Dead Cat Bounce (31 page)

“Sure,” said Chippy. “Give me a couple of hours.”

David started his pacing again. “And then you’ll show us the caves, yes?”

Chippy nodded as Jonah looked on. He wasn’t entirely satisfied with his father’s answer about physical torture, but he was pacified
enough to accept his dad’s next instruction without further discussion. “Jonah, you carry on going through the files. I’ve got some planning to do.”

It ended up taking three hours for Chippy to return, but for Jonah it felt like mere minutes, such was his absorption in the Apollyon files. Having been torn from the computer, his mind was still racing as they made their way to the caves. Jonah had suggested that he stay behind while David and Chippy checked out the caves, largely so he could research Apollyon further, but his father would have none of it.

“No, you must come,” he’d said. “I’m not leaving you alone, and Chippy says that there’s a hill near the caves where we can get cell phone reception. I want to e-mail a copy of the September records to Harry Solomons, and I need your help. I’d probably delete all the files if I tried to do it myself.”

Jonah backed down. If he could e-mail Pistol, it meant he could also e-mail Creedence and research Apollyon online to see if he could find anything on them. He followed Chippy and his father out of the camp, eager to reestablish communication with the outside world.

It quickly became clear that his father and Chippy were using this walk as an opportunity to discuss possible interrogation techniques, so Jonah consumed himself in his own reflections, a strategy which also helped him ignore the discomfort of the heat and the grass and thorns scratching his bare legs as they walked.

His thoughts were only broken by Chippy coming to a halt. “Here we are,” he said.

Jonah looked around. They were in front of a low rocky cliff riddled with fissures and ledges. The trees and bushes were greener and thicker than back at Main Camp, and a muddy water hole suggested to Jonah that this must be a river when the rains came. He chuckled to himself:
So geography class had been useful after all!
Another huge antelope was drinking at the water hole, which Jonah identified from its horns. He’d seen the same spiraling horns above the entrance to the camp. It was a kudu.

“Look at these,” said Chippy, gesturing at the ground. “They are fossilized dinosaur footprints. We’ve had them verified.”

Jonah bent down to see what Chippy was pointing at. They looked like nothing more than scratches in the rock, but were somehow weirdly enthralling all the same. The footprints, his memory of the kudu skull, the long shadows being thrown by the falling sun, and Chippy’s comment about evil spirits gave this place a very ancient and mystical aura.

Jonah stood up and followed Chippy up to the cliff and to the edge of a large fissure in the rock face. “Stamp your feet when you walk inside,” Chippy instructed. “There may be a few snakes around.”

“Snakes!” screamed Jonah, now really convinced that he should have stayed behind. “Poisonous ones?”

“Don’t worry,” said David behind him. “They’ll be long gone if you stamp.”

Chippy took a flashlight out of his rucksack, switched it on, and led them into the fissure. He kept the light fixed on the ground. As they progressed, complete blackness enveloped them, the pinpoint of light becoming their only guide. The floor was strewn with rocks
and dirt, and the air was stale and fetid. Suddenly Chippy flicked the light upward, and Jonah gasped. The chamber they were in was huge, and Jonah could make out magnificent formations of stalactites and stalagmites, royal boxes and stages, nooks and crannies.

“Wow,” said Jonah. “It’s even bigger than the trading floor.”

“Man has used this place for thousands of years,” Chippy explained, fixing the light on what looked like paintings of stick men hunting stick animals. “These rock paintings are more than four thousand years old, and we’ve found arrowheads made from stone, bronze, and iron.”

“It’ll certainly make a good place to keep the Baron,” said David. Chippy answered in Shona, and the two of them went back to whatever they were talking about on the walk over, leaving Jonah alone in the dim light, feeling the darkness closing in around him and the precipitous drop in temperature now that they were out of the sunshine.

After a while David switched back to English. “Let’s go and send that e-mail. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day.”

The Baron’s plane
from Zurich landed in Namibia at seven twenty-five on Monday morning. He was stopped at Windhoek Airport customs, but only briefly. A friendly official looked at his passport, asked him his reason for entering the country, and wished him a good holiday. Soon after, Kristoff Klaasens, big game hunter and sadist, introduced himself to the Baron in the arrivals hall. He had driven from Johannesburg overnight, entering Namibia along a dry river bed before returning to the highway. He didn’t want customs looking at the contents of his Land Cruiser.

Klaasens would have been somewhat pleased to know that his fears were justified. He and the Baron
were
being watched. When the Baron had left customs, wearing his usual shirt and tie, the official he had dealt with had phoned one of the attendants at the small parking lot outside. In turn, that attendant noted the registration details of the Land Cruiser (when Klaasens returned to the vehicle with the Baron) and phoned them through to Chippy.

It was just as Jonah had predicted—the hunter was becoming the hunted.

When Jonah made his way to Main Camp’s dining area soon after eight o’clock in the morning, he was greeted by the smell of cooking bacon and a table strewn with guns, knives, crossbows, wires, ropes, and clothing. David and Chippy were at the far end, deep in conversation.

“Is he here?” Jonah asked, all of the previous nights’ concerns flooding back.

David nodded grimly. “He is. Chippy’s man at customs says he landed about half an hour ago and is on the road. He was met by a big South African guy dressed in hunting gear. Chippy will meet up with them about sixty miles from here and tail them.”

“There’s only one road and not much traffic, so it won’t be difficult,” Chippy explained. “I’ll follow them and find out what they are up to, and we’ll make plans from there.”

“Are they coming by tank?” Jonah asked drily, indicating the armory on the table.

Neither David nor Chippy laughed. “We can’t be too careful after last time,” said David. “Plus, you know what we found yesterday. We must be fully prepared.”

Jonah surveyed the guns on the table, his stomach churning. He’d already shot a gun once. He didn’t want to have to do it again.

“Right,” said David, moving toward the fire and changing the subject. “Let’s get you some bacon and eggs, and after that you can help us get ready for tonight.”

Bacon and eggs
? His dad had never cooked him breakfast in his
life. He sat down at an empty space at the table and watched David busying himself with pans and food while Chippy stripped down an assault rifle. It was a strange sight to say the least. “How did I get to bed last night?” he asked. The last thing he remembered was sitting by the fire in the camp following dinner as Chippy played on a harmonica he’d brought along.

“I carried you,” David answered simply, as if this was no big deal and not the first time in as long as Jonah could remember that he’d done something so attentive. “You passed out. One minute you were awake, and the next you were gone.” He threw some rashers of bacon into a frying pan.

“Oh,” said Jonah. “Thanks.”

Chippy was now cleaning the gun’s parts with a rag, and Jonah remembered what else he had discovered while they had had Internet reception on the hill the previous night. “So,” he said to his father, “I didn’t tell you what I learned while you and Chippy were enjoying the sunset on the hill last night.”

“No,” said David. “What is it?”

“I found out where the word ‘Apollyon’ comes from.” He paused for effect. He wanted to ensure he had his dad’s full attention for what he was about to tell him. “I didn’t tell you then because it seemed like you two were really enjoying yourselves.”

“Oh?” David raised his eyebrows.

“Yeah. It’s from the Bible, the Book of Revelation. Apollyon is basically another name for the devil. He is ‘the Destroyer’ and ‘the Angel of Death.’ It’s supposed to be Apollyon who brings about the Apocalypse, the end of the world.” He watched carefully to see David’s reaction, but all he did was break an egg into the pan.

“Oh, I wouldn’t read too much into that. Lots of hedge funds get their names from the Bible or Greek and Roman history. They think it shows intelligence and aggression.” He turned to face Jonah and held up a silver packet. “Do you want coffee?”

Jonah was surprised at the lack of reaction. He thought it was a big deal: a massive fund named after the Angel of Death that fed off crises and that was supposed to bring about the end of the world!

“Coffee, Jonah?” David repeated.

“Uh … yes, please,” he answered and looked again at the armory on the table. “Well, if you don’t think the name’s anything to worry about, how about explaining the interrogation plan?”

“We’ll get to that,” David replied, obviously not wishing to be distracted from his culinary efforts.

Jonah grunted with frustration. Here he was with killers hunting him, killers backed by more money than a decent sized country and named after the Angel of Death, and his dad cared more about cooking bacon and eggs!
He
might have been to war before, but Jonah hadn’t.
He
might feel comfortable surrounded by assault rifles, but Jonah wasn’t. And
he
might consider an interrogation as perfectly normal, but Jonah didn’t. If Jonah had been forced to trade on the information he had at present, he would be buying “Apollyon,” not “Lightbody.” He wanted something more than breakfast to change the odds that appeared heavily stacked against them.

After three and
a half hours of driving, Klaasens pulled off the road into a rest stop. There was a concrete table and chairs under the shade of a couple of acacia trees.

“Come, let us stretch our legs, and I will show you where we are going from here,” he said in a guttural South African accent. He spread out a map on the table and showed the Baron the Lightbodys’ last known location on the farm and the access point he planned to use: a hunting reserve called Luipaard. Kloot had it all arranged in advance, ensuring complete privacy except for a local tracker who was being paid handsomely to keep his mouth shut. They would set up their base near the perimeter fence, and Klaasens and the tracker would explore the area once darkness fell. When the Lightbodys were asleep, Klaasens, the tracker, and the Baron would go in and enable the Baron to do what he had come to do.

The Baron gave his assent, and they returned to the Land Cruiser
and continued their journey, turning off the road some twelve miles short of where David had turned the day before.

For all the precaution they took, it was not enough. Chippy watched them turn from some way back and drove on another five hundred yards. He parked his open-backed vehicle and entered the reserve by scaling the game fence that surrounded it. From there he proceeded on foot, silent and invisible. He watched, as still as a praying mantis, as they set up their camp. It was very basic: two small tents still to be erected, a cooking fire, and two chairs. Everything else stayed in the Land Cruiser. Chippy couldn’t see anyone else, and it was obvious that this set-up was short term and not meant for a hunting trip, or at least not of the animal kind.

Less than a mile away on the game farm, Jonah was learning how to use a crossbow. They were nothing like the ones he had seen in history books. These were high-performance weapons made of carbon fiber and with telescopic and thermal sights. Once David had fired a few bolts and found a feel for the weapon, he handed it over to Jonah. “Here. Have a go.” Jonah took the bow, immediately surprised by its lightness. David showed him how to activate the self-cocking mechanism and how to load the bolts, which were aerodynamically designed and made of high tensile steel. “From there it’s point and fire like you would a gun.”

Jonah looked down the crosshairs of the sight at a target set up twenty yards away on a tree. When he squeezed the trigger, there was only the faintest “whoosh” as the bolt sped on its way and thudded into the target: silent and deadly.

“There are only two of them,” Chippy said, panting upon his return. “They are on the reserve next door, camped very near the perimeter. I think their plan is to strike tonight. We should go as soon as we can.”

Silence fell over Main Camp, dispelling any joviality that remained from the crossbow practice. “Okay,” said David, almost standing to attention. “Let’s get this done. What do we need? Are we driving or walking?”

“We’ll take the tranquilizer gun and a crossbow, plus some cord. We’ll walk in. It will be quieter, and we can drive out in their vehicle.”