From Cape Town with Love (42 page)

A balding Asian man paced in an Italian suit and tie, and the four other Asian men, all younger, wore casual street dress, including baseball caps. They all looked like undercover cops, but they weren't cops. They were bodyguards.

One was stationed in the doorway. Another stood beside the window, his back facing us. They had created a formation in the room, ready for trouble. If we tripped the motion sensor by the window, everyone would notice the light.

The man at the doorway across the room hiked his chin in my direction, and I quickly pulled away. “Careful,” I whispered to Marsha. “Twelve o'clock.”

Marsha's wide eyes didn't move or blink for ten more seconds. Finally, she pulled back.

Holy shit,
Marsha mouthed to me.

You know them?
I mouthed back.

Marsha nodded, looking dazed.

I was about to ask for an introduction when a booming voice floated through the window. “Ah, Mr. Yi, please accept our apologies,” said the South African man I'd heard in the butler's pantry. The adviser. “We have been concluding a very delicate—”

An angry voice cut him off, so muffled that it took me too long to realize that the balding man in the suit was speaking Chinese. Marsha's head shot up to stare into the room again.

“Mr. Yi is very, very disappointed in so many delays,” said a cultured English accent. One of the Chinese bodyguards sounded like he'd learned English at Oxford. He was about thirty and wore his hair long. “And this foolhardy distraction has already jeopardized so much. All the media headlines! He wanted to make this trip personally—”

“And we are so honored he did!” the Kingdom's adviser said, in diplomacy mode.

I risked another peek into the room, too. A short black man wearing slacks and a dress shirt entered, and I recognized him instantly—he was the cook I'd been sent to babysit at Nandi's birthday party. His kitchen laborer's bearing was gone, replaced by a princeliness no one in the room
could ignore. Everyone straightened to their full heights when the African walked in.

As soon as he spoke, I also realized he was the boss I'd heard through the window. His voice was the same, but he now spoke with a high-bred English accent, matching the translator's like a common language.

“Mr. Yi, please accept my personal apologies,” said the South African kidnapper who sounded English. He made a practiced bow. “We are resolving this awful and embarrassing situation as we speak . . .” He was also the short man from the football field, the one who had wrested Nandi from me at gunpoint.

An instinct to lunge at him through walls and windows nearly overwhelmed me.

More irate Chinese from Mr. Yi followed, but I had heard enough: Nandi was a point of contention with the Asians, and she had run out of time.

Spider wasn't in the room—where was he? Heading for Nandi's room with knife in hand?

“I'm going in now,” I whispered to Marsha.

She waved me off, straining to listen to the men's conversation. She motioned:
How?

“I'll climb the tree,” I told her. “There's an open window up there.”

Marsha glanced at the tree. It was a seventy-footer. If I slipped, it would be a long way down. While the rant in Chinese continued through the window, Marsha nodded.

“Do you need the backpack?”

Marsha shook her head. “Not as much as you will. I can get this door open by the time you get back—and hopefully the smokers will be nicotine flush and back in the house. If you have to shoot someone . . .” The idea stopped her in midsentence. “Let's hope one of us can run like hell while carrying a two-year-old.”

I nodded. Suddenly, I didn't want to leave Marsha alone.

“Come up with me,” I said.

Marsha shook her head. “Ten, I have to stay and listen. I need ten minutes.” She was almost whining, crouched by the side of a house like a schoolgirl playing hide-and-seek. “If I have to, I can create a distraction. Go get Nandi.” She raised her finger to her lips:
Shhhhhh.

Inside the sunroom, the translator took his turn: “Mr. Yi says this is unacceptable behavior . . . and he is baffled as to why you would have pursued such a public and distasteful act at such a sensitive time for all of us . . .”

Marsha was lost in her surveillance, holding what looked like a phone up close to the window. A listening device? A recorder? Hell, she might have had a goddamn periscope.

I wanted to be mad at Marsha for switching priorities in the middle of our mission, but I found myself worrying about the man smoking in the red SUV. And the men at the meeting inside, who might see her through the window.

But Nandi needed me more than Marsha did.

Ten minutes, and I'll be back with the prize,
I thought.
Be here.

Midway up the tree, my foot slipped against the bark. I flung my arm out to catch a branch overhead—and I triggered the same security light we'd set off before. The side of the house closest to the vineyard lit up like it was midday, providing enough light past the patio that Marsha's outline against the house came into sharper focus.

I hugged the tree like a lover, not moving as I tried to blend in. There was a rustle as Marsha ducked in the hedges near the sunroom. I counted the seconds, my arms aching from my awkward grip.

The man standing at the sunroom window pushed the blinds aside and stared outside.

I expected him to look down toward Marsha—instead, he seemed to stare straight at me, as if he knew exactly where I was perched. My torso was hidden from his angle by the branches, but my face was in plain sight, resting on a V in the tree.

We seemed to be staring eye to eye. I almost reached around for my gun.

When the light finally went off, my arteries drowned in an adrenaline surge. My limbs seemed numb, but I held on. The man in the sunroom closed the blinds again, and stayed at his post.

The rest of the climb raced by. My hands found their holds and my
feet followed, just like I was playing in the old ficus tree I conquered daily in our yard when I was a kid. The branches near the window, chopped off at the ends, were strong enough to hold me, so I could look inside.

There was a nightstand light on in the room, which was smallish and sparsely furnished, like a guest room. There were shopping bags of clothes on the bed. I saw pajamas from the kids' TV show
Dora the Explorer,
still carrying the price tag. Could Nandi be in the room?

The idea almost froze me on the windowsill. My imagination fed me an image of Nandi sitting upright on the bed, smiling and happy to see me. But then I realized that the door to the room was wide open, not locked. And no one was in sight.

An empty room was the next best thing to Nandi being there.

Fresh from my practice at Paki's house, my knife sliced an X through the screen. A quick couple of taps, and I raised the open window high enough to let me inside. The next thing I knew, my feet were on a carpeted floor, soundless. I had penetrated the fortress.

But I didn't have time to celebrate. There were footsteps coming in the hallway. Fast.

I rolled across the floor, landing behind the door just as a voice boomed nearby.

It was Paki, talking to someone as they walked briskly past. “. . . but they swore it would never come to this!” He sounded distraught, breathless.

“They are not reasonable like you and me,” said the black South African who had been counseling Paki in the wine-tasting room. “What is a child to them? They only know money! Don't interfere with my brother. There is already talk—”

“She is my
child!”

“Yes, Paki, yes, but if Mhambi thinks you are a problem, I am afraid for you . . .”

The voices faded again, moving past.
She IS my child. Nandi was still alive!

They might have been on their way to see Spider, from the sound of it. If I got to them first, I might be able to sway Paki to help with a rescue. His friend might be halfway sane, too. Either way, I didn't have time to think it through.

I only glanced around before I slipped into the hallway to follow the men, mostly to make sure there weren't security cameras mounted in the corners. Paki and his friend turned a corner to my right.

I'd entered the house in a room near the top of a winding staircase. A tile floor gleamed up at me from the lower level. I heard rapid, angry Chinese downstairs, from the sunroom—Mr. Yi's mood had not improved—but I didn't see anyone milling around in the foyer, or posted at the door.

Keeping close to the wall, I dashed after Paki.

They had reached a small side corridor, and were walking toward a closed door at the end.

Paki's friend was pleading with him in Xhosa, warning him. Genuinely worried.

Paki rapped on the door, hard. “Mhambi!” he called. “You must talk to me!”

Spider was in the room. Was Nandi there, too? I stayed hidden around the corner from Spider's room, but that left me exposed in the upstairs main hall. After a glance at the other end to make sure no one else was coming, I slipped my hand around my Beretta, ready to draw.

A click around the corner as Spider's door opened. Even in another language, I recognized the voice from Club Skylight. He sounded annoyed.

Paki's friend spoke to Spider, trying to placate him. His fear needed no translation.

“I've bought clothes!” Paki said, breaking into English. “I can take her away with me.”

“You?” Spider said.

“Yes, me! I am her father!”

“And with such a father as you, it is more merciful to put her out of her misery!” Spider said. “You'll be paid for your tears, Paki, and I'll be paid for mine. They should make you go to the basement and wipe up your own shit.”

I wanted to turn the corner and shoot Spider on the spot. I wished I had a silencer on my gun the way people do in movies—but in the real world, silencers are really only sound
suppressors,
and they're louder than silencers in movies. And I didn't even have that.

But I had my lead.

They argued a while longer in Xhosa, but I wasn't listening anymore.

As soon as I heard the word
basement,
I bolted toward the stairs.

I raced down the spiral staircase, running far ahead of ideas or plans. My eyes swept the ceilings, still looking for surveillance cameras. None so far.

At the bottom of the stairs, I almost ran headlong into the chest of the stout Asian man I'd seen smoking outside in the red SUV. He had a newspaper curled under his arm, fresh from a bathroom break. His linen jacket was pushed aside by the barrel of the AK-47 assault rifle. A very nasty gun. The black gleam nearly made me trip on the last steps.

Done,
I thought.

The actor in me saved my life. I never broke my stride. Never reached for my gun. I maintained my breezy pace, giving AK-47 a
Whassup
nod as I rounded the staircase.
Places to go, things to do, man.
He nodded back, grunting in response. To him, I was another one of the Africans. Hell, maybe we all
do
look alike.

I was dizzy from adrenaline, but I didn't have time to recover. I would be lucky if I had sixty seconds to find the basement. Where was it?

I veered away from the sunroom, to the other side of the house. If my search took me toward the sunroom, I'd have no choice—but it was no place to start if I wanted a chance.

Each door and archway might be full of promise, or death. I shunned open spaces, looking for corners, shadows, and furniture to keep me out of sight. I pursed my lips to keep from calling out Nandi's name. Would she hear me? And who else would?

The foyer and living room looked empty, so I darted to a narrow reading room with a fireplace, an antique grandfather clock, and a love seat beside a row of bookshelves. Two voices approached, speaking Xhosa or Zulu. I shrank behind the grandfather clock just in time to conceal myself as they passed. Not Spider, but I was sure they were armed.

There were at least twelve men in the house, and those were only the
ones I knew about. Marsha had been right: They might as well be an army.

For a full five seconds, I ignored the inconsolable, wailing cries that pierced me. Since the sound captured the way I felt, I thought it was in my mind.

It wasn't. Somewhere near me, Nandi was crying.

The cry was muffled, but the sound seemed to surround me. I gazed down at the floor and fell to my knees to put my ear against the cold tile. The cry sharpened.

Nandi was
beneath
me! My fingertips rested against the tile, as if to memorize the place where I had found her. My heartbeat raged and thrashed in my fingers. I might have tried to dig through the floor if I'd had a shovel ready.

Even then, I didn't dare call to Nandi. The floor was thick, and my voice would carry much farther inside. I still heard the two men talking in the hall.

I looked around the reading room for a door that might lead to the basement. Nothing.

A one-eyed peek around the archway into the foyer. The two Africans were standing in what might be the kitchen doorway, twenty-five yards away.

I leapfrogged to the small corridor beside the reading room, and found an alcove with two closed doors on opposite sides. In the alcove's rear, there was an entrance to a butler's pantry, perhaps where the boss and his adviser had been standing when Marsha and I overheard them. That might mean I was within only a few yards of the back door, and my only backup. No conversation or stink of cigarette smoke: They must have gone. If Marsha had opened that door, we had egress.

But I didn't have time to check on that door, or verify that Marsha was ready for us. Nandi was in the basement, and Spider was on his way. Nandi's cries followed me into the alcove.

When I opened the door closest to me, a stench floated out. The driver with the AK-47 had nervous bowels, and a spritz of air freshener hadn't helped erase the scent. I closed the door to the guest bathroom, softly.