Authors: Anthony Bidulka
Standing unawares near one of the terminal’s exit doors was a portly, mustachioed man, looking like an African version of Agatha Christie’s diminutive Hercule Poirot. He was wearing a white shirt with an A&K name badge pinned to his chest, and holding aloft a handwritten sign with the name Ruseey Grant on it. That had to be me, and if it wasn’t, well, I didn’t give a damn; Ruseey would just have to find another ride home.
As we reached the man, I grabbed his arm as well and-looking like a mother with two unruly children-dragged the two of them, Cassandra and the A&K guy, into the sweltering heat outside the airport building and into a parking area crammed with countless, haphazardly parked buses, vans and motorized scooters.
“Where is your vehicle?” I demanded to know, my breath grown shallow and ragged.
The man looked at me as if I was deranged and I recognized how this might appear to him.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have a lot of time for a get-to-know-ya session. “I’m Russell Quant, your fare.
You’re from Abercrombie and Kent; Roy Hearn arranged this, right?”
“Yes, that’s right,” he said slowly, his eyes becoming slightly less alarmed. “Welcome to Zambia. My name is Johnning. I’m your guide in charge of your transfer to the Kazungula jetty. The trip will…” I could tell he was getting set to recite a well-worn welcome speech which, although I’m sure would have been fascinating, would have to wait.
“Yeah, that’s great. Can you tell us in the car? Where’s your car?” I spit out, yanking him along to keep us moving and, I hoped, out of Jaegar’s gunsights.
“It’s over there,” he said, catching on to my sense of urgency and leading us to a small, blue van that was in need of a paint job. On its side was one of those magnetic logo plates that identified it as an Abercrombie and Kent vehicle.
“I’ll explain on the way,” I told him, checking behind us for any sign of the German hulk. “But we really need to move fast right now.”
The three of us piled into the van, Johnning in the front and Cassandra and me and our bags behind him.
As I stepped into the vehicle, I pulled the logo sign off the door; who knew what Jaegar knew, and there was no need to make it any easier for him to spot us. With a choking plume of blue smoke the van came to life and Johnning directed it out of the dusty, gravelled lot.
I glanced at Cassandra, but all she had for me was a what-the-hell-is-going-on look.
As Johnning droned his A&K spiel that could not be staunched, even with a gun-wielding maniac after us, Cassandra and I fell into stunned silence, alternating between staring at one another and checking the road behind us for a tail.
“What is going on?” Cassandra eventually mouthed, the words coming out at a barely audible level.
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“I’m sorry, but I’m not exactly sure,” I whispered back quite truthfully.
“That guy back there, he had a gun, didn’t he?”
I nodded.
“Why? Who is he?”
“I’m not sure, but the first time I saw him he was getting on the plane at Sal Island.”
“Sal Island!” she exclaimed, understandably bewildered.
Johnning, sensing we weren’t paying him the full attention he deserved, raised the volume of his voice.
He had now left town and was on a highway, driving very slowly with his hands at ten and two, eyes never leaving the pavement.
“Can we go faster, Johnning?” I asked. We’d never outrun a tortoise at this rate, never mind hare Jaegar.
“No,” he answered matter-of-factly, and continued with his information seminar, pointing out the distant mist of Victoria Falls.
Cassandra and I whispered a bit more until we realized the van was coming to a stop.
“I thought you said we were going to the Kazungula jetty,” I said as if I knew what a Kazungula jetty was. “Didn’t you say it was seventy kilometres away?” We hadn’t driven anywhere near that far.
Suddenly a horrible thought pierced my brain like a needle full of poison.
Had I been fooled?
Was Johnning in on this too, along with Jaegar and Richard Cassoum?
Maybe Jaegar had not followed us because he didn’t need to; Johnning would deliver us right to him. Or had I read too many Robert Ludlum novels?
I strained to see outside the dirty window on my side of the vehicle and saw that we had pulled up alongside a dicey-looking collection of buildings, just this side of being mud huts.
“We must get out here,” Johnning said as he opened his door and hopped out of the van.
Our eyes grew wide and then narrow as Cassandra and I contemplated a daring escape rather than be captured.
The side door slid open and Johnning stood there with something in his hand. It was a bottle of water.
“You must be thirsty,” he said handing Cassandra the bottle, then pulled another from under his arm for me.
“What’s going on?” Cassandra demanded to know with a steely edge to her already brassy voice.
“As I told you,” he said, not bothering to hide a near-accusatory tone at our obvious earlier lack of attention. “We must now be processed through the Zambian exit station into Botswana.”
Phew.
I made a note to listen more carefully to Johnning from there on in.
Minutes later, we were back in the van and preparing to head for Kazungula jetty-whatever or wherever 103 of 170
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that was. I was beginning to feel immeasurably better about things, until I saw another van, this one the colour of used straw-kind of a musty yellow- approaching the border crossing buildings. As the vehicle came closer, I could just make out the figure behind the wheel: Jaegar. His eyes found mine and for an interminable second we stared at one another, conveying an unmistakable message of mutual dislike.
And then it began to rain.
Now where the blasted hell on this heat-soaked day of Lucifer had that come from? It always seems to rain whenever my cases aren’t going well. It wasn’t torrential or even pouring, just a dotty little rain that coloured the sky a fuzzy grey (like my mood).
“Johnning,” I urged with desperation. “Can you please make this thing go faster? The man in the van behind us is dangerous and he is after us.”
“But we are already ahead and he too must be processed by the Zambian authorities before entering the country,” he told me as we started off at a leisurely pace down the highway, as if heading for a picnic in the enchanted forest with a group of friendly elves and magical fairies. “And, once on his way, he cannot go any faster than we.”
Huh? I did not know if Johnning’s van could not go any faster, or if
he
simply would not go any faster, but I was certain Jaegar wasn’t about to pay much attention to the posted speed limits.
“Stop this thing right now,” Cassandra said, somehow knowing exactly what I was thinking. “I have to pee.” Her southern belle’s accent had suddenly reasserted itself, becoming overbearingly insistent.
The guide must have been used to this type of request from American women as he immediately complied with the request, and helpfully pointed out a clump of trees off the side of the road.
“Not to worry,” he assured. “It is quite private.”
But instead of Cassandra getting out of the vehicle, I did. I came around the van and yanked open the driver’s side door.
“I’m sorry about this, Johnning,” I said, meaning it. “But I’m going to have to drive. And you’ll have to get in the back because I have no idea where we’re going.”
After a bit of mumbling and bumbling, Johnning-not a dumb guy and very aware of the difference in the size of our biceps- took my place in the back next to Cassandra, and I took control of the little blue van.
However, once I got us rolling, although appreciably faster than Johnning speed, no matter where I put the gear shift or how hard I pushed on the gas pedal, the A&K van indeed only went so fast. Admirably hiding my frustration, I turned in my seat and asked him, “So, where do I go?”
He shrugged, “Just drive to the water.”
“Water?” I knew a jetty is usually some kind of landing pier. Pier equals water; water equals boat; boat equals discomfort for Russell Quant. Oh crap.
I’d taken a Mediterranean cruise a couple of years back and learned to make friends with the water. Oh yeah, we were real friendly-like. As long as the boat was a luxury ocean liner with handsome stewards and plenty of free-flowing champagne. I somehow doubted that was the kind of boat we were about to meet at the Kazungula jetty. But maybe…
I checked the rear-view mirror for Jaegar’s van, but the rain had gotten thicker, sluicing over our vehicle like clear gelatin, making it difficult to see out. The front windshield wipers were barely keeping up and there were none for the rear window. All we could do was ride hard and watch for a body of water somewhere in front of us.
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It was the longest, slowest car chase I’d ever been on. The trip to Kazungula took a tension-filled hour, and although every so often I thought I could see something yellow in our rain-blurred wake, I was never sure if we were being chased by Jaegar’s van or not. At least Johnning was right. Jaegar couldn’t go any faster than we could-something about how the vans were manufactured I guessed, or maybe the fuel they used didn’t agree with the engines-so, whoever started out in the lead, was the winner. Thankfully, that was us.
Throughout the journey, Cassandra was chomping at the bit to pelt me with questions about our bizarre and unexpected situation, whereas Johnning dealt with it by choosing to ignore it as if nothing untoward was happening-a nervous reaction I suspect- and did so by filling the time with more verbal exposition about Zambia, the local economy, politics and religious beliefs. As I had no idea what to tell Cassandra at this point anyway, I encouraged Johnning by making appropriate sounds, like “Oh really?” and “Isn’t that interesting,” which kept him going and gave Cassandra little opportunity to butt in.
Finally, a clump of buildings-no
Architectural Digest
candidates here-emerged in front of us through the sheath of rain.
“We have arrived,” Johnning announced, all tourist-guide-like. “This is the Kazungula jetty.”
“Now what?” Cassandra wanted to know.
I shot a glance at Johnning over my shoulder. Could I trust that he was on our side and wasn’t about to deliver us into the hands of whomever it was that wanted to get their hands on me?
“At the river’s edge,” he said, unfazed by my look, “there will be a ferry boat and a speedboat. Get on the speedboat.”
I decided that if I was going to have to get on water-given the circumstances (the whole escaping-a-madman-in-the-Zambian-rain thing)-I liked the sound of a speedboat versus a ferry.
“On the speedboat,” Johnning continued, “will be a man. His name is Godfrey. His job is to take you across the river to Kasane.”
“And then what?”
“Godfrey will tell you.” He gave us each a curt nod. “My job is done.”
We nodded back.
I slowed and pulled into a lot made of mud juice, allowing the van to slip to a halt against a hunk of jagged concrete that jutted up from the wet earth for no apparent reason.
Cassandra and I collected our bags, jumped out of the van and raced towards the river’s edge with Johnning loudly repeating his instructions to get on the speedboat, not the ferry, and to ask for Godfrey who would take us to the Kasane side of the river.
The Kazungula jetty area was a mishmash collection of vehicles parked in no obvious order, varied groupings of rain-soaked people, and rundown buildings that must once have served an official purpose but were now largely ignored except by varmints and critters. There were tourists trying to figure out what to do, locals trying to help the tourists, business people and area residents simply trying to cross the river, and several shifty looking characters who, no doubt, had nefarious purposes in mind. But we had no time to pay attention to any of it. Jaegar could not be too far behind and if he caught us here, our options for escape were few.
“There!” Cassandra yelled breathlessly, pointing to the banks of the sluggishly moving river, the 105 of 170
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Zambezi, where a large ferry boat (circa
Huckleberry Finn
) was moored. A couple of dozen people were aboard, expectantly waiting to depart. “Next to the ferry!”
Wedged between a rickety wooden pier and the ferry, almost hidden by a thicket of wild grass and reeds, was a small boat with seating for six (very small) people. Standing next to the boat was a tall, rangy-looking fellow whose skin had turned ebony with the wet.
“That must be Godfrey!” Cassandra called to me as she galloped toward the man and his dinghy.
“Oh shit,” I replied.
Cassandra glanced over her shoulder and saw what I’d just seen: two vans were turning off the main road and heading for the river. Both of them were yellow. One of them had to be Jaegar!
Hauling ass and our bags, we ran for it, never looking back. We reached the skinny guy and breathlessly told him who we were. He nodded and with frustrating carefulness arranged our bags on the boat then told us to get on, one at a time, one on each side, and not to forget to put on our life jackets. Safety-conscious or preparing for the inevitable? Didn’t matter. We needed that speedboat to do its thing. Now.
I kept my eyes on the yellow vans, which had pulled up near to where Johnning’s was still parked. A large figure was getting out of the first one. I said something to Godfrey about lighting a fire under it. He gave me an indulgent smile and joined us on the boat, which swooped a little with his added weight. My stomach did the same.
Godfrey started the engine.
“Russell,” Cassandra’s voice came out like belligerent ketchup from a bottle. “Look.”
I turned away from shooting urgent stares at our captain and saw that the figure that had gotten out of the first yellow van was now leaning into the driver’s side window of Johnning’s van. Through the rain, and given the distance, it was impossible to see exactly what was going on. But I could make a good guess.
“Godfrey!” I cried. “We have to go now!”