An Ordinary Day Read online

  AN ORDINARY DAY

  TREVOR R.

  CORBETT

  An

  Ordinary

  Day

  To Wanda, Kyle and Reece

  Published in 2010 by Umuzi

  an imprint of Random House Struik (Pty) Ltd

  Company Reg No 1966/003153/07

  80 McKenzie Street, Cape Town 8001, South Africa

  PO Box 1144, Cape Town 8000, South Africa

  [email protected]

  www.randomstruik.co.za

  © 2010 Trevor R Corbett

  Trevor R Corbett has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

  ISBN 978-1-4152-0082-7 (Print)

  ISBN 978-1-4152-0232-6 (ePub)

  ISBN 978-1-4152-0233-3 (PDF)

  Cover design by mallemeule

  Text design by klavierstemmer

  JERUSALEM

  21 OCTOBER 2000

  Most of the kids who hung out at the mall after school were just as crazy as she was, so in Aliyah’s teenage world, the pink-framed sunglasses were cool and fun, and she felt captivating in them as she admired herself in the bus window. As the two o’clock weaved its way through the afternoon crowds stocking their baskets for the Sabbath meal, she smiled at her Dad, an arched eyebrow questioning his paranoia about her safety. But she was not embarrassed by him: her Dad was cool. It was a bonding time for them where he caught up with her on the complexities of being a teenager in a low-grade war zone, where a trip to the mall could be as dangerous as playing hopscotch in a minefield. She felt safe with Dad; he was her hero, her prince. He put up with all her teenage nonsense and eccentricities, and he always tactfully disembarked when the bus reached Jaffa Road.

  The bus never reached Jaffa Road.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  1

  6 MAY 2002

  Being a housebreaker is more challenging than most people realise, thought Kevin Durant as he hoisted himself onto the first-floor balcony of the house and a rusty nail on the outside of the balustrade punched a hole in his forearm, instantly spilling blood onto the lining of his jacket. Resisting the urge to swear loudly, Durant quickly ducked into the shadows and waited for the pain to subside. After thirty seconds it had got worse, but it was time to move; he could already hear his partner’s quick breaths below. Breaking into a house in South Africa was particularly demanding. Layer upon layer of physical protection was supposed to deter housebreakers by breaking down their resolve as each barrier presented a new challenge. To Durant, the nail had proven to be the greatest deterrent. Durant had overcome the perimeter fences, the dogs, the passive sensors and beams and the alarm system, and climbed eight metres vertically to reach the entry point. The owner obviously had a lot to protect.

  He had elegantly and professionally penetrated the layers of security with an apparent effortlessness gained only from weeks of careful planning and preparation and years of wisdom in the craft of breaking and entering. The nail a carpenter had negligently failed to flatten on the outside of the balustrade was the first serious obstacle Durant had encountered since he had scaled the perimeter wall fifteen minutes earlier. The palatial house in Morningside was unoccupied, the two dogs had been tranquillised minutes earlier by a painless dart and his associates were monitoring the street outside. Durant still felt that same sense of fear he always felt once he was within the perimeter of a target property. He had entered this zone dozens of times over the past fifteen years and the fear was always there – that almost paralysing fear of being apprehended or taking a bullet from a zealous security guard.

  His focus had to be on the next carefully planned step, and fear had to be transformed into action. The indeterminables in the planning stage were still fresh in Durant’s mind; those factors which no amount of creative planning could neutralise. Breaking into homes could be meticulously planned and professionally undertaken, but it remained an imperfect science. The life of the honest thief was a dangerous one.

  Durant looked back over the balcony for a few seconds and saw the outline of the plush houses and apartments silhouetted against the western sky. He narrowed his focus. The house’s balconies and walls jutted out along the length of the structure and reached back twenty metres to a courtyard where a fountain lazily dribbled water into a koi pond surrounded by an immaculately kept lawn. Atmospheric garden lights highlighted various plant features and threw eerie shadows all the way back to the two-metre perimeter wall. To the east, the orange lights of Africa’s busiest port flickered and flashed in their syncopated rhythm. Durant thought of the stacks of shipping containers at the harbour depot and remembered how Ali had made his money. Ali’s home mortgage was being paid from a crooked attorney’s trust fund fed by the proceeds of crime.

  Sweat ran into Durant’s eyes and sent cold streams down the back of his shirt. Why had he worn the thick black jacket? It gave him a false sense of invincibility. It protected him from the cold, but the blood trickling from the nail wound on his forearm reminded him that it wouldn’t stop a bullet. He could die tonight if any of the safeguards built into the operation failed. And some had failed already.

  The window on the first-floor balcony slipped open easily, encouraged by a nudge from the screwdriver and a tap from Durant’s palm. It was amazing: Ali had spent thousands on security, but hadn’t bothered with burglar bars on the upper-storey French doors. Criminals never considered themselves targets of crime, Durant reflected; crime was something they did to other people.

  Durant slipped over the windowsill and dropped to the floor. His small torch quickly scanned the cavernous room. Expensive but tasteless furniture. Paintings: originals, not prints. The marble floor gleamed eerily in the torch beam and Durant felt like he was in a museum rather than a bedroom. ‘Nightmare to keep clean’ was his first thought, replaced quickly by a sudden terror as the torch beam momentarily reflected the bizarre image of a madman – a desperado and freak – standing less than a metre from him. Durant realised he was seeing himself in a huge, gold-framed mirror set against the wall. He was clad in black from head to foot, a beanie on his head and wide eyes staring out of a face glistening with sweat. He wouldn’t have to shoot anyone if confronted; they would die of fright if they saw him.

  ‘Clear?’

  The headset crackled to life and Durant was quick to respond. ‘Clear.’

  Durant calculated that they were still six hours in credit.

  Ali and his wife were attending a business awards dinner which would not finish early. To make sure he and his team weren’t disturbed, Durant had kindly arranged accommodation for the Alis at a luxury lodge close to the event. At exactly 1 a.m., an unfortunate power surge would knock out the gate motor and not allow any guests to leave until … well, until Durant was ready.

  Mike Shezi appeared at the window, hesitated for a second, and then tumbled inelegantly into the room. Hefting a canvas bag, he moved swiftly, awkwardly, across the room, crouching down as if out of courtesy to an audience watching a movie. Shezi was out of breath – partly because of all the climbing, and partly be
cause of fear. He was tall and thin, and his round, wire-rimmed glasses gave his face a school-boyish appearance that belied his age. A black beanie was pulled over his shaved head and his collar was turned up on his jacket.

  ‘Should we take everything, boss?’

  Durant grinned. ‘Ja, Mike. Just leave the paintings.’

  Shezi closed the window. ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Fine – you didn’t find a nail on the outside balustrade, did you?’

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘Okay, it’s still embedded in my arm then.’

  ‘Let’s start, chief,’ Shezi said urgently. He was scared; he didn’t want to be in the house longer than he had to be. He had bad memories of prison cells and didn’t want to go back to one.

  Durant and Shezi slipped out of the bedroom door and down a passage to a sweeping staircase which wouldn’t have looked out of place on the Titanic. Durant led the way to a door on the eastern side of the house, close to an entertainment area.

  ‘This one,’ Durant said, quickly consulting a miniaturised plan of the house which had been laminated and sewn into his sleeve. ‘Passage, left, there’s the main reception area, guest suite – so it must be this one,’ he whispered. He took his right glove off and reached into his pocket for a key. ‘Let’s see if we wasted our money or not.’ The domestic worker who had provided an informer with the key number had charged them r1000. The key slipped in easily enough, but wouldn’t budge left or right.

  ‘Sure it’s the right key?’ Shezi asked, his voice clipped.

  ‘It’s the right key – it’s the only key – it just doesn’t fit.’ Durant was turning the key as hard as he dared without breaking it off in the lock.

  ‘What now?’ Shezi asked.

  ‘Now the mission’s just become a lot longer,’ Durant replied, slipping a small lock-picking kit from a pouch on his belt. ‘Damn, I hate picking locks; I haven’t got the patience for it. If it’s more than a three-lever lock, we’ll have to …’ He didn’t finish the sentence. Neither of them wanted to acknowledge that months of planning, replanning, reviewing and accessing all relied on an illiterate housekeeper getting a key number right.

  Durant had barely slipped the tensioner and pick into the lock when a tinny female voice whispered in his ear: ‘Groundcrew, Kiteman, copy?’

  ‘Go ahead, Groundcrew,’ Durant spoke into his radio mike without taking his focus off the keyhole.

  ‘Roger, Kiteman, approaching security guard. Will give a minute update. Go radio silence, copy?’

  ‘Copy that.’

  Anja Naudé’s radio call sign was ‘Groundcrew’, but Durant often referred to her as ‘Roundcrew’ because of her shape and size. Nonetheless, as a surveillance officer, Anja was the best Durban had. Professional, dedicated and alert – the qualities her colleagues really appreciated while they were trespassing on other people’s properties.

  The early evening had been uneventful. She’d enviously watched Durant and Shezi slip across the street. Durant was Kiteman, but she would always only be Groundcrew. She felt like the wartime gophers whose only role in the mission was to make sure the plane flew. The real heroes were the aviators who flew them. She felt like she was always on the brink of an adventure, but not really in it. She hid the disappointment by being the best backup any Kiteman could hope for: the first line of defence, the early-warning system which kept Kiteman flying safely.

  By the time Anja heard the crunch of car tyres on the dry tar, the security vehicle was already right beside her car and her first and only action was to press the transmit button and radio Durant. The security patrolman stopped his vehicle in front of hers in a semi-defensive position. Anja was angry. Her position, the ‘A’ position, was closest to the target and the other members of the team further out should have warned her about an approaching vehicle. The warning never came and she had to assume that the strong black coffee consumed at the 11 p.m. briefing had obviously not been strong enough.

  The security patrol officer stepped out of his car and swaggered towards Anja’s car, hands hovering over his holstered gun. Fresh from security-officer school and trying to imagine approaching a car packed with armed hoodlums with their booty stashed under the seats, he slowly approached Anja’s window.

  His voice was nervous and high-pitched. ‘Can I help, lady?’

  But he soon saw that this was no lady. Anja had unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blouse and allowed the full glory of her monstrous bosom to welcome the officer. He stared at her longer than was polite and let out a gasp as Anja put her hand under his chin.

  ‘I love a man in a uniform,’ she said slowly, and then in a voice which would have made Garbo proud, she grunted, ‘I used to be one myself.’ The security officer jumped back as if he’d been shot by a 9mm round. Judging by his expression, he probably wished he had been.

  ‘Ag, just checking to see that you’re not … broken …’ and before he’d finished, he was already stumbling backwards, afraid to turn his back on her, silently praying that the lady, or whatever she was, would not take him up on his offer of help. He reached the patrol car, fell against the door and rolled into the driver’s seat as if under fire. He slipped the clutch, as specified somewhere in the training manuals, and roared off down the street towards a less threatening part of the neighbourhood where there were real criminals.

  ‘Groundcrew, Kiteman. The street is clear.’

  ‘Copy, Groundcrew, thanks.’ Durant hadn’t stopped picking at the lock. Shezi was growing impatient. ‘Come on, Kevin, that’s ten minutes – any progress?’

  Durant stopped momentarily to wipe his eyes and steady his hand. ‘Progress? I’m close to kicking this door down. Is that progress?’

  Shezi shook his head and wandered down the passage. He knew his lock-picking skills were worse than Durant’s.

  Moments later, Shezi returned with the familiar sound of keys jangling in his hand. Durant didn’t look up. ‘You found me a key?’

  ‘Found some in the kitchen. Wanna try?’ If Shezi had told Durant he could open the door with his big toenail he probably would have let him. He stepped back and heard his back crack in at least three different places. Shezi dropped to his knees and tried the keys in the lock. The third one opened the door with a click. Shezi couldn’t contain his elation. ‘Laduma! You whities think you’re smart. Everyone hangs spare keys in the kitchen.’

  Durant grinned. ‘I don’t. Anyway, let’s finish this and get outta here. I’m getting nervous.’

  Durant would have been surprised if the office wasn’t neat. Ali was, after all, an organised criminal and organisation characterised the room’s layout. Clever, Durant thought. A neat office was not easily explored, although exploration wasn’t the aim here. In the centre of the oversized stinkwood desk which squatted on four elephant-like legs, was a single computer monitor and keyboard.

  ‘So this is where it all happens,’ Shezi said, flinging the canvas bag onto the floor next to the desk and unzipping it.

  ‘Wait,’ Durant said.

  ‘No worries. I didn’t forget.’ Shezi pulled a digital camera from the bag and switched it on. He looked serious for a moment. ‘You wanna pose?’

  ‘Just take the flippen pictures, specially this area,’ and Durant motioned to the area they would be working around. It was standard operating procedure. The pictures would be checked once the surveillance equipment had been installed to make sure the office looked the same as when the team had arrived.

  Blue lightning lit the room for an instant as the camera flashed.

  7 MAY 2002

  Durant involuntarily closed his eyes for a split second as the flash blinded him, then he leaned forward in his chair, moved a floral centrepiece in the middle of the table to one side, pressed his cheek against Stephanie’s, and smiled.

  ‘Please take another one for us, I blinked.’

  The waiter snapped a second photograph of them. ‘Happy anniversary, sir, madam,’ he said, handing the camera back to Durant.


  Stephanie smiled, a smile which was as open and carefree as she was. ‘Nice of you to make our anniversary,’ she said.

  Durant nodded without looking up. ‘I checked my diary – had nothing else planned, so I thought what the hell.’

  Stephanie laughed and ran a hand through her long auburn hair which fell in big curls halfway down her back. ‘No secret operation tonight that’s more important than your wife of six years?’

  Durant smiled. ‘I had one last night, remember? Tonight, you’re my secret operation.’

  ‘Ooh, I like the way you think. Is that the wine talking, or Kevin Durant?’

  Durant looked at her and then took her hand. ‘Sweetie, this wine’s so cheap, it doesn’t talk. I’m just an ordinary civil servant; I can’t afford the decent stuff.’

  Durant looked at Stephanie and memories of the past six years came flooding back like a sweet, warm tide. Their first encounter had been awkward. Stephanie had presented a financial intelligence briefing to National Intelligence Agency members on money laundering. Durant had sat right at the back of the conference hall with Shezi, who nudged him in the side with his elbow every time she looked at them. This attractive and successful financial guru was elegant, in control and self-assured, and Durant felt inadequate and unworthy of her attention. Richard King, on the other hand, was confident and as self-absorbed as the leather seats of a convertible left open in the rain. He felt both adequate and worthy of Stephanie’s attention. And the less she gave him, the harder he tried, until Durant wondered if King was even starting to annoy himself with his persistence. During the briefing King fired off volley after volley of unnecessary comments, inane suggestions, and idiotic remarks which had Durant and most of his colleagues cringing with embarrassment. King really thought he was impressing the girl when he cited examples of operations in which he’d never been involved. He wasn’t even operational. He was an analyst – he just packaged the stuff Durant and others brought in and made it look good to the client.