Night Page 9

CHAPTER EIGHT

  Night had a particularly good rest, as he knew that on these assignments sleep was often lost. The next morning he arrived at the address stipulated to him by General Arosi through the promised text message.

  He was 45 minutes early. He wanted to survey the house, the street it was on and evaluate its positioning and outward security posture and any stand-alone risk factors that he may find. The house was in the wealthy suburb of Sandown situated within Africa’s richest area of Sandton. The property had six foot white walls with electric fencing on the top, as did all the other houses on the street. There was one pedestrian door within the wall and a large and heavy automated vehicle gate. Two CCTV cameras were visible from the road, one on either side of the barrier pointing in each other’s direction in a downward angle at the street. There was an intercom and camera next to the automated gate and a buzzer on the civilian door. So far the physical security of the house looked okay. Night drove around the block a number of times, taking pictures with his Blackberry Smartphone as he did so. He also noted down all the vehicles and their number plates on the street that contained his possibly new client’s home. He hadn’t accepted the task yet.

  General Arosi pulled up 25 minutes later. He was alone, driving himself in his privately owned black 3 series BMW with tinted windows. He pulled in behind Night and left his own vehicle and approached the SS’s passenger side door, which Night opened, and got in.

  “How are you Mike?” and put his hand on Night’s arm which was resting on the centre console.

  “I am good thanks General. The time at the Vaal was nice. Thank you for the use of the chalet.”

  “No problem my friend, that’s what it is there for and I hardly have the opportunity to make use of it myself. Lisa was glowing when I saw her briefly this morning at Radio Control before she booked off duty. She looked happy.” The General turned in his seat and looked more closely at Night. “In fact she was glowing in pretty much the same manner as you do now” he said grinning broadly at Night.

  “Ja, like I said, it was very nice General thank you.” Night blushed slightly and wanted the General to change the subject.

  “Okay Mike, I’ll brief you quickly… or as quickly as I can, on what I already know and then we will run it through again in front of the client. She wants to size you up.”

  “I’m sure she does, why wouldn’t she?”

  “Have you spoken to Stanislov? Is he interested?”

  “Yes, he is available from tomorrow and is in if I am in. He couldn’t make it today as he had other ‘business’ to attend to.”

  “Okay, great. The story goes something like this. She lives here with her only child, an 18–year-old boy in his final year at high school, his name is Andrew.”

  Night pulled out a pocket book and was taking notes.

  “She is a widow, her husband was killed three years ago on their farm out in Lanseria, near the airport. He was killed in his jeep after detaining a suspect he found trespassing on the farm. The boy was with him in the vehicle when it happened but for some reason the suspect didn’t shoot him, we believe the gun jammed, we can think of no other reason why he would have left him alive. The reason we are here now is that the final hearing of the court case, the murder trial, is scheduled to take place tomorrow and Thursday at the Johannesburg High Court. The boy is the prosecution’s key and only eye witness. Any questions so far?”

  “Yes. What is the client’s name? And what is the name of the high school Andrew attends and is she the principal or is Andrew?”

  “Her name is Annabel Bergman, and prefers to be called Anne. The boy attends King David High in Victory Park. They are both to be protected, that’s why you will need a second man – who will look after the boy while he attends school. Anything else?”

  “So then I presume the reason we are here is that there is a threat against the boy’s life and the mother as well, for pursuing the case, probably being made by the suspect himself who is out of jail and free as he was given bail?”

  “No, though this would usually be the case, wouldn’t it. Except here the mother has a considerable amount of money and was able to… have bail denied. The threats on their life are, apparently, being made by his brother and friends of the murder suspect, having being paid to do so.”

  “You sound sceptical, this surprises me as I thought the Intel would have been solid since you said this is a high risk gig?”

  “It is a high risk engagement but not necessarily due to the Intelligence on the case alone. Here is where it gets murky. We are not the consultants on this case, well I am not. I have been brought onto the scene by a friend of mine through her former bodyguard, Yossi Shishler, I think you know him?”

  “Yeah, former Israeli Special Forces –he runs his own operation out of Houghton?”

  “Correct, well he has had to leave the country for a while on business and he called a friend of mine, a Major he used to work with in the SA Army, asking if he had anyone in mind that could take over his duties. The Major called me and I naturally got in touch with you.”

  “So until recently she has had full time protection then, with Yossi?”

  “Not until recently, he stopped looking after her about a year ago, after things settled down but matters have heated up again as we near the court case.”

  “Okay, so who is the P.O.C. then?”

  “Technically the point of contact is her private investigator, a man named Hendrik Van Tonder but I have been able to circumvent him in the communication process.”

  “Ah the former BOSS man you told me about on the phone? From the old lot.”

  “Ja Mike he was something to do with the South African Bureau of State Security or as you say BOSS.”

  The South African Bureau of State Security is the English translation of the original Afrikaans version of the name - Buro vir Staatsveiligheid. The English language Press -- regarded by the racist nationalist regime as their deadly enemy-- seized upon this ham-fisted public relations blunder by joyfully plastering BOSS all over their headlines. The Bureau’s job was to monitor national security and was later replaced by the National Intelligence Service (NIS) in 1980.

  “I fucking hate spies!” Night said with remarkable contempt in his voice.

  “So do I Mike. And this one is as bad as they come. I met him briefly a week ago here at the house when I came to see Annabel. He didn’t like the fact that I had seen him and it looked very much to me as though he was feeding the fear into Annabel. The poor woman is a wreck, mainly because of him.”

  “I am beginning to understand. So we don’t trust his Int then?”

  “No, not all of it at least. I am certain a lot of it is bullshit to keep him employed. He also, apparently has got a man on the inside with the suspect’s friends, living, apparently, in a shack within the same informal settlement near Lanseria with the supposed hit men.”

  “Well then I don’t blame Anne for being shit scared if she is being fed this kind of information. Can she be persuaded to disengage the services of this spy?”

  “No she is under his thumb. I tried to enlighten her to the ways of these people but she wouldn’t have it, she nearly kicked me out the house for even suggesting she get rid of him.”

  “That’s what these fucks do, they brainwash people with their bullshit and fear.”

  They sat in silence for a short while, both contemplating their own detestation of government spies.

  “Okay so we can’t trust his information but can we rule out an attempted hit?”

  “No not entirely but we both know it’s unlikely as this suspect is doubtful to be in a position to put a hit out on anyone. I read the case file. The suspect is a nobody, I even forgot his name.”

  “That’s very professional of you General!”

  “Ja Mike I know but it’s this damn BOSS fucker that’s been dominating my thoughts on this contract. I will get the case file across to you this evening and you can memorise the suspect’s name.”

&n
bsp; “If that’s it shall we go in then, we are five minutes early but it’s better than to be late.”

  “No Mike, that’s not it” said the General half smiling, eyes raised.

  Night said nothing but looked at the General poker faced and waited for him to continue.

  “There is also another court case coming up in a month. It’s about ownership of the farm. And the farm is estimated to be worth around 25 million Rand.”

  “This keeps on getting better. Now we are raising the stakes and the risk factor soars.”

  Michael Night was right, for in Africa people die every day, and more specifically in South Africa which has the fourth lowest life expectancy rate in the world – a mere 49 years of age; no matter how tragic the circumstances or how sad, a hornet’s nest is disturbed more by dangling a golden carrot in the air than by murdering someone’s family member.

  The General continued: “What makes this aspect even more disturbing is that it was not brought to my attention by the BOSS man in his written risk assessment to me and we have very little information on the case. All I know is that a former farm manager is the litigating party. I also believe that the feeling on the farm itself among the labourers is bad.”

  “So Annabel told you about the legal battle over the farm?

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think the BOSS fuck might be up to something regarding the case?”

  “I am sure you would agree that he might be.”

  “Anything else General?” Night said, smiling.

  “Yes. There are rumours from some of my contacts from the old days that some extreme right wing boys used to use the farm in question for training purposes or that it was being prepared for that purpose.”

  “Fok me! This is interesting. Well I wondered why the fee was so good, now I know!” said Night, who, as an English-speaking South African, only ever uttered a word of Afrikaans in times of great interest.

  Night and the General entered the house and spent the next couple of hours going over everything that was discussed in the Lumina SS. And the General was right about how worried Annabel Bergman was. In fact she was a nervous wreck. She would jump at the slightest noise and couldn’t sit down for longer than a few minutes at a time. She didn’t look the typical South African kugel which Night had expected. She was rather more moderate looking, wearing plain white pants and a grey cardigan, that surprisingly wasn’t branded. Her hands, face and neck were without any jewellery save for her wedding ring that she still wore. She was about five foot five inches tall and slender and had curly dark hair and an unmemorable but pretty face.

  Night had long ago decided not to become emotionally attached to any of his clients. He would care for them but from the first meeting he would put his defences up and look at the facts and figures of a job rather than the personalities involved. His mind’s eye also somehow blurred the finer details of the features of his clients’ faces as though his brain was subconsciously protecting him from getting too involved.

  A very common problem in the bodyguarding world was that female clients often became romantically involved with their protectors. Night was determined to never let this happen--another reason why he had such a good reputation and would often receive offers to work internationally in Europe, the Middle East or America. All of which to date he had turned down.

  Night was pleased though, to notice that her son Andrew was a lot less anxious. He was a slender young man, an artist who played the guitar and who had long curly brown hair and a remarkable beard for his young age, he looked like a fledgling hippie who belonged in the Sixties. He seemed more philosophical about the whole affair and perhaps even sceptical about the purported hit out on his life. He didn’t stick around long though and soon retreated to his flat at the rear of the property where Night could hear him practising on his guitar and imagined that he had just lit up a large joint.

  During the meeting and after carefully evaluating the case and client, Night agreed to take on the assignment and it was agreed that he would accompany Annabel Bergman to the Johannesburg High Court on the Wednesday and Thursday. Nikolai Stanislov would be the second bodyguard and would collect Andrew from the house and take him to school and back again on the same days as the court case. Andrew had not been called upon to give evidence but the mother wanted him watched over none the less. On the Friday they would all go to the farm together. And that is where the contract would end. The other court case that was due to take place in a month wasn’t ever brought up during the meeting and neither the General nor Night pushed the matter.

  There is one fundamental difference between being a police officer or soldier and being a bodyguard, Night had long ago learned. As a police officer and soldier he wanted action. He wanted to make contact with the enemy while on patrol as a Commando and he wanted to engage and arrest as many criminals as possible while on duty as a cop. As a bodyguard however the exact opposite is true. He wanted exactly nothing to happen. The less that occurred while he was looking after his client, the better. If he could, he would keep his principal safe in an underground bunker surrounded by a legion of police officers and an army. This of course is not possible so the next best thing was to plan and prepare for any eventuality and assess and mitigate any perceived risk to the best of his ability. As a bodyguard Night lived by the Mantra: “Proper planning and preparation prevent piss poor performance.” Or the Seven Ps.

  And that is exactly what Night did on this occasion. That evening in his police barracks flat he studied the case file relating to the murder as it happened on the night. It turned out that the deceased, Peter Bergman, Annabel Bergman’s late husband had been patrolling his farm looking out for trespassers as they had been experiencing unusually high stock theft problems that month. He came across the suspect, Gift Lembede, hiding in one of the out barns. The suspect was wearing only black shorts, a red tee-shirt and leather sandals. Thinking that Gift was a mere chicken thief desperate for some food the kind farmer put him in the back of his old Jeep Wrangler and drove him up to the house where his was going to send him on his way with some canned food and a loaf of bread. His 15-year-old son, Andrew, sat in the front passenger seat.

  Night read the words of young Andrew as he had dictated them to the investigating officer.

  “I am not exactly sure what happened. All I remember was that we had this black guy in the back of the Jeep because we caught him hiding in the barn and we thought he was a thief. We were driving up to the house to give him some food. I felt bad for the guy, he was so skinny and looked cold. I thought he was hungry and just wanted some food. My dad wanted to strip search him and make him sit on the floor while we waited for the cops, as he had done that before. My dad had his hunting rifle on him. But I thought that would have been cruel and convinced my dad that we should feed the guy as the only reason he was stealing was because he was hungry. I asked him if we could take him to the main house and feed him and give him a second chance. My dad spoke to the guy in Zulu and said that we were going to feed him and that he should come with us. I remember that the guy smiled and put his hands in the prayer shape. I was happy and thought we were doing something good. There is always so much bad stuff happening here I thought we were doing good, that I was helping the guy and my dad because he got so angry sometimes about the crime and stuff…”

  Night looked up from reading the boy’s statement and knowing how it would end thought about all the victims of criminals he had interviewed who became victims through wanting to commit acts of kindness to people they didn’t know. Africa, he thought, was not the place for unconsidered and romanticised acts of charity.

  Night read on: “We got to the house and my dad parked the Jeep and was putting the hand brake up, I looked around to ask the guy what his name was and I saw a gun in his hand, he was pointing it at my father’s head. It was only a small gun and it looked like a toy gun, I started laughing and wanted to ask the guy what he was doing… then I heard a loud noise and my ears were sore and start
ed to make a ringing sound, everything started to happen in slow motion, I don’t really remember what happened but I looked at the guy in the back seat and he was pointing the gun at me now, then he was gone and I looked at my dad and asked him what had just happened. I looked at him again and he didn’t say anything, I couldn’t see properly and rubbed my eyes and don’t really remember what happened but then my mom came running out of the house and she was screaming. She opened my dad’s door and shook him then started crying and ran over to me and hugged me, well at least I think that is what happened. The next thing I remember was that I woke up in my bed and our doctor was there, he told me to go back to sleep and everybody was in my room, I couldn’t understand what was going on. The next time I woke up my mom told me that my dad was dead, I don’t understand why, I think that maybe that guy who was hungry shot him but I don’t understand why he would have, my dad was kind and we were trying to help him…”

  Night stopped reading.

  That was the boy’s original statement taken the day after his father was shot, the boy was still in the early stages of shock Night thought, still in denial. The detective had since taken further statements from Andrew in front of the family’s lawyers. Night didn’t bother reading these statements as he knew that the attorneys would have scripted Andrew’s words. Any doubt Night or anybody else had about the guilt of Gift Lembede quickly dissipated as he read on about what had happened that night. According to the Investigating officer’s notes the suspect then ran out of the Bergman’s property and off the farm onto the main road where he hijacked an unsuspecting motorist of his vehicle, a Toyota Hilux, took the victim out of the car and executed him at the side of the road.

  Coincidentally an off duty SAPF border police officer based out of Lanseria Airport was driving home and saw what had just happened and called for backup while he followed the hijacked vehicle in his own unmarked car. A Highway Patrol vehicle responded to the call and was behind the stolen vehicle within a few minutes. They pulled the double cab over and arrested Gift Lembede without a shot being fired. Apparently Gift didn’t like shooting at highly trained armed officers, only unarmed civilians. They recovered a .22 calibre pistol and through ballistics testing matched it to the weapon that was used to kill Peter Bergman. The recovered .22 had its serial number filed off and was a Walther P22 and was probably taken from a house robbery. Unusually it was pink in colour suggesting that its original, licenced, owner was a female, perhaps a sports shooter. Without the serial number though, the gun was near impossible to trace to the original owner, who may not have even reported the weapon missing. Although the investigating officer noted that he had performed a search at the South African Police Force National Firearms Registration Centre for any purchased Pink Walther P22s, thinking that the unusual colour would narrow down the search, unfortunately the exploration produced zero results, probably because the weapon was painted pink after its original purchase. Andrew’s statement that the weapon looked like a toy now made sense as the slick looking pink Walther could easily have been mistaken for a child’s toy or water pistol. Furthermore, due to the tiny size of the weapon, the P22 weighs in at less than 435 grams, the suspect, Gift Lembede could easily have concealed the weapon in his shorts.

  Reading the rest of the case docket Night realised that Andrew Bergman’s statement and testimony would have little effect on the outcome of the case. Hence the reason why Andrew was not called to provide his version of events in court over the next couple of days, his written statement was adequate, it seemed. Besides there was enough evidence to convict Gift Lembede of the murders just based on the ballistics proof and the statement of the off duty border police officer who witnessed the second murder take place.

  Given the facts of the case Night had just uncovered he found it very unlikely the suspect or the suspect’s brother or friends were attempting to kill Andrew or his mother. There would be no point and the suspect would have been advised as such by his lawyer – who was a legal aid attorney provided free by the government.

  Night’s conclusion that a hit was very improbable was in direct confrontation with the intelligence report that Annabel’s private investigator and consultant, Hendrik Van Tonder had given her and which Night now read.

  In the hand written A4 documents that lay before him Hendrik Van Tonder went on in remarkable detail to explain that he had an agent living in the same informal settlement as the brother and friends of Gift Lembede. Apparently his unnamed and unknown man had been inserted to gather intelligence six months earlier and was now firmly entrenched with the brother and friends. Night quickly scanned through the lines of hand written information and stopped to read a paragraph that had been highlighted by Van Tonder in yellow. The paragraph reported that Van Tonder’s agent whom he referred to as Agent X, accompanied Victor Lembede to the edge of the Bergman’s farm, just one week previously. Apparently they had spoken to a couple of the farm workers about Andrew and his mother, asked if they still stayed on the homestead and when was the next time they were due back. The intelligence reports went into great depth, even detailing what shoes and socks Victor Lembede was wearing.

  Night had seen similar intelligence reports before but never with such minutely detailed information that contained times, dates and headed inserts such as: 1712 Conversation took place at Bergman Farm... It seemed too neat to Night and too convenient for Van Tonder.

  Night was sure his client was being handled by the former apartheid spy and was certain Van Tonder’s involvement created a greater risk than the purported would be assassins.