Land of Second Chances by Lewis Tim

Author:Lewis, Tim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House

7

BLACK MAGIC

The men came on a Sunday evening – 31 May 2009 – a little after six. They knew to come then. The coach, JP Van Zyl, had stopped by the apartment in Potchefstroom a few minutes before to drop off training programmes for the next week and the MTN Cycling riders would be alone in the house, relaxing before dinner. JP always told them to lock the gates, but they were forever zipping in and out with their bicycles, so they did not always remember. Tonight the gates were wide open.

When the four men came in, Adrien Niyonshuti was in his bedroom; the sun was beginning to dip, so he had laid his mat down and he was preparing for maghrib, the fourth of his five daily prayers. When he heard raised voices in the living area, he didn’t investigate. He locked his room and climbed inside his cupboard, balled up like a foetus. The Zambians, Jupiter Nameembo and Trust Munangandu, were in their shared room. Nathan Byukusenge, the other Rwandan, was chatting with his Algerian team-mate, Hichem Chabane; Hichem spoke Arabic, Berber and French, Nathan had Kinyarwanda and a little English, but somehow they muddled through. Hichem was young, only twenty years old, but the most senior rider in the house, the only full member of MTN Cycling. He had finished fifth in the 2008 African Continental Championships and had represented Algeria the same year at the Olympic Games in Beijing. A spirited climber, he had been identified as one of the best young talents on the continent.

He had also just been fired. Since arriving in South Africa, perhaps enjoying a freedom he didn’t have in Blida, the affluent colonial-era city where he lived with his parents, he had taken to spending his evenings in Potchefstroom’s bars with other Algerian expatriates. His form dropped off alarmingly and the team boss Douglas Ryder had told him that they were sending him home on Tuesday.

Suddenly four men stood in front of Hichem and Nathan; they wore balaclavas and gloves and carried knives. For a moment, Nathan wasn’t scared, he thought it must be a prank. He could only see their eyes and in their black outfits they reminded him of ninjas from kung-fu movies. But the men spoke with an easy but menacing familiarity to Hichem and, though Nathan could not understand the words, he knew that something was wrong. Jupiter and Trust were rounded up and dragged into the living room, but the men never found Adrien or couldn’t be bothered to break down the door to get to him.

The men, it turned out, were impressively briefed on the riders. They knew that they didn’t have work permits and that they didn’t have bank accounts. They knew they were paid in cash and, what they didn’t send home, they kept in their rooms. Each rider had been given a laptop and a mobile phone by the team. Hichem, because of his greater experience, earned more than the others and had just bought his own computer to take home to Algeria.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.