Playing Solitaire
Copyright© 2026 by Jody Daniel
Chapter 15
Dragon Peaks Resort. Tim’s suite.
I looked at my watch for what must have been the seven-hundredth time. 02:07.
The bold blue digits of my smartwatch glowed against its black face, changing every second with irritating precision. The date had rolled over sometime earlier, quietly marking the beginning of another day while the four of us were still sitting in my suite.
I glanced at the other information displayed beneath the time. 4 325 steps. 132 calories burned. Heart rate: 71 bpm. Useless information, really. But it was there, so I absorbed it anyway.
My heart rate seemed remarkably calm considering that somewhere outside my suite there were people who had been looking for the green box, a suspicious SUV had appeared on the resort grounds, and Piet and his tactical team were supposed to have arrived hours ago.
That was the question bothering me. Where the hell was Piet? He should have been here shortly after midnight.
The plan had been simple. Once he and his people arrived, we would hand the situation over to them and finally get some sleep. Instead, midnight had come and gone. Then one o’clock. Then two.
Nothing. No phone call. No message. No headlights sweeping across the curtains.
I lowered my wrist and listened. The suite had become almost completely silent.
After the board game had finally run its course, Linda had taken the lead in winding things down. She had gathered the cards, closed the Trivial Pursuit box and announced that if we were going to maintain our little holidaymaker charade, we should at least look like people who had eventually become too tired to keep playing. The lights had been dimmed afterwards.
Only the lamps in the living area remained on, turned down low enough to leave the room wrapped in warm pools of amber light. Beyond the glass doors, the balcony was swallowed by darkness. Every now and then the curtains moved slightly as the mountain breeze found its way through some imperceptible gap.
The whole suite had taken on the atmosphere of a campsite after midnight.
Quiet. Warm. Safe. At least, I hoped it was safe.
I looked across at Amanda. She had claimed the easy chair, although claimed was perhaps too generous a description. At some point during the last hour she had simply folded herself sideways into it.
She lay half upright, her torso turned towards the armrest, her head resting on her folded arms. Her glasses had slipped halfway down her nose, giving her the appearance of someone who had fallen asleep halfway through reading something technical and complicated.
For once, there was no mischievous grin. No rapid-fire technical explanation. No fingers dancing across a keyboard. Just Amanda. Fast asleep.
The soft light caught the edge of her glasses and illuminated a few strands of hair that had escaped whatever arrangement she’d started the evening with.
I shifted my gaze towards the bedroom. Linda had boldly commandeered my bed. She had kicked off her shoes somewhere near the foot of it and curled onto her side, her legs drawn slightly upwards. The blanket was pulled loosely around her, and the steady rise and fall of her chest told me she was completely out.
Linda could probably sleep through an artillery barrage. I almost smiled at the thought.
Then I looked down. Megan was beside me on the sofa. Or, more accurately, she was on me. At some point during the gradual collapse of our evening, she’d apparently decided that my lap was the most convenient pillow in the Drakensberg. I had no idea exactly when it happened.
One moment we’d been sitting at opposite ends of the sofa, talking quietly while the others were still awake. The next, she had somehow migrated sideways until her head was resting comfortably in my lap.
Her feet were drawn up on the sofa beside her, and her left arm lay loosely across my legs. Her glasses were gone, resting carefully on the coffee table. Without them, she looked younger. Softer.
The usual guarded expression that seemed permanently attached to Dr. Megan Forsyth had disappeared completely in sleep. There was no worry about SACAA, no airworthiness report, no Steinhoff, no threatening emails and no mysterious green box. Just a peaceful woman sleeping.
I looked down at her for a long moment. I had absolutely no idea how she’d ended up there. And, if I was completely honest with myself, I wasn’t in any particular hurry to find out.
There was something strangely comfortable about the weight of her head against my thigh. Her breathing was slow and even, and every so often she made the tiniest movement, as though adjusting herself deeper into whatever dream she was having. I barely moved. I didn’t want to wake her.
Outside, somewhere beyond the resort buildings, the wind moved through the trees with a low whisper. Farther away, something creaked—a branch perhaps, or one of the old structures responding to the cold.
Then came silence again. I glanced at my watch. 02:08. One minute had passed. Piet was still missing.
And somehow, sitting there with three sleeping women around me, I had the uncomfortable feeling that the night wasn’t anywhere near finished with us yet.
My cell phone chimed beside me.
The sudden little electronic sound seemed absurdly loud in the otherwise silent suite. I froze for a moment, instinctively looking down at Megan. She didn’t move. Her head was still nestled comfortably in my lap, her breathing slow and even, one hand resting loosely across my legs.
I reached for the phone as carefully as I could, moving centimetre by centimetre so I wouldn’t disturb her. The screen illuminated my face in the dim room.
A WhatsApp message from Piet. I frowned. Now what?
I opened the message.
For a second, I simply stared at the screen, not quite believing what I was reading.
“Okay. Perimeter secured. Crooks in custody and your friend Steinhoff would like a word with you.”
I blinked. Then I read it again. Steinhoff?
My thumb moved across the screen. “Where are you?”
The reply came almost immediately.
“In the parking area at the RAV4. Come alone. Leave the girls.”
I stared at those last three words. Leave the girls.
Damn. I needed not to wake up Megan.
Very carefully, I began extracting myself from underneath her. I slid one leg out, then the other, supporting the back of her head with one hand as I eased it away from my lap.
She murmured something unintelligible and shifted slightly. I froze. For several seconds I didn’t breathe.
Megan’s eyes remained closed. She settled again. Phew.
I gently lowered her head onto the cushion, picked up my phone and rose from the sofa. I looked once towards Amanda, still asleep in the easy chair, and then towards Linda in my bedroom.
All quiet.
I crossed the living room and slipped through the door. The moment it closed softly behind me, the atmosphere changed.
The warmth of the suite disappeared, replaced by the sharp mountain air. The resort was almost completely dark, the few remaining exterior lights casting isolated pools of illumination across the walkways.
Then I saw the parking area. The quiet was gone. Three bright tactical spotlights illuminated the dark blue RAV4 from different directions, turning the vehicle into the centrepiece of a very unexpected midnight drama. Shadows of armed SAPS members moved across the ground as they worked around it, their black tactical uniforms almost disappearing whenever they stepped outside the harsh beams.
Several officers stood with weapons at the ready. Others were examining the vehicle. Piet stood slightly apart from them, hands resting on his hips.
I walked towards him. “What the hell?” I asked. “You just came in like a wrecking ball?”
Piet turned towards me. His face broke into a grin.
“It’s more fun that way!” He gave a short laugh and jerked his thumb towards the RAV4. “We got all three in the car.”
I stopped. “Wait. All three?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are the other two?”
Piet’s smile disappeared. “What other two?”
“I saw four of them getting out of that SUV.” I pointed towards the RAV4. “And Steinhoff wasn’t with them at the time. That makes five.”
Piet stared at me. Then his expression hardened.
“Crap.” He spun around and waved one of the nearby officers over.
“Go check the Nyala. Ask about the other two that were with them. Now.”
The officer didn’t waste a second. He turned and sprinted across the parking area towards the armoured vehicle positioned some distance away from the main scene. I watched him disappear into the darkness.
Piet turned back to me. “That VIN number you gave me,” he said, “and the one I checked against the system identifies this vehicle as the one hijacked at Pebble Rock Golf Village near Roodeplaat Dam in Pretoria.”
I glanced at the RAV4. “So it’s stolen.”
“Very stolen.” He nodded. “Once the fingerprint team is finished, we’re confiscating it and taking it back to Pretoria.”
“Good.” I looked at the vehicle again. “But what were they looking for?”
Piet gave me a sideways glance. “Your box of tricks, I suppose.”
I sighed. “Speaking of that, what do I do with it?”
“Hand it to me.” His tone became more serious. “I’ll see that it goes through the right process.”
I hesitated. For a moment I imagined another option.
“I was thinking of powering the damn thing up,” I said, “dropping it into a bathtub full of water, frying the electronics, breaking it into pieces and scattering the bits over the Drakensberg one by one on my flight back to Wonderboom.”
Piet stared at me. Then he gave a slow nod.
“That sounds like a foolproof way of getting it out of dirty hands.”
He glanced towards the RAV4. “That thing could dump half the world into the next economic recession.”
“Exactly why we can’t just destroy it.”
I folded my arms. “We still need to find out who was behind it. Who designed it. Where the blueprints are. Who commissioned the thing. Who else has access to the technology.”
“Yeah.” Piet’s expression darkened. “Otherwise, the asshole just builds another one.”
Before I could answer, the officer Piet had dispatched came hurrying back across the parking area.
He slowed as he approached us, breathing hard.
“Colonel. Captain.”
Piet turned.
“What have you got?”
The officer glanced towards the row of thatched units. “The word is that two more are holed up in Unit Six.” He paused. “They’re sleeping.”
Piet’s eyebrows rose. For one glorious second, nobody said anything.
Then he grinned. “Good work.”
He turned towards the tactical team. “Let’s go get them.”
I looked towards Unit Six.
Somewhere inside that quiet little holiday chalet, two men were apparently sleeping peacefully, blissfully unaware that an armed SAPS tactical team was about to introduce them to the concept of a very bad morning.
I decided I had no desire whatsoever to witness the introduction.
“I’ll be in my suite,” I said, turning away. I had taken perhaps two steps when Piet called after me.
“Colonel!”
I turned.
“Put the kettle on.”
He pointed towards my suite. “I deserve a mug of wake-up juice!”
I couldn’t help laughing. “At two thirty in the morning?”
“Especially at two thirty in the morning.”
He turned back towards his men. “Move!”
The tactical team began moving towards Unit Six. I watched them disappear into the darkness and shook my head.
Then I headed back towards my suite, already wondering how I was going to explain to three sleeping women that our quiet little games night party had somehow turned into a midnight police raid without us even knowing about it.
Back inside the Lakeside Suite, I closed the door as quietly as I could and stood there for a moment, listening.
The suite was dimly lit, the only real illumination coming from the small lamps beside the sofa and the muted glow of the digital clock on the kitchen counter. The air carried that peculiar stillness that only existed in the early hours of the morning, when most of the world had surrendered to sleep.
I crossed to the kitchenette, filled the kettle and switched it on. Then I looked at my three sleeping companions. For a fleeting moment, I wondered whether I was looking at three corpses. They were for all practical reasons, dead for the world.
Amanda was twisted sideways in the easy chair, one arm hanging loosely over the side and her glasses resting crookedly against her face. Megan had somehow migrated from the comfortable position she’d occupied earlier into a full-length sprawl across the sofa, one leg tucked beneath the other and her hair spread across the cushion.
Linda had completely commandeered my bed. She lay on her side with both arms wrapped around a pillow, apparently having decided that whatever happened in the world could wait until morning.
The three of them were oblivious to everything. I envied them.
From somewhere beyond the suite came faint sounds. A vehicle engine. Then a muffled shout. A door closing. Another voice, too distant for me to make out the words.
The sounds drifted across the resort from the direction of the thatched chalets, softened by distance and the cold night air. They were faint enough not to disturb my sleeping companions, but loud enough to remind me that the night wasn’t nearly as peaceful as it looked.
Somewhere out there, Piet and his people were still working. And judging by the noises, they weren’t conducting a midnight inspection of the flowerbeds.
I glanced at the clock. Three in the morning. Wonderful. Apparently, sleep wasn’t on my schedule tonight.
The kettle clicked off. I poured the boiling water into a mug, added coffee and stirred it slowly. The aroma was rich and comforting, but it did absolutely nothing to convince my exhausted body that staying awake was a good idea.
I took the first sip. My cell phone vibrated in my pocket.
I frowned. At three in the morning, a ringing phone generally meant one of two things. Someone was dead. Or something had gone very wrong. I pulled it out.
PRIVATE NUMBER. I stared at the display.
No. Not tonight. I rejected the call. Almost immediately, the phone vibrated again.
I closed my eyes. “Bloody hell.” I accepted the call and brought the phone to my ear.
“What? It’s freaking three in the morning! Don’t you telesales people ever sleep?”
A soft chuckle came through the receiver.
It wasn’t the nervous laugh of a telemarketer. It was calm. Measured. Almost amused.
“We discarded those annoying calls long ago here.”
I straightened. There was something about the voice. Male. Middle-aged, perhaps. Educated. And completely devoid of the nervousness I would have expected from somebody calling a police officer anonymously in the middle of the night.
“So,” I said, taking another sip of coffee, “what do you want that is so important it can’t wait until business hours?”
“Well, it is business hours here in Shanghai.”
I felt something cold settle at the base of my neck.
Shanghai.
“I need something from you,” the voice continued. “Something that is mine and mine alone.”
I glanced across the room. Amanda was still asleep. So was Linda. Megan hadn’t moved.
“You seem to have a knack for getting the better of Steinhoff and his cronies,” the man continued. “So let us talk business.”
“What business is that?”
“The return of my device.”
I said nothing.
“The device you found in that minced-up aircraft.”
I deliberately let a few seconds pass. “I found no device other than aircraft components,” I replied.
“Well, I find that hard to believe.”
“I don’t know who you are, what you believe in, or where you’re calling me from at three in the morning.”
“Come now, Colonel Duncan.”
The casual way he said my name made the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
“Look at the facts from my side. One: a device belonging to me was on that flight from Wonderboom in Pretoria to Margate in KwaZulu-Natal.”
I said nothing.
“Two: there was a transmission from that device after the aircraft crashed.”
My grip tightened slightly around the coffee mug.
“That means someone found the device, knew what it was, and used it to sabotage my company.”
He paused. “Are you with me?”
I leaned against the kitchen counter.
“I think you’re making some very large assumptions.”
“Perhaps.”
“If someone found something that was either on the aircraft or in the baggage of one of the passengers, I wouldn’t necessarily know about it. It wasn’t handed to me and it wasn’t recorded in the evidence register.”
I glanced towards Megan. She was still sleeping.
“For the record, I arrived on site more than seventeen hours after the aircraft crashed. Anyone among the first responders could have retrieved the device you’re talking about.”
“True.”
The single word was delivered without argument.
“But how do you explain that the transmission from that device originated in the general vicinity of Dragon Peaks? Or the Champagne Valley?”
There it was. He knew. Not everything. But enough.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I replied. “So, if you’ll excuse me, I have some sleep to catch up on.”
“Colonel.”
I paused.
“Before you go.”
Something in his tone had changed. “I offer you ten million US dollars.”
I stared at the dark window overlooking the resort.
“If you successfully retrieve that device and hand it to me, the money is yours.”
For several seconds neither of us spoke.
Ten million dollars. Just like that.
My mind immediately rejected the number. Not because it was insignificant, but because it was far too significant.
Nobody offered ten million dollars for a piece of electronic equipment unless that equipment was worth considerably more to them than ten million dollars.
“I told you I don’t have it.”
“And yet you seem remarkably well informed about it.”
“I also told you I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking for.”
Another pause.
“Now,” I added, “can I get back to sleep?”
“Yes ... yes, you can.” His voice remained pleasant. “But consider my offer. It would be highly appreciated by me.”
“Who are you?”