“Sorry!” she exclaimed, as the Land Rover rolled over the fruit.
She peered into the cloud of dust behind her. She saw the nose of the delivery truck, but no blue sedan. She took the turn onto Kamloops Road without slowing. The top-heavy Land Rover canted to the side, but its tires never lost traction. She raced along the tarmac, weaving around slower-moving cars. Then, without warning, she threw a hard right onto a rutted lane that led back into the warren of Kalingalinga.
She made two quick turns and braked to a stop, her heart pulsing with adrenaline. Around her people gestured and stared. Children knocked on her window and opened their palms. Ignoring them, she conjured the face of her pursuer. Why is he following me?
After a few minutes had passed without sign of the blue sedan, she started to breathe again. She drove east toward Mutendere, her eyes glued to her mirrors. It took her ten minutes to escape the compound and another five to reach Kabulonga. She turned onto Sable Road and focused on her apartment complex. She felt a stab of fear.
The blue sedan was parked a short distance from the gate.
She accelerated up the street, her mind struggling to process the implications. She squealed to a halt outside her complex and honked urgently. For a distressing moment, the gate didn’t move. Then it opened with a creak, and the guard let her in.
She parked outside her flat and scanned the ten-foot walls that surrounded the property, taking comfort in the shards of glass and quintuple strands of electrified wire. She found her iPhone and called Joseph. He answered on the first ring.
“Are you still in Lusaka?” she asked, a bit breathless.
“I’m on the road. What happened?”
“The guy with the sunglasses followed me home.”
Joseph took a measured breath. “I was afraid this might happen.”
“What do you mean?”
“The DNA decision. They’re escalating the threat.”
“But I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
Joseph was silent for a long moment.
“What?” she asked. “What are you not telling me?”
He sighed. “We got an identity from Interpol. His name is Dunstan Sisilu.”
Zoe heard the gravity in his voice. “Who is he?”
“He’s from Johannesburg. He was one of the ringleaders of the Pan Africanist Congress in the early nineties. The apartheid regime suspected him in a number of deadly attacks, but nothing was ever proven. When Mandela took office, he went underground. There were rumors he joined one of the Jo’burg gangs, but he’s never been linked with organized crime. Nobody knows what he’s been doing since then.”
Her stomach began to churn. “Do you think you can tie him to the Nyambos?”
“I doubt it. He’s clearly a professional.”
She glanced at the walls again. “What do you want me to do?”
“Tell the guard not to let him in. And don’t go out tonight. I’ll be there in the morning.”
“Please come as soon as you can.”
She went to the guardhouse and made her request, giving the guard a fifty-pin tip. Then she entered her flat and walked through each room, checking the locks on all doors and windows. Afterward, she ate a sandwich in the dining room, thinking about Dunstan Sisilu. He killed people in a war, she consoled herself. Even Mandela tolerated violence.
When evening came, she watched a documentary on the financial collapse of 2008—an event her father had predicted four years before—and then immersed herself in Swann’s Way until she began to drift off. She checked the locks a second time and got ready for bed. After taking out her contact lenses, she turned off the light and slid under the covers, imagining what it would be like to wake up beside Joseph.
Soon, she thought. Very soon.
Sometime in the early hours of morning, she awoke with a start. She looked around the pitch-black room but saw nothing. She held her breath and listened instead, straining to hear the sound that had disturbed her sleep—a sharp crunch.
Something moved in the doorway.
She tried desperately to make out the shape in the dark. It was a lump at floor level, but the haze in her vision blurred its features. She heard quiet footsteps retreating down the hall, then the crunch again. Fear and adrenaline shot through her like an electrical surge.
She threw off the mosquito net and found her glasses in the drawer at her bedside. She switched on the light and looked toward the doorway. The lump was a burlap sack, and it was moving. She shuddered. She had seen a sack like it before—in a snake charmer’s booth in Mombasa.
Suddenly, a head emerged from the sack. What is it? she thought in terror. A puff adder? A viper? A cobra? Then she saw it—the grey color of the snake—and she knew.