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River Road and Ballantrae.’
    â€˜Spell that please.’
    â€˜ B-A-L-L-A-N-T-R-A-E .’
    â€˜Got it. Thanks.’
    Still parked in the emergency lane, De Villiers powered up his MacBook and opened Google Maps. Within seconds he had Kawerau on the screen. He found the intersection quickly. It was in the middle of the town near the river. He sat back and thought about the decision he had made.
    He was a policeman, but this was a military operation. The people who had abducted Zoë were soldiers, of that he was convinced. You cannot fight soldiers with a policeman’s methods. Too many constraints. Too many rules. Too many agencies looking over your shoulder to ensure that no one’s civil rights are infringed. In his capacity as policeman, De Villiers was disqualified from participating in any investigation. Just as well, he thought, because here I want to act like a soldier. Policemen take prisoners. They have to. But a soldier is employed to kill.
    De Villiers folded his arms and stared at the screen. His eyes lost their focus. In the web of streets and houses on the screen, he saw himself as he thought he knew himself. He spoke aloud without realising he was doing so. ‘From now on, I play by the rules of war.’
    De Villiers looked at his watch again. It would be twenty-four hours before he could speak to Zoë again. He returned his focus to the computer screen and tapped with his finger on the intersection. It looked like any other small town in New Zealand.

Thursday, 18 June 2009
9
    They also misjudged Weber, but for completely different reasons. Johann Weber SC was a respected senior advocate – the letters SC after his name stood for Senior Counsel – and they thought that he would stay within the law and would respond to the kidnapping of his wife by reporting the matter to the police and leaving it in their hands.
    But they were wrong.
    Weber came from Baltic stock. His ancestors had sailed the northern seas when Lübeck and Hamburg were but tiny settlements and all communication with those on land was lost the moment a ship disappeared over the horizon. His ancestors had survived at least three sackings of Hamburg by a succession of invaders, from the Vikings to the Poles to the Allied bombers of Hitler’s War. Each time the Webers had returned and had rebuilt their city. Each time they had built it better and higher than it had been before the fires. Among his ancestors were men who were prepared to face the unknown dangers of the icy waters right up to the Barents Sea. His mother had come to South Africa in the captain’s quarters of a U -boat, surrounded by rough men and facing an uncertain trek across the desert, but had not once complained. The Webers were not prone to fear, and Johann Weber was not a man to leave a problem unsolved or a challenge unanswered.
    As he stood at his window looking out over the harbour, a truck carrying a Hamburg Süd container made its way through the slow-moving traffic. Weber remembered that he had met his wife in Hamburg. Container shipping was in its infancy, and Hamburg Süd had flown him out to Hamburg to advise on the readiness of the port in Durban to handle containerised cargo. Weber had looked right instead of left crossing the road and had been knocked down by a taxi. The arbitrage nurse in the emergency room had laughed at his accent when he spoke German and had teased him. ‘Your German is old fashioned,’ Liesl had said. ‘Grammatically correct, but very old fashioned, like my grandfather’s.’
    Weber had been in pain and was short on humour. ‘I didn’t come here for a lecture on my German,’ he said. ‘I’m hurting.’
    â€˜Oh my,’ she had said. ‘Can’t stand a little pain. Perhaps you should be more careful, then, when you cross the road.’
    Weber could never get her to take him seriously. When he berated the boys for some misdemeanour, she would