By the time Anja heard the crunch of car tyres on the dry tar, the security vehicle was already right beside her car and her first and only action was to press the transmit button and radio Durant. The security patrolman stopped his vehicle in front of hers in a semi-defensive position. Anja was angry. Her position, the ‘A’ position, was closest to the target and the other members of the team further out should have warned her about an approaching vehicle. The warning never came and she had to assume that the strong black coffee consumed at the 11 p.m. briefing had obviously not been strong enough.
The security patrol officer stepped out of his car and swaggered towards Anja’s car, hands hovering over his holstered gun. Fresh from security-officer school and trying to imagine approaching a car packed with armed hoodlums with their booty stashed under the seats, he slowly approached Anja’s window.
His voice was nervous and high-pitched. ‘Can I help, lady?’
But he soon saw that this was no lady. Anja had unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blouse and allowed the full glory of her monstrous bosom to welcome the officer. He stared at her longer than was polite and let out a gasp as Anja put her hand under his chin.
‘I love a man in a uniform,’ she said slowly, and then in a voice which would have made Garbo proud, she grunted, ‘I used to be one myself.’ The security officer jumped back as if he’d been shot by a 9mm round. Judging by his expression, he probably wished he had been.
‘Ag, just checking to see that you’re not … broken …’ and before he’d finished, he was already stumbling backwards, afraid to turn his back on her, silently praying that the lady, or whatever she was, would not take him up on his offer of help. He reached the patrol car, fell against the door and rolled into the driver’s seat as if under fire. He slipped the clutch, as specified somewhere in the training manuals, and roared off down the street towards a less threatening part of the neighbourhood where there were real criminals.
‘Groundcrew, Kiteman. The street is clear.’
‘Copy, Groundcrew, thanks.’ Durant hadn’t stopped picking at the lock. Shezi was growing impatient. ‘Come on, Kevin, that’s ten minutes – any progress?’
Durant stopped momentarily to wipe his eyes and steady his hand. ‘Progress? I’m close to kicking this door down. Is that progress?’
Shezi shook his head and wandered down the passage. He knew his lock-picking skills were worse than Durant’s.
Moments later, Shezi returned with the familiar sound of keys jangling in his hand. Durant didn’t look up. ‘You found me a key?’
‘Found some in the kitchen. Wanna try?’ If Shezi had told Durant he could open the door with his big toenail he probably would have let him. He stepped back and heard his back crack in at least three different places. Shezi dropped to his knees and tried the keys in the lock. The third one opened the door with a click. Shezi couldn’t contain his elation. ‘Laduma! You whities think you’re smart. Everyone hangs spare keys in the kitchen.’
Durant grinned. ‘I don’t. Anyway, let’s finish this and get outta here. I’m getting nervous.’
Durant would have been surprised if the office wasn’t neat. Ali was, after all, an organised criminal and organisation characterised the room’s layout. Clever, Durant thought. A neat office was not easily explored, although exploration wasn’t the aim here. In the centre of the oversized stinkwood desk which squatted on four elephant-like legs, was a single computer monitor and keyboard.
‘So this is where it all happens,’ Shezi said, flinging the canvas bag onto the floor next to the desk and unzipping it.
‘Wait,’ Durant said.
‘No worries. I didn’t forget.’ Shezi pulled a digital camera from the bag and switched it on. He looked serious for a moment. ‘You wanna pose?’
‘Just take the flippen pictures, specially this area,’ and Durant motioned to the area they would be working around. It was standard operating procedure. The pictures would be checked once the surveillance equipment had been installed to make sure the office looked the same as when the team had arrived.
Blue lightning lit the room for an instant as the camera flashed.
Durant involuntarily closed his eyes for a split second as the flash blinded him, then he leaned forward in his chair, moved a floral centrepiece in the middle of the table to one side, pressed his cheek against Stephanie’s, and smiled.
‘Please take another one for us, I blinked.’
The waiter snapped a second photograph of them. ‘Happy anniversary, sir, madam,’ he said, handing the camera back to Durant.
Stephanie smiled, a smile which was as open and carefree as she was. ‘Nice of you to make our anniversary,’ she said.
Durant nodded without looking up. ‘I checked my diary – had nothing else planned, so I thought what the hell.’
Stephanie laughed and ran a hand through her long auburn hair which fell in big curls halfway down her back. ‘No secret operation tonight that’s more important than your wife of six years?’
Durant smiled. ‘I had one last night, remember? Tonight, you’re my secret operation.’
‘Ooh, I like the way you think. Is that the wine talking, or Kevin Durant?’
Durant looked at her and then took her hand. ‘Sweetie, this wine’s so cheap, it doesn’t talk. I’m just an ordinary civil servant; I can’t afford the decent stuff.’
Durant looked at Stephanie and memories of the past six years came flooding back like a sweet, warm tide. Their first encounter had been awkward. Stephanie had presented a financial intelligence briefing to National Intelligence Agency members on money laundering. Durant had sat right at the back of the conference hall with Shezi, who nudged him in the side with his elbow every time she looked at them. This attractive and successful financial guru was elegant, in control and self-assured, and Durant felt inadequate and unworthy of her attention. Richard King, on the other hand, was confident and as self-absorbed as the leather seats of a convertible left open in the rain. He felt both adequate and worthy of Stephanie’s attention. And the less she gave him, the harder he tried, until Durant wondered if King was even starting to annoy himself with his persistence. During the briefing King fired off volley after volley of unnecessary comments, inane suggestions, and idiotic remarks which had Durant and most of his colleagues cringing with embarrassment. King really thought he was impressing the girl when he cited examples of operations in which he’d never been involved. He wasn’t even operational. He was an analyst – he just packaged the stuff Durant and others brought in and made it look good to the client.
Stephanie seemed unfazed by all of this, even amused. Durant marvelled at the resilience of the woman. She was a master diplomat, and he was falling for her.
From that moment, she lived in him like a dream, like a sweet and arousing fragrance from which he couldn’t, wouldn’t escape. From that moment, she had him. All that remained for Durant was to devise a strategy, an infallible plan of action which would make the dream real and make Stephanie go out with him. He wouldn’t have to kill King, because King was already dead, or may as well have been; he’d disqualified himself from any type of romantic encounter with her. Durant went into scenario-planning mode: he visualised various scenarios from best case to worst case, including the whole spectrum in between. The worst-case scenario was inaction: if he was too afraid to say anything to her she’d leave and he’d never see her again. The best scenario he could imagine was Stephanie dismissing him with a coy smile and a wave which would have had him tied up in knots.
But while Durant was sitting quietly by himself at a table, contemplating these outcomes, Stephanie approached him.
‘Hi,’ she said, and before Durant could say anything, he realised he couldn’t. His mouth was so dry that even getting a ‘hi’ out was a physiological impossibility.
‘I’ve heard some interesting stories this morning from your colleagues; really impressive stuff. Especially from Mr King over there – he seems to be quite the specialist.’
Durant nodded. It was as much as he could do. He mentally rearranged his scenarios and adjusted the risk factors – it could go either way.
‘You didn’t mention any of your successes. You have some, being a professional and all.’
‘How do you know that?’ Durant asked, shocked at the calmness of his voice.
‘While everyone else was giving me their best stories, and probably trying to impress me, you just sat there reading my notes. That’s what a true professional would do. Study the material in his hand and find loopholes, seek out new information, look for useful bits.’
Durant managed a smile, but he avoided looking her in the eye. That was still beyond his functional ability. ‘Or I was pretending to read so I didn’t have to look up at you and be distracted like every other guy in the room.’
‘That’s a bit forward, isn’t it?’
Embarrassed, Durant looked up and saw Shezi lurking behind her. Shezi’s laugh bellowed across the room. ‘He’s not very good with the ladies,’ he said, landing a stinging slap on Durant’s shoulder. Stephanie giggled and blushed and the ice was broken.
The lunch encounter led to a dinner, followed by a short period of dating in which a deep friendship formed. Durant’s colleagues were amazed when he announced his wedding plans a few months later. They believed he was already married – to his work. Shezi later commented that Stephanie was the perfect match for him – someone whom he could speak to about his work and who would understand. Someone who shared his passion for discovery and adventure, who was driven, goal-motivated and determined.
And for Durant, the six years had brought its ups and downs. They had both focused on their careers and done well; they still spoke affectionately to each other and were generally happy in each other’s company. Their lives were relatively uncomplicated because they both chose it to be so. Their biggest difficulty had been trying to conceive children.
Then, four months before, Stephanie had announced she was finally pregnant. Durant often wondered how a child would fit into their busy schedules. Stephanie had left the bank and started her own business and he had been promoted to head of organised crime investigations at the National Intelligence Agency’s provincial office. But he was willing to make sacrifices, and he knew Stephanie was too.
Durant raised his glass. ‘To my lovely wife. Eighty years with you and beyond!’
She smiled and her hazel eyes sparkled.
Durant knew there would be troubles in the future as there had been in the past, but that evening, life was great.
It was no coincidence that the African Union was launched in the African Century. The African Union was a vision which encapsulated the rebirth, revival and renewal of Africa, and which, it was envisaged, would empower the continent to free itself from a history characterised by economic and political hardship. New partnerships were being fashioned which were to be different from previous conditional and imposed ones. On their own terms, Africans would determine what was best for Africa. The African Union was a new baby, born to succeed its ageing predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity, which had been founded in 1963 and which by the late nineties had become structurally and politically ineffective. The Ghanaian leader, Kwame Nkrumah, originally envisaged a united Africa along the lines of the United States of America, a dream which was doomed to failure in a continent where individual countries were torn apart by warring factions and territorial disputes in the postcolonial period. The
OAU
became nothing more than a club of African presidents who sat around large tables, drank expensive port, and blamed the colonialists for the legacy of failure in their countries.
The launch of the African Union and the last meeting of the
OAU
brought delegates from all over the African continent to Durban’s International Convention Centre. The launch date was 9 July 2002, and preparatory and plenary meetings were planned for the preceding fortnight. Durban would become a gathering place for some of the most powerful and influential people in the world. And for spies.
International events are the hunting ground of spies. Casual conversations in lobbies and at smokers’ corners become recruitment pitches. Agents of influence and compromise agents are born here. Business cards are swapped, money changes hands and deals are done. The event itself becomes a sideshow. The real actors are the case officers, the undeclared officers, the recruitment specialists, and the compromise functionaries who watch the diplomats succumb to human weakness and get lured by the dangles which are hung before them. The heads of state are merely supporting actors. The real work is done in the back rooms and at intelligence headquarters. Report-backs to principals cover who was successfully pitched, not who said what at the plenary.
The launch, like all high-profile international events, was a challenge to the security services. Hundreds of presidents, ministers, delegates and other
VIPS
arrived in Durban, expecting not only South African hospitality, but also a high level of diplomatic protection. A large area around the International Convention Centre and Hilton Hotel was turned into a security island, to which access was prohibited without an accreditation card and where roads were closed and manhole covers welded shut. Advance teams of security and protocol officials started arriving from various countries, each with their own demands testing the patience of security officials. Tempers flared. Diplomats are known for their intolerance, and often the poorer the country, the more demanding its diplomats.
The South African Department of Foreign Affairs received a late note verbale from the Libyan government requesting permission to bring a dozen presidential camels for President Gaddafi. South African health officials had a hard time explaining to diplomats that there was a mandatory period of quarantine for animals and that the president’s camels would be isolated until long after the launch was history.
Further chaos erupted on 1 July, when an unscheduled Libyan aircraft arrived at the airport bringing an advance party of ninety-seven Libyan security officials. Their mission was to smooth the way for the Brother Leader, like the magi from the east. With them came an arsenal of mp5 automatic weapons, each loaded with sixty rounds of ammunition, and over a hundred loaded revolvers and automatics. On 6 July, a Libyan cargo Antonov delivered fourteen vehicles to Durban International Airport, including two presidential limousines, a bus, and two truck-mounted portable generators, while further aircraft dispatched thirty-one Land Cruisers with communications gear, tents, an ambulance and security vehicles. Two further Libyan cargo aircraft arrived the same day, along with four passenger jets. The presidential jet and two more passenger aircraft carrying Libyans arrived shortly afterwards, and dispatched President Gaddafi and his female close protectors and hordes of security guards into the air force base’s reception area.