Johannesburg, 1994.
By the time David Maseko entered the conference room, everyone had decided what they were prepared to concede. Almost nothing, which was how these meetings usually began.
Twelve men occupied the long table: government representatives, political organisers, union officials and two businessmen who insisted they were only observers despite having spoken more than anyone else. Three assistants sat against the wall behind Maseko, their notebooks open.
Outside, the country was changing faster than anyone at the table could control. The possibility that someone else might control it frightened them most.
“Gentlemen.”
Maseko removed his jacket and took his seat. Some conversations stopped; others continued until he had waited long enough to make their persistence uncomfortable. He had spent much of his adult life learning what people revealed when left to fill a silence.
“We all know why we’re here.”
“Do we?” asked a man opposite.
Maseko recognised the tone. They were going to lose the morning.
For two hours, progress came in inches. Language was negotiated, rejected and rewritten. One side wanted assurances, the other guarantees, and everyone understood the distinction even when nobody could explain it.
Shortly after midday, he checked his assistants. Thomas was taking notes, Peter looked half asleep, and Lindiwe Ndlovu was sorting documents into neat piles.
“Find us coffee before somebody declares war over a comma,” he told Peter and Lindiwe.
A few people laughed as they left. Ten minutes later, the meeting began to unravel.
A reference to security arrangements led to the previous week’s violence. One man accused the government of allowing it; another accused his organisation of provoking it. Chairs scraped back and Maseko stood.
“Sit down.”
“If this is the level of good faith—”
“Don’t lecture us about good faith.”
Thomas had stopped writing. Maseko noticed that before a man at the far end slammed his hand against the table.
“You cannot ask our people to trust a system that has spent decades—”
Peter and Lindiwe returned with the trays. Few noticed them enter. They moved around opposite sides of the table, distributing coffee, tea and water while Maseko continued trying to make himself heard.
“Everyone sits down.”
The representative near the door remained standing, but accepted a cup. Lindiwe placed another beside the government official who had been shouting.
“Thank you,” he muttered.
She smiled and returned to her seat.
The change was gradual enough that nobody would later describe it as unusual. Voices lowered. A man who had been leaning across the table sat back, and another began listening rather than preparing his reply. The representative who had collected his papers put them down again.
Maseko took the opportunity.
“Now, perhaps we can decide whether we came here to achieve something or simply to remember how much we dislike one another.”
The few smiles were enough. Within twenty minutes, they were discussing substance. Within forty, they had agreed on two points nobody expected to survive the morning.
Afterwards, Maseko remained while his assistants cleared the room.
“That was close.”
“You pulled it back,” Thomas said.
Maseko loosened his tie.
“Eventually.”
Lindiwe collected her folder and followed the others without speaking.
The motorcade departed shortly before four. Maseko travelled in the second vehicle, with two security cars ahead and three behind. Traffic around central Johannesburg repeatedly brought them to a halt, giving him time to study the meeting notes beside his security chief.
“Think they’ll hold?”
“For today.”
“I meant the agreement.”
“So did I.”
Through the tinted glass, he watched taxis, vendors, office workers and police moving along pavements crowded with people trying to survive the present while waiting for the future.
Two vehicles behind, Thomas sat beside the driver while Peter and Lindiwe shared the rear seat.
“I thought Van Rensburg was actually going to hit him,” Peter said.
“He wasn’t.”
“You weren’t in the room.”
“I was for most of it.”
“You were getting coffee when it went bad.”
“Exactly.”
She smiled as Peter shook his head. Outside, the convoy slowed beside a newspaper kiosk, where a man in a grey shirt and dark trousers stood watching their vehicle rather than Maseko’s.
Their eyes met through the glass. Lindiwe felt herself recognised without recognising him. She turned to look back, but they had already passed.
“What?” Peter asked.
“Nothing.”
In the principal vehicle, the security chief leaned forward.
“Why are we slowing?”
The driver tried his radio and received no answer. Ahead, the lead vehicle stopped as a truck pulled across the road.
The first shot struck its windscreen.
Gunfire hammered against metal and pedestrians scattered. Maseko’s driver accelerated into the car ahead while his security chief pushed him towards the floor.
“DOWN!”
Glass burst above them. One security car mounted the pavement and another reversed into traffic as gunmen appeared from two directions. Maseko heard shouting over the radio, interrupted by another burst.
“What about the rear cars?”
“Forget the rear cars. Stay down.”
The assistants’ driver tried to turn away, but a bullet struck a front tyre. Their car slewed into a concrete barrier, throwing them against their restraints. Thomas’s head hit the window, and the driver slumped over the wheel.
For a moment the gunfire seemed to cease.
“Are you hurt?” Peter asked Lindiwe.
She shook her head. Thomas twisted towards them.
“We need to get out.”
Another burst tore into the vehicle. Peter’s window shattered and he jerked beside her. She stared at him, unable to understand until blood spread across his shirt.
“Peter?”
His eyes were already empty.
She screamed. Thomas reached back towards her.
“Get down!”
Across the road, a gunman moved between parked cars and raised his weapon towards theirs. Lindiwe pulled her door handle, but it would not open. Peter had fallen against her, and as she tried to push him aside, a single shot sounded from outside the motorcade.
The attacker dropped.
Through the broken window she saw the man from the newspaper kiosk approaching. He crossed the street with a certainty that made it seem he knew where each bullet would land.
The rear door resisted him too. He stepped back and kicked beside the lock. Metal folded, releasing it.
“Move.”
“Who—”
“Now.”
He pulled her out as another shot struck the car. Thomas shouted from the front, and the stranger looked towards him once. Security forces were moving, but most of the surviving detail remained around Maseko, whose vehicle was pinned between two cars farther up the street.
The man drew her behind the barrier.
“My friend—”
“Keep moving.”
“Peter—”
“He’s dead.”
The blunt answer shocked her into silence. They passed through a service entrance between two buildings while gunfire continued behind them. She looked back before the motorcade disappeared from view.
“Where are we going? My people are back there.”
“They’re not your people.”
“Let go of me.”
He stopped, allowing her to see his face properly. His composure belonged to neither the police nor the security men she knew.
“Listen carefully. If you go back out there now, you will die.”
An explosion rolled between the buildings. She flinched, and when he took her arm again, she followed.
They crossed a warehouse and its loading area to an alley, where a plain car waited beside a steel gate. He opened the passenger door.
“No.”
“You don’t have time for this.”
“I don’t know who you are.”
“That’s preferable.”
“You expect me to get into your car?”
“Yes.”
Something warm ran down her face. She touched it and found blood. The alley tilted, and he caught her before she reached the ground.
His face was the last thing she saw. He looked angry with himself, as though what had happened was something he should have prevented.
Lindiwe woke beneath a ceiling fan. Late-afternoon light pressed around curtains drawn across the windows of a white-walled room.
She tried to sit up, but pain stopped her. Her left shoulder and the side of her head had been bandaged. For several seconds she remembered nothing, then Peter’s face returned with the breaking window and the gunman outside.
Her rescuer sat across the room in a white shirt, its sleeves rolled to his elbows. A dismantled pistol lay on the table before him.
“You’re awake.”
“Where am I?”
“Safe.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It will have to do.”
She eased herself against the pillows.
“What happened to Maseko?”
“He survived.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“Thomas?”
“Alive.”
“Peter?”
He stopped cleaning the pistol. She looked away, finding it difficult to breathe until she could bring herself to face him again.
“Who are you?”
“Nobody you need to know.”
“You shot that man.”
“Yes.”
“You were watching us before the attack.”
“You were mistaken.”
“No. You were standing near the road before we left. I saw you.”
His hands slowed. As she watched, Lindiwe became aware of his caution and irritation, and of something beneath both. He was afraid for her.
She could not explain how she knew.
“You knew something was going to happen.”
“No.”
The answer came quickly. He looked away, and the silence began to trouble him more than it troubled her.
“Why were you watching me?”
“I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were.”
He met her eyes. For several seconds, she felt something in him begin to yield.
“You need to rest.”
“Why me?”
He stood and collected the pieces of the pistol. The brief connection between them disappeared.
“When you’re strong enough, I’ll take you somewhere safe.”
“You said I’m already safe.”
He stopped at the door without turning. She saw him recognise his mistake, and smiled for the first time since waking.
“Sleep.”
He left her awake, certain that he had been watching her before the attack and that keeping secrets from her was proving harder than he expected.