Chapter 28

Adrian’s Bungalow, Skukuza, Kruger National Park.

By midday, Skukuza seemed suspended in a world of its own. The frantic energy of dawn had long since faded, while the promise of evening still lay hours away. It was that peculiar African hour when time itself appeared to slow beneath the weight of the sun.

The sky stretched from horizon to horizon in an endless dome of pale blue. Only a handful of clouds disturbed its vastness. They drifted lazily overhead like forgotten brushstrokes on a giant canvas, their brilliant white edges glowing in the sunlight. They offered no promise of rain and cast no meaningful shadows upon the earth below. They simply existed, floating aimlessly in the immense sky above the Lowveld.

The temperature hovered around twenty-six degrees Celsius. Warm. Comfortable. Yet strangely still as the days were shifting from summer to autumn.

There wasn’t the slightest breath of wind. Not a rustle of leaves. Not a whisper through the grass.

The air felt motionless, as if the entire Bushveld were holding its breath. Even the dust along the camp roads seemed reluctant to move.

The vegetation stood frozen beneath the midday sun. The great trees of Skukuza cast islands of precious shade upon the ground, each species adding its own character to the landscape.

Scattered among the camp stood the familiar knob-thorns. Ancient-looking trees with dark, rugged bark and crowns of delicate green leaves that filtered the sunlight into shifting patterns. Their distinctive swollen thorns protruded from branches like nature’s own warning signs, giving them an appearance both beautiful and formidable. Beneath their spreading canopies, impalas often sought refuge from the sun, standing motionless in patches of shade.

Nearby stood the elegant umbrella-thorns. Their flat-topped crowns stretched outward in near-perfect symmetry, creating silhouettes that seemed almost too perfect to be natural. Against the African sky they resembled giant parasols suspended above the Bushveld. Their branches reached horizontally before gently curving upward at the edges, forming the classic shape immortalised in countless paintings and photographs of Africa.

Buffalo-thorns punctuated the landscape as well. Their zigzagging branches twisted skyward in seemingly random directions, giving them a wild and untamed appearance. Sunlight glinted off the distinctive paired thorns that adorned their branches—one hooked backward and the other pointing forward, as if forever reminding travellers of both where they had come from and where they were going. Their dense foliage provided welcome shade and attracted countless birds seeking shelter from the midday sun.

The bushwillows added yet another layer to the scenery. Their broad crowns carried leaves that shimmered softly whenever the slightest movement disturbed them. The trunks often twisted into graceful shapes sculpted by decades of drought, flood, elephants and fire. Their muted green foliage contrasted beautifully against the dusty earth below, creating pockets of coolness in the otherwise sunlit landscape.

Towering above them all stood a solitary baobab. Like a giant standing watch over centuries.

Its enormous trunk rose from the earth with impossible proportions, appearing less like a tree and more like a monument carved by nature itself. The thick grey bark carried the scars of countless seasons. Massive limbs stretched skyward like the roots of an upside-down tree, frozen against the blue backdrop of the sky.

High within its branches sat a lone grey go-away-bird. Motionless. Patient. Its soft grey plumage blended surprisingly well against the bark of the baobab.

For several minutes at a time it remained silent, surveying its kingdom from above.

Then came the call. “Khwe...”

The sound drifted across the savannah. Mournful. Lonely. Almost questioning.

The bird paused. The Bushveld listened. Minutes later the call came again.

“Khwe...”

The note carried effortlessly through the still air. Without wind to scatter it, the sound travelled far across the camp and into the surrounding wilderness.

Then silence returned.

The go-away-bird remained perched upon its lofty throne, occasionally flicking its tail or shifting its position among the branches.

At regular intervals it announced its presence to a world that seemed otherwise content to sleep through the warm afternoon. The cry became part of the landscape itself. A living heartbeat. One solitary voice punctuating the great silence of the Bushveld. Warning animals nearby that it spotted a human walking by.

Below, the grasses shimmered beneath the sun. A few impalas rested in the shade.

Far away, beyond the camp perimeter, the faint outline of the savannah stretched toward the horizon in muted shades of gold, green and brown.

Nothing hurried. Nothing demanded attention. The Bushveld simply existed. Ancient. Patient. Timeless.

And above it all, from his lofty perch in the baobab, the lonely grey go-away-bird continued his watch, calling his solitary “Khwe” into the still African afternoon.

The landscape did not reflect the turmoil inside my head as I made my way back toward the bungalow.

If anything, the Bushveld seemed determined to mock me with its serenity.

The world was at peace. I was not.

My boots crunched softly on the gravel pathway as I walked. Tourists passed me. A family carrying cameras headed toward the river lookout. People smiled. Laughed. Enjoyed their holidays.

Meanwhile, I was busy conducting a trial inside my own head.

Prosecutor. Defence attorney. Judge. And accused. All at the same time. The further I walked, the more my anger began to cool. Not disappear. Just lose some of its sharp edges.

Anger is easy. It burns hot. It demands action. It makes everything seem simple. Betrayed. Used. Lied to. Case closed.

Except life is rarely that simple. Especially when emotions become involved. I sighed and shoved my hands into my pockets.

The truth was that I had overreacted. Not entirely. I still had legitimate questions. I still felt hurt. I still felt betrayed.

But I had also lashed out. The memory of Kait’s face when I accused her of using me refused to leave me alone. I could still see it. The hurt. The disappointment. The way her eyes had widened slightly, as though I’d struck her.

Perhaps I had. Not physically. Sometimes words cut deeper than fists. And unlike fists, words leave wounds you can’t always see. Words spoken cannot be taken back. They leave your mouth and belong to the world forever.

You can apologise. You can explain. You can make amends. But you can never truly reclaim them. I grimaced.

“I am starting to doubt that.” The sentence echoed inside my head. What a cruel thing to say. Particularly when I knew I hadn’t meant it. At the time I’d wanted to hurt her. To make her feel some of what I was feeling. Mission accomplished. The realisation left a bitter taste in my mouth.

I followed the path beneath a cluster of bushwillow trees, their broad crowns casting patches of welcome shade across the ground. Above me, a pair of glossy starlings argued noisily from a branch. The simple normality of it all somehow helped. Nature had a way of putting human drama into perspective.

Eventually my thoughts drifted back toward Kait. Back toward the revelation. Back toward the impossible image of her sitting calmly at the coffee table and announcing that she worked for Mossad.

A laugh escaped me. A genuine one this time. Because if somebody had told me twenty-four hours ago that Kait Fourie was secretly gathering intelligence for one of the world’s most capable intelligence services, I would have laughed in their face.

Now it made an alarming amount of sense. Too much sense.

The problem wasn’t that she’d lied. The problem was that she’d omitted. There was a difference. A significant one.

As I walked, a line from an old song drifted into my thoughts. The lyrics surfaced from somewhere deep in my memory. “ ... I refuse to listen to all those lies they tell on you. I know better. ‘Cause angels don’t lie... ”

I smiled despite myself.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Angels don’t lie.” A few more steps. Then I snorted.

“Angels just hide some pretty serious details better.”

The image of Kait immediately came to mind. Kait smiling. Kait laughing. Kait teasing me. Kait carrying enough classified baggage to fill a military transport aircraft.

The irony wasn’t lost on me.

I shook my head.

The more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable another realisation became.

I had been judging her by a standard I wasn’t applying to myself. That wasn’t fair. Not even remotely. Because if I was honest, truly honest, I’d done exactly the same thing.

There was an entire chapter of my life that Kait knew little or nothing about. The years before Elsabe. The things I’d done. The people I’d known. The skills I’d acquired.