He ran for the corner where the gate met the brick post and scrabbled up the iron, a clumsy game of parkour. The pack leader, a giant gray Great Dane, arrived just as Wells pulled himself onto the post. The dog’s jowls snapped shut an inch beneath Wells’s feet. Wells stood atop the post as the pack growled and howled and snapped and jumped for him, lemme at ya, come on down and fight fair, you can’t stay up there forever. Now Wells could shoot them all. But he didn’t like shooting dogs. Anyway, killing them wouldn’t gain him any points with Witwans or whoever was inside the house.
Duto edged the Audi forward and cracked his window. “Now what?”
“I’m gonna jump on the roof and you drive to the house.”
“John—”
Wells jumped. His bad ankle nearly gave and he had a moment imagining himself on the ground with the dogs at him, but he steadied. Beneath him, the Audi rolled through the gate and up the driveway. The dogs followed the car, howling all the way, outriders from hell.
The mansion’s wide front door swung open. An African man stepped onto the porch, pointing a shotgun at the Audi. From a window on the floor above, a second black man covered them with a pistol. Salome’s bodyguard and Witwans were nowhere in sight.
Wells raised his hands.
“You have a gun?” the man on the porch said. He looked at least seventy, his skin wrinkled and his hair short and gray, but he held the shotgun steady.
“Yes.”
“Throw it down.”
“We’re looking for Rand.”
“Throw it down.”
Wells plucked out the Glock by its butt and spun it softly to the right, onto the grass at the edge of the driveway. The man whistled sharply and shouted in Afrikaans. The dogs snapped their jaws shut and looked up at him. One by one, they backed away from the car. The man whistled again and they trotted through the front door. The gray Great Dane went last, unwillingly, eyeing Wells as he disappeared into the house.
“Get down,” the man said. “This side.” He nodded the shotgun to his right, the direction opposite where Wells had thrown the pistol. Smart. Wells jumped down.
The man stepped off the porch, keeping about fifteen feet from Wells. The man on the second floor shouted down in an African language Wells had never heard. The first man didn’t answer. He seemed to be enjoying his control of this situation. Wells tried to imagine how he must feel, a servant who suddenly had absolute power over these white men who had bizarrely come to the house where he worked. Yet he seemed polite, almost friendly.
“Your name?”
“John.”
“I’m Martin. What is it you want?”
“We’re looking for Rand.”
“He’s not here.”
“The man with the scars took him?”
Martin hesitated, obviously wondering how Wells knew, then nodded. “Amos, yes. Around six p.m.”
“Don’t suppose he told you where?”
“No.”
Wells grunted, just once. Like he’d taken a shot to the stomach. He and Duto had come so close. They’d missed Witwans by three hours, no more. But three hours or three months made no difference. Witwans could be anywhere, and they had no way of finding him. In the wind, the cops said.
“This man comes, now you. What is it you want with him?” Martin appeared sincerely interested.
“To stop a war.”
“Rand? He can’t get out of bed without a drink.” The man upstairs laughed.
“Did a woman come here a few months ago? In her thirties, brown hair, pretty. Big nose. Maybe take something from the house?”
Martin’s eyes widened. “Natalie, yes.”
Wells tented his hands together in supplication. “I promise you, if you have any idea where he went—please.”
“Tell me more about why you want him.”
“He sold that woman uranium — stuff for a nuclear bomb. She’s pretending it’s from Iran. And that’s why America wants to attack Iran tomorrow.”
“This is true?”
“I swear on my family.”
“You catch him, then what?”
“We take him back to the States, to the people who need to know the truth.” A more than slightly oversimplified answer. Wells hoped it was right.
“They put him in jail?”
“I don’t know.”
“Drunk greedful fool. You know he thinks we like him.”
“So help us find him.”
“I tell you I don’t know.”
Wells bowed his head. Maybe Martin would let them look through the house for clues. Though Wells couldn’t imagine that Frankel had left anything useful.
Then Martin grinned, nodded to the man on the second floor. “But Jacob, my nephew, he does.”
Inside, Jacob explained. Every couple of weeks, Witwans drove his Mercedes to bars around Bloemfontein and drank himself to blackout. The bartenders took his keys and called him taxis home. Their motive was not so much altruism as the cut of the fare they received. The next day, Jacob had to find the Merc. To simplify the process, he installed a GPS tracker.
This evening, when Frankel told Witwans that they would have to leave, Witwans had set only one condition, that they take the Mercedes. After a minute of arguing, Frankel agreed.
“Does Rand know about the tracker?” Duto said.
“Not sure. He loves the car. So maybe it was a fortune—”
“Coincidence—” Martin said.
“Or maybe he wants us to find him. No matter.” Jacob pulled out his phone, a big-screen Samsung. “Here he is.” A white dot pinged on a bright orange highway.
“That’s the N1?”
“Yes. He’s in the Northern Cape now. Almost three hundred kilometers from here. Going good, maybe one hundred kilos.”
“Can we have the phone?” Wells said.
“No no no.” Jacob tucked it away.
“Name your price.”
“No price.”
Not now. They couldn’t afford more delays. Wells couldn’t imagine hurting these people, but he would for the phone. “Please.”
“This is too good. I’m coming.” Jacob grinned. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
27
ONE DAY…
Wells expected to stay at the wheel until they caught the Mercedes. But just after midnight, the Audi demanded gas. At the station, Wells went inside for a pit stop of his own. He came out with coffee and water and found Duto in the driver’s seat.
“Move.”
Duto grabbed the coffee instead. “You’re not the only control freak in this car. Besides, big day tomorrow. You need your beauty sleep.”
So Wells took his place in the passenger seat. Their new friend Jacob sprawled across the back, cradling the phone that was his ticket to the party. He was a big man, and spherical, round eyes in a round head atop a round body, fat, but strong, too. Wells wasn’t sure how they would make him stay in the car when they caught Frankel and Witwans. He looked to be having too good a time.
Wells dozed fitfully as Duto raced down the N1. He hoped they might reel the Mercedes in over the night, but the road didn’t give them much chance. It was not a divided highway but a single strip of asphalt, often with only one lane in each direction. A county road, with an interstate’s traffic, even in the small hours of the night. Twice oncoming trucks forced them onto the shoulder.
Every few minutes, Jacob let them know that the Mercedes was still moving, still ahead of them. But Wells couldn’t shake a creeping fear that Frankel had shucked them somehow. Maybe he knew about the tracker. Maybe he’d passed the car to another driver and taken Witwans the opposite direction, toward Johannesburg. Paranoia, yes, but Salome and Duberman had more than matched him this last month. Why wouldn’t they have one more trick?