He gave in too easily, another of his faults. She was still angry, when she'd woken, and ready to go a few more verbal rounds with him, but he'd kissed her, on the forehead then on the lips. She had sighed.

'I still think you should let me go with you, and . . .'

He'd kissed her protest away, gently. 'I told you last night, I need to do this shoot, and I don't need you to be my bodyguard.'

Sonja had frowned. She had known, and still understood, even after what had happened to him, that he was right. Perhaps she could have shot the poacher who killed him, or given him better first aid, or taken a bullet for him, but that was all academic. Sam was right: he had needed to go to South Africa by himself, as much as it wounded her.

'I don't want to go away with you being mad at me,' he'd whispered, and moved his hand between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, tracing a line down her sternum, over the flatness of her belly.

She was still mad at him, but when she looked up into his eyes as he lay there propped on one elbow, she felt her anger cool. He was just too G.o.dd.a.m.ned s.e.xy. Sonja had drawn his face to hers and kissed him deeply.

He had teased her, as he always had, until she was close to o.r.g.a.s.m and she'd climbed on top of him, the way they both liked it. She had climaxed almost immediately, and rolled off him, but he'd then moved between her legs and entered her again, looking down at her. Her body was still quivering, still acutely sensitive from the first time, and each long thrust of him was like a mini jolt of electricity; it set her on edge with desire and she locked herself around him, drawing him deeper into her.

When he was finished he stayed there, melded to her. She hadn't wanted to let him go, and when she'd closed her eyes she'd been annoyed when she'd felt a tear squeeze through her tightly shut lids.

'Hey, hey, my big tough girl, what's this?' He'd kissed the tear away.

'I'm just tired, that's all,' she'd replied. She hated showing weakness, and hated women who cried over nothing. 'My eyes are sore.'

He had smiled down at her and kissed her again. 'Are you going to miss me?'

'No.'

He'd laughed, and she'd felt it through her body. Even so, she couldn't stop another couple of tears welling.

'Oh, baby, it's all right. I'll be home before you know it.'

Sonja had felt the anger return then. She hated it when he was condescending to her, treating her like a child. 'Don't call me baby! I'm fine.'

'I love you, you know?'

'Yes.'

He'd chuckled again, then withdrawn from her. He got up and stepped into the shower. She'd thought of joining him, but decided against it. It was bad enough he'd seen her cry; she didn't want him to think she couldn't live without him. She had to let him go.

In the Land Rover, driving through the heat haze, she screamed at the top of her voice, until her vocal chords ached.

Chapter 14.

Windhoek's Hosea Kutako International, Hudson Brand mused, would have to be one of the few capital city airports in the world with not a building visible beyond the terminal complex. As far as he could see was flat, dry landscape studded with hardy blackthorn acacias.

He and Matthew Allchurch disembarked from the South African Airways flight and walked across the baking black runway to the terminal building. They cleared immigration without delay or issue, along with the other tourists who had been on the flight.

'I did my military service in Pretoria, as an army lawyer, before things got busy in South West Africa,' Allchurch said as they walked through the arrivals hall to the car rental desks. 'I've never been to Namibia. I always thought hoped, in an odd way Helen and I might come here to lay Gareth to rest or to bring his body home.'

'Try not to get your hopes up, this is still a long shot,' Brand cautioned him.

'I gave up getting my hopes up decades ago, Hudson.'

They picked up a Jeep from Avis and Brand said he was happy to drive. 'It'll take us about five hours to get to Etosha,' he added.

They skirted downtown Windhoek and Brand was relieved when Allchurch said he wasn't hungry after eating on the aircraft and was OK to keep going. Brand always felt most relaxed when on the move; he found if he stayed in any one place for too long the demons from his past started catching up.

Brand mulled over the case, for that was how he viewed this arrangement, as he drove. Once clear of the city, the countryside was empty of people and distractions. Matthew Allchurch would be happy if he found his dead son's body, but Brand had a nasty feeling in his gut that the publicity of the discovery of Venter's body still listed in the media as himself would flush out some ghosts from his past who were very much alive. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Even after all this time, and despite being disillusioned with America at the time, the way he had been summarily dismissed from the CIA still rankled.

It wasn't that he regretted having to turn his back on the States he had carved out a better life for himself in Africa than he probably would have in the US but his name had been tainted, and in some records deep in a vault in Langley, Hudson Brand was still branded a criminal. The war in Angola had left him feeling bitter and cynical, and even if he'd wanted to challenge the way he'd been dismissed or appeal the ruling, by the end of the conflict he couldn't be bothered. He'd seen enough of the way foreign powers be they the Americans, Cubans or Russians meddled in the affairs of other countries to know he didn't want to re-join the company. But even if he was willing to put the past behind him he knew there would be others from that time who could not afford to forget him, or the fact he was still alive.

'What are you thinking?' Allchurch asked from the pa.s.senger seat.

Brand looked straight ahead. 'I'm wondering why I'm still alive, specifically why the people who planned that mission your son was on let me live.'

'Maybe they didn't know you were alive,' Allchurch replied. 'You said yourself you put your dog tags on Venter's body and then disappeared from your old job and joined 32 Battalion.'

'That's true, but I contacted my superiors in Langley, over the head of the local station chief, a guy called Brett Martin, as soon as I could after surviving the jump from the Dakota. They told me Martin had filed a report on me and I'd been terminated from the agency, and that they were sending people to get me. They never did. I fought in 32 under my own name, and I haven't tried to hide my ident.i.ty since then. h.e.l.l, I'm easy to find you contacted me through the website for my safari business and a couple of my cases have made the press here in Africa.'

Allchurch exhaled. 'So you think your immediate supervisor, this Martin fellow, was guilty, involved in the illegal smuggling of valuable goods out of Angola?'

Brand shrugged. 'Could be. I never really got on with Martin, and he p.r.o.nounced me guilty without even hearing my side of the story. As it was, he died a few weeks later in a grenade attack on his office in Namibia. Maybe he fell foul of his business partner. I've thought that could have been the mystery guy on board the Dakota.'

'Perhaps the trail to you ended when the Dakota crashed.'

'Maybe.' Brand instinctively patted his top left breast pocket for the pack of cigarettes that wasn't there.

They were quiet for a while as the rented Jeep ate up the kilometres. They pa.s.sed through the regional towns of Okahandja and Otjiwarongo. Brand kept a close eye on his rear view mirror.

Allchurch looked out to his left, over the bush-covered plains. Occasionally they pa.s.sed a camelthorn tree, nurtured to maturity by water trapped in the drainage line on the side of the road. Tall barbed-wire fences marked the boundaries of game farms. 'This country is beautiful. Wild. Do you think if there's anyone left alive who knew what was on board the Dakota that they'll come looking for it, now that the discovery of the body has been in the news?'

'I'd bet my shirt on it, and that's about all I've got at the moment.' Brand glanced in the mirror yet again.

Allchurch leaned over to Brand's side of the car and looked at the dashboard. 'Hey, I don't want to sound like an old woman, but aren't you travelling a bit too fast?'

Brand glanced down and saw the speedometer needle creep above the one hundred and forty kilometre per hour mark. 'Not a bit.' He pushed his foot down a little harder and checked the mirror again.

'What are you up to, Hudson?' Allchurch asked, his voice raising an octave.

'Sorry, don't mean to alarm you.' Brand moved his toe to the brake and the Jeep bled off speed until the needle was hovering around eighty. He looked in the mirror again. 'There's a town coming up, Outjo; nice little place. We're going to stop there.'

'All right,' Matthew said, 'and then you can tell me what's going on.'

'Probably nothing.'

Outjo had the feeling of a town trapped in time, somewhere around the mid-eighties, Hudson thought. There were a couple of cafes and curio shops to serve the tourist traffic on its way to and from Etosha, and delis, bakeries and supermarkets for the locals and surrounding farmers. It had a feeling of general orderliness. He'd pa.s.sed through similar towns in the old days, but this part of the country had been spared the worst of the war, which was mostly fought in Owamboland, or further north in Angola. After being kicked out of his CIA liaison role in Angola he'd spent most of his time based in the far north of Namibia, in the Caprivi Strip area at Buffalo Base, 32 Battalion's headquarters on the banks of the Okavango River. From there he and the Angolan soldiers under his command crossed the border into Angola on lightning-fast, hard-hitting raids. He was there for the last big battle of the war, at Cuito Cuanavale, where the South Africans, including his battalion, went head to head with the Cubans and their allies in a battle the likes of which the continent of Africa hadn't seen since the Second World War. Brand still shuddered when he remembered the smell of blood, the rumble of tanks, the screech of artillery sh.e.l.ls overhead and the terror of Cuban MiGs raining ordnance from above.

Brand slowed, casting an eye over the shop fronts, then pulled into a service station. An attendant came over and Brand got out of the vehicle and opened the fuel cap.

'Say, do you know where the Portuguese bakery is around here?' he asked the attendant.

'Yes, just down the road, take the first left and it is on your right.'

'Much obliged.' Brand paid the man, got back in and drove out of the service station.

'We're going the way we came,' Allchurch said.

'I need to visit a bakery.'

'You're hungry?'

'I know the baker, an old friend.'

Brand took the turn and saw the O Portuga Bakery on the right. He made a U-turn and pulled up outside it. Brand turned to Allchurch. 'Wait in the car. I won't be long. I'll bring you a custard tart this guy makes the best ones this side of Lisbon.'

Inside there was an African woman serving and in the rear of the shop, seated at a wooden desk staring at a computer was an enormous, swarthy man. Brand thought the kitchen chair he was sitting on was in danger of collapsing at any minute.

'Ola, Joao.'

The man raised bushy grey eyebrows and looked over the top of the screen.

'You never could keep your eyes off p.o.r.n for long, could you, you disgusting b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Only difference now is you get it online instead of in those Scandinavian volleyball magazines.'

The man made two fat fists and pushed them down on the desktop as he struggled to get up. His fierce scowl suddenly softened, though, and his mouth split into a beaming grin under his ashen Viva Zapata moustache.

'Hudson Brand?'

'The very same. How you been, Joao?'

The man came around the counter and engulfed Brand in a bear hug. Brand felt his ribs giving way from his sternum. 'My G.o.d, I can't believe it's you, after all this time, you useless Yankee p.r.i.c.k.'

'Let me go, you stink of garlic.'

Joao dropped Brand then nearly winded him with a slap on the back. 'Come out the back. We must drink brandy.'

'No beer?'

'Breakfast is over.' Joao led Brand through the bakery, past hot ovens and a young man kneading dough. They emerged into a small courtyard with a home bar in one corner under a thatched roof. There was a bottle already on the table and Joao took a gla.s.s from behind the bar and half-filled it. 'It's good to see you again.'

Brand clinked gla.s.ses with him. 'How's the bakery business?'

Joao shrugged. 'It's OK. People need bread. It's better than the old days.'

'I'll drink to that.' Brand took a sip.

Joao drank half his gla.s.s then narrowed his eyes. 'What do you want, Hudson?'

'I can't just look up an old war buddy?'

'I don't see you for thirty years and you walk into my bakery. s.h.i.t always followed you, Hudson.'

Brand didn't have time for chit chat. 'I need a piece.'

'What makes you think I deal in guns?'

'You always loved guns. Even if you're not dealing, you'll still have a collection stashed away somewhere.'

The baker raised his bushy eyebrows again. 'You going to kill someone?'

'I hope it won't come to that, but I'm going to be doing some digging into the old days. Some people aren't going to like what I might find.'

'CIA s.h.i.t?'

'Something like that.'

'I like it here, Hudson. It's a nice country overly bureaucratic but the SWAPO guys leave us in peace. I employ Angolans, illegals mostly, but the government turns a blind eye. I don't want trouble.'

Brand nodded. 'I understand. Sell me something untraceable. No one will know it came from you.'

Joao stared at him across the table for a few seconds and Hudson almost believed the old Portuguese army officer who he'd fought alongside in 32 Battalion really had gone completely legit. Joao had been ruthless in battle, but he was devoted to his Angolan foot-soldiers and Brand wouldn't have been surprised if some of them had worked for him in the bakery. 'Wait here.'

Joao disappeared out the back gate of the courtyard, and after a few minutes returned and set a long green canvas safari bag down on the table with a loud clunk. He unzipped it.

Brand whistled through his teeth. 'Where the h.e.l.l did you get an Uzi?'

'You want paperwork and service history you've come to the wrong baker.'

'Understood.' Brand picked up the stubby Israeli submachine gun and pulled back the slide. It was clean and lightly oiled, in good condition. Also in the bag were a couple of nine-millimetre Glocks and a Russian-made Tokarev.

Brand placed the Uzi to one side and checked out a Glock. 'I'll take this one, plus a couple of spare mags for each of them.'

'Five hundred,' Joao said.

'Namibian dollars?'

The other man laughed. 'Funny guy. US dollars.'

'For crying in a bucket, Joao, I'm probably not going to make that much money on this case.'

Joao reached for the pistol. 'Then give it back. I heard you were a private investigator. I thought you'd be licensed to carry your own gun.'

'I didn't think I'd need it in Namibia, I heard it was a peaceable country, and I had to leave South Africa in a hurry.'

'What made you change your mind?'