The Fateful Date (eBook)

A Fabel Retief Thriller, Book 4

Meiring Fouche, Pieter Haasbroek (Autoren)

Pieter Haasbroek (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
118 Seiten
Pieter Haasbroek (Verlag)
9780000923035 (ISBN)

Infos

He was searching for adventure.

He found a tombstone in a wasteland.

In the desolate wasteland of South West Africa, a place locals call the Coast of Death, stands a grand, fortified mansion that has no right to exist. For retired detective Fabel Retief, it's a mystery too tempting to ignore. But the house is not as empty as it seems, and its secrets are protected by a man who will kill to keep them buried.

Inside, Fabel finds a brilliant, secretive German professor and his beautiful, terrified wife. His relentless curiosity unearths a sunken WWII ship packed with rifles, a ruthless gun-running scheme fueling a bloody uprising, and a conspiracy of lies and murder. Trapped, hunted, and marked for death, Fabel is the only thing standing between a cold-blooded mastermind and an entire region being plunged into chaos.

A classic, high-octane adventure thriller that will leave you breathless. Perfect for fans of Alistair MacLean, Wilbur Smith, and heart-pounding pulp fiction.

You know the name. You know the risks. Now, prepare for the showdown. The Fateful Date is the explosive fourth chapter in the Fabel Retief saga you can't afford to miss.

Textauszug

4. THE FATEFUL DATE

Chapter 1

The shadow of the tall, slender man falls far, for it is late in the afternoon. He walks cautiously and attentively across the silent yard. Now and then he stops and looks around him.

Before him, he sees an incredible sight. A colossal house in this desolate world that is virtually a desert. This house must stand at least one hundred and fifty miles from the nearest white civilisation. If it is not much more than that.

It is a large house and completely deserted. It looks almost as if the one who built it here had actually intended to build a castle. It has a giant veranda with a series of impressive pillars. The porches are wide. It is a double-storey place with heavy wooden shutters in front of the windows. It has a few old-fashioned turrets that remind one of houses from the latter part of the previous century.

But what is most striking is that the house is completely deserted. There is not the faintest sign of life. Everything is apparently buttoned up. Only on one side of the house are there two windows whose shutters are open. The tall man wonders how anyone could have built such a palace in this part of the world. How did the man get his materials transported here and what, in fact, was the intention of erecting such a house here?

It makes one wonder, because this strange house with its heavy shutters and its turrets, which look impressive even in their desolation, stands in a God-forsaken world in a remote corner of South West Africa, not far from the Kunene River. It is situated in the corner formed by the Kunene and the sea. To the north of this place runs the Kunene and to the west of it lies the sea. And between this place and the sea is the Seekus van die Dood.

The tall fellow is now not quite sure himself what he has come here to do. Perhaps it is curiosity, perhaps it is adventure that has driven him here. He has driven far to get here. And here, as he now walks across the deserted yard in the direction of the front door, he thinks again of the talk around the campfire the night before last. Then, everything was so pleasant and cheerful. Then, they were a whole group of friends together. Now, it is just him. He and his shadow in the yard of the deserted house.

The front gate hangs crookedly on its hinges. It has apparently long been in disuse, and yet it was once a neat front gate between the two impressive granite pillars. One of the pillars now stands completely askew. In places the fence around the house already lies flat and in other places it threatens to fall over.

The visitor comes to a stop before the porch. Then he looks up at the house attentively. Here and there the plaster is beginning to fall away. Some of the pillars under the veranda have large cracks in them. A thick layer of dust lies on the porch.

He shivers where he stands. He is now a little sorry that he did not bring someone with him. This is not the kind of adventure one likes to go through alone. He thinks of all the talk the other night…

He is back at the campfire. He sits there in the company of six farmers from South West. Pleasant, cheerful and exciting men. During the day they had a successful hunt. The biltong has been cut out. It is already hanging under the trees. And now they have finished eating. Barbeque, strong black coffee, and butter and bread.

Actually, it is his good friend Gerhard Maree who brought it up in connection with the old house. But he, who now stands here before the house, had provided the real impetus for it.

“What is there in these parts that is strange?” he had asked. “That is to say, apart from the Etosha Pan. Is there not something here I can go and see? I have allowed myself six weeks of vacation and I would like to visit interesting places.”

“Have you heard of the lonely house?” Gerhard Maree then asked.

“No,” answered the tall visitor from the Republic. “Where is it?”

And then Gerhard Maree told him the fantastic story of the deserted house far in the north-western corner of South West. A house that has been seen by very few people. A house that has become a kind of legend. And a house that is apparently feared by the natives so that they do not go near it.

The story unfolds of an old German prospector who settled in those parts years ago. He had apparently prospected so successfully that he decided to spend a considerable time there. He liked solitude, seclusion, and the region where he worked. He received special permission and, with great difficulty and patience, built the house. It is said that the building materials were still transported there by ox-wagon in those days. He built the house himself with the help of a few assistants, and it took him nearly two years before it was completed.

And then came the tragedy. Actually, so it is told, the old German prospector built the beautiful place for his wife, who had always been in Germany, and when it was all finished, she refused to come and live there.

The natives say that the old man died there. Without kith or kin, without a soul near him. They only found him dead later in one of the rooms of the old house. At least, they found his skeleton there. There are rumours that he was murdered. There are other rumours that he took his own life. But be that as it may, the old German prospector never left his house again.

“And now,” Fabel Retief asks there by the campfire, for that is the name of the tall, slender man who now stands here in the yard.

At that moment, his friend, Gerhard Maree, had looked at him a little mysteriously.

“Well,” says Gerhard Maree. “I will tell you what they say now, they claim that the place is inhabited again.”

“Inhabited?” asks Fabel. “And by whom, I wonder?”

“No one seems to know,” Gerhard had answered. “It is said that there are indeed people in the house, but no one seems to know who they are or what they are doing.”

“That sounds interesting,” Fabel had said. “I feel like going to have a look.”

“My dear man,” says one of the farmers, “do you know where the place is? It is almost against the Kunene and almost against the sea. It is not a stone’s throw from here. It is a wild, rugged world. Uninhabited, demanding, waterless.”

“A world after my own heart,” says Fabel and looks at Gerhard Maree who, in the years gone by, had served with him in the South African Detective Service. Now Gerhard Maree is a successful cattle farmer here in the northwest of South West Africa. And he, Fabel, is a retired detective who specialises in tropical fruits in the Eastern Transvaal. He had missed Gerhard so much that he had to come and visit him. Besides, he wanted to come and hunt a bit, and so it happened that the two and a few other farmers were gathered around the campfire that evening. So it happened that Gerhard Maree and the others told him about the deserted house on this side of the Kunene.

Fabel Retief had asked Gerhard Maree to accompany him. But for Gerhard it was unfortunately impossible. Therefore, he decided to come alone. He equipped himself thoroughly with food, water, ammunition and fuel. He had almost overloaded his large jeep for this trip.

To the best of his ability, Gerhard Maree had indicated to Fabel where the place was located. And they had drawn up a detailed map of the route.

“Are you sure you want to go, old friend?” Gerhard had asked before he left. “You know it is a dangerous world. If you don’t know it, you can easily get into trouble.”

“Yes, I want to go,” Fabel had answered, because one of Fabel’s strongest qualities is that he loves the unknown, the adventurous, the strange, the mysterious. And he knows how to conduct himself when he enters a strange and mysterious region. He can find his way by the stars. He can defend himself if necessary. And this story of the strange house was perfectly suited to his tastes.

Fabel Retief walks slowly up the porch. He looks down at the layer of dust, but he perceives no tracks there. He turns and listens. He hears no sound. Then he looks out over the surroundings. It is a beautiful world for those who have an eye for it. Rolling plains with white grass and here and there a deep depression. The flatness of the terrain is broken by ranges of hills, and further on strange mountains that are purple in the late light.

But more than the beauty is the complete desolation. Here where he stands, it feels to him as if he is finally cut off from the rest of the world. Not even the smoke of a native’s fire is visible. Everything is silent. Everything has petrified in silence. The only faint movement there is, is the barely perceptible stirring in the tops of the grass, for a light wind has risen. He looks up into the sky to see if he cannot see a bird circling. But even that he does not observe. The sky too is still and desolate.

Without expecting to get an answer, he walks to the front door and knocks on it. It is a massive front door of solid wood, but it too bears the signs of neglect. The large brass knob is tarnished blue. The heavy door knocker is likewise tarnished because no hand has surely cleaned it in years.

Strange, as he waits before the front door in the hope that someone will come to open it, he wonders where the bones of the German prospector lie. Would they have removed them from the house or would they still be here? And was the man really a prospector? So the questions run through his mind, because he is a former detective and for everything he seeks a solution. Behind everything he sees a deeper meaning.

But after his first knock on the door, he waits in vain. He hears no footsteps and no one comes to open up. He knocks again. This...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 18.9.2025
• Übersetzer: Pieter Haasbroek, Ai
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-13: 9780000923035 / 9780000923035