‘Chokwe’s just ahead,’ Sannie said, looking up from the map and rubbing her eyes. The sun was nearly touching the horizon.
It had been a long, tiring day, but rest was the last thing on Tom Furey’s mind. Chokwe was an important waypoint on their journey. If their theory that the terrorists were heading for the Indian Ocean was correct, then the little farming town was where the dirt road the criminals would have taken after crossing the border met the main sealed road to the coast. It would be the point where Tom and Sannie’s path would at last cross the abductors’.
From here on, their plan was to question the police at every roadblock and station they came across. Sannie was prepared to use her language skills, her charm and their stock of South African rand to get answers. Tom suspected the last weapon at her disposal would be the most persuasive. She had warned him already that while the police in Mozambique were generally polite and friendly, they always had their hand out, and worked off lists of petty rules and regulations all designed to convince unsuspecting tourists to pay a fine.
The road into Chokwe was flanked by market stalls, mostly housed in corrugated-tin sheds. The vendors, who were now in the process of shutting up shop, offered an eclectic mix of goods, including tyres, coffins, plastic buckets, television antennae, lettuces, bicycles and clothing. A minibus taxi in front of them put on its brakes, forcing Tom to stamp on his pedal and swear. As he indicated and passed the bus, which had stopped for a fare, he saw the words Talk to my lawyer painted on the back window. He smiled, despite his annoyance.
As with the smaller towns they had passed through, Chokwe was a mix of decaying colonial elegance and chaotic, noisy African life. Music boomed from ghetto-blasters, and impatient drivers leaned on their horns. The milling of people on foot, on bicycles on the road and its verges, had forced Tom to slow down, so he was surprised when a rotund policeman in blue trousers and a white shirt waddled out into the middle of the thoroughfare and flagged him down.
‘How fast were you going?’ Sannie asked.
Tom checked the speedometer. ‘No more than fifty-five.’
‘Speeding. Licence,’ said the policeman, who was leaning on Tom’s windowsill, catching his breath.
‘Rubbish,’ Tom said.
‘Calm and patient, remember?’ Sannie said under her breath. She smiled at the policeman and greeted him in Tsonga Shangaan, immediately disarming him.
‘What does he say?’ Tom interrupted their burgeoning conversation.
‘He says you were doing sixty-two.’
‘Tell him to go fuck himself.’
Sannie kept a straight face and whispered, ‘Careful, he might know that much English.’ Tom smiled again and nodded like an imbecile at the policeman. Sannie talked at length with the man, never raising her voice and, eventually, pulled her South African Police Service credentials from her handbag. Tom saw the look on the man’s face change, possibly to one of worry. It was hard to tell. She fired a series of questions at him, and the African scratched his chin as he talked, and gesticulated with a thumb over his shoulder, towards the coast.
Sannie’s eyes widened. ‘Tom! He says everyone’s looking for two or three men in a bakkie with a tinted canopy on the back, heading for the coast.’
‘What else?’ Tom wiped away the rivulets of sweat that were stinging his eyes. It was hotter and much more humid the closer they travelled to the coast. Sannie spoke to the man again.
‘He says they’ve just had a radio call from Maputo, via their station in Xai Xai, to be on the look-out for up to three men in a Toyota HiLux, suspected of carrying two kidnap victims in the back.’
For the moment Tom shared her enthusiasm. At least they weren’t the only ones on the trail of the suspects. He wondered where the new intelligence had come from and suddenly wished he could call Shuttleworth — or anyone on the team, for that matter. However, there was no signal showing on his mobile phone.
The policeman looked past them anxiously. There were already three other cars — two overloaded pick-ups and the minibus taxi Tom had very nearly rammed — that had been pulled over for speeding by another officer and were queued up behind their Volkswagen. ‘Well, has he seen them?’
Sannie spoke to the man again. ‘He says he only came on duty two hours ago and there’s been no vehicle matching that description so far on his shift. I’ve got the name of his colleague, though, who was working this afternoon. He’s at the main station at Xai Xai.’
‘That’s something.’ The policeman waved them on, without them having to pay a bribe or a fine, obviously thinking there were easier targets behind them. They pulled over after leaving Chokwe and Sannie took a turn behind the wheel. She was a godsend, Tom thought. He knew he would have been completely out of his depth if he had crossed the border alone.
Twice they found themselves behind Toyota pickups and Tom slipped his pistol from his holster and held it ready between his thighs as Sannie, knuckles white on the steering wheel, accelerated and brought the Chico up beside the four-by-fours, which towered menacingly above the little car. One was driven by a Portuguese woman who had four children on board with her; the other’s occupants were an elderly African man and a woman of similar vintage, presumably his wife. Tom was frustrated, but also relieved as either truck could have sent their little car flying off the road into the bush with a gentle nudge.
They came to a T-junction where the road from Chokwe met the EN1, the main north-south road along the coast of Mozambique. ‘Well, here we are. Right or left? Right goes to Maputo, the capital; left goes all the way to Tanzania eventually.’
Tom glanced at the map again, touching the red line that marked the road, as if some unseen force would guide him. ‘It gets quieter, less populated as you go north, right?’
Sannie nodded. ‘Though a gang of kidnappers could very easily lose themselves in the slums of Maputo.’
Tom closed his eyes. ‘North,’ he said. Sannie turned left.
They made good time heading up the coast, with Sannie winding the Chico up to a hundred and twenty between towns where they were forced to slow to sixty again, both to avoid speed traps and to ask more local policeman if they had seen the fugitive vehicle. There were no confirmed sightings and Tom felt seeds of dread germinating in his gut.
They crossed a broad flood plain on a raised road and then a suspension bridge to enter the town of Xai Xai. It must have been quite pleasant in its day, Tom thought. There was more of the architecture he had already come to associate with the country — whitewashed Portuguese-style villas with red roofs and rendered buildings painted in pastel hues, but, unlike the other settlements they had passed through, Xai Xai was a holiday town. There were a couple of white concrete hotels, neither of which Tom would have fancied staying in, and a grassy park with a bandstand. It could have been any holiday town on the Mediterranean coast. Outside a cafe, two Portuguese men sat with four much younger African women in western clothes, one of whom was breastfeeding a coffee-coloured baby. A boy in board shorts and an American basketball shirt held up the largest prawn Tom had ever seen as they coasted past him.
‘River crayfish,’ Sannie said of the creature, which looked nearly as long as the lad’s forearm. Music pumped from a bar and it seemed the beat was almost loud enough to cause their car’s windows to vibrate as Sannie stopped to let a minibus disgorge passengers ahead of her.
It was hot and muggy here on the coast and Tom could smell the cloying scent of salt water above the diesel exhausts and the oily smoke of chicken grilling over sizzling charcoal. Youngsters ran alongside their South African registered car, waving bags of cashews and yet more prawns. ‘Howzit, my boet,’ one yelled at him and Sannie smiled and shook her head as she translated the Afrikaans slang for ‘Hello, my brother’.
‘This was once a nice place, but it’s too busy now. We stayed here not long after the country was opened again to South Africans, but I’m afraid my people have spoiled this part of the coast. These days you can buy cashews and prawns cheaper in South Africa than you can from these guys.’
Sannie had sourced directions to the main police station from the last speed trap they had stopped at and she turned off the main road through the centre of town and parked under a tree outside a building that looked as solid as a block house. The pockmarks in the wall told Tom that the police station had been well built to withstand gunfire and the civil war had proved the point.
Inside, Sannie asked the female police officer on duty at the front desk for Capitao Alfredo — she didn’t have his second name. The woman looked at her blankly for a few seconds, then turned and walked into a back room. Sannie looked at Tom and he shrugged.
‘Ah, good evening,’ said a thin man in blue uniform trousers and a starched white shirt, wiping his hands on a paper serviette as he emerged from the back room. ‘I am Capitao Alfredo Manuel.’ He wiped himself again, this time on the front of his trousers, and then shook hands with Tom and Sannie, who introduced themselves by name and rank. ‘My colleagues from South Africa and England. I have heard you would be coming.’
Sannie complimented the captain on his English and he explained that, ironically, he had learned the language in Russia, where he had trained as a soldier for Frelimo, the rebel force which had subsequently become the government in Mozambique. ‘I also speak Russian, of course, and German. I was a teacher before joining the struggle.’
‘Thank you for agreeing to help us, Captain,’ Tom said.
‘Not at all. The pleasure is all mine. It is not every day that we get reports of a senior politician being abducted by terrorists.’
He led them around the charge counter down the corridor to another room, which was his office. Tom and Sannie took bare metal chairs in front of a large antique wooden desk. Capitao Alfredo sat in a leather office chair. ‘Cigarette?’
They declined, but Alfredo lit up a Benson amp; Hedges anyway. Behind him on the wall was a map of Mozambique and a second one, which Tom couldn’t see clearly but guessed was of the local area. There were coloured pins stuck at intervals on what looked like the main north-south road. On the desk was an open Styrofoam takeaway food container with the bones of a half-chicken in it. Tom smelled chilli and fat. ‘You have heard that one of my officers saw a suspicious vehicle that matches the description of the one you are seeking?’
‘Yes, Captain…’ Sannie said.
‘Please, call me Alfredo.’
Sannie smiled. She was a white Afrikaner and he was a black African, but Tom thought the captain’s eyes were pure Latino when he looked at the attractive blonde. He also thought he saw a trace of a blush on Sannie’s cheeks. ‘Well, Alfredo, yes, we have heard that you are looking for the same Toyota HiLux we are pursuing and that one of your officers may have seen the vehicle in question.’
Tom was impressed at how she was winging it. The truth was that they only now knew they were looking for a Toyota because one of Alfredo’s men had told them that was the vehicle they had been warned to look out for. Tom and Sannie were still behind in the game, but this was their chance to catch up and, hopefully, get ahead.
Alfredo stood and turned to the maps behind him. ‘ Sim,’ he nodded. ‘In fact, more than one of my people have seen it. After the bulletin came through, one of my men at Chisanno recalled seeing a HiLux with a tinted rear cab pass by him. He recalled it as unusual because the other windows on the double cab were untinted. He saw the bakkie about one o’clock this afternoon. You can talk with him if you wish. I have had him called to the station in case. I thought this may be the vehicle and warned all of my officers to be extra vigilant.’
He gave them a long, thoughtful look, as though giving them time to appreciate how efficient he had been in his policing. Perhaps, Tom thought, he was waiting for praise for having done his job. Just get on with it, he willed the man.
‘And then?’ Sannie prompted.
Tom looked at his watch.
Alfredo turned back to the map and planted a bony finger on a dot. ‘Here. Near Chongoene, about thirteen kilometres north-east of Xai Xai, later in the afternoon a HiLux with a tinted rear cab but untinted front cab ignored a direction by one of my officers to stop.’
‘Why did he flag it down? Did he recognise it as the suspect vehicle?’ Tom asked.
Alfredo turned back to him and shook his head. ‘Regrettably, no. The officers’ radio was unfortunately not working, but the vehicle was speeding. Sixty-five in a sixty zone.’
Tom thought the captain had talked about the crime as though it was one step removed from murder. ‘They didn’t pursue it?’
Alfredo shook his head again. ‘This is a poor country, Detective Sergeant Furey. Not all of my officers have cars or motorcycles. They had no way of pursuing the Toyota, but the officer used his cell phone to call the next checkpoint, at Chidenguele. The officers there said the description matched that of the suspect vehicle you have lost.’
The emphasis did not escape Tom, and he remained silent.
‘And that checkpoint notified you?’ Sannie ventured, looking for a way to defuse the confrontation before it began.
Alfredo smiled at her efforts. ‘Yes, Sannie. I ordered the police in the speed traps to set up roadblocks and check every bakkie passing through that area.’
She nodded. It was good policing and a swift reaction.
‘However,’ Alfredo continued, taking his seat again and, as though he had just got back from running after the truck himself, mopping his brow with one of the serviettes that had come with the takeaway chicken, ‘the vehicle never reached Chidenguele.’
‘You’re sure?’ Tom said, almost instantly regretting the words.
‘I am sure, Detective Sergeant.’
‘Hard to miss it with a static roadblock in place,’ Sannie said, as much in reproof of Tom for doubting the Mozambican officer’s word as in support of Alfredo. ‘May I?’ She stood and walked around the enormous desk so she could study the map more closely. Alfredo swivelled in his chair and looked up at her.
‘As you will see,’ he said, ‘there is a side road they could have taken, away from the coast.’
‘Or they could be somewhere here.’ Sannie circled the stretch between Chongoene and Chidenguele. ‘About forty-five kilometres of coastline.’
‘Didn’t you say this is one of the busiest parts of Mozambique?’ Tom observed. ‘We were thinking they might prefer somewhere more remote, perhaps further north.’
Alfredo started to speak, but Sannie beat him to it. ‘The established coastal resorts, such as Xai Xai and Bilene, further south, are busy, but this part of the coast is still very empty, if I’m not mistaken, Capitao?’
Alfredo nodded. ‘ Sim, Sannie. There are only a few resorts, but they are mostly quite inaccessible. One needs a four-wheel drive to get into them because of the coastal sand dunes in this area.’
Sannie looked back at Tom. ‘Remote, inaccessible to most vehicles, on the coast…’
‘Perfect,’ Tom agreed. ‘And still only a couple of hours’ drive from Maputo if they need to fly anywhere or disappear into a city.’
‘Some of the beaches — mostly those near the resorts — are protected by natural reefs, so you could bring a small boat in or out as well,’ she said.
‘Captain,’ Tom said, trying his best to sound humble and beseeching, ‘what assets do you have at your disposal to search this part of the coastline?’
‘Naturally, I will devote what resources I can to this task,’ Alfredo said. ‘It is, of course, of great importance to the British government and I would hope that they would be grateful for the assistance of our poor police force.’ He spread his hands wide, over the desk, palms upwards.
Tom half wondered if he was expected to pay a bribe at this point. He forced the uncharitable thought from his mind. ‘Vehicles?’ he said.
‘I have four cars and two motorcycles, though only one four-wheel drive — my own Land Cruiser — which we will, of course, use to investigate any leads that my officers turn up.’
This hardly filled Tom with confidence. ‘Boats?’
‘Alas,’ Alfredo said, shrugging his shoulders, ‘there are some inflatable boats, donated to the police by the government of Portugal, at the praia, but they all have punctures.’
‘The praia? What’s that, the beach?’
Sannie nodded. ‘The Praia do Xai Xai, the town’s beach, is about ten kilometres from here.’
‘I will have my officers contact all of the accessible villages and resorts on this stretch of the coast first thing tomorrow morning,’ Alfredo said, standing as if to signal their meeting was over. ‘If we receive word of the stolen vehicle I will be ready to depart, at a moment’s notice, in my Land Cruiser. I will keep four men here with me, armed with AK 47s, to act as the reaction force.’
‘Thank you, Capitao. We are very grateful to you for staying back to meet us, and for your kind offer of assistance in the morning. We will be here first thing to monitor the search.’ Sannie stood and nodded to Tom to do the same. Her look told him to keep his mouth shut.
Tom turned on her as they walked outside into the sticky, salty night air. ‘What the fuck is all this manana bullshit? We’re wasting time.’
‘Easy, easy.’ She placed a hand on his arm, as she had done at the border. ‘Look at the realities of policing in Africa, Tom. This guy’s got no boats, no helicopter, one four-by-four and a few bicycles. You saw the station — it’s empty except for him and the woman on duty. All of his officers will be off in their villages by now. The police here spend most of the time standing by the side of the roads with speed cameras, or on roadblocks hassling tourists. You’re not going to get a SWAT team rappelling out of the sky, no matter how much you want it.’
‘I’ve got to get on a phone and tell the people back in the UK. They might even have people on the ground by now, in South Africa or here. At least we’ve got the vehicle confined to a limited geographic area.’
‘Exactly.’ She removed her hand from his arm. ‘I’ll do the same with my people and until we can get some back-up over here, I’m afraid there’s not very much more we can do until Alfredo gets his people on the job tomorrow morning.’
Tom walked away from her towards the Volkswagen, his fists clenching and unclenching as he went. He felt like hitting something, running somewhere, getting in the car and charging up and down the coast road in pursuit of a vehicle they had only a vague description of. It was all so maddeningly frustrating. All the long day he’d been just a step behind the abductors. They were close, but close wasn’t good enough in this game. He turned and saw Sannie standing there, giving him space to vent. ‘It’s not about me, Sannie. I want you to know — ’
‘I know, Tom,’ she said sympathetically.
‘I’m probably finished as a protection officer no matter how this pans out. I cocked up royally and I deserve all I’ll get, but there are two men’s lives at stake here. I can’t just sit on a beach and do nothing.’
‘It’s why I’m here as well. God knows, I’ve probably screwed my career up too.’ She tried to force a laugh, but it was hollow and they both knew it — her words were too close to the truth. ‘But we’ll do more harm than good charging around blindly, and you know it. Say we did find the vehicle by ourselves and went in there, guns blazing…’
‘They outnumber and outgun us,’ he conceded.
‘If we make a mess of it, the first thing they’ll do is kill the hostages. You know that, Tom. This is the time for others — the military, whoever — to make a plan to rescue them. But we can still look for them. Tomorrow. Carefully.’
He sighed and slumped against the car. ‘Christ, I’m hungry — and thirsty. But I keep thinking how bad things must be for Bernard and Greeves.’
‘They know you’re on their trail, Tom. You nearly caught them in Kruger. That will keep your men alive. That will give them hope.’
‘So where to next? A hotel?’
Sannie shook her head. ‘African towns aren’t generally renowned for the choice of accommodation. I don’t like the look of anywhere I’ve seen so far. Hotels in small towns often double as brothels.’
‘So where, then?’
‘The beach is about ten kilometres from here. There’s a municipal camping ground that has some small chalets. We stayed there a few years ago. It’s not luxury, but it should be okay.’
Tom shrugged. He was, as he had been from the moment he touched down in Africa, out of his depth and totally reliant on her. It wasn’t a bad feeling — not nearly as bad as the frustration he felt now that it appeared they would be spinning their wheels for twelve hours until morning. ‘Lead on.’
Sannie drove, and after the main road took them up a hill, out of the centre of town, she turned right at a sign with a beach umbrella on it that said Praia do Xai Xai. There were no streetlights, and only pinpricks of illumination showed in the dark from lanterns in villagers’ homes. The Volkswagen careened up and down a roller-coaster of hills which were under cultivation with bananas, and other crops that Tom couldn’t make out. Unlike the townships he’d passed through on the way into Kruger, the villagers here seemed to have left plenty of mature trees growing amid their homes, either for shade or to help stabilise the sandy hills they lived on.
The road to the beach ended in a roundabout on top of a cliff and Sannie swung left onto a side road that deteriorated rapidly from potholed tar to dirt as they wound down towards the Indian Ocean. The wind was up and Tom could see white horses pinpricking the dark sea through the gloom. He smelled salt air through the open window and, despite the breeze, it was still warm outside. As they drove down the hill he saw holiday homes that looked like they had come out of a 1970s timeshare brochure. There were curving verandahs, angular geometric designs, and lots of whitewash. Some of the villas still looked run-down, though many, he noticed, had been spruced up with a coat of pastel paint and had well-tended gardens. One particularly nice place, re-done in an ochre coloured render, had its own security guard out front in a blue beret and military-style uniform.
Sannie momentarily seemed to have lost her bearings at the bottom of the hill. ‘Sorry, should have turned left, not right,’ she said, executing a three-point turn. In front of them was a multistorey white concrete hotel, but no lights were shining in its rooms. Tom looked back as Sannie changed directions and caught a glimpse of the hotel’s facade. It was completely gutted. The rooms were empty — all the glass panes and, presumably, all the contents, were gone. In its way, the hotel reminded Tom of Egyptian temples in the Valley of the Kings, or the ruined city of Petra, in Jordan, which he’d visited while protecting a former foreign secretary. The hotel was yet another relic of a disappeared people. He wondered if someone would reopen the hotel one day, though from what Sannie had said, the tourism boom had bypassed sleepy, rundown Xai Xai in favour of nicer beachfront real estate further north.
At the gates of Campismo do Xai Xai, an elderly African security guard greeted and led them through the camping ground, which was set back from the beach below a line of low dunes topped with trees and hedges. Tom noted a security fence amid the shrubbery, but also saw it had been trampled in places. There were neon lights in several trees around the small camping area, though about one in two seemed to be broken. There were only two parties of campers — a couple in a caravan towed by a Mazda pick-up which looked like it had seen better days, and an old Toyota Cressida parked next to a two-man tent. It hardly looked like a playground of the rich and famous.
Sannie spoke to the caretaker when they pulled over and he unlocked the door of a small blue bungalow, the walls and roof of which looked as though they were made of asbestos sheeting. He switched on the light and a single naked light bulb revealed a double bed at the front of the room and a kitchenette. They walked in and, behind a curtain at the rear, found an alcove with two single beds.
‘I was worried there for a moment.’ Sannie nodded at the double bed. ‘You were almost spending the night in the car. You get one of the singles. I hope you don’t snore.’
The hut smelled mouldy and damp, and Tom heard mosquitos buzzing around his ears. When he asked Sannie the price he thought it seemed exorbitant for what it was, but neither of them was in the mood to haggle. ‘We’ll take it,’ he said to the caretaker, and Sannie translated.
He checked his watch as they walked back out to the car to unpack their meagre supplies and belongings. ‘Let’s listen to the news again.’ It was close to nine pm and Tom pulled out the battery-operated portable shortwave radio from his bag. He always took it with him on overseas trips and they had tuned in at regular intervals to the BBC World Service. While the news of Greeves’s abduction still rated highly, it had been usurped as the lead item by a report of a scandal involving footballers’ salaries. Typical, Tom thought. The pips sounded the hour.
‘I’ll get us a drink,’ Sannie said, opening the rear hatch of the Chico.
‘Thanks, I could use one.’
‘ An African-based terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the abduction of British defence procurement minister Robert Greeves and an as yet unnamed staff member and released a video in which they threaten to behead…’
‘Coke?’
‘Shush.’ Tom beckoned her closer. The reception was bad so they both leaned in to hear the report.
‘ Mr Greeves is seen in the video, head shaved, dressed in orange overalls, kneeling in front of three men wearing camouflage uniforms and carrying automatic weapons. One of the alleged terrorists holds a long-bladed sword resting on the minister’s shoulders and says, in Arabic: “This war criminal, Robert Greeves, will be beheaded in forty-eight hours unless the British Prime Minister agrees to withdraw all of his country’s troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.” The low-resolution video clip was reportedly emailed today to an Arabic language satellite television news channel and has been airing for the last hour. The abductors say they are members of a so-far unknown group called Islamic African Dawn. Mr Greeves, who says nothing in the video, disappeared from a luxury game lodge in South Africa yesterday morning following talks with…’
Tom straightened in the car seat as the announcer recapped the story. ‘They must have sent it this afternoon, while we were out looking for them. That means they’ve stopped — holed up somewhere.’
Sannie nodded. ‘So they couldn’t have gone much further than where Alfredo’s men last saw them. The newsreader said “low-resolution video”. They could be sending it via a satellite modem, or even from a phone. If it’s a phone-camera they’ll need to be in an area with mobile reception.’
Tom nodded. ‘At least he’s still alive — and they’re giving the government forty-eight hours. No news of Bernard, though.’
Sannie leaned against the car, arms folded, her mind processing the new information. ‘They might want to use him in a separate video, to keep the media interested in the story. You know TV — they can only show the same footage so many times before people lose interest.’
‘Let’s hope so, for his sake. I’d like to see that video.’
‘Over there,’ Sannie said, pointing to the caravan.
‘What about it?’ Tom asked.
‘Come with me.’
As they approached the caravan they saw an over-weight white man sitting in the annex area. His camp chair looked like it might buckle under him. He drank from a big yellow can of Laurentina beer while his diminutive wife mixed something in a bowl at a fold-out table. Sannie walked towards them and Tom followed. As they closed on the couple, Tom saw flickering light reflected in their faces and heard people talking in Afrikaans. The couple, though, were silent.
Sannie pointed to the rear of the caravan and it dawned on Tom what he was seeing. A portable satellite dish, about the size of a large wok, stood on a white metal pole which was anchored to a spare wheel, sitting on the sandy ground. A cable led into the annex and, although Tom still couldn’t see the screen, he realised the couple were watching satellite television — hundreds of kilometres from home, on a stretch of beach in Mozambique.
‘ Ja, we love our TV,’ Sannie said. ‘Some of these people wouldn’t leave home if they thought it would mean missing their soap operas or their rugby games on the weekend.’ She greeted the couple in Afrikaans.
The man looked up from the screen, a slightly annoyed look on his meaty face. ‘ Ja? ’
‘We need to see your TV, please. Can you please change it to BBC World or one of the other news channels.’
‘My wife’s watching her soap opera,’ he said dismissively.
‘This is important. We’re police officers — I’m Inspector Susan van Rensburg.’
The fat man laughed. ‘What, you come to check my TV licence? This is Mozambique, not South Africa.’
Tom walked in front of the screen. ‘The lady said it was important.’
The man started to stand, but then saw the look on Tom’s face. ‘We need to see the news.’
‘You can’t just — ’ But the man’s wife had changed channels with the remote and his protest was silenced when the image of Greeves, kneeling under the executioner’s threatening blade, filled the screen. Tom and Sannie crowded into the annex for a closer look. ‘You’re after these skurke?’
Sannie nodded, watching the video in silence.
‘Sorry, hey. Good luck. But I think this guy’s for the chop,’ the man said as the news item finished.
Tom had seen the three armed men in the grainy video clip and knew that while he and Willie had hurt them, reducing their number by two, the big man was probably right. There was nothing they could do right now, except wait.
‘I’ll pray for him,’ the thin lady said.
‘Can’t hurt,’ Tom said. He felt Sannie take his hand, and looked across at her, at the unexpected gesture. He saw that her eyes were downcast and that her other hand was in one of the big man’s and his, in turn, was joined with his wife’s. Tom felt a lump suddenly come to his throat at the gesture from these strangers; and at the sight of Sannie — beautiful, smart, determined, brave Sannie, who was risking her career for him — praying.
Tom took the elderly woman’s hand to complete the circle.
He bowed his head and said, softly, ‘Please.’