Read A Sailor's Honour for Free Online Page B

slowed down to look. De Villiers was aware of the fact that Emma had lost most members of her family in such an event. Her father was the only one left, and he refused to leave.
    But Emma had left her home behind, and it had worked to De Villiers’s advantage, because that was how he was able to meet her when they were both in London. Having fled from the countries of their respective births, they had fallen into each other’s arms with the desperation of the lonely and the lost.
    Emma did not often cry, but she was crying now.
    â€˜Okay,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to go.’
    She turned to face him. She knew him as well as he knew her. She knew that, just as much as she would not leave her home until her child had been found, De Villiers wouldn’t stop searching until he had found Zoë, no matter what official restrictions or prohibitions there might be against his being personally involved. They were personally involved. It was their child, not some stranger’s. ‘Promise me you will be careful,’ she said.
    â€˜I will,’ he said.
    They found comfort in their lovemaking. Neither found it odd that they could make love under such circumstances.
    De Villiers woke up early. He could hear Emma in the kitchen and knew she would be bringing him coffee and a biscuit. There was something wrong with the scenario and it had kept him awake long after he and Emma had made up. Now, with the sun up, the question surfaced more clearly. What did Liesl Weber have to do with any of this? Or put another way, how could she possibly be involved?
    De Villiers had got to know Liesl Weber well. Less than a year before, he had spent nearly three months in her house. She had looked after him as if she were his personal nurse when he was undergoing radiation therapy for his cancer. On days when Johann Weber needed his car, she had driven De Villiers to the Oncology Centre and had waited for him in the reception area when he was called in for his turn under the radiation machine. It was Liesl Weber who had talked him out of his misery and self-pity, who told him that cancer was not the end of the world, that he should fight it as if it were an enemy soldier on his spoor. And on the subject of spoor, it was she who had traced !Xau, his bushman companion on a long trek though the Kalahari when he had been hunted by soldiers of 32 Batallion, to Schmidtsdrift, and it was she who had accompanied him to see !Xau. It was Liesl Weber who had helped him to find closure of a sort by persuading him that, although his memory of the events that followed his flight through the Kalahari was fragmented, it wasn’t inaccurate. The existence of !Xau was proof of that.
    He owed Liesl Weber.
    The smell of coffee interrupted his thoughts. He opened his eyes to find Emma next to the bed.
    â€˜What have you decided?’ she asked.
    He sat up. ‘There’s something odd about Liesl being abducted at exactly the same time as Zoë,’ he said. ‘It must mean something. I just can’t work out what.’
    Emma nodded and sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘There must be something common to the two of you,’ she said. ‘Could it be something you did together?’
    The question was too vague to have an answer and De Villiers thought of something else. ‘Last year,’ he said, ‘just before I was to catch my flight, they arrived at Liesl’s home looking for me. She lied to them, saying she didn’t know where I was, but then she and Johann arranged for me to catch an earlier flight, which I did.’
    Emma was nonplussed and stood up. ‘Are you telling me that these people were looking for you last year already? You didn’t tell me.’
    â€˜I’ve told you before, Emma, that there are things that you don’t need to know.’
    She interrupted him. ‘When those things, as you call them, affect me or my daughter, or even you, I am entitled to