Like a good beverage, a good book holds promise from the first sip. This extract is used with the permission of Pan Macmillan South Africa.
About the author
Deon Meyer (Will Punt Peartree Photography)
Deon Meyer is based in Stellenbosch and has published seventeen novels and two short story collections. Deon’s books are published in twenty-eight languages in more than forty countries worldwide and have received numerous local and international accolades. He has also written several series for television and four screenplays for feature films, as well as producing and directing movies in Afrikaans.
About the book
Title: Scorpio rising
Author: Deon Meyer
ISBN: 9781770109735
Publisher: Pan Macmillan South Africa.
First Sip: Extract from page 1
Tuesday, 6 June, Metropol Hotel, Moscow
She stood facing the large mirror in the spacious bathroom, holding the lipstick tube, then applied the colour to her lips. Automatic actions from ingrained habit. Her thoughts were on tomorrow, though at the same time she felt in her body the tight coil of suppressed tension.
She knew it was all down to her anticipation of the next day’s meeting, in spite of all the usual political foreplay and her thorough preparation. This time, the Russians … It was as though their joviality, the volume of their hospitality and warmth had been dialled down a notch.
Did they suspect her motives, why she was here? Or was it simply the effect of their war with Ukraine on the Russian psyche? Or was it that everything had changed since her last visit, a decade earlier, when she had been the Deputy Director General of Nuclear Power Regulation and Management? The political landscape in both countries – and worldwide – looked very different now. She was new, her Russian counterparts as well, and there were no established contacts and trusted relationships between them.
It was going to be a difficult day. It would require delicate handling. She hadn’t come here to damage South Africa’s interests. On the contrary. She was here to insist on her country’s interests. And those of the next of kin. She would set an ultimatum. Diplomatically.
Definitively.
How would they respond?
That was the big question.
She twisted the lipstick shut, weighed up how she looked. Her mostly grey hair was hidden under the cheerful multicoloured headscarf. Her slim figure wrapped in the bright, heavy cotton Xhosa-style umbhaco dress. Still barefoot, her shoes ready beside one of the armchairs in the Deluxe Suite.
Good enough for an evening at the Great Moscow State Circus, she thought. She checked her Apple watch. Time to meet her PA and the Russian attaché in the lobby. She walked out into the bedroom. Through the open window she could hear the hum of the early evening traffic in the broad Teatral’nyy Proyezd thoroughfare. It was still light outside. She looked out at Revolution Square again, the Vitali Fountain and the brooding, chunky Karl Marx monument.
This area of the city always reminded her of Paris. The wide boulevards, three-storey architecture.
She shut the window, picked up her handbag from the bed, walked into the sitting room to slip on her shoes.
She heard the beep of an electronic lock, assuming it was the room next door. Her own room door opened. Shockingly, unexpected.
They entered. Six men. Huge and ruthless.
She gasped for breath, stared dumbly at them.
The first man grabbed her, pressed a hand over her mouth.
Her name was Aishah Fernandez. She was sixty-two years old.