“I know, I know. I’m not disputing that. And you’ve fulfilled this part of the bargain. I’m just saying that as long as we’re leaving tomorrow morning we might as well see as much as we can on our way out.” Removing his comm unit he inscribed instructions across the face until the device’s tiny integrated projector generated a map of the Preserve above the dining table. With a forefinger that bordered on skeletal he traced a path through the glowing diagram. “Look. Instead of just retracing our steps we can head north. There’s a park track that follows the Touws River northwest all the way to a service entrance near the N1.”
She peered into the three-dimensional chart. Reaching out, she manipulated details with her fingers in order to study Whispr’s proposal from as many angles as possible. Finally withdrawing her hand she indicated the vast area he had chosen to isolate.
“There’s nothing up that way, Whispr. No park facilities, no proper roads, nothing for hundreds of square kilometers.”
“I know.” With a dismissive flick of one finger the glowing map vanished. “That’s the point. The animals up there will be less used to tourists. There should be more of them, too. According to the guide app the central Touws River region is full of them. Except for flyovers not too many visitors get up that way.”
Her second helping arrived. As she arranged it in front of her and began to eat she contemplated him over her fork. “Why do you suppose that is?” she wondered drily. “Could it be because there are no Preserve facilities and nothing for hundreds of square kilometers?”
“Please, doc. Ingrid. It’s the chance of a lifetime. We both know neither of us is likely to ever get back this way. Except for possible floater flyovers we should have the region all to ourselves. There’s no camping allowed in the Preserve so only guided tours get up that way. Individual vehicles can’t get up there and back to camp in time to make the evening curfew. But we won’t get caught out after dark because we’ll be leaving the park via the little-used north gate. It’ll just be us and the mammoths,” he finished proudly.
“Mastodons,” she corrected him. As she chewed reflectively on her second lightly breaded tenderloin of gemsbok she tried to ignore his imploring expression. It would help his cause, she thought to herself, if at such moments he didn’t look so much like the painting by Munch. Unable to withstand his pleading, she finally gave in.
“Well,” she conceded reluctantly, “at least we’ll be heading north.”
She feared the resulting cheek-to-cheek grin might split his gaunt visage.
“Thanks, doc! It’s the last request I’ll make on this trip.”
“No it isn’t,” she replied confidently, “but we’ll do it your way anyway.” She jabbed her greasy fork in his direction. “You’d better make sure our rental is in perfect condition before we leave in the morning. I don’t want to get stuck out there, have to call for help, and answer the inevitable awkward questions.”
“I’ll check everything out, don’t worry.” His boyish enthusiasm was unrestrained.
It was remarkable, she reflected, how much he had emerged from his self-imposed protective shell since their arrival in Southern Africa. The change of venue, not to mention continent, had done wonders for his personality. His brooding paranoia and interminable sarcasm had given way to a wary acceptance of the freedom they presently enjoyed and to a delight in ordinary everyday things that was a far cry from the hunted, apprehensive creature from whose back she had removed police traktacs in her office. It was amazing the effect a little wildlife viewing could have on a career urban malefactor. That, and being free of police surveillance.
She dug deeper into her second helping. All he was asking for, really, was part of one more day. She figured she owed him that much, considering that once they reached the Orange River and started into the Namib their lives would be seriously at risk. If anything—happened—at least she would know that she had been more than fair with her street-wise partner.
We’re really going to do this, she found herself thinking. Try to sneak into one of SICK’s most restricted research facilities. It was not too late to call it all off, she knew. Go back home, reconnect with her patients and her friends, pretend this was what until now it largely had been: nothing but a vacation, a break from routine, a getaway from everyday life. It would be easy enough to do. She could turn the mysterious thread over to one or more of her colleagues better equipped to study its baffling physical properties. Or she could hand it in to the government.
Unless, of course, the government had something to do with what was going on. In which case nothing more would be heard of what might be on the thread or the inexplicable metastable metallic hydrogen of which it was made. She could go on with her life as if nothing had happened.
Except—there was the less easily forgettable matter of the quantum entangled MSMH nanoscale implant she had removed from the head of fifteen-year-old Cara Jean Gibson back in Savannah, and the subsequent revelation that comparable devices had been found in the skulls of other adolescents throughout the world who had likewise required reworking of their bad melds. As a physician, that was knowledge she could not so easily put aside. Someone, some company, some organization, or some government somewhere was up to something. She would not be able to sleep comfortably until, like any good scientist, she found out the how and why of it.
Being the only place within the Preserve to get a cooked meal, even in the off-season the spacious cafeteria was busy at dinnertime. Intent on working out their itinerary for tomorrow the two visitors from Namerica paid little attention to their fellow diners. They ignored the nattering couple who occupied the table off to one side and paid no attention to the local family and its quartet of noisy children who occupied the other. They certainly did not inspect the room for interesting faces or visitors. Even the pair of Martian couples seated near the exit failed to attract any interest.
They certainly did not notice the little old man who sat off in one crowded corner, his presence shielded from them by a number of other talkative diners, and who only occasionally and surreptitiously looked up from his simple meal to gaze fixedly in their direction.
As it inevitably did, everything had fallen into place. This was not the result of accident or of luck, Molé knew. Accidents befell those who made mistakes and luck is an illusion loved by the incompetent. Everything he had achieved in his life, the sum total of his success, could ultimately be put down to nothing more mysterious than careful planning and hard work.
For example, he might never have found the thieving doctor and her indigent companion had he not maintained a regular watch on the competition. With the resources at his command this was not difficult to do, but many in his position and profession would not have bothered, choosing to rely instead solely on their own instincts and expertise to find their quarry. Molé wholeheartedly believed in accepting assistance wherever and whenever it could be obtained, be it voluntary or otherwise.
So when he had been informed of the futile attempt on the part of another organization’s hirelings to penetrate the security of a local female witch doctor, he had followed up on it as methodically as he had dozens of other potentially relevant reports. All the others had been dross. But someone like himself needed to strike gold only once. In addition to reporting on the break-in, the local contact had also mentioned the earlier presence at the same sangoma’s residence of two foreigners; one a near-Natural female, the other a lanky male Meld.
A broad-spectrum hack of every transportation outlet south of the Limpopo had produced supposedly private images of a traveling couple who had rented an off-roadster. Obtaining the vehicle’s ident allowed him, with his sophisticated knowledge and experience of tracking, to further penetrate the rental company’s network and obtain the broadcast code for the rented vehicle’s emergency locator beacon. Implanted in the body of the 4×4 to counter theft and to enable it to be found in the event of an emergency, it would allow a police floater to track the vehicle anywhere it went. Equipped with a
n impressive assortment of illegal software, Molé had no trouble tracing the rental’s signal himself.
More than a little to his surprise it had led him here, to this wild and expansive nature preserve. But then, the presence of his quarry in South Africa was itself a surprise. What were they doing here, so far from Namerica? The connection to the thread’s rightful owner, the SAEC, naturally sprang to mind. But if they wanted to sell it back to its rightful owners there was no need to travel in person to the location of that powerful politico-economic conglomerate. Such a purely commercial transaction could have been carried out without leaving the shores of Namerica, or for that matter the doctor’s home city of Savannah. She would have been far more secure exchanging sensitive communications and propounding industrial blackmail from there. Traveling to the SAEC’s heartland exposed her to any number of dangers she would not have faced back home.
In the course of their single face-to-face confrontation she had struck him as stubborn but not particularly brave. Why then had she chosen to make this long, tiring journey, with all its attendant risks? Was it possible she knew something he did not? It was not unusual for Molé’s employers to withhold sensitive commercial information from him. He did not mind. It was not his place to question why he was being asked to interdict specific individuals or recover certain items. A good house painter did not question why a homeowner chose chartreuse and puce for their color scheme. He simply brought out his sprayer and mixed up the requested combination.
Though he could not prove it, he suspected that the scrawny Meld she was traveling with might have something to do with their journeying to Southern Africa. Why an educated, respected member of the medical community like Dr. Ingrid Seastrom should be traveling in the company of an insolvent oaf like this Whispr-Kowalski person was a conundrum he had yet to unravel. It was not critical that he learn the reason, of course. Reasons were not his concern. His trade lay in recovery. While it would be nice to know why his quarry had come all this way, it was not necessary to the successful resolution of his task. Neither was killing them both.
However, while killing was not necessary, it was anticipated. This odd couple had caused him a good deal more trouble than he had expected and far too much of his time. He was an old man and had few lazy afternoons to spare. Additionally, the whole Miavana fiasco had made him look bad. This made him angry. Very angry.
Silently and out of sight of any of the other prattling diners he slipped a metal knife off the tabletop and bent it between two fingers. The strain helped to mitigate some of the annoyance he felt whenever he had occasion to think back to the botched confrontation in the Everglades. That should have been the end of this particular job. He should have finished it then and there and recovered his employers’ property. Instead he found himself here, halfway around the world, in the heartland of the very concern that had employed him, chasing down two mismatched urban brigands.
That chase would soon be over. The realization was comforting. He made himself calm down, though anyone who had been watching him would have detected no change whatsoever in his outward demeanor. There would be no more slipups, no more mistakes, no more accidents. There was no meddlesome Alligator Man to come to their rescue this time, no pre-adolescent Meld master of intrusive stinging insects. Unaware they had been located, his quarry would be less on guard.
Observing them from across the dining room, Molé was not sure the good doctor was ever on guard. Perhaps that was why she had chosen to travel with the Meld. The stick-man was street-wise—he had already proven that. But at base he was an amateur now operating in the world of sophisticated international industry, a struggling sardine who had voluntarily squeezed his way into a shark tank. Just look at them, Molé told himself: the innocent and the overconfident. It was a miracle they had managed to evade him this long.
Now that he had found them again he was in no rush to end it. The termination must be carried out out of sight of any possible witnesses, if only because someone was bound to wonder at and follow up on the disappearance of a distinguished Namerican doctor. In his mind Molé had already made the necessary preparations. Having the luxury of a personal vehicle had allowed him to purchase and bring along a portable but commercial-strength biltong maker. Designed for turning select cuts of game meat into the local equivalent of jerky, it would reduce chunks of any dead protein to desiccated strips of dried meat tough enough to shingle a roof. Left exposed, this edible but utterly unidentifiable organic residue would attract scavengers who would finish the job. It was infinitely more thorough than burying a victim.
And besides, he was curious about the taste.
Unaware that they were less than a day away from their own deaths, his targets were finishing up their dinner. They had not so much as glanced in his direction. This ability to disappear into a crowd was one of the secrets of his success and his survival. Long-lived assassins were not made of massive muscle and brute force. Anonymity was not only a survival trait: as practiced by a professional like Molé it bordered on art. The thickly hewn (and often thick-headed) bodyguards and overmuscled minor athletes women flocked to and other men envied were quickly identified and easily cut down by their enemies. The smallest gun is more powerful than the biggest biceps.
He had seen some of them, employed by those who could afford no better. They would smile and make jokes at his expense behind his back. And it was true. They could boast of being younger, more muscular, more attractive. Whereas all poor Napun Molé could lay claim to was a continuing and comfortable existence.
He had come to the conclusion long ago that in place of good looks and friendship it was better to be able to buy women and be feared by other men.
He could have finished it that night. There was no need to wait for morning. Even a wary street slug like the Meld Whispr would not wake to Molé’s presence as the hunter slipped noiselessly into their rooms. A single quick, kitten-paw slash of the knife he favored, the other hand over nose and mouth to stifle any outcry, and it would all be over in minutes. He could be on his way back to Cape Town before midnight.
Other than briefly contemplating the fanciful melodrama he did not for a second consider actually carrying out such a scenario. While the actual killing would be quick and easy, the aftermath would take time. Terminating quarry while they slept in their beds was far too messy, too primitive, and downright insulting to someone of his skill. Also, there would be no biltong.
The mismatched couple who were the object of his professional attention had arrived in a rented vehicle; they would surely depart in one. The country surrounding the Preserve was nearly as empty as the park itself, its roadways almost as isolated and little traveled. He would follow them at a discreet distance, select an appropriate place, stop their vehicle, and then put a stop to them.
But first he would magnanimously offer to trade their lives for the stolen thread. Once his employers’ property was safely in his possession he would then embark on a bit of local food preparation. This experiment in indigenous cuisine would be followed by a leisurely drive back to Cape Town and then a well-deserved rest, perhaps at one of the numerous local wine-country spas.
Knowing anything about Napun Molé and what he did for a living, what any other person would doubtless have found most remarkable about the stone-cold old executioner was how quickly and easily he could fall every night into a deep and completely relaxed sleep.
WHEN MORNING CAME, IT WAS plain that they were going to make it easy for him.
It was almost as if, he thought as he watched his quarry’s rented vehicle pass through the double gate in the dusty wake of one of the big tour buses, that feeling guilty, a capricious Fate had decided the time had come to compensate him for all the unforeseen difficulties and delays he had been forced to deal with in the course of this particular assignment. Because as soon as it was outside the camp’s security perimeter the 4×4 he was tracking turned right toward the interior of the Preserve instead of left along the track that would take it to the p
ark exit. His victims were going on another game drive, or a picnic. Why they had chosen to drive deeper into the Preserve instead of leaving it did not matter. The end would be the same.
As if that was not enough they had obligingly checked out that morning, a fact he had already quickly and easily confirmed. According to the lodge’s electronic register they had left no forwarding information or travel plans, had packed and taken all their belongings along with them, and to all intents and purposes appeared set on enjoying one more morning or day in the Preserve before continuing on their way.
It was most thoughtful of them, Molé mused with satisfaction as he prepared to follow in his own vehicle. He must remember to thank them before he killed them.
DRIVING DOWN THE LEAST-FREQUENTED off-road track that led northwest, Whispr settled in behind the wheel and was soon searching for animals. It quickly became evident that the farther they got from the tributary of the Kakoenshook River, the fewer and farther between the residents of Sanbona became. He resigned himself to the realization that they were unlikely to encounter larger animal groups again until they reached the Touws itself.
Not that the drive was entirely devoid of sightings. Grinding through a series of granite outcroppings they came upon a herd of grazing impala. Startled by the 4×4’s silent arrival they exploded away in all directions, like so many bubbles from the mouth of a well-shaken bottle of champagne. There were also numerous colorful birds, from bee-eaters to rollers. A bonus appeared in the form of a family group of Hipparion. Emitting toylike whinnies, the partially striped pony-sized early horses bolted from the vehicle’s approach like carvings escaping a carousel. But unlike on the previous day no mastodons, no rhinos, no resurrected megafauna crossed the car’s path.