An Ordinary Day Read online

  The prisoner screwed up his face in pain as two soldiers dragged him hastily into the bush. ‘Durant,’ he called out loudly, ‘we’ll meet in a free South Africa!’

  Durant was later charged with insubordination and inappropriate behaviour with a prisoner. The charge was eventually dropped: as a medic, Durant was ethically and legally bound to treat any wounded soldier, and Durant’s verbal interaction with the prisoner was deemed harmless. He later heard that the combatant was evacuated to a field hospital in Namibia and then interrogated for eight months in Pretoria. He apparently gave no useful intelligence.

  Durant was surprised the blemish on his record didn’t surface during his security-vetting process, which took place a few months later when he applied for a position at the National Intelligence Service. During interviews, he stressed his desire to make a difference in South Africa; the recruiters had probably misinterpreted this to mean that he was a staunch defender of apartheid. When he was accepted into the NIS, he was relieved to find there were pockets of liberal thought within it, and he could relate to other colleagues who wanted things to be different. Because his bosses saw him as a liberal, they allocated him to the field of student politics, to keep tabs on young white students who were seen to be conspiring with radical black students and organising treasonous activity, such as printing university newspapers with caricatures of PW Botha on the pages. Durant’s exposure to the student movement only cemented his belief that his ‘enemies’ were more like him than his own colleagues. Over the following decade, his superiors recognised that his interest and skill lay in non-political areas such as corruption, which was becoming endemic as the Nationalists tried to feather their post-apartheid nests.

  In 1995, Durant became a member of the National Intelligence Agency, following the integration of the statutory and non-statutory forces into one civilian intelligence agency after the 1994 democratic elections. It was the weirdest time of Durant’s career. People with names which had appeared on target lists and faces which had adorned index cards in the registry under headings such as ‘terrorist’ and ‘saboteur’ were walking into the same office building which had targeted them and were shaking hands and introducing themselves to the NIS members. Some of the handshakes were brief, some of the smiles hollow, but it dawned on everybody that history was being made in South Africa, and that miracles did still happen. It was the IRA taking office space at M15 headquarters on the Thames. It was the plo sharing jokes with the Mossad officers at their Tel Aviv headquarters. Greater miracles the world had not seen since the parting of the Red Sea. Enemy forces had not only made peace, they had become partners, colleagues, fellow travellers on a long road ahead to a place called the New South Africa.

  Durant met Mike Shezi in 1994, but only began working with him in early 1996. Shezi was a Department of Intelligence and Security member of the ANC attached to the Natal Midlands branch. He handled a number of sap members in the late 1980s who provided information to the ANC on hit squad activities and other special operations the securocrats had sanctioned. His task was to confirm that the destabilisation in the area was a result of orchestrated ‘black-onblack’ violence. Shezi had seen and heard of the worst excesses of human depravity and almost lost faith in freeing the country from its pain and suffering. To his shame, he began seeing all white people as enemies; those who weren’t pulling the triggers were supporting the triggermen or giving them moral justification. In 1986, one of Shezi’s agents turned double, and a week later he was awoken by a knock on his door with a battering ram. He had only been married to Thandi for a month and she was unaware of his underground activities. She bravely pulled at the policemen’s clothes as they manhandled Shezi to a cream Toyota Cressida parked up the road from his house and told him he was being arrested for terrorism.

  It was close to midnight when the three security branch policemen set off for Pietermaritzburg with Shezi. He sat in the back seat with two young white policemen on either side of him. In his hands was a green key ring in the shape of Africa. A close comrade had given him the key ring as a good-luck charm. Shezi wondered when the magic would kick in.

  The driver increased the volume of the car radio as the national anthem began to play. As if choreographed, the policemen quickly extinguished their cigarettes, sat up straight in their seats and put their hands over their hearts, staring straight ahead. The last words of ‘Ons sal lewe, ons sal sterwe, ons vir jou, Suid Afrika’ rang out, and Shezi turned to the policeman on his left, a fresh-faced youngster with meticulously trimmed black hair.

  ‘I admire you, chiefs,’ he said.

  The policeman’s head jerked so violently it looked as if he’d been hit on the side of the head with a fence pole. The other one said in Afrikaans, ‘What did he say?’

  Shezi switched to Afrikaans, a language he’d learnt as a child, growing up in Soweto. ‘Your national anthem plays, you make yourself stiff, like a proud lion. When you hear the words, you really believe you’ll live and die for your country if you have to.’

  ‘Shut your mouth!’ the driver said, and added a list of expletives.

  ‘You guys are passionate. You must use that passion, guys.’

  The two policemen were silent, but the driver, an ox of a man in his late fifties, swore at Shezi again. Not satisfied, he tried to swing his arm around to punch Shezi, and the Cressida lurched to one side then the other as the cop over-corrected the skid. The car hit the barrier, bounced off and sheered across the road, down an embankment and into a ditch. The policemen on either side of Shezi buffered him, and although shaken, he was unharmed. The driver was propelled through the windscreen and lay still, slouched against a gum tree. One of the policemen in the back seat was unconscious and the other held a gaping wound on the side of his head.

  Shezi crawled over him, through the window, walked to the road and flagged down the first car which came past. His favourite part of the story is how he and the black nurse who had stopped treated the two white policemen at the scene until an ambulance arrived. When Durant heard this story, he recounted his own to Shezi about his experience in southern Angola, and an immediate friendship was forged.

  In 1996, the new operational head of the NIA office in Durban was introduced to the staff. Alfred Masondo stood tall and dressed impeccably. He walked with a slight limp, but had a commanding presence which inspired awe. Durant recognised this man by his eyes. He had first seen these inscrutable eyes open up in Angola, and they were as impenetrable then as they are wise now. Masondo told Durant that they would meet again in a free South Africa and it had taken ten years for that prophesy to be fulfilled. Durant’s pressure dressing had saved Masondo’s life.

  Durant learnt later that Masondo was a senior and influential MK commander who had worked closely with the ANC leadership in exile. He was a close confidant of Nelson Mandela. In 1992, during an ANC congress, Masondo had mentioned to Mandela that a young white South African soldier had saved his life in Angola. Mandela had purportedly smiled his enigmatic smile and said, ‘White South Africans have had so many opportunities to do good. Some chose to embrace those opportunities, others didn’t.’ When Masondo told Durant this, it had affected him deeply. He had simply helped a wounded fellow human being, yet the consequences of that action had affected so many lives, including his own.

  ‘Let’s talk about Ali,’ Masondo said as Durant stepped into his neat and spacious office, gesturing for him to sit in the chair next to his desk. Masondo sat on the edge of his table, folded his arms and looked down at Durant with his piercing eyes.

  Durant shifted uncomfortably into the chair and lifted his eyes as high as his headache would allow him. ‘Chief, Ali’s quiet, and we don’t really know why.’

  ‘You’re intelligence, you should know.’

  ‘I know. The audio and video is in and it’s all working. He just hasn’t been at his office.’

  ‘So we’re wasting our time?’

  ‘No, not at all. He’ll be back. He’s in the country.’
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br />   ‘But he’s not in his office.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘And that’s where we’re monitoring.’

  ‘Correct, sir.’

  ‘Who’s monitoring?’

  ‘Amina Yusuf.’

  ‘She’s been briefed?’

  ‘I gave her the whole history of Ali from the first time we picked him up – what, three years ago.’

  ‘We’ve only got three months, maybe six. This thing must be handed over to the police as soon as there’s something concrete.’

  ‘Of course, chief.’

  ‘Remember, you’re not a policeman. You gather intelligence. We do our job, they’ll do theirs.’

  ‘Chief, I know. We’re hoping for a quick success here. Ali’s been untouchable for years. It’s time to shut him down.’

  Masondo looked at his watch. ‘Okay, I must move. The airport’s got problems. The Libyans have complained to DFA that we’re obstructionist and poor hosts.’

  ‘You’re kidding, chief; we’ve gone overboard to please them.’

  ‘Because they tried to bring camels and big guns into the country for the African Union launch. That Gaddafi knows how to get the media’s attention.’

  Durant stood up and turned towards the door.

  ‘Kevin.’

  ‘Chief?’

  ‘You know what bothers me the most?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When’s the baby due?’

  Durant frowned. ‘Our baby? In October.’

  ‘That’s what bothers me the most. That you’ll still be looking for Ali when you should be with your family.’

  Durant smiled for the first time that morning. ‘You’re right, chief.’

  Masondo motioned to the door. ‘So go and find Ali.’

  Amina Yusuf leaned back in her office chair and paged through the bulky briefing document Durant had given her. A relative newcomer to the Agency, she was only 26, but her experience and dedication made up for a lack of years. She was popular and outgoing, with an open face and clear brown eyes enhanced by silver shimmering eye shadow and long eyelashes. She loved her job and the people she worked with.

  Amina had been an operational assistant for four years and this was by far the biggest assignment she had ever received. Operational assistants were legal eavesdroppers, men and women who were empowered by parliament to listen to the conversations of others and extract intelligence from these hours and hours of often mundane banter. A three-month operation sometimes only yielded a single relevant conversation out of thousands, or sometimes only a single word which might betray the modus operandi of a criminal, the plan of a hitman or the weakness of a diplomat. The work was tedious and frustrating. Often targets believed their telephones were bugged and spoke cryptically to their associates of plans which seemed significant, but which were unfathomable. At other times, targets would begin to speak about something of intelligence value, and then stop themselves and arrange a personal meeting to continue the conversation. These events were significant in themselves as they served as pointers to the fact that the objective was legitimate and the targets were indeed involved in surreptitious activity.

  Amina carried a heavy responsibility. She had worked with Durant on organised-crime operations before and she had a great appreciation for his dedication and thoroughness. He was a professional and he expected greatness of her, as he did of all his team members. She had experienced disappointment before, when some ambient noise or an aircraft flying over the target’s house had obscured a vital telephone number or location and led to the failure of an operation.

  The bug and camera installed in Ali’s office would reveal more about Ali than even his own wife knew. It would uncover his Achilles heel, his frailties and failings, along with his successes and his affairs. During the three months of monitoring, Amina would enter into a virtual relationship with Ali as a secret witness in his sacred room. She would become part of his life, capturing every moment like the angel writing his Book of Life.

  She was eager to get started. There were two photographs of Ali in the file. One was a passport photograph showing a man in his late forties with short black hair, greying on the sides. He was clean-shaven and sported frameless glasses which would have been more appropriate for a person half his age. The second photograph was a surveillance shot of Ali, taken at the airport. The picture showed a man dressed in traditional Muslim wear and sporting a black beard and cap. He was looking directly at the surveillance camera which had photographed him, and one almost got the impression that he knew he was being photographed, but didn’t care.

  The briefing document indicated that Ali had begun his criminal career in his twenties, using a network of contacts at some of the biggest banks in South Africa to transfer funds from stolen cheques and credit cards into front companies. These companies then borrowed huge sums of money from unsuspecting banks and it was suspected this money was used to build a protective layer around the enterprise. This layer included the recruitment of high-ranking police officers, prosecutors, customs officials and other civil servants. Ali, by the early 1990s, was the most notorious figure in shipping-container theft in Durban, and eventually even his competitors realised the only way they would survive in the industry was by working for him. The result was a well-oiled and well-protected multi-million-rand industry, which was well documented, but near impossible to dismantle.

  A dozen containers worth over a million rands disappeared into the night every week, while shipping clerks, drivers and security personnel greeted investigators with a shrug of the shoulders or a wry smile. Ali’s mixture of fear and reward was a perfect recipe for cooperation. Those who worked with the operation were reimbursed well. Those who were disloyal met a nasty end. In 1997, a truck driver refused to divert his load of electrical equipment to a warehouse as ordered by the syndicate, and he was found the next day beside his burnt-out truck on a farm road. He had been forced to drink petrol, then set alight. The few attempts by the police to investigate Ali were neutralised at the early stages. Mojo, Ali’s security consultant and close protector, was once a SAPS officer on a team which was close to arresting Ali. He had boasted to his colleagues that Ali had tripled his salary and given him a car. Mojo had his own network of contacts within the SAPS, who gave him weekly updates on the progress of any investigations which might threaten the operation.

  Amina read through all the notes Durant and Shezi had made on the target-analysis report. It was clear that Ali was above the operational level of the syndicate on which the daily criminal processes were put into effect. He had outgrown hands-on management of the operation and relied on his lieutenants to ensure the enterprise continued to operate efficiently. A motivation attached to the briefing indicated that the intention of the eavesdropping operation was to link Ali to a specific criminal act as a co-conspirator, hand over the information to SAPS investigators, who would make the arrest, and then use the Prevention of Organised Crime Act to ensure he was jailed for the maximum period. Emphasis was placed on the element of surprise and unpredictability. Ali’s security wing could only respond to known threats. The NIA’s approach would be stealthy and clandestine, undetectable until it was too late for Ali. The SAPS would not be involved in the investigation until close to the end, when a group of handpicked detectives would take the court-related evidence and present it to the Prosecuting Authority. Amina smiled when she realised that Durant was surely going to be Ali’s worst nightmare – he had the persistence of a pit bull terrier and the integrity of a high-court judge, a formidable combination.

  The monitoring room at the NIA was a quiet and warm area. Operational assistants stared at computer monitors, headphones on, and wrote notes. Amina always arrived early so that by 7 a.m. she could quickly catch up on the evening’s conversations and skip through the video-feed file to see if there was any activity. The operation had run for three weeks, and Amina hadn’t seen or heard from Ali. The video feed from his office remained motionless, and the audio feed produced
only the sound of unanswered telephones ringing, birds singing outside and the occasional aircraft flying overhead. Conspiracy theories began plaguing her. Had Ali somehow received knowledge of the interception operation? Was his enterprise connected all the way to the office of the judge who had approved the interception? Impossible, she thought. Ali was known to spend periods overseas and travelling the country. Passport control hadn’t picked him up leaving the country and a low-echelon source indicated that Ali was ‘around’ and busy. The surveillance unit also failed to detect Ali and it was clear he wasn’t at any of the obvious places in Durban.

  Amina had no way of knowing Ali was, in fact, in Cape Town. He’d returned from a world circuit, visiting countries most tourists don’t visit, using a passport that wasn’t his, and doing deals with powerful – and evil – men. He hadn’t planned to spend three weeks in Cape Town when he returned, but something happened which demanded his personal attention.

  He met a man called Joe Vitoli. Ali was initially sceptical of Vitoli. He had arrived from the US and introduced himself as the sales director of Cimex Corporation, a specialised manufacturer from which Ali had ordered a consignment of electronic components. Ali specifically stated in the order, for which he’d also placed a substantial deposit in cash, that no technical or other assistance was necessary, as his client had the required skill and technical expertise to install the purchased components in their existing equipment. Vitoli’s presence surprised him and it was difficult for Ali to refuse the meeting.

  Vitoli was a bear of a man in his early fifties who habitually ran his hand over his bald head and frowned deep furrows into his forehead.

  ‘Mr Ali, it’s our company’s policy to inspect the equipment you’re putting our components into.’

  ‘I know it’s a policy. But is it mandatory? My clients want discretion.’

  ‘Discretion worries me. There’re maniacs out there who’d use these damn components for all the wrong things.’

  Ali took off his glasses for effect and looked at Vitoli scornfully. ‘What do you mean by that, Mr Vitoli, are you questioning my bona fides?’