Why You Were Taken

THE UNHOLY TRINITY ₃₂

Johannesburg, 2021

The dogs’ barking is deafening now, but there’s not a dog in sight. White spikes etch into Kirsten’s vision and she has to close her eyes.

‘It was him online, I was sure!’

‘Maybe it was him, but with a gun to his head.’

Seth realises that the sound is a recording, playing on loop. There must be speakers hidden in the unkempt garden. The front door opens, the security gate is unlocked in three different places, and out walks a chubby young cappuccino-skinned man with tinted spectacles. He pushes them up on his nose and squints at his guests. He’s carrying a game console that he touches, and the barking stops. Another button turns on calming white noise: a waterfall, birds, a rumble of thunder.

‘Hello,’ he says, ‘sorry about the dogs, and the gate. I programmed it myself and I’m still ironing out some of the kinks. Or, I was. I’m a procrastinator. A paranoid procrastinator.’ When they still don’t move or talk, he comes out further along the driveway, looking left to right as if to cross the road. His hands remain on the console.

‘I’m Marko,’ he says to Kirsten, then blushes. ‘Obviously.’

He’s wearing a Talking Tee shirt a size too small that stretches over his doughy belly. It has a simple animation of a panting Chihauhau and says: ‘My favourite frequency is 50,000 Hz’. When he turns around to lead them inside the back of the shirt says: ‘You’ve probably never heard it before.’

‘Come in,’ he says. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’

His room – the basement – is wall-to-wall glass screens, blinking projector lights, drives, processors. There is a constant white hum and it smells like powdered sugar. The walls are papered with posters of T-Rex jokes, incomprehensible maths formulae, and one with a picture of a pretty planet. It says: ‘God created Saturn and he liked it, so he put a ring on it.’

Nerdgasm, thinks Kirsten, nudging Seth.

‘Your kind of guy.’

He makes a ha-ha face. She spots a brooding woman on the wall, black and white, thinks she kind of recognises her.

‘Vintage movie star?’ she asks Marko. He momentarily stops smashing his keyboard with his stubby fingers.

‘That,’ he says, ‘is Hedy Lemarr.’

Her face is blank.

‘Lemarr was a remarkable woman and I will love her forever.’

Okay, that’s not weird, thinks Kirsten.

‘She was the most beautiful woman in Europe in the 40s, starred in 35 films, one of which was the first portrayal of a female orgasm ever, and a math genius. She invented frequency hopping spread!’

‘That’s wifi,’ says Seth. ‘Wireless internet.’

‘Never heard of it,’ Kirsten says, but is impressed nonetheless, specifically at the intensity of his geekdom. She is surprised he doesn’t have a neckbeard, or giant gaming thumbs.

‘So your timing is excellent,’ he says, using his handset as a wireless pointer to open a browser on the main projection, revealing the photo of the college students and allowing the program to run, showing which facial features were isolated to run a match.

‘This FusiformG has the most amazing features baked in. You won’t believe the results. Who the creeps are, in the photo, I mean.’ He pushes his glasses up again. ‘It’s huge. It’s, like, cosmic. No wonder they’re trying to cover it up.’

‘Marko?’ comes a feminine, distinctly Hindi voice from the top of the stairs. Marko rolls his eyes.

‘Not now, Ma!’ he says. ‘I’m having a meeting!’

‘Marko?’ she calls, closer now.

‘Ma!’ he says, ‘I’m busy!’

An eruption of gold-trimmed indigo at the bottom of the stairs.

‘I thought I heard voices!’ she beams. A handsome woman in a sari bright enough to spike your eyes out, holding a silver tray full of deep-fried goodness. Smoky ribbons of scent: cumin, turmeric, cardamom billow towards them. Kirsten blinks, wonders briefly if she is hallucinating.

‘Marko, you should have told me you were expecting visitors. I would have cooked dosa!’

He blushes, stalks up to her, takes the tray, bangs it down on a crowded desk. A designer toy – a Murakami – falls over. Kirsten gently rights it.

‘Thank you,’ she says, ‘I’m starving.’

‘It’s just a little plate of eats, nothing special,’ the woman smiles.

‘Thanks, Ma,’ Marko mutters, steering her towards the stairs. ‘I’ll see you later, okay?’

‘You’re too skinny!’ she says, pointing to Seth. ‘I’m making beans, if you want to stay for dinner.’

Once Seth sees samoosas on the platter he laughs out loud. It was refreshing to see an old cultural stereotype played out in real life. South Africa had become so cosmopolitan that it was rare to see, say, an Afrikaner farmer in a two-tone shirt wearing a comb in his khaki socks, or a coloured fisherman missing his front teeth. He celebrates this by eating a samoosa that burns his mouth. Excellent, he thinks.

‘As I was saying,’ Marko sighs, then looks excited again: ‘Cosmic.’

FusiformG automatically opens browsers on three of the other screens, one for each of the faces, and the first two identities are revealed: blip, blip. The software is still searching for the third face. Cross-referenced with hundreds of televised interviews, PR shots and virtual news articles. Kirsten and Seth stare at the matches.

‘Shut the front door,’ whispers Kirsten.

The first man, good looking, smiles back at them with his perfect teeth.

‘This is…’ begins Marko, but Seth cuts him off.

‘Christopher Walden,’ says Seth, ‘Founder and CEO of Fontus.’

‘Then,’ continues Marko: ‘Thabile Siceka, the Minister of Health.’

‘No,’ says Kirsten, in disbelief.

‘The third face is taking a while… could be that the third person isn’t as well known or photographed as much as the first two. Maybe the shy one, staying out of the limelight.’

‘So, we have the CEO of one of the biggest, most successful corporates in the country, and the minister of fucking health. Industry, government, and what we can probably guess is some kind of academic, doctor or scientist. Reach and power to do anything. The Trinity.’

‘The Holy Trinity,’ says Marko.

‘More like the Fucking Unholy Trinity,’ says Kirsten.

‘But we still don’t know WHY. Why the kidnappings, why the murders,’ says Seth, ‘and why now?’

‘We need to focus on finding Keke. She’s got,’ Kirsten looks at her watch, ‘maybe three hours left before she…’

‘That’s if they haven’t killed her already,’ says Seth, and they both glare at him. He spins the ring on his finger.

‘Where do we even start?’

The room is quiet.

‘Marko?’ comes his mother’s voice from up the stairs again. ‘Marko? Would your friends like a mango lassi?’

‘There’s one person that can help us find the Trinity HQ,’ says Kirsten, as they jog to the car. ‘Someone that’s not involved in the Genesis Project. Someone who would want justice done.’

The gate opens and the barking starts again. Once they’re on the road, Kirsten takes her mother’s letter out of her pocket and reads it to Seth.

‘Ed Miller is his name. There’s an address. Melville. He has the packet of information. Everything we need to know about what the Genesis Project is and why we were taken.’

The car is redolent with curried potato and coriander. Marko’s mother wouldn’t let them leave empty-handed and packed them a Tupperware take-away, along with some gold-coloured paper serviettes, despite her son’s embarrassed protestations.

Kirsten is quiet, anxious they won’t find Keke in time, or, as Seth had said, worried that the worst had already happened. Tears sting her eyes but she blinks them away, opens the window to get some fresh air. It’s a strange sensation to her: tears. Little lines like pins dance in the top half of her vision. She doesn’t remember the last time she cried. Had she ever cried? She breathes in deeply, swallows the warm lead in her throat, looks out the window at the ChinaCity/Sandton skyline. Seth catches himself thinking about the future. He wouldn’t be able to go back to his ordinary life after this. What would he do? What would it be like?

That’s if we survive today, thinks Kirsten, which is looking increasingly unlikely.

They stop at a red light in the middle of the CBD. A man dressed in filth appears out of nowhere and peers into the passenger side, giving Kirsten a shock.

‘Jesus,’ she says, in fright, ‘I’m not used to seeing beggars anymore.’ A gun appears in the ragman’s hand.

Oh, she thinks.

His wrist is inked with prison scrawls. A Crim Colony graduate. In other words: an ex-con, or in this case: a con.

‘Out,’ he barks, shaking the weapon at her. She tries to go for her handbag, reach for her own gun, but the man loads the mechanism and something tells her that he won’t hesitate to put a bullet in her brain. She puts her hands up.

‘You have got to be kidding me!’ shouts Seth, flames in his cheeks. ‘Not today!’ he shouts at the hijacker, ‘not today! You can fucking HAVE the car tomorrow, but not today!’

‘Out,’ says the man, his voice iced with violence.

‘Fuck!’ shouts Seth, hitting the steering wheel, ‘Fuck you!’ he gets out, slams the door, sending a lightning bolt of silver through Kirsten. Kicks the car door, kicks the tyre.

‘I need my handbag,’ says Kirsten to the hijacker, ‘and that other bag. It’s medicine. I’m keeping both bags, you take the car.’

The man is annoyed, looks around: This is taking too much time. Kirsten unzips the insulin, shows him, but he searches her handbag himself, takes her Ruger with a loud whistle, and her empty slimpurse. He throws both bags onto the road and Kirsten scoops them up off the tar, picking up the lipstick taser and keeping it hidden in her palm. The hijacker loses focus for a moment as he tries to start the car; lowers his gun-hand. Kirsten tasers him; is surprised by the force of the current. A thin blue line connects them for a second (Electric Sapphire), and then he slumps back.

‘Holy fuck!’ she says.

His gun clatters onto the road, his eyes roll back.

‘Is he dead?’ she asks. Seth opens the car door, pulls the slack body out, leaves him on the shoulder of the road. It doesn’t escape his attention that this is the second time he has pulled a limp body out of a car in the last 6 hours. He inspects the man’s gun, a semi-automatic, and finds it empty. Throws it into the car. Passes Kirsten her Ruger.

‘I don’t know, don’t care,’ he says. ‘Let’s go find Ed Miller.’