'Hi Mum, where are you? I need your help.'

'Fok,' she said aloud in Afrikaans, startling the elderly woman next to her, who moved her trolley further along the carousel. Sonja tried her daughter's number, but it went straight through to voicemail. 'Howzit, it's me, I'm in South Africa,' she said. 'Call me or SMS me. And next time, don't just send a message that says "I need your help". Bye.'

She had not wanted to sound angry or panicked, but knew she had failed. Sonja told herself Emma was fine. The girl was in Namibia, not Afghanistan. The country of her birth had been through several periods of terrible violence, but these days it was quiet, peaceful and stable. The crime rate was low and the people friendly, and Emma was in the middle of nowhere.

Was that part of the problem? Sonja wondered. Had Emma or someone on her team suffered some terrible accident, or been bitten by a snake? Did they need Sonja's bush knowledge? For once she regretted not giving Emma a specific date and place to meet up. Years of subterfuge and not knowing how long missions would take had led to her always keeping arrangements on a need-to-know basis.

Her bag popped out and she hoisted it onto her shoulder, not bothering with a trolley. Sonja was supposed to be catching up with some friends in Johannesburg, but she quickly sent them a message saying she would have to take a raincheck as something had come up. She decided to head straight for Namibia. Sonja went out into the arrivals hall and walked to the Parkade complex where the rental car offices were located.

Sonja had drunk herself to sleep on the flight and managed to catch a few hours of rest. She did the car rental paperwork, found her Nissan X-Trail in the garage and tossed her bag on the back seat. She headed out onto the R24; her planned route would take her around Johannesburg's northern and western suburbs, then onto the N14.

Once clear of the western outskirts of the city Sonja felt she could breathe more freely. She was heading for the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, on the border between South Africa and Namibia. If she couldn't make it today, she would reach it the day after. All she could think to do in the absence of speaking to Emma was to drive towards her dig site. She turned off the air conditioner and wound down the window. The morning air was still crisp and the African sun streamed in through the windscreen. The cloudless blue sky and the gra.s.sy farmlands, already turning golden under the endless winter sun, stretched to eternity.

It was good to be back in Africa. This was South Africa, not Namibia, but the landscape reminded her of her youth. She cruised through tiny towns with little other than wheat silos, a pub and a butchery selling biltong. Burly farmers in Toyota bakkies lifted a finger off the steering wheel to wave good morning to her; African farm workers trudged slowly to another day's work.

Sonja spied a cafe and bar, co-located, pulled over and parked in front, got out of the Nissan and stretched. She walked into the cafe, which was empty and called, 'h.e.l.lo?'

A girl in her late teens, blonde, in jeans and a thick pullover, came out from the kitchen. 'Goeie more, Tannie.'

'More,' Sonja replied, biting back a retort that she was not the girl's aunty. Sonja had grown up speaking German and English in her home, but there were many Afrikaner families in the farming district of Okahandja so she learned to speak her third language fluently. Tannie was a term of respect for an elder and, Sonja reflected, she was certainly old enough to have earned the name. She didn't like to think of herself as 'old', but while she kept herself in peak physical shape a prerequisite for her job no amount of working out or running could remove the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth.

Sonja ordered coffee and eggs and boerewors. The girl apologised that she spoke little English and Sonja told her it was fine. It was, in fact, nice to be speaking the old language again. It made her feel like she was closer to where she belonged, wherever that might be. Perhaps, she thought as she moved out onto the stoep of the cafe to catch some morning sun, she could move to a dorpie like this, a small town where she could reinvent herself and live in peace.

She dialled Emma's number and the phone went through to voicemail again. 'Dammit.' Sonja felt her anxiety level ratchet up a notch. She'd be angry with Emma if her call for help turned out to be something minor.

A Toyota Land Cruiser bakkie pulled up. Two fat men in shorts and camouflage jackets got out of the cab and a third, who had been sitting in the open on a canvas-covered seat in the back, climbed down. He swayed as his feet hit the ground. His friends laughed at him and the pair joked in Afrikaans that the man in the back couldn't handle his liquor. They looked like hunters, Sonja thought. They nodded to her as they walked through to the adjoining bar and, once out of her sight, started to laugh.

The waitress brought out Sonja's breakfast, then rolled her eyes as one of the men yelled out for service from the bar.

Sonja c.o.c.ked an ear when she heard raised voices inside. In Afrikaans, the men were asking why the young woman couldn't serve them alcohol at this time of day.

The girl screamed.

Sonja set down her knife and fork and slid off the picnic table bench. She walked inside and saw the man who had been in the back of the bakkie lying across the bar, his feet kicking in the air as he swung himself over. His friends were laughing as the man removed a bottle of brandy from its holder. The waitress tried to grab it and he reached around and slapped her on the bottom. This provoked more guffaws from the men.

The waitress retreated and reached under the bar for a wooden club. She brandished it at the man, who swatted the baton away with a meaty hand.

'Put the bottle down. I'm calling the cops,' the girl said.

Sonja stood in the doorway of the bar, as yet unseen by any of them. If the men were smart, they would leave now. The waitress put down the club and picked up the handset of a phone on the bar. She was tough, Sonja thought; she probably had to be to work in a place like this.

'Poepol,' the girl said to the man with the brandy, who was struggling to get his fat belly back on the bar. He stopped when he heard the insult and reached for the phone.

The waitress turned her back to him and the man grabbed the phone with his free hand and wrenched the cord from the wall socket. The waitress responded by slapping him in the face.

Sonja clenched and unclenched her fists. The incident was escalating. She prepared herself, mind and body, for what was to come. She felt a sense of calm wash over her. Her pulse rate slowed and she breathed deeply and evenly as she strode across the otherwise empty barroom floor.

The man with the brandy tossed the phone away and grabbed the waitress's arm. She screamed again and one of the other two men reached across the bar and yanked her by her ponytail. The third man backed away, his face going pale.

'Enough, guys,' he said to his friends, but they were beyond listening.

'b.i.t.c.h hit me,' said the fat one with the brandy. He pushed her against the bar.

Sonja went to the man holding the waitress's ponytail, coming up fast and silent behind him. She grabbed a fistful of his mullet haircut under his baseball cap and slammed his face down hard and fast into the wooden bar top, shattering his nose. The third man started to close on her. 'Back off,' Sonja hissed.

'Get her, man.' The fat man kept his hold on the struggling girl and smashed the neck of the bottle of brandy against the bar, shattering it. He held the jagged edge against the waitress's neck.

The man who had urged moderation kept coming towards Sonja. She put her hands up, palms out, as if submitting, but when he was close enough she delivered a vicious kick to his s.c.r.o.t.u.m. As the man bent double Sonja grabbed a fistful of hair and rammed her right knee up into his nose. Blood spattered her skin below her shorts and she let him fall to the ground. The man whose face she had driven into the bar staggered towards her and swung a wide punch at her. Sonja dodged to one side and jabbed two fingers, hard and fast, into his already broken nose. The man howled like a jackal and sank to his knees.

'Get out or I'll cut this one's pretty face,' the man behind the bar screamed. He had the barmaid in a headlock now, his free hand around her neck and the broken bottle close to her skin.

'Ja, right.'

Sonja turned and walked outside. She knew the idiot with the broken bottle would not hurt the barmaid, but that didn't let him off the hook. She peered into the cab of the Land Cruiser. As she expected there were three rifles inside and the men had, sensibly, locked the vehicle. She picked up a brick lining a flower bed outside the bar, smashed the driver's side window and the truck's alarm started screaming. A grey-haired man in a butcher's ap.r.o.n came out of the biltong shop next door.

Sonja reached into the cab through the shattered gla.s.s, unlocked the driver's side door and opened it. 'Nothing to see here, Uncle,' she said to the butcher. The man took a step towards her, but backtracked into his shop as Sonja slid one of the rifles from its padded canvas bag and chambered a round.

She walked back to the bar, the b.u.t.t of the rifle snug and comfy against her shoulder as she raised the telescopic sight to her eye.

The man who had threatened the barmaid was leaning against the bar now and the girl had backed away from him. When he saw Sonja he swayed upright and raised the broken bottle and moved towards the barmaid again. 'I'll kill her!' the man with the bottle screamed.

A bottle of Jgermeister schnapps exploded behind and to one side of the man's head, showering him with spirit and shattered gla.s.s. The barmaid laughed as the man cowered. Sonja worked the bolt and took aim. Her second shot took out a bottle of scotch.

'Sheesh, man, not the Klipdrift Premium!' the barmaid cried. Sonja liked her style.

'Next shot's for you, outjie,' she said to the fat man.

The man dropped the bottle and backed away from the girl half a pace, giving the barmaid the chance to vault across the bar. The man who had grabbed her hair was trying to get up again and the girl kicked him in the stomach and spat on him as he doubled up again.

'Say sorry. Apologise to her,' Sonja said to the man still behind the bar. She chambered another round, revelling in the smooth, slick action of the rifle.

He bared his teeth and she shifted the end of the barrel until the crosshairs of the sights were between his eyes. Her finger curled around the trigger and everything slowed around her. She could snuff this f.u.c.ker out in a heartbeat.

The girl laid a hand gently on Sonja's shoulder. 'No, hey. He's not worth it. The cops will have heard the shooting; they're just up the road and they'll be here in a minute.'

'Say it,' Sonja said again. She lowered the rifle, tracking down over his nose and chin, along his sternum until she was aiming at his b.a.l.l.s. 'Last chance.'

The man licked his lips and looked down at where Sonja was aiming. 'Sorry,' he croaked.

'That's better. Are you OK?' Sonja asked the girl.

'Ja, I'm fine, but you'd better get moving. The owner will be here soon and he won't be too happy about you shooting up his bar.'

Sonja turned, walked outside and shot out the first tyre of the Land Cruiser. She chambered a round and shot out another tyre. She removed the bolt from the rifle and dropped it through the metal grille of a stormwater drain. She went to the truck and did the same with the other two hunting rifles.

The incident had pumped her full of adrenaline and it felt good. It had also felt satisfying to feel the rifle bucking under her control. It was the same when she'd killed Tran Van Ngo. There was no remorse, no fear, no nerves, just the calm satisfaction of a job well done. She had felt incomplete in America, living the life of a glorified housewife or Sam's red carpet plus one. Sonja leaned into the cab of the Land Cruiser and opened the glove compartment. As she'd hoped, there was a pistol there, probably the owner's. It was a nine-millimetre Glock. She slid the pistol into the waistband of her shorts, pocketed a spare magazine and walked back to her rented Nissan.

Blue lights were flashing in her rear view mirror, but the police bakkie pulled off the road and parked in front of the bar as Sonja accelerated up the road, a smile on her face for the first time in quite a while.

Chapter 6.

It was mid-afternoon when Sonja entered the town of Kuruman. She was tired from the flight and she knew it would be unwise to drive through the night. There was no chance of her reaching the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park before nightfall and she knew accommodation options would become fewer and further between if she kept travelling.

Kuruman was a popular stopover place and there were dozens of signs for bed and breakfasts. The main street was choked with minibus taxis and honking cars; she had hit the town in its mini evening rush hour. She decided that tomorrow she would take the shorter, gravelled road to the Kgalagadi park, via Hotazel and Van Zylsrus, so she took the turnoff to Hotazel and began to look for a place on the outskirts of town.

A sign for a bottle store tempted her and she pulled over, walked in, and bought a bottle of Klipdrift, two litres of c.o.ke Light and a bag of ice. She carried on and randomly decided she liked the sound of the Azalea B&B. It turned out to be a good choice, a nice place off to the right of the main road on a suburban back street. The owner was friendly without prying, and showed her to a comfortable room with en suite, a television, and a fridge. He said he could organise dinner for her, but she'd snacked in the car through the afternoon to keep herself awake, so she pa.s.sed on the offer.

In her room she poured herself a brandy and c.o.ke, added ice, kicked off her hiking boots and lay down on the bed. Sonja tried Emma's number again, but there was no answer.

Don't worry, she told herself. Sonja finished her drink and nodded off. She awoke two hours later, the sun low outside and slanting in through the room's window. The news in Afrikaans had just begun on the television. Video of a rhino flashed up on the screen and she turned up the volume.

Another three rhinos had been killed in the Kruger Park overnight, and in a separate incident another poaching gang had been ambushed by rangers and South African National Defence Force personnel in the reserve; one poacher had been killed and another wounded.

'Should have shot the wounded guy,' Sonja said out loud. She drained her Klippies and c.o.ke and made another.

'Coming up, later tonight,' said the news anchor, '5050 has a special report on rhinos in Namibia and how that country is managing to protect its population of wild animals.'

It was m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic, Sonja realised, for her to want to watch another program about rhinos. Too often, these shows mentioned Sam, as he was without doubt the highest profile casualty of the war against poaching. But Sonja was interested in the upcoming segment on 5050, the popular South African nature-based current affairs program. She had wondered, when considering the rhino problem in the wake of Sam's death, why the country of her birth had been relatively free of poaching.

There had been the odd incident, but the number of animals killed, however, was a tiny fraction of the losses in South Africa.

Part of the reason, she was sure, was logistical. Namibia's rhinos tended to be in remote, spa.r.s.ely populated parts of the country, with limited road access in and out. By contrast, there were hundreds of thousands of people living along the borders of the Kruger National Park and there was no fence between much of South Africa and neighbouring Mozambique, where many poaching gangs were based. They had a relatively short walk, through thickly vegetated country that allowed concealment from aerial patrols, to get to Kruger's rhinos. Namibia's desert-dwelling black rhino, however, traversed wide ranges of open territory.

Sonja would be interested in what other theories the program's journalists came up with. She poured herself another brandy and c.o.ke and checked her emails on her phone while she waited. There were a few messages, one from a friend serving in Somalia who had been out of contact with the big wide world and had only just heard about Sam. She hated receiving condolence emails and had long since given up replying to them.

There was a statement from her bank, but she didn't need or want to open it. Sam had been an only child and his mother, his sole parent, had pa.s.sed away, so Sonja was the sole beneficiary of his will. She had been financially secure on her own she'd made sure she had put aside a portion from her contract fees for Emma's schooling and future as well but now she wanted for nothing. Nevertheless, she had put herself back out into the market for some military contracting work. There was the offer of a personal protection gig from an old friend now working in Dubai he was looking for a woman who could be the bodyguard for a sheik's wife. Sonja screwed her nose up; she didn't want to come out of retirement to spend her time following a rich woman through handbag stores.

Slightly more interesting was a message from a South African ex-recce-commando. Before she'd met Sam she'd had a fling with Piet in Iraq; despite his reputation for toughness he was a big softy with lovely blue eyes, but she could conjure no memories of happiness or ecstasy these days. Piet was in the Central African Republic. The South African National Defence Force had been involved in a full-on shooting war there trying to protect the government from an uprising by Muslim extremist rebels. Piet and some other private contractors were running private security there.

It's hectic here, Sonja. Maybe you should stay in California, his email read. She smiled; Piet would know such a comment would be like a red rag to a bull. Emma would be furious once she found out Sonja was getting back into the fray, but as much as Sonja had loved being able to reconnect with her daughter and spend time with her she would go crazy sitting around in a mansion in LA.

Sonja wallowed in her self-pity and encroaching drunkenness. She got up to go to the toilet and tripped over her backpack. As she reached out to steady herself she knocked a lamp off the bedside table. The lampshade came off and the globe popped, covering the carpet in broken gla.s.s.

'Scheisse.' She'd spoken German, for the first time in a long time, she realised as she sat back down on the bed and stared at the glittering fragments on the floor. She remembered her father, Hans, belting her across the back of her skinny legs the first time he'd heard her say that word, 's.h.i.t'. She also remembered Hans slapping her mother in the face.

Sonja looked to the wall facing the bed, and saw her face in the mirror. She saw the first tear rolling down her cheek. She picked up the lampstand, stared at it for a few seconds then tugged it, ripping its cord from the power point, and hurled it at the mirror. The gla.s.s shattered and cascaded down onto the writing bureau and the carpet. She was a one-woman wrecking ball who destroyed everything and everyone who got close to her. It was probably too late to really save her relationship with Emma in any case.

'Mein Gott, reiss dich zusammen!' she said out loud after splashing water on her face in the bathroom, but try as she might she didn't seem to be able to pull herself together. It seemed being so close to home meant her German was coming back to her thoughts and words.

Although she knew she shouldn't, Sonja made herself another drink and flopped back down on the bed. The program she had been waiting for, 5050, had begun. She sat through a story about lions being reintroduced into a national park where the species had been shot out decades ago and then, after the commercial break, the story about rhinos came on.

The small screen of the television didn't do justice to the majestic landscapes of Namibia, but all the same it moved something inside her to see the endless skies and red, flat-topped mountains. There was vision of a black rhino, lying at first then standing and trotting towards the camera; the rhino had his head up and sniffed the air as he paused.

'And one of the men in the front line of rhino conservation,' the announcer broke in, 'leading a team of local people backed by international NGOs in this fight to save a piece of prehistory, is Stirling Smith.'

Sonja nearly spilled her drink as she clumsily set it down on the bedside table. She scrabbled for the remote and turned up the volume.

'Stirling?' she said. Her Stirling. It was him, framed close-up on the screen now, and that was his voice speaking. He was heading up the rhino research and conservation project in the Palmwag Conservancy in Damaraland.

Sonja slid herself along the bed until she was sitting at the foot. She reached out and touched the screen as he talked about rhinos. Sam had been the true love of her life, but once upon a time she'd thought that the only man for her was Stirling Smith.

Chapter 7.

At the dig site they had a couple of free-standing camping gazebos that could be shared among the students to keep the worst of the sun's fury off a couple of diggers at a time, but one of them was now covering the remains of Harry Brand.

They had dubbed him 'Harry' by consensus. Emma took off her hat and wiped her brow and looked across to where Dorset Sutton knelt, meticulously brushing away the sand and grit from Harry's boots.

That morning, just after dawn, he'd asked them to a.s.semble around the body, before Natangwe left to do the shopping for the next few days' provisions.

'We must not forget,' he had said, standing at the body's head, 'that here lie the remains of a human being, just like us. Whatever his nationality, whatever his race, whatever his religion and whatever his politics, he was flesh and blood, with a beating heart, a soul, and a life. You may call him "Harry" if you wish, at least until we know his correct name, but we must not make light of him or treat him as an object of fun or ridicule, any more than we would if one of our own family members was lying here.'

Emma had noticed Natangwe fidgeting and shifting his weight from one foot to the other. 'But Prof,' he'd chimed in, 'this man was probably part of the security forces, the men who brutalised my people. He might have dropped bombs on women and children.'

'Natangwe,' Emma had hissed.

'No, no, Emma, don't be so quick to criticise,' Dorset said, not unkindly. 'Natangwe, I know your father was a member of the liberation army, your family's role in the struggle is well doc.u.mented. Inevitably, the work we do, uncovering the past, scratches at the scabs of barely healed wounds. We must you and I both must try to view the events of the past as historians, as archaeologists, as investigators, not as partic.i.p.ants, or the family of partic.i.p.ants. We must confront the sins of the past, and try to understand them through our work, just as we must celebrate bravery and heroism and other n.o.ble deeds. If you don't think you can treat this body with respect because he may have fought against your father, then I think you must either resign from this program or ask for me to be dismissed from the university.'

'You, Prof?' Natangwe asked. 'I didn't mean any offence to you; I just don't know if I can salute the remains of a man who may have killed innocents.'

'I'm not asking you to salute Harry here any more than I'm asking you to forgive me. It may be, though, that you can't see past your family's own history.'

'I still don't understand what this has to do with you, though, Prof,' Natangwe said.

'I served here as well, Natangwe. Before studying history and archaeology at Wits I, like every other able-bodied white man living in the old South Africa, had to undertake national service. I served as a gunner in an Eland armoured car, with the Umvoti Mounted Rifles. I did two tours in the old South West Africa, today's Namibia. I didn't kill anyone, civilian or soldier, but I was trained and ready to. If you can't abide respecting Harry's dignity as a human being then perhaps you can no longer respect me.'

Natangwe said nothing for a couple of minutes, and Emma's heart had pounded. Their exchange was simply bringing into the open the sorts of questions that she had been grappling with. She was worried Natangwe wouldn't like her if he knew more about her family's history in the war, but now Professor Sutton had brought the simmering tension to a head.

'I'm sorry, Professor Sutton. I do respect you and I do want to be here.'

Dorset walked around Harry to Natangwe and taken his hand in his. He looked into Natangwe's eyes. 'You don't need to be sorry, Natangwe. When I was your age, serving here in the heat and the dust, thousands of kilometres from home and worrying that some other poor b.u.g.g.e.r might kill me with an AK-47 or an RPG round, I hope I would have been as respectful of a dead enemy as you have been. I learned through the course of the war that we were all victims in some way or another and, in the end, the ideologies we were fighting for all counted for nothing. Namibia has emerged as a beautiful, peaceful country and I'm proud to be here and proud to play a small part in unearthing its history.'

'I understand, Prof,' Natangwe said.