Chapter 20: Alina is Nervous

"Relax Alina," I tried to calm her, "I'm on your side. I'm not sure if you noticed, but you were being followed."

"No, I hadn't noticed," she replied. She shifted in her seat as she said it, however, and turned away to look out the window. I was instantly suspicious. I got the clear impression that she was trying to lie to me. I wasn't sure quite what she was trying to hide, but at the least, I suspected that she knew that she was going to be met and followed. This put a new complexion on things.

Ahead, I could see Cpl Maseka's car turning off into Edwin Swales VC Drive, heading towards Pinetown. Our plan was to lose anyone following us before we got to the original car rental agency in Pinetown, so Cpl Maseka turned off at Queensborough. We drove past on another road that ran parallel. There was a subsidiary rental agency there, and he pulled into their parking lot, jumped out, and handed the keys to the attendant. He then jumped over a low wall and into my car. The car that had chased him from the airport was stuck. It had to turn around into traffic and drive about two klicks back to get onto the road that we had used.

"Did they follow you on foot Cpl?" I asked Cpl Maseka.

"No Major," he answered, a little out of breath, "I don't think they know the roads here very well. They drove straight on when they saw me go over the wall."

"Excellent. Thanks Corporal, good job."

We drove in silence for a few minutes until we were back on the main road. Ten minutes later, I pulled into the Pinetown rental agency, and found the Sgt Major waiting for me. I got out of the car, handed the him my car-keys and bundled Alina into the Land Rover. Cpl Maseka got into the back and we pulled out. Total time spent: less than two minutes. I felt like the Ferrari Formula One Team doing a pit-stop.

As I pulled away, I was almost deafened by the effusive greetings between Daise and Alina. A quick glance at Alina showed a completely different person. It was as if those first few minutes of being re-united with Daise had stripped away her other concerns. As we drove, however, I could see her start to worry again. A few minutes into the journey, her cell-phone rang. She immediately looked guilty, and I could see she was trying to decide what to do; whether she should answer it or just pretend that it wasn't ringing.

"Alina, pass me your phone please," I requested politely. She just looked at me. "Now," I added with a bit more emphasis. Cpl Maseka had picked up on the tension between us and I could see that he was watching Alina very carefully, leaning close to the front seats. I caught his eye in the rear-view mirror and cut my eyes towards Alina. He nodded slightly to show that he understood that he needed to watch her closely.

Alina was still dithering about her phone. "Daise, please pass me Alina's phone."

Daise reached into Alina's bag, grabbed her phone, and handed it to me, giving Alina a puzzled look as she did so.

The phone stopped ringing just as I took it, so I pressed the green button to bring up the list of recent calls and saw that the first missed call was from 'Dimitri'. I scrolled through the list and saw that there were three or four calls to-and-fro between Alina and this Dimitri, starting from when Alina had landed in Cape Town. I opened the back of Alina's phone, removed the battery, and dropped it into the storage compartment between the seats.

"Alina," I said woodenly, "I think you owe us an explanation. It can wait till we get home though."

Alina just nodded. The expression on her face was guilt overlaid with defiance. Daise started in at her in Russian and I stopped her, telling her that I would prefer it if she kept it to English and waited 'till we got back to the house. After that, there was silence in the car.

The journey through Giba Gorge seemed as if it had been unnecessary as I detected no tail, but I was still happy that I had made that more paranoid choice. Sgt Major Dhlamini called me just as we were arriving at the house to tell me that he had dropped his guys off on-foot and they would set up stopper-groups on the road leading to the house. He said he would prefer to stay away until we had a clearer idea of what was going on. I was happy with that. It was nice to know that I had backup waiting on-call if needed.