A Sailor's Honour Read online

  A Sailor’s Honour

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR:

  Shepherds and Butchers, 2008

  The Soldier Who Said No, 2010

  A SAILOR’S HONOUR

  Chris Marnewick

  A Sailor’s Honour is fiction. Names, characters, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. The words or actions in the book are not to be ascribed to any of the characters named in it.

  Published in 2011 by Umuzi

  an imprint of Random House Struik (Pty) Ltd

  Company Reg No 1966/003153/07

  80 McKenzie Street, Cape Town 8001, South Africa

  PO Box 1144, Cape Town 8000, South Africa

  [email protected]

  www.randomstruik.co.za

  © 2011 Chris Marnewick

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

  First edition, first printing 2011

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

  ISBN 978-1-4152-0163-3 (Print)

  ISBN 978-1-4152-0352-1 (ePub)

  ISBN 978-1-4152-0353-8 (PDF)

  Cover design by publicide

  Text design by William Dicey

  Set in Trump Mediaeval and Caecilia

  Printed and bound in South Africa by

  Paarlmedia, Jan van Riebeek Avenue, Paarl

  To Layla, also known as Babyshoes.

  When I write about a spring, that spring

  is there and the water is good to drink.

  LOUIS L’AMOUR

  Contents

  Abduction

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  U-891

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  The Alicia May

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  St Katharinenkirche

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Also from Umuzi

  ABDUCTION

  PROLOGUE

  Pretoria

  September 1992

  The day started like any other.

  When everyone was ready, De Villiers drove, like he always did. The children had to get to school, and his wife had to be at work at 8 a.m. Jeandré was still in kindergarten and Annelise escorted her to the door exactly as the school rules demanded. De Villiers watched from the car as his daughter turned and blew him a kiss. School was a happy place for Jeandré and goodbyes had never been tearful. Her brother, on the other hand, was a different story altogether. Marcel hated school, and said so every day. De Villiers suspected bullying or an overly robust teacher, but Marcel’s quarterly reports were good. A quiet boy at the head of his class, the teacher wrote. When De Villiers asked him, ‘Why don’t you like school?’ the answer was an enigmatic shrug of the shoulders.

  ‘It’s just a phase,’ Annelise said. ‘It’ll pass.’

  But it never had the chance to pass.

  It happened on the way home.

  De Villiers started the home run early. He went first to the army headquarters on the Johannesburg road to ask if they didn’t have a position or a mission for him. The personnel man just shook his head with a knowing smile on his lips. A voice from behind the partition gave the reason. ‘All recruitment is on hold, pending the elections. And then all the MK terrorists will be our new commanders.’ Another voice added to the mirth. ‘No, they’ll all be generals, and we’ll still be the ones to do the dirty work.’ De Villiers left with their laughter ringing in his ears. ’n Lag met ’n traan, his Afrikaans teacher might have said.

  He picked them up in reverse order: Annelise first, then Marcel and Jeandré last. They had to return to Marcel’s school because he had left some of his books in his desk. The dressing-down De Villiers had given Marcel left the car in silence as they turned the last corner and slowed to take the turn into their driveway.

  He had seen the white minibus with its blackened windows parked on the verge opposite their house, but had thought nothing of it.

  That was a big mistake, although it is doubtful whether the outcome would have been any different. At least, that’s what De Villiers sometimes tried to believe.

  Throughout his training as a Special Forces operator and during the planning phase of every mission he had undertaken, De Villiers had always been encouraged to think ahead, to identify potential dangers in order to avoid them or, if avoidance was not possible, to find ways of meeting them.

  Preparation prevents poor performance, his instructors used to say. They said it so often that it became the voice in De Villiers’s inner ear.

  Preparation.

  Prevents.

  Poor.

  Performance.

  In time it would also become the nagging voice of his conscience.

  This time he didn’t see it coming. This time, Major (Ret’d) Pierre de Villiers, specialist in reconnaissance and risk avoidance, did not see it coming.

  He had become complacent. The civil war was over. The soldiers who were fighting on foreign soil had been called home. His own last operation had been terminated unexpectedly, just before the final push, and he had been made to resign his commission and leave the army, albeit with a rise in rank to major. An uneasy truce had been arranged with the soldiers on both sides returning to their barracks to await further orders. The country calmed down as politicians met to talk and talk and talk. The national team went to the Olympics and the Wallabies and All Blacks came to play the Springboks. Things were back in equilibrium and the nation was at peace.

  But on the street, weapons of war were now freely available at the gates of the army barracks or the local taxi rank: R500 for an AK-47 with a full clip and R750 for a hit. ‘You point out the target, boss, and we take him out. Afterwards you pay us extra for the bullets we used.’

  The mistake Pierre de Villiers made was to think that the streets would be safe and that there was nothing untoward in the presence of a minibus with blackened windows in his suburb.

  But there was. De Villiers realised it as soon as he saw the man at his gate and a further two in the rear-view mirror, all three converging on the car. They carried their AKS openly, as if they owned the street, and in a way they did. For De Villiers and his family, the options were reduced to one: the Glock under the driver’s seat of no use. Even if it had been ready to hand, there was too much to lose and too little to gain.

  ‘Let them have the car,’ De Villiers said in a low voice and raised his hands in surrender.

  When
he came to, he was in a hospital bed, strapped down with his right leg suspended in the air by a collection of wires and pulleys and a drip on a stand next to the bed feeding a yellowish liquid into a vein on the back of his hand.

  He had smelled cordite, but had heard no gunshots. There had been screaming.

  Children screaming.

  His children.

  His body was numb and he felt no pain except a stinging burn where the drip needle was taped to his hand. He was alone in a white room he recognised by the equipment and the furniture and the smells and noises as a hospital, a military hospital. He had been there before.

  De Villiers had also been alone before, but when he looked around, he could not work out who was missing.

  Their graves were in the Garsfontein Cemetery on the opposite side of the city, nestled against a koppie with rough rocks and acacia trees and low shrubs. Tall trees cast a shadow over the gravestones.

  Jeandré, daughter of Major Pierre de Villiers and his wife, Annelise.

  Marcel, brother and son.

  Annelise, wife and mother. Sister of Advocate Johann Weber of Durban.

  Weber was the family’s spokesman at the funeral and had looked the camera in the eye when he gave his address in the cold, clinical tones of his profession. ‘This family does not believe in the maxim that the law should be allowed to take its course. The law usually runs out of steam pretty quickly. No, we believe that the law is not enough when you need to deal with the killers of women and children. This family will not rest until we have had our revenge. That day will come, perhaps not tomorrow or next week or even next month or next year. But it will come. We shall wait as long as it takes.’

  The newspaper headline echoed his words. As long as it takes.

  Auckland

  Monday, 15 June 2009 1

  Hop. Skip. Jump.

  Hop. Skip. Jump.

  Zoë’s feet landed in a puddle and water splashed up against her shins. Her cross-trainers and tracksuit pants were soaked through, but she laughed with pleasure and jumped again and again.

  Jump splash. Jump splash. Jump splash.

  Each time she jumped, the seven-year-old girl’s French braid rose up behind her like a whip and came down to slap her between the shoulder blades. The braid was as wet as the trainers. She knew she would be home in a few minutes.

  Ahead of her, the boys and girls of Macleans Primary School were slowly making their way home, the boys in groups of two or three, pushing and shoving, and the girls in a slightly more sedate fashion.

  Except for Zoë de Villiers. Zoë had fallen behind, but that was nothing unusual. She always played games in her head, even when her class teacher was talking. There were lines on the footpath only Zoë could see and she loved hopping, skipping and jumping to the dictates of the lines. She took no notice of her classmates ahead of her on the footpath and did not see the Range Rover Sport with its blackened windows. At first it kept pace with her, but then sped up a little and stopped a short distance ahead. Zoë also didn’t take notice when two women dressed in black alighted from the SUV and came walking towards her.

  Eyes cast down to watch the lines. Hop. Skip. Jump. Splash, splash, splash.

  When Zoë looked up, there was darkness.

  Anyone looking back towards the scene would have seen two athletic women dressed in identical dark jeans and thick jackets with hoodies walking side by side on the footpath towards the school. They would have thought that the hoodies were pulled over their faces to protect them from the rain. They would not have been able to see the dark glasses below the hoodies and might not have taken notice of the girl skipping towards the women in black. They might not have noticed the folded travel rug over the arm of the woman on the right, and they might not have believed their eyes when the two women separated for an instant and then, as they came together again, that the skipping girl had disappeared. They might at first have wondered why the Range Rover was reversing and why the two women were in such a hurry to get back in, but they would never have suspected that there was a little girl wrapped in the travel rug in the back seat between the women when the Range Rover sped off towards Pakuranga Road.

  In the affluent Bucklands Beach it is not unusual for a luxury vehicle to stop to pick up a child.

  Inside the speeding Range Rover, one of the operatives pulled a beanie over Zoë’s eyes while the other silenced the captive child with duct tape.

  The operation was completed in a minute.

  When the field commander at the steering wheel looked at his watch, it was 05:00 GMT and 17:00 local time. He made the phone call as he drove.

  Durban

  Ten time zones away in Durban, a similar scene played itself out, but in better weather. The sun had risen to a clear winter’s day when the men and women of the Third Force executed their orders. This time they needed no women to complete their subterfuge. The uniforms they wore ensured that no one would question them or oppose them.

  At the entrance to the KwaMashu Aids Clinic outside Durban, two men in the heavy riot gear of the South African Police Services stood waiting for the white Mercedes they knew would arrive dead on time. Their white BMW 330i had police markings on its sides and a blue light on its roof. They carried their automatic rifles with casual but professional ease; their trigger fingers were extended on the trigger guards. To the onlookers’ eyes there was nothing unusual in the scene. Heavily armed police patrol every corner of the townships at night to engage equally heavily armed robbers and drug lords. The antiretroviral medication that arrived daily by the truckload was an attractive target for drug dealers. It could be smoked with dagga, and enhanced its kick, they claimed.

  The patients outside the clinic watched passively, used to police and robberies at their clinic. They watched as the Mercedes arrived and the taller of the armed policemen stepped over to the driver’s window. He spoke softly but firmly to Liesl Weber in Afrikaans. ‘Get in the car, madam. We need to speak to you.’ He gestured with his automatic.

  ‘Kill the motor and bring your handbag with you,’ he said when she made to get out of the Mercedes without it.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she demanded. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’

  ‘You have no choice, madam. Now get in the car or we’ll carry you to it.’

  Liesl Weber nodded slowly and looked at the line of patients outside the main door of the clinic. Her car was still in drive and she slowly and deliberately unclipped her seat belt before she leaned over to lift her handbag from the passenger seat. She caught everyone by surprise when she stepped out of the car and slammed the door behind her. The Mercedes quickly picked up speed and veered towards the front door of the clinic. In their haste to get out of the way, several of the elderly patients fell over in the dust. The car slammed into the glass doors of the clinic and ploughed its way through several pieces of furniture before it crashed into the far wall. The airbags opened and filled the front of the car.

  The operatives had been trained to ignore such distractions, and the man nearest to Liesl Weber grabbed her by her shoulder with a gloved hand and turned her around. He whipped the rifle around her and, with one hand on the barrel and the other on the stock, pulled it sharply into her ribcage. He picked her up and shook her as a hunting dog might shake a rabbit in its jaws. She went limp. He lifted her off her feet and carried her lifeless figure, now folded double over the rifle, to the car. He threw her in headfirst. She landed in the footwell in front of the back seats.

  By the time the patients had regained their composure, Liesl Weber was restrained in the back seat of the BM with a balaclava pulled low over her face and duct tape covering her mouth. The patients watched in silence. This was a most unusual arrest, some of them might have thought. The police are usually not that rough with white people, especially women, and especially white policemen. No one intervened. What could they do? In their township they had seen much worse from the police during the eighties, when large numbers of protesters and innocent bystand
ers alike had been shot by the combatants.

  ‘You’re not going to give us any trouble, are you?’ the driver of the BM asked over his shoulder when he reached the gate.

  None of the patients thought of phoning the police. They stood and waited, wondering whether they would have to return later in the week, incurring the expense of another taxi ride for the ARVS that kept the virus in their blood at bay.

  They might have wondered how the virus had made its way to them in the first place.

  The field commander looked at his watch when the BMW left the clinic grounds: 05:00 GMT; 07:00 local time. He made the phone call.

  Third Force HQ

  The operation had been successful, carried out with military precision. But then, they were of military persuasion and that is what the military do. They execute the orders they are given.

  In the lounge which served as his Ops Centre, the major lit a cigar to celebrate. He held a mug of coffee and looked out over the wa-terhole from the veranda of the game lodge, an hour’s drive north of Phalaborwa. From where he stood, he could see the fence of the Kruger National Park. He could hear a pride of lion feed on the night’s kill.

  He stood very still in the early morning breeze. Since the general had broken his hip and had been confined to a wheelchair, the major had taken over the day-to-day operations of their movement. But the major knew that he would have to report to the general soon. The general might be old and confined to his wheelchair, but he remained the spiritual force behind their movement.

  It was time to launch the next operation of the Third Force.

  The general had chosen the name: Operation Samson. ‘It’s time to bring the house down,’ he had said the night before. ‘And this time you are in charge of the operation, from beginning to end.’

  Yet the major had lain awake most of the night, wondering whether he was being asked to bring the house down on the Third Force itself after their successes of the past sixty years. He thought of the virus which was killing in droves as he lay in his bed. That had been their most successful operation thus far, along with the misinformation they continued to spread about it. They were still managing to undermine the efforts of those trying to effect a cure, or even a delay of its most debilitating effects.