "Are you armed?"
"Ja" comes the reply. "All three of us."
"Be careful," Sindi says. "We have to assume they are too. And you'll probably be outnumbered. But if you can stop them…"
"We'll do what we can."
They wait some more.
And then Auggie sits up. For the first time in a while he looks less tense. Relieved. There's even a small smile around his mouth. "I think I've found Jaco," he says. "He has a satellite tracker installed on his vehicle. I managed to hack into his vehicle recovery company's server. He's still at Christiaan's."
Or his vehicle is. But no one says it out loud.
Annie doesn't even bother to ask how Auggie has done it. She came to accept years ago that the man's crazy-brilliant and can do almost anything. And so all she does is put a hand on his back. "That's good," she says.
The GPS dots start moving again on Auggie's phone. In a straight line. Not following the roads. "In the air," Auggie confirms, obviously picking up the altitude on his computer.
Their cops are still not anywhere near the scene yet. Sindi sighs.
"We need to go," she says.
Annie waits for Auggie to gather his laptop, headphones and folded cane and then gives him her arm. They pile into the back of the Land Rover.
As soon as he's seated Auggie has the laptop out and open – headphones plugged into the port and over his ears. Annie scoots up to him and he turns his machine slightly so she can see the screen.
"They're heading northeast," he says. "Straight line. In the direction of…Sabi Sands?" He phrases that as a question.
Sindi's nodding, already driving out the staff exit. "I'll go up that way, then," she says. "I know a good back route." She flicks a switch on the Land Rover. The road ahead of them lights up even more brightly. She turns to Jonathan. "Get the hand-held spot, will you?" she requests. "The last thing we need is to hit something on the way."
Jonathan reaches down under his seat. Brings out the spotlight. Plugs the cable into the cigarette lighter socket. Opens his window and angles the spot through it – rhythmically sweeping the beam left and right. "Need to check off the road too," he explains. "Make sure nothing's about to jump out in front of us." It seems he's done this before.
Sindi has increased their speed. The Land Rover's engine is roaring. "Hold tight," she warns. "This road's not built for comfort."
Sindi doesn't drive for comfort, either.
It's a measure of Auggie's stress levels that he doesn't produce his standard comparison with Annie's driving.
"We're about level with Christiaan's place now," Annie comments, watching the dot representing them pass east of the dot representing Christiaan's vehicle. Auggie knows, obviously. He's been monitoring through his headphones. Annie's comment is for Sindi and Jonathan's benefit.
And then the M99 coordinates freeze. "They've landed," Auggie announces. Sindi slows to a halt. Stops. Idles the engine.
Auggie pushes his computer through the space between the two front seats. "Jabula," Sindi says, obviously looking at the screen. "Borders on Sabi Sands. That's where they are."
She shoves the Land Rover back into gear. "I need to talk to Hoedspruit," she says. "Look for De Jager. Morné. Put him on speaker." She's probably handed her phone to Jonathan.
They careen along the road as Sindi yells at Sergeant De Jager. The Hoedspruit police station, it seems, are not awake enough for her.
Auggie's phone rings. "Incoming call: 'Jack-oh Bower'," intones Voice Over.
His gut unclenches slightly. The relief from the other occupants of the vehicle is palpable too.
Before he can find his phone on the seat next to him, he feels it touch the back of his hand. Annie has already picked it up.
Auggie puts Jaco on speaker.
"Owen. I've just got a call from the police. There's…" The words begin to break up. "…Poaching…Jabula…three rhinos…They want me to come…" The line dissolves into crackles.
Shit. "No. No. It's a set-up, Jaco." Auggie realizes he is yelling. As if the increased volume will somehow force the words past the poor connection. "Don't go. I repeat, Do not go."
"…Have to go…" Jaco's voice drifts back. "They sent photos…bad…Need to see if there's…do…"
Fuck. Auggie slams his fist down on his thigh in frustration. Why will people just not listen?
But at the same time Jaco's response does not surprise him. Auggie has heard the passion in the vet's voice when it comes to the work he does. Has heard his anguish when he's spoken about horrific injuries inflicted on the animals in these circumstances.
The people luring Jaco in have known just what buttons to push.
Auggie sighs. Resigned. Dissuasion is not going to be an option. He goes for the next best thing. "Don't go in without back-up, Jaco. Cops are on the way. We're on the way. Wait at the gate. Do you copy me?"
Jaco's "Yes," is the last thing that comes through before the call drops.
On Auggie's computer the coordinates for the tracker on Jaco's vehicle begin to change. He's leaving Christiaan's house.
Auggie leans forward between the seats. "Sindi," he says urgently, "Drive like hell."