Angel in the Shadows Read online

  He saw that amused smile reappear on her face. ‘Okay, Es, let me have it,’ he said.

  ‘It’s right here,’ she said. ‘In Meijer’s statement. When he’s talking about Lombard’s back-seat antics over the years.’

  She scrolled down and read aloud. ‘ “Maybe if it had happened in the dark, it wouldn’t have been so bad; I don’t know. He was afraid of his shadow, at least that’s what I think, a grown man afraid of the dark. The light in the car always had to be on at night. Even if there was nobody with him.” ’

  She looked up and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘So what we have is two vehicles passing each other at a slow speed. Angela Faber is in one and our minster is in the other with the inside light on.’

  She removed two cigarettes from her packet of Gauloises, placed them between her lips and lit them both.

  ‘I like how that sounds,’ she said as she handed him a cigarette.

  ‘How what sounds?’

  ‘Es.’

  ‘Did I call you that?’

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘No, you didn’t say that. You said Es.’

  He felt the smoke tingle on his tongue.

  ‘So we need to interrogate her again?’

  ‘No. She’s going to volunteer the information. It’s a gamble, but if it works, we’ll have the most reliable witness statement you can imagine.’

  She’d spelled out her plan. He’d listened and hoped that she’d keep talking the entire morning, that she’d then do the same the whole afternoon, sitting at the kitchen breakfast bar drinking mug after mug of coffee and smoking cigarettes. He wanted this to continue late into the evening, if necessary until the next morning, until the morning after.

  Of course he’d nodded when she’d asked if she could get to work on her plan for Angela Faber. And of course he’d put on his smelly clothes again while she was taking a shower. Of course – that’s how life goes.

  All good things come to an end.

  When she entered the room again, she’d swept up her hair. Her blouse, corduroy trousers, fitted jacket and boots were all in shades of black.

  ‘Meijer is being buried today,’ she’d explained as he stared at her in surprise. ‘And I think we need to go. To see who else shows up.’

  ‘I never go to funerals.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re missing.’

  She first drove him back to his car, which was still across town on Olympiaplein, and then went directly to the station to set the plan they’d discussed in motion.

  Driving home at a snail’s pace, Radjen thought hard about what he’d say when he got there. But he also knew it wouldn’t matter. She’d see it on him. How something deep inside had changed.

  Before he’d put the key in the lock, she’d already opened the door. When she saw him standing there, with a forehead the size of Frankenstein’s, she was so startled she didn’t say a word.

  ‘Probably a mild concussion,’ was all he said. ‘We worked through the night because we’re about to break an important case. I only came to change my clothes.’

  Although over the years she’d grown accustomed to the irregular, hectic pace of his job, he saw in her eyes that she couldn’t muster the energy to believe him. She also showed no sign of protest. She only looked at him with a dull sort of acceptance. As if she’d always known that a day like this would come. A time when a stranger would arrive on her doorstep: no longer the man who lay on his back beside her in bed and, as part of their trusted ritual, stared at the crack in the ceiling.

  Radjen would have preferred to throw his arms around her, to tell her any way he could that it wasn’t as bad as she thought. Yet what often happened when he wanted to react spontaneously happened here again: he shut down. He mumbled something about his black suit: was it still hanging in the same place? And what about those shoes that were too tight: the only ones he had that looked good with a suit?

  He said to her, ‘I’m going to a funeral.’

  ‘You never go to funerals,’ she replied.

  Even her response didn’t sound like a protest – more a clear-cut observation. She was an expert at this. Observations that were so matter-of-fact they were practically clinical.

  ‘Well, today is different.’

  Fifteen minutes later he was standing by the front door again wearing his suit and uncomfortable shoes.

  ‘When will I see you again?’ she asked.

  ‘Soon.’

  The tone of his response was one used to reassure children. Only she wasn’t a child. She was his wife.

  8

  There were more comfortable ways to take in the Johannesburg sunset. But this time it wasn’t up to Paul. Somewhere in a tower block, which had been stripped bare, he was hanging fifteen centimetres above the floor with his hands tied high above his head to a frayed rope attached to a pulley. A few metres from him was that woman: hazel eyes, alabaster skin, snow-white hair pulled tightly back in a ponytail. Her tightly fitting jogging outfit complemented her athletic figure.

  She was having an agitated discussion with a black man wearing a run-of-the-mill blue suit, whose head was covered in tiny grey curls. Standing right behind them was a strapping white guy in blue jeans with a clean-shaven head. He was cradling a Kalashnikov in his arms.

  When she caught Paul watching them, the woman ended her conversation with the man in blue and smiled benignly. ‘You’ve got some technique. A bit rough around the edges, but I can appreciate that,’ she said to Paul in Russian.

  ‘English, please,’ said the man standing beside her.

  She pretended not to hear.

  ‘Under other circumstances we could go a round or two. But it’s all about setting priorities.’

  She held up Paul’s phone. ‘The passcode. It would be wise for you to give it to me.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying, speak English,’ the man in blue repeated.

  She threw her strongman a glance. A single nod was enough. The barrel of the Kalashnikov was rammed into the back of his blue suit.

  ‘This wasn’t the deal,’ griped the suited fellow. ‘You get us the information first. Then he’s yours. Only then. We’ve got fuck all now!’

  The woman remained composed and turned to Paul. ‘Are you familiar with the concept of pain tolerance, Paul? The point at which pain is no longer bearable? If you don’t give me that passcode, we’re going to explore your tolerance threshold.’

  ‘Is it Lavrov?’ Paul asked. ‘Are you his errand girl?’

  ‘You have a lot of questions for someone who should only be volunteering answers,’ she said.

  ‘Occupational hazard. Journalists never stop asking questions.’

  ‘Have it your way.’

  She put the phone in her pocket, grabbed him by the hips and gave him a forceful shove.

  The rope tightened around his wrists.

  She grabbed him by the hips again and pushed him even harder. She did this repeatedly until he was swinging back and forth with considerable speed. He saw her estimating the distance to the front-most point, where he hung weightless in the air for a split second, or so it seemed.

  Then it struck him, what he’d become.

  A human punchbag.

  He kicked his feet back and forth in an attempt to touch the floor and slow down his movement, but he couldn’t reach the ground. As he swung forward, she turned and lunged from the hip. The tip of her shoe shot into his stomach like a spear. He couldn’t breathe. His body swung backwards, and the pain ripped through him like an electric shock. His body wanted to cower, roll up in a ball, somehow to alleviate the worst of the agony, but he could only hang there, stretched in mid-air. He felt like there was a large crater where his stomach had once been that an arm could easily reach through.

  She let him sway to and fro until he’d almost come to a standstill, and then she came and stood right in front of him.

  ‘Any idea what they use to stuff punchbags? Scraps of fabric, re
mnants of cloth, unimaginable volumes, and it all goes into the bag until it’s sturdy enough. That’s what your insides are going to look like when I’m done with you. On the outside, intact, okay, black and blue, but, for all appearances, fine. On the inside, it’s a different story: catastrophic. What now passes for your intestines, liver, kidneys and your stomach will be bits and pieces bobbing around in blood. You know what you can do to prevent that, right?’

  She pulled out the phone again.

  At that moment muffled shots rang out. They came from a lower storey.

  The man in blue drew a pistol and descended the stairs. Snow White in her designer wear didn’t seem the least bit fazed. She looked at him like a beast of prey and simply said, ‘The passcode.’

  Paul shook his head. Even this slight movement hurt.

  ‘You can beat the shit out of me, but you can’t touch Farah.’

  ‘There’s no way you can win this,’ she said.

  A second volley of gunfire sounded from below.

  She grabbed Paul firmly, started pushing him back and forth again, and took up position. He tried to anticipate how she was going to hit him this time around. Judging from her footwork – she was jumping about like a boxer – he suspected she was going to go after him with her bare fists. He felt the rope cut deeper into his wrists. Taking advantage of the backward momentum, he tilted his pelvis and pulled in both his legs. With all his strength, he gave her a good hard kick and hit her chin.

  As she fell backwards, the Kalashnikov started clattering and the brawny bald guy hit the ground for cover.

  The Russian scrambled to her feet, face contorted in rage. But, to her astonishment, seconds later she felt the barrel of a gun pressed against the back of her head: Dingane’s 9-mm Glock.

  Her astonishment lasted no more than a split second.

  She didn’t need longer than that to spin around, duck under the barrel of the gun and give Dingane a sharp kick to the right kidney. She grabbed his wrist with her left hand, and with the right shoved the gun out of his hand. It all happened so quickly that Dingane had no idea her elbow was about to bash his nose.

  It took a few seconds for her to catch her breath, evaluate the new situation and draw her conclusions. There were at least two bodies one storey below. The third was behind her, in his blue jeans, bleeding out.

  Before her was the man who was responsible for this, lying on top of his Glock.

  She didn’t need a weapon to finish off Dingane.

  A few hard kicks to the skull and larynx would be enough.

  Paul saw that she was about to make her move. At that exact moment Dingane raised himself up on his left arm and pulled the trigger three times with his right hand.

  The bullet that hit her in the gut must have worked its way through her body and then exited her right shoulder. At the same time, the second bullet pierced her sternum. The third got her right between the eyes.

  But she kept standing, her mouth gaping and her eyes filled with a cloudy sort of disbelief, and, while the hail of lead raced through her body, she put one foot before the other, and then again, as if she’d decided to defy the laws of nature and just keep walking.

  She sank to her knees and remained motionless beside Dingane. She looked right through him while thin rivulets of dark blood began to flow from her ears. The life drained from her bulging eyes.

  As she fell forward she didn’t utter a sound.

  Dingane rose, moaning, his smashed-up nose bleeding. A red stain started to appear on the right side of his jacket.

  ‘No wonder you have a face like a second-rate boxer,’ he said, after he’d used the last bit of his strength to cut down the rope that held Paul suspended in the air. ‘Somehow you manage to fight with everyone.’

  9

  Farah had no idea how long she’d have to stay here. But it was the only option. On a dark and deserted section of the seafront promenade, where cats and dogs prowled around waste containers, he’d opened the boot of the car so she could climb in.

  She trusted him. Not that she had any choice. Her contact, who went by the name of Oka Haryanto, possessed not only charm in abundance but also the necessary authority to convince her of the need to take this measure.

  She’d smiled when she saw he’d put a blanket and a pillow in the boot. But that smile was short-lived. Nothing could dispel the claustrophobia that had gripped her the second she was shut in. And compared to what awaited her later that evening, this was just a comfortable warm-up.

  In her mind, she ran through the most important phases of the plan. As agreed, Haryanto had given her an image of the router. It was tucked into the inner sleeve of the promised Stan Getz album. It was a TP-Link, model TL-WDR3500. She’d taken a picture of it on her mobile and sent it encrypted to Anya.

  First thing the following morning, she’d received an email from Moscow containing firmware with a fully adapted Linux operating system, which she was supposed to install on Gundono’s router. If she managed to pull it off, from then on all outbound digital traffic from Gundono’s compound would automatically be split into two streams: the regular one would go unhindered to the IP addresses, as usual, while a second stream would be forwarded to the central server Anya was connected to in Moscow. This would allow her to intercept all of Gundono’s email traffic.

  But to get to that point, Farah had to overwrite the firmware currently on the TP-Link router with what she’d downloaded to her laptop. ‘Patching’ is what Anya called it. And that patching could only be done in person, with a LAN cable. She had to break into Gundono’s compound and get to the router on the fifth floor.

  Gundono’s gated and heavily secured office was surrounded by tropical gardens that stretched all the way down to the Bay of Jakarta. It was a seven-storey round tower with its stairwells, piping and mechanical ventilation shafts on the exterior. The steel frame made the building look like a futuristic stronghold, especially at night. To reach the fifth floor without being seen either by a patrolling guard or one of the security cameras, she’d have to make her way through the ventilation system. The shafts would be even narrower and darker than the boot of the car.

  It was her only option.

  Aninda had wanted to come along in the pickup taking her to the promenade where she had transferred to Haryanto’s car. But Farah needed that time to prepare mentally for what was ahead. She wanted to concentrate the way she did for a fight: turn completely inward, to focus on the rock-solid core inside herself. And that left no room for anyone else or for sentimentality. Only for willpower and conviction.

  ‘I need to do this alone,’ she’d said. ‘I don’t want you to come along.’

  Aninda had quietly held her hands and looked at her as if this might be the last time they’d see each other.

  Now, in the dark boot of the car, recalling the sadness in Aninda’s eyes and her anxious grip as she pulled her hands away, Farah regretted the flat tone in which she’d told her not to worry, that she’d be back. Then she’d turned and walked to the waiting pickup without so much as a backward glance. Why couldn’t she be as candid and spontaneous as Aninda? Why did tears and fear not go together in her mind? Why compartmentalize everything?

  The car slowed down before coming to a complete standstill. The engine was kept running. One of the voices she heard was Haryanto’s. He sounded just as civilized in Bahasa as he did in English.

  ‘I’ve forgotten an important report.’

  Entering the compound would be the least difficult part of the operation, he’d said in his last conversation with her. His car was rarely inspected.

  She heard metal scraping across metal – it was the electric fence opening. The car slowly drove over a bump and stopped soon afterwards. She held her breath.

  Haryanto’s voice was soft, muffled as it was by the thick leather upholstery of the back seat. He was talking to her.

  ‘Don’t worry. Everything’s going well, my dear.’

  Why would he say that? Why were they standing
still? Why didn’t he open the boot?

  Next, she heard what sounded like a large sliding door opening. Then the car started to descend. She began to worry – not about the plan, but about her own state of mind. Because of nerves, she’d forgotten they’d be going into an underground car park, where he’d place the car in the security camera’s blindspot, right by a ventilation panel.

  The car stopped. The door on the driver’s side was opened, and footsteps could be heard. She braced herself.

  As Haryanto opened the lid, he didn’t look at Farah, but instead scanned every nook and cranny of the concrete space. They were alone in a deserted, brightly lit garage. This time around there were no Waringin women to protect her, and there was no bustling square where she could disappear into the crowd.

  Her legs were trembling when she clambered out of the boot. Then she donned her headlamp. It was small, but its beam was wide. She pulled her rucksack with the laptop and the LAN cable closer to her body. The trainers she was wearing would hopefully provide her with a decent grip on the ridged interior of the metal ventilation system. Finally, she put on her rubber gloves.

  Haryanto climbed on to the roof of the car, lifted a panel off its hinges and lowered it cautiously. Then he surveyed the surroundings. Farah joined him on the roof of the car. She somehow had to get into the shaft with a standing jump. Breathing fast and fully focused on the opening, she flexed her knees a few times, and, with her arms extended, swung up and pushed off.

  The edges were sharper than she’d expected and she had less of a grip than she’d hoped. She had to hoist herself up fast to make the most of her momentum, but in a controlled way, since the shaft was narrow. Ideally, her head would end up just past the bend in the shaft, so she could squeeze inside without ending up flat on the bottom.

  She only partially managed this. She pulled her arms in and continued to hoist herself up until she was completely inside. When she lifted her head, she saw the contours of the narrow tube ahead of her. She heard Haryanto closing the panel behind her. Her heart was racing now and her breathing shallow and ragged. She was locked inside a dark shaft in which every move she made was painful. But there was no way back. Literally. The only way was forward, upward, sideways and then forward again.