"You didn"t ask why the man the dig uncovered should have been me," Brand said.
"And you didn"t answer my questions. Do you know where the dig site is? I don"t care about you, just about seeing my daughter."
She"s a pistol, Brand thought. She reminded him of a cat gone feral, once sleek and attractive, now ragged and hissy. "We"ve got a rough idea and I know a guy who works as a guide around these parts who knows most of what goes on in and around Etosha."
"Good. You find out where the dig is and I"ll get myself a room."
"OK," Brand said. He gave her the number of the chalet he was sharing with Matthew, and told her he would see her there soon.
Brand left Sonja and drove Allchurch to their bungalow. Brand recognised the layout of the camp, which had remained largely unchanged since he"d visited a couple of times during leave periods from the war in Angola. Back then, during the insurgency in South West Africa, Etosha had been all but empty, but now it seemed to be groaning at full capacity. The old chalets he remembered had been refurbished. Inside he found the two-room hut had been decorated in cool neutral colours and furnished with a double bed in one room and twins in the other. There was a desk with tea and coffee, and air conditioning. Allchurch still looked pale and he poured himself a gla.s.s of water from a pitcher and lay himself down on one of the single beds.
"I"ll come and check your wound and change the dressing in a minute, but first I"ve got to make that call." He had told Allchurch of his discussion with Sonja Kurtz on the short drive to the room. If Matthew minded someone else joining them at the dig site he was in too much pain to express an opinion.
Brand went back outside, into the sun. He got out his phone and scrolled through his contacts until he found the number for Otto Stapf. Brand had met Oom Otto when he was warden of Etosha, shortly after he had bailed out of the Dakota and joined 32 Battalion. On one of his leave periods he had made an attempt to find out if the Dakota had ever been discovered, but Otto told him the search had been called off, with no trace found.
"Oom Otto, it"s Hudson Brand. I don"t know if you remember me, but I was "
Otto cut Brand off. "h.e.l.l, but I thought that was weird when the media reported that they had found your body out near the King Nehale Gate. How are you, Hudson?"
"Fine, alive and well, same as the last time you saw me."
Otto laughed. "Yes, I thought it was just typical newspeople getting their facts wrong."
Hudson dispensed with the small talk. "I"d like to go see the place where I was supposedly buried. You don"t happen to know where that dig is, do you?"
"I do."
Brand held his phone in the crook of his shoulder as he took down the directions to the dig site, which was beyond the northern border of Etosha National Park on the Andoni Plain, outside the King Nehale Gate. "Got it, thanks. I owe you a Tafel."
Brand was about to walk back into the chalet when a Land Rover Defender pulled up. Sonja Kurtz climbed out looking even more p.i.s.sed off than before. "Let me guess," he said, "no accommodation?"
She nodded. "I can"t believe how busy this place is. During the war there was no one here."
"I remember," Brand said, devoid of nostalgia. "Where are you going to stay?"
She shrugged. "They say the camping ground is full, but they"ve given me an overflow s.p.a.ce. I"ll sleep in the truck."
Sonja looked tired. "Well, at least come in and enjoy the air con for a while."
They went into the chalet. Matthew Allchurch had got off his bed and moved to the small sitting area. He started to stand as they entered. "h.e.l.lo."
"Don"t get up," Sonja said, and her eyes fell on his hand, the bandage spotted with blood. She went to him. "That looks like it needs to be changed."
"I"m Matthew Allchurch, we haven"t met."
"Sonja Kurtz. Do you have a first-aid kit?" she asked Brand.
Brand had thought her to be on the skids, incapable of much since the loss of her partner but he figured that the sight of Allchurch"s injury, and her insistence on changing the dressing before even knowing the man"s name, was a sign of her military training kicking in. He knew that it wasn"t just loud noises that triggered the responses; it could be smells, sights, little things like blood spots on a bandage.
"Yes, ma"am." He went to his room, to his duffel, and took out the kit he travelled with, plus some extra gauze, dressings, and antibiotics the doctor in Outjo had left with them. Sonja was already undoing the dressing, quickly, yet gently.
She held Matthew"s hand up to the light coming in through the window. "Hmm, doesn"t look too bad. You"ll live."
"Not too bad? I"ve lost half my finger."
"Your little finger," she said, as if it didn"t matter. "Believe me, I"ve seen worse." She took the items from Brand and laid them out. "Get me a bowl, Brand, some warm water and a towel."
"The doctor said to keep it dry," Allchurch said.
She looked at him. "I have done this before."
Brand set the water and towel down on the coffee table beside her. Sonja cleaned the dried blood from Allchurch"s hand, and around the wound. Allchurch winced as she started to peel the dressing from the top of the remains of the finger. "Men. Such p.u.s.s.ies. Brand, get some liquor."
Allchurch"s eyes widened. "The doctor in Outjo said "
"I"m the doctor now. Besides, the alcohol is for me, not you."
Allchurch laughed and she peeled away the rest of the dressing. "As I thought, it looks OK. Still painful, though, I bet." He nodded and sucked air between gritted teeth. Brand set down three gla.s.ses and unscrewed the cap on a bottle of whiskey. "Five fingers for me, four for Matthew."
Brand couldn"t quite stifle his laugh. Even Allchurch managed a smile. Sonja gently dabbed antiseptic cream around where the doctor had st.i.tched the digit, then carefully re-bandaged Allchurch"s hand. "As good as new. Almost."
She sat back in her chair and took her drink, downing the generous measure in two gulps while the men sipped theirs. Sonja looked at the gla.s.s, then at Brand. "Where are your manners, Mr Brand?"
Brand topped up the gla.s.s. He figured it wasn"t her first drink today. "Hudson."
She closed her eyes, raised the gla.s.s to her mouth and tilted her head back, momentarily calm. "So, we are going to be travelling together?"
Brand nodded and gave her a rough idea of where the dig was. "My contact said the archaeologists" camp is easy to find; there"s nothing else out there on the plains."
"That"s what I like about this country, what I"d forgotten, I think, the emptiness of it." Sonja finished her second drink as Brand was nearing the end of his first.
What the h.e.l.l, Brand thought. He topped them both up. He was getting a taste for the booze as well.
"I"d cook, but my hand . . ." Allchurch said.
"I"ve got some biltong and chips, or I can drive you to the camp restaurant," Brand said. He looked at Sonja.
"Not hungry," she replied, and took another drink.
Allchurch stood, and seemed steadier now. "Actually, I think a walk would do me some good. Are you coming, Hudson?"
He looked to her, and she gave a little shrug. "No, I believe I"ll stay here."
"Suit yourself," Allchurch said, and let himself out of the chalet.
"A civilian?" Sonja asked after Allchurch was gone.
"Army lawyer."
"Pretty much the same thing."
Brand filled Sonja in on Matthew"s long quest to discover the fate of his missing son.
"I"d do the same if I were him." She leaned back into the chair and put her feet on the coffee table. Her boots were filthy, the socks, once khaki, were grey. He noticed the stubble on her legs.
"Do you have a tent?" he asked.
"No, I"ll sleep on the back seat of the Landy."
"Can"t be comfortable."
"Issue you four-poster beds in 32 Battalion, did they?"
He remembered being so tired, and the weather so warm in Angola, that sometimes he would just lie down in the gra.s.s at night and fall asleep, and pick the ticks off himself the next day. He wondered what her daughter was like, what she would do when this dishevelled creature showed up at her dig site. "Say, are you OK?"
"What do you mean?" She"d said it as though he"d insulted her, the verbal equivalent of a slap.
"I mean, are you all right for money, food, whatnot?"
She reached for the paper bag of biltong on the coffee table, helped herself to a handful. "I am now." She shovelled the dried meat into her mouth and drained her third gla.s.s of whiskey. Then she stood, holding on to the arm of the chair to steady herself. "I should go. The camp ground shower block awaits."
"Do you have any soap? Shampoo? Want to borrow some?"
She looked down at him and he could see her eyes boring into him like offensive weapons, but he wouldn"t look away from her. He recognised her, not just as the girlfriend of a man he"d known briefly, but as a fellow soldier in trouble. He"d been that person once, dirty, drunk, throwing up in his bed, surly to friends, angry at the world. This was not America, or Australia, or England, where military veterans got counselling and pensions for post-traumatic stress disorder. This was Africa, where the white or, in his case, coloured veterans of the war were told that border fighters didn"t cry and, besides, there was no money and no one to help in any case if you couldn"t sleep because of nightmares, if you drove your girlfriend crazy, if you cried out at night or jumped when a car backfired. When you put a gun to your head, or ga.s.sed yourself in your car, there was no national outpouring of protest, no collective shame at the way young men had been sent off to fight a war with no choice.
"What are you suggesting? That I stink?"
He stared back at her. "Maybe that you just misplaced your wash bag."
She looked as though she was going to bite him, but she backed down, sighing. "I don"t even have a bar of soap, let alone shampoo. And these are the only clothes I have." She sniffed towards her underarm. "You"re right, I do stink."
"Do you want to have a shower here?"
Again there was the moment"s resistance, the wild animal wary of accepting food or kindness from a human. "I suppose so."
"I can lend you a T-shirt if you want to rinse out your shirt or whatever."
"Want me to move in?"
"Just offering is all," Brand said. "I thought maybe you"d want to look good for your daughter."
"OK," she seethed, "now you"re just being insulting." Sonja got up, walked past him into the double room and s.n.a.t.c.hed a towel from the bed. She came back to him, poured another hefty measure of whiskey and took it with her into the bathroom.
Fifteen minutes later she reappeared with a towel wrapped around her, knotted above her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Brand tried not to look anywhere other than her face, but it wasn"t easy. "I"ll take that T-shirt now."
"Coming right up." He got up and fetched her a green one from his duffel.
Sonja went back into the bathroom and re-emerged wearing his oversized shirt, and the towel now wrapped around her waist as a skirt. In her arms she carried her wet clothes. "I washed them in the shower."
She dumped the clothes on a chair and picked it up. Brand opened the door for her as Sonja took her things outside and hung them over the chair to dry. She walked back inside, retrieved her empty gla.s.s and waggled it at Brand.
"You sure you don"t want to go easy for a while?"
"Do you have a gun?" she asked him.
"What if I do?"
"If you do, I"ll find it. Pour me a drink."
The sound of screaming woke Brand. At first he thought he was having one of his regular nightmares, about Angola.
He sat up, head throbbing, and swung his legs off the bed. He still had his boxer shorts on, though he had no recollection of undressing. The last thing he remembered was Matthew coming back from dinner and making some comment about him and Sonja being too drunk to talk straight.
Allchurch was awake as well in the single bed next to him. "That sounds like someone being mauled by a lion."
Brand burped. "I"ll go check on our house guest."
He groped his way along the wall of the room until he found the light switch, then went out into the corridor. The cries continued unabated and, still drunk from the scotch, he followed them to her room. He knocked on her door, but all he heard was incoherent screaming. He let himself in.
Sonja was sitting up, her hands in her hair, eyes screwed tight, screaming at the top of her lungs.
"Hey, hey, wake up."
She seemed not to hear him so he went to her, tentatively. Hannah, an old girlfriend, had tried to wake him from such a nightmare once and he"d awoken, fully, to find her screaming, his hands wrapped around her neck.
Brand grabbed Sonja on the arms near her elbows. "Sonja, wake up."
She bucked in his arms and, as he"d half expected, lashed out at him, but he held her firmly. "No!" she screamed. "No, Sam, no!"
"It"s me, Sonja, Hudson Brand."
Her eyelids fluttered and she looked at him, not focusing immediately, but her screaming stopped. "Who are you?"
"Hudson Brand, Sonja. We met last night. Do you know where you are?"
She shook her head, trying to clear her mind. "Home. No. Namibia. Etosha."
"Yes. You"re fine. You"re safe."
"I am?"
"Yes." He had an overwhelming urge to hug her and tell her she would be fine, that one day the wound would close over with only the scar remaining. Instead, he said: "Get some more sleep now. It"ll be light in a couple of hours and we"ll go find your daughter."
Brand waited until she lay back down and closed her eyes. He lingered a moment, looking down at her. He smelled the fresh scent of her, now that she was clean, then turned off the light and closed the bedroom door.