'Thank you. Then let us continue,' the professor said to them.

Natangwe Heita thought about Emma Kurtz as he waited for the Chinese man in the general trader's store to fill the requirements on the shopping list.

She was of German Namibian descent and her family had left the country at the end of the war. Emma hadn't said why, exactly, but Natangwe a.s.sumed that her white supremacist parents couldn't have countenanced the idea of living in an independent country, ruled by the majority, or that her father had done such shameful things during the war that he was too scared to face his victims.

In fact, Namibians had proved extremely tolerant of their former oppressors. Sure, the issue of the genocide came up often for discussion, as did the question of land ownership much of the country's most productive land was still in the hands of a white minority, many of them living abroad but all in all he felt he lived in a progressive, peaceful society. Still, if he ever brought home a German girl he knew his father, who had served as a freedom fighter in SWAPO's military arm, the People's Liberation Army of Namibia, would hit the roof.

His attention was distracted, at least temporarily, by the girl who strode into the store.

'Give me a c.o.ke,' she said to the shopkeeper.

Despite the girl's curvaceous beauty, she needed to be taught a lesson in manners. 'I was here first, sister,' Natangwe said.

'I'm not your sister, and I'm in a hurry. I have a deadline.'

'Well, I've got a bunch of starving archaeologists waiting back at camp. A deadline? Are you a journalist?'

She tossed her head, flicking an errant dark curl from her face. 'Yes, I'm a journalist, for New Era. You might have heard of it.'

Straight out of university, Natangwe guessed, which would account for her age and the fact she was here, in the middle of nowhere. 'Of course I know it. The government-owned newspaper; which minister is telling you what to write today?'

She frowned. He had clearly scored a point. 'It's not like that. We are encouraged to be independent, and to voice the people's problems. We don't just toe the party line, you know. Anyway, why am I bothering to justify myself to you? What did you say about archaeology?'

He decided not to goad her any further. 'I'm studying archaeology. A few of us are on a dig not far from here. We're looking for a ma.s.s grave from the Herero War.'

Her plucked eyebrows formed double arches. 'The genocide? Serious?'

'Very serious,' he said, savouring the reaction his revelation had provoked. 'How much is that?' he asked the shopkeeper.

The man evidently couldn't speak English as he simply pointed to the figures on an old-fashioned desk-top calculator he'd been entering the prices into. Natangwe knew only too well from his history studies the dangers of racial stereotyping, just as he knew the debt his country owed to the People's Republic of China for its support during the liberation war, however the presence of so many Chinese trading stores throughout Namibia concerned him. This was, he thought, a type of neo-colonialism where traders had been dispatched to the remotest corners of Africa to peddle Chinese-made goods. As well as limited range and stock of basic food supplies bags of maize meal, cooking oils, canned goods and long-life milk this little shop was overflowing with ma.s.s-produced, cheap consumer goods. There were radios and clocks, blankets and clothing, rubber sandals, lanterns, children's toys, a couple of bicycles and just about everything else in between.

'Tell me more,' said the woman. 'I'm Aggie, by the way.'

He felt like he was getting somewhere. 'Natangwe. Nice to meet you, Aggie.'

'Have you found any heroes from the war against the Germans?'

Natangwe hesitated. She was back to business and he didn't know how much he should tell her. The find was interesting, though not in the way they had all been expecting. It was a mystery, and he wondered what ramifications the finding of a dead white man in the desert might have. At the very least the man's family would want to know his fate. It might make an interesting story, he thought. He corrected himself; it would make a good story for a young journalist consigned to a beat far from Windhoek.

She changed tack. 'OK, if you're not going to tell me anything I can't waste my time talking to you here in the middle of nowhere. Coca-Cola Light,' Aggie said slowly and loudly for the benefit of the shopkeeper. She tossed some coins on the gla.s.s-topped counter, above a selection of flashlights and pocket knives. 'Goodbye, Natangwe,' she said, and turned on her heel.

'We found a body,' he said, the words tumbling out.

Aggie stopped and looked back over her shoulder. 'Man or woman?'

'Man.' He felt safe giving away that small amount of information, and she wasn't leaving.

'Executed? Killed in battle?' she pressed.

'We don't know,' he said, rationalising it was best to stick to the truth.

'Hmmm.' She frowned. 'That's not very interesting. And I do have a deadline.' She reached into her purse. 'Here's my card. You can call me on the cell number if you have something really interesting to tell me. Maybe I'll come out and do a story on your dig?'

He liked her. She was confident and beautiful. 'I could show you around, give you a briefing on the battle that took place in the area.'

Aggie faked a yawn. Natangwe felt a little hurt and annoyed, but she laughed. 'I was just kidding. It could be interesting, but I can't just go wandering off into the wilderness without a story to follow. My editor puts enough pressure on me to come up with news every day, so I can't waste hours listening to a history lesson, no matter how important you and your fellow archaeologists think it is. Tell me more about this body, something I can use. Where's your dig?'

Dammit, she was sucking him into revealing more information than he'd intended to give her.

'Go on, tell me where you're scratching around. I'll be able to find out from the local authorities in any case.'

'On the site of the new mine, about forty kilometres east of here.'

'Ah, yes, I know it. There's some local opposition to the mine. If your find is controversial it might stop the project from going ahead. This could be big.'

Natangwe groaned inwardly. He really hadn't thought through the potential consequences of what he was doing. The reporter, Agnes Aikanga, her card informed him, was right, though. The point of the dig, from the mining company's view, was to find nothing of interest. The government outwardly supported the dig, which the mining company was paying for, but Dorset Sutton had hinted that there would be people high up in the administration who wanted the mine to go ahead as badly as the company did. It would bring employment to impoverished local communities, resources income for the country through taxes and who knew, perhaps even some cash to some politician or bureaucrat's back pocket. Dorset, however, said that they needed to stay true to their calling, to seek out the truth through their digging. They were there to reveal history, he had said, not provide the answers other people wanted.

Natangwe realised Aggie's newspaper could actually help ensure that what they had found was never covered up. The discovery of the body whoever he was warranted a full investigation. For all they knew he could have been the victim of a murder rather than a casualty of war.

'We found the body of a white man, from the liberation war, we think. He seems to be wearing the uniform of a pilot, so we think maybe his plane crashed or was shot down somewhere. His surname is Brand, first name begins with an "H". That's all we know. Maybe your newspaper could even help us identify him.'

'Wow,' Aggie said. 'I've got to call my editor.'

Emma noticed that Professor Sutton had been quiet since the exchange with Natangwe that morning. She welcomed the absence of his brusque instructions and frequent criticisms, but as she watched him Emma also wondered if his revelation about his war service had brought back some painful memories. She set down her trowel, stood, straightened her aching back and took her water bottle over to where Sutton was working. He didn't bother looking up as she stood next to him, casting her shadow over him.

Emma cleared her throat. 'I'm just on my break, but thought I'd see how you were doing.'

He brushed away some more dirt from Harry's boot. Emma looked into the dead man's empty eye sockets. At first she had been so excited to discover him she hadn't been concerned by the physical sight of a dead person, but since this morning she'd been feeling mildly freaked out about being around Harry. It was, she realised, Sutton's simple but poignant reminder to them all about what, or rather who, they were dealing with that had brought about the change in her att.i.tude. Seeing the skull, with its layer of stretched, mummified skin drawn across the cheeks, made her feel incredibly sad all of a sudden. Harry must have had a family, perhaps a wife or a girlfriend, maybe children, and they would have had no idea what had happened to him, only knowing that he'd never come home.

'Like I said, I didn't kill anyone during the war, but I did lose a couple of friends. You never really get used to it, you know,' Sutton said, without looking up. 'And the memories, they stay with you.'

'I understand.'

He looked up at her, pausing in his work. 'Do you, Emma?'

'My mother gets nightmares.'

'You couldn't get through to her, when you and Alex went to Namutoni?'

'No, there was no phone signal,' she said. He had changed the subject, just like her mother did when she tried to ask her about her sleepless nights, or about the places she had served and worked.

'Do you think Natangwe was all right, when he left to do the shopping?' Dorset asked her.

Emma was surprised. She didn't think the professor would care what one of his students thought of him, but Natangwe's comments had obviously unsettled the old man more than she had guessed. 'He seemed fine. Before he left he told me he was sorry he'd interrupted your speech. He's a hothead, that's all. He's in the SWAPO Party Youth League and you know what student politics is like.'

Dorset nodded and went back to brushing away the dirt. 'There has been so much blood spilled on this continent,' he said without looking up, 'that I wonder if we'll ever be able to dig anywhere and not unearth more sorrow.'

'But you were right,' she said, 'this is our job, to bring history to light and not shy away from it. It's good to remember the past, and to understand and learn from it, so that the terrible things that happened won't ever occur again.'

Sutton sighed. 'Yes. The only problem is that mankind's been saying that since the dawn of time, and we never learn.'

Sonja cleaned up the mess in her room as best she could, filling the tiny waste paper bin with broken gla.s.s from the mirror. She left an extra five hundred rand on the writing bureau and a note that said, 'Sorry'.

She made herself a cup of coffee in the room, but skipped breakfast. It was good to be moving again and she wound down the window of the X-Trail rather than using the air conditioning and let the hot wind blast away some of her hangover as she drove out of Kuruman.

The road soon turned to gravel and she had some fun driving too fast and deliberately drifting through some of the bends. At tiny Van Zylsrus she filled up the car's tank and then went to the hotel across the road, where she had a cold Windhoek Lager and a cheeseburger at the bar to take care of the remnants of her post-binge illness. Sonja knew she couldn't go on like this. She needed to get her mind back into shape. She'd worked out and stayed away from liquor for a month prior to the Vietnam mission and had felt the better for it. She needed to keep up that regime, but it was hard.

As she hit the road again she thought about Stirling. It had been a surprise seeing him on the television last night and, in her drunken stupor, she had googled the lodge where he was based, Desert Rhino Camp, and found a phone number. She had almost called, but by morning had thought better of it.

Things had not ended well for them the last time she'd seen Stirling, in Botswana. She'd been on another mission then, to blow up a dam that the Namibian and Angolan governments were building on the Okavango River, where it pa.s.sed through the narrow corridor of Namibian land known as the Caprivi Strip. The dam was a threat to the wildlife-rich wetlands of the Okavango Delta and the Moremi Game Reserve; downstream in neighbouring Botswana a group of lodge owners had banded together to oppose the dam. When their lobbying efforts failed they employed Corporate Solutions, the mercenary outfit Sonja had worked for back then, to destroy the dam.

Stirling, who had been managing a lodge in the delta, was a good man, too good for her, and in the end he couldn't support the plan to destroy the dam as it also involved fomenting an insurrection by separatist rebels in the Caprivi Strip. He'd tried to foil the plan and Sonja, who had despised Stirling's betrayal at the time, had questioned why she had ever found him attractive. She had ended up with Sam, who'd been caught up in the insurrection while making a wildlife television doc.u.mentary, and had not given Stirling a second thought.

Until now.

Stirling had been right, she had to concede, to oppose the plan Corporate Solutions had hatched. The rebellion against the government of Namibia had failed. She could have blown up a dam without starting a war. Perhaps she was getting maudlin in her advancing years, but she regretted adding to Africa's long tradition of bloodshed.

She had actually met Stirling years before the dam episode. They had been teenage sweethearts and he'd wanted her to stay in the bush with him, in Botswana, but Sonja had run off to England and joined the British Army. She wasn't like Stirling; she couldn't manage a safari camp because she couldn't be bothered pandering to the needs of overfed, overpaid guests, and while she loved the outdoors and appreciated the continent's wildlife, she wasn't a bunny hugger like Stirling. Her father had taught her to shoot and she'd hunted for the pot when they had lived on the farm in Namibia. Stirling had never killed anything larger than a mosquito, and she knew he abhorred the work she did.

Sonja made Twee Rivieren, the main camp of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, just after lunch time. She had been here on a family holiday in the old days, when it was still known as the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park. The newly named park was the first of a series of 'peace parks' to be opened in Africa. These transfrontier parks, which were springing up all over southern Africa, dropped fences and streamlined crossings and management where two wildlife reserves adjoined each other, but were in different countries. Here at Twee Rivieren in the east of the Kgalagadi park, one could cross from South Africa to the neighbouring national park in Botswana to the north, while Namibia was just across the western border of the reserve.

Sonja walked into the impressive new thatch-roofed reception and administration area and presented herself to a woman in a South African National Parks uniform. She had decided to stop here for the night. After exchanging pleasantries the woman consulted her computer and made a clicking noise with her tongue. 'We've nothing here in Twee Rivieren, ma'am, but I can book you into a chalet in Mata Mata for tonight.'

Sonja cursed silently. It wasn't the woman's fault. While the woman processed her booking Sonja read an information sheet on the park and noted it would take her about three hours to get to Mata Mata, and she needed to reach the camp before its gates closed at dusk. 'Thanks,' Sonja said when the woman handed her a printout of her booking.

Mata Mata was on the border between South Africa and Namibia. Sonja was persona non grata in Namibia; the same events that had put a wedge between her and Stirling were also the reason she couldn't legally go back to her birthplace, but if her daughter was in trouble she would find a way into the country. Nothing would stop her.

Chapter 8.

Matthew Allchurch had teed off at the eighth hole on the course at the Steenberg Golf Estate when his phone beeped. He usually switched the d.a.m.n thing off when he played, but he'd forgotten.

He'd sworn after selling his profitable law practice in Cape Town six months earlier that he would consign the device to the dustbin, but it seemed impossible for anyone, even a retired advocate, to live without a phone.

He checked the message and felt the beat of his heart quicken. Thought you should know, the body of a flier has been found in northern Namibia. Call me when you can. Andre.

Matthew immediately abandoned the game, giving brief apologies to the three friends he normally played with, and drove his buggy back to the car park. In the car he took a deep breath and called Andre Horsman, but he was told by the receptionist that Andre was on the other line and would call him back.

Matthew started the engine of his Range Rover, his retirement present to himself, and drove, too fast, out of the estate and up the hill towards his home on the slopes of Table Mountain, overlooking Tokai. Andre's office was in Constantia, not far away, and Matthew resolved that if Andre hadn't called him back within an hour he would drive there.

He pressed the remote to open the swinging security gates and drove down the driveway, not bothering to open the garage in case he did have to leave again soon.

The dogs, Fabian and Soda, started barking, and they galloped up the steep lawn from the koi pond at the sight of Matthew walking out onto the balcony. His wife, Helen, was in her broad-brimmed khaki bush hat. She looked up and waved to him, then followed the dogs.

Matthew was in the study turning the computer on when Helen walked in. 'Well, this is a surprise. You couldn't have finished your game already.'

'No, something's come up, love.'

She peeled off her gardening gloves. 'Just as well you weren't half an hour earlier or you would have caught me with Charles the gardener making pa.s.sionate love in that illegal marijuana patch he's growing down past the pool house.'

Matthew only half heard her joke. He typed 'flyer found Namibia' into the search engine.

'What is it, Matthew?' his wife asked him.

The search just yielded useless results, so he tried 'body of pilot found Namibia'.

'Andre sent me an SMS while I was on the golf course.' He looked up at her. 'The body of an airman or a pilot has been found in Namibia.'

Helen put a hand over her mouth and sat down in the chair on the other side of his desk. 'No. Is it ?'

Matthew scanned the results on the screen. 'I don't know, love, Andre didn't say anything in his message. Hang on, here's something.'

He clicked on a news item dated that morning. It was from a Namibian newspaper called New Era. The headline on a story by Aggie Aikanga said: Mystery body found in desert archaeological dig may be a wartime pilot. As Matthew read the story Helen got up and moved behind him. She scanned the item over his shoulder.

'It's not him,' she said, with what sounded to Matthew like a mixture of relief and sadness. 'It says the man had dog tags identifying him as "H. Brand".'

Matthew nodded, then felt himself slump a little in his seat. 'No, it's not him. But Andre thought it worth mentioning the article to me. Perhaps there's some connection to Gareth.'

Helen straightened and put a hand on his shoulder. She gave him a little squeeze. 'You know the names of all the crewmen who went missing on that aircraft. "Brand" isn't one of them.'

She was right. Matthew knew that also missing on Gareth's flight were the senior pilot, Captain Danie Bester, and a loadmaster, Jacobus Venter. But all the same there was some reason why Andre had messaged him. Perhaps Andre had seen a different version of the article, one that didn't carry the name found on the body's identification disks, but when Matthew tried a variety of combinations of words in the search engine he kept coming back to the same story. He felt as his wife had sounded: a mixture of relief and the annoyance that came when one reopened a healing wound.

'I'll get Sophia to make us a cup of tea,' Helen said as she walked out of the office.

When the air force officer and the padre had come to their home, in the more modest area of Fish Hoek at the time, the news they'd brought had nearly destroyed Helen. She hadn't wanted to let them into the house, rationalising that if she didn't hear the words then it wouldn't be true. They had, both of them, clung to the one word, 'missing', for a long time, years, in fact.

After a while, especially once South Africa's war in Angola was over and South West Africa had become peaceful Namibia, the fact that their only son, Gareth, was still listed as 'missing' proved more of a cruel taunt than a glimmer of hope. Helen had been an emotional wreck for years, crying every day, but Matthew had turned his attention and his energies to finding out what he could about his son's disappearance near the end of the war.

Matthew looked at the framed photo on his desk, the one he said 'Good morning, my boy,' and 'Goodnight' to every day. Gareth had just earned his wings as a pilot in the South African Air Force when his parents had cajoled him into getting the studio portrait done. He'd been excited, he'd told his father, at being deployed to South West Africa so soon after graduation. He had wanted to fly jet fighter aircraft but had to do his time flying a maritime patrol aircraft, an old Second World War vintage Douglas DC-3 Dakota as it turned out, but Gareth was simply happy to be flying operationally, putting his training into practice.

The war in Angola had become one of full pitched battles on air and land, with tank battles and aerial dogfights between South Africa on one side and the Angolan military backed by the Cubans on the other. Still, father and son had a.s.sured Helen repeatedly that Gareth would be flying patrols over the Atlantic Ocean, not dodging Russian-made surface to air missiles or Cuban-piloted MiG interceptors.

Again, though, the seemingly random way in which Gareth's aircraft had simply disappeared made the loss of their son even harder to bear than the ordeal faced by other parents and loved ones whose sons had been killed in action in the border war.

Andre Horsman had been Gareth's temporary squadron commander and it had been he who had penned a letter to Matthew and Helen, praising their son's commitment to the unit and the war effort, and stressing that in the short time Gareth had been with the squadron he had left his mark in a positive manner.