Текст книги "Kruger's Alp"

Автор книги: Christopher Hope

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

‘Jesus, what a bunch of tits we must look!’ he remembered Ferreira fumed.

Blanchaille answered Van Vuuren, ‘How long? Not since we were living history.’

‘Living history! We were dying of embarrassment,’ Van Vuuren said. ‘He claimed he was trying to make us understand the roles we played.’

Blanchaille remembered how they had shuffled and glowered and banged their rifle butts on the ground. ‘I never felt a bit like a Boer.’

‘Lynch never cared about our feelings. He made us pretend because he knew that’s what we did best. Lynch wanted us to understand that our lives were all play-acting. There was nothing real about them. He wanted us to see that all we lived for was to pretend to be what we weren’t. Your role, Blanchie, has always reminded me of St Paul. You remember the trouble with St Paul, don’t you? He spent all those years persecuting Christians for being Christian and then he got converted and spent the rest of his life persecuting them for not being Christian enough. And for that he was canonised by his grateful victims. God’s policeman, old Paul was. And you’re another. Why do you think Lynch always insisted that you’d gone to police college and refused to accept that you were in the Seminary? The dogmatic, policeman-like qualities in you, were what he saw. Look at your life! You went into the camps and you gave the Regime hell for treating people like garbage. You attacked the Church, your own church, at every turn for failing in its responsibility. Then you took to touring the country like a wandering madman demanding that the camps be bulldozed. Then you were given a church and you stood up in the pulpit and addressed your parishioners like the investigating officer. You stood up there to unmask the villain, like the tiny Flemish tax inspector or the seemingly genial ex-nun in the detective yarn unmasking the totally unsuspected killer. You expected them to stand up and confess. Instead, like Makapan, they lost their tempers and besieged your house. Well, what did you expect? You’ve lived the investigating life, you’ve taken the high moral ground, you’ve gone after the culprits, the criminals. Your vocation is to bring the guilty ones to book, you’re the holy detective, the righteous sleuth. And where’s it got you? Nowhere. It’s done nothing for you – except to ruin you. You’ve taken the drugs this country offers – moral outrage, angry condemnation – and they’ve wrecked you. You’re on your last legs and you’re going down, you’re going out.’

‘And you? I suppose you know better,’ Blanchaille said angrily.

‘I joined the police because I believed I would find out what was really going on. You know what it’s like. Under the Regime everything important is called a police matter, history is a police matter. All presidents as far back as Babbelas and Breker have also held the portfolio of Minister of Police. You know the argument – the State is an instrument of God. Its security is a matter of divine concern. The police are the mediators between the Almighty and the citizen. I believed it. We all believed it.’

‘Of course.’

‘But Blanchie, what if it isn’t true?’

‘You mean it isn’t true?’

‘Not entirely. That’s the thing. Nothing is entirely true. Or entirely anything. I began to learn that as a rookie cop when they put me on surveillance in a department called “foreign friends”. Now that alone was an eye-opener. I thought we didn’t have any foreign friends. Or need them. Or want them. We were the Albania of the South. Our foreign policy was to tell everyone to go and get stuffed. But that’s wrong! We’ve got loads of foreign friends. That’s why President Bubé went on his whirlwind foreign tour. He wasn’t foisting himself on his hosts in the capitals of Europe. He was returning calls! We do have foreign friends. Lots. And I was detailed to watch over them. Once they came singly: businessmen, politicians – here to collect their bribes to arrange shipments of materials we needed like planes or football teams. But soon we had so many foreign friends they took block bookings and came on chartered flights calling themselves the Patagonian Hockey Team and were taken away in buses with darkened windows. I got assigned to one of these teams. The papers usually got the story after the new arrivals had been spirited away and ran headlines like: VICTORY FOR GOVERNMENT SPORTS POLICY: PATAGONIANS TO TOUR! This led to world-wide protests and the Patagonians would flatly deny that any of their teams was playing in South Africa. By then the ‘team’ had disappeared. I looked after a team who wore baseball caps the wrong way round, with the peaks down their necks. Or yarmulkas. And they’d get drunk with the township girls and cause us a lot of trouble. They worked in a camp in the mountains outside the capital. It turned out that the language they were speaking was Hebrew and they were scientists of some sort. I went to my superiors and said, “Look there’s a colony of Jewish scientists working in the mountains.” “Nonsense,” my superiors said. “They’re not Jews, they’re Israelis. And this conversation did not take place.” I was sent to another camp about five miles away. This one was a very different kettle of fish. It was full of Chinese. Now wasn’t that strange? I mean we don’t even have Chinese laundries and here is a colony of Chinese working in a strange factory. I went to my supervisors. “Look here,” I said, “what are all these Chinese doing? I thought we didn’t like Chinese. I thought the Regime had taken a vow of No More Coolies! Ever since their bad experience with the indentured labourers on the gold mines early this century.” “There are no Chinese,” said my superiors, “only Taiwanese and this conversation did not take place.” Then I was taken off people and put on to things. I was posted to security on the atomic research station out there in the mountains. I missed the voluble scientists and the quiet, hardworking technicians but you go where you’re sent. The atomic research station was getting large shipments of equipment. I happened to see the inventories. They took delivery of something called the Cyber 750–170 which is an interesting computer. Because its main strength is multi-channel analysis, it’s used for sorting through the hundreds of cables collecting data from a test-blast site. Other shipments to the research centre included vibration equipment and ballistic re-entry vehicles. Oh, I almost forgot, there were supplies of some gas too, Helium 3 it was. I thought about this. You put together the scientists, the technicians and the equipment and you come up with something that explodes.’

Blanchaille began to understand. He knew the rumours, the unmentionable stories.

Van Vuuren’s blue eyes widened. ‘Go on, Blanchie, take a guess.’

‘A bomb! The bastards are building a bomb. Now the question is – are we working on a large dirty weapons system, or small, relatively clean devices? Neutron bombs, say? Or field launching systems. Yes, tactical battlefield weapons. Or both? That would give flexibility. Large bombs against hostile forces on our borders, or on the capital of an enemy, or on the capitals of states supporting that enemy. Then the smaller, cleaner, weapons for specific jobs, say the 155 millimeter cannon, capable of lobbing nuclear shells. But what’s the gas for? This Helium 3?’

‘It’s used to make Tritium. That’s a form of hydrogen used in thermo-nuclear weapons.’

‘What a lot you know about this sort of thing,’ Blanchaille said.

‘I remember hearing about it first years ago from Kipsel, Silberstein and Zandrotti and the others in their bomb-making days. No, I did not interrogate them, that affair was before my appointment to Interrogation, or Twenty Questions, as they call it here. But I read the report of Kipsel’s confessions. Even though all they were planning to demolish were a few pylons, Kipsel was never one to do anything by halves. He got Silberstein to swot up on everything from fireworks to weapons in the megaton range.’

Blanchaille nodded. ‘Lawyers read.’

Van Vuuren looked cagey. ‘They were young. They confused yearning with faith. They really believed the revolution had started. Zandrotti was convinced.’ Again the odd look, almost embarrassment. ‘Poor old Zandrotti.’

‘We were all young and we all believed. What else could we do?’

‘Sure, sure.’ Van Vuuren regarded him steadily. ‘From what I’ve told you, then, you conclude that we’re building a bomb, or rather the Taiwanese are building us a bomb designed by the Israelis who are selling it to us wholesale?’

‘Seems like it.’

‘You know of course that the Regime deny that we possess any nuclear weapons – and when mysterious explosions occurred in the southern hemisphere the Regime rejected American claims that we were testing nuclear weapons. They said it was atmospheric disturbance, or the American instruments were faulty. Then they said a meteorite landed in the Namib Desert. So what do we surmise from that?’

‘That they were lying.’

Van Vuuren’s blue eyes widened still further. ‘Certainly not. We agree that there was no explosion. From there we go on to state categorically that we have no nuclear weapons.’

Now it was Blanchaille’s turn to stare. ‘But you said —’

‘No. I didn’t.’

‘But I heard you.’

‘You couldn’t have done. This conversation never took place.’ Van Vuuren took a photograph from a desk drawer and fanned himself with it absently. ‘What is the official policy towards the Russians, Blanchie?’

‘The Russians are our enemies. They are after our gold, our diamonds, our minerals, our strategic positions, our sea-lanes. We do not talk to the Russians, have never talked to them, will never talk to them.’

‘Excellent answer. Now have a look at this.’ Van Vuuren handed him a small black and white photograph, rather grainy and blurred, as if taken from a distance. In the foreground two men were walking together, behind them a busy street with trams. ‘Paradeplatz in Zurich where the banks sell gold like hot rolls in a baker’s window. Do you recognise the men?’

Blanchaille studied the grainy photograph. The two men were deep in conversation. The older man wore a black Homburg. The other looked younger, was bare-headed, fair-haired.

‘Never seen either before.’

‘The man on the left in the hat is a Russian. The official, accredited roving representative of the Bank of Foreign Trade in Moscow, on secondment to the Wozchod Handelsbank in Zurich. The other man is Bennie Craddock, an executive of Consolidated Holdings and the nephew of its Chairman, Curtis Christian Himmelfarber. Here is another photograph of Craddock, this time in Moscow. Notice anything?’

The photograph showed Craddock standing in a snowy Red Square surrounded by what appeared to be curious bystanders.

‘Yes,’ said Blanchaille, ‘he seems to be crying.’

‘Odd, isn’t it? Why go all the way to Moscow for a cry? It’s as odd as the spy Popov’s behaviour when he was arrested outside this very building. He was reported to be very, very angry. It puzzled me. That he was upset I can understand, even anguished, but angry? No, I can’t make sense of that. And I can’t clear up the mystery by asking anyone. What strikes me about this investigation is that there are more and more mysteries and fewer and fewer people to question. I’ve had the urge, increasingly hard to resist, to call off the whole damn investigation and start praying. It starts with Ferreira. Somebody has been telling stories about Ferreira. He dies. Shares fall on the Exchange. People disappear leaving behind only the stories we go on telling about them. Craddock has not been seen since the photograph was taken. And his uncle, Himmelfarber, is abroad. So many people are overseas. Have you noticed? Minister Gus Kuiker and his Secretary of Communications are out of the country. The President is said to be travelling overseas for medical treatment. Even you will soon be gone.’

‘You could ask Popov yourself, you’ve got him here. “Why the rage Nikita?” you could say.’

‘I heard why – from Himmelfarber. Popov’s gone. He was spirited away by the Bureau and now he, like it, may or may not exist. You see how isolated I am, Blanchie? Even those who assigned me to investigate the murder of Tony Ferreira have gone. I had no shortage of instructions. First to put me on the case was the President himself. It’s his prerogative when he wears his other hat as Minister of Police so I went to it with a will. President Bubé implied that Minister Kuiker might have had some involvement. As I knew that Gus Kuiker is a rising star in the Regime, tipped to succeed Bubé one day, or even replace him, I put this down to professional jealousy. After all Kuiker took over Bubé’s baby platform. The President went around the country encouraging white women voters to breed; but Kuiker took positive steps to reduce the opposition birth-rate and he used science. He made it his aim to reduce the non-white breeding potential by one half and he got the boffins involved. All Bubé did was to encourage white women to have more babies. Whereas Kuiker hit the enemy where he lived – in the womb. He got the reputation of a modern whizz-kid. Bubé never forgave him. But Kuiker didn’t care.’

Of course Kuiker did not care. Augustus Carel Kuiker, Minister for Parallel Equilibriums, Ethnic Autonomy and Cultural Communication, cared only for success. Kuiker with the thick, ridged, almost stepped hairstyle, a rugged jaw and heavy, surprisingly sensuous lips. He looked like a rather thuggish Charles Laughton. Blanchaille recalled Kuiker’s speeches, how he tirelessly stomped the country reeling off figures. The total population was already over twenty-seven million, it could rise to thirty-eight million or more by the year 2000. The number of whites was dropping. Zero population growth might be all very well for the rest of the world but for the Europeans of the southern sub-continent it was suicide. The percentage, now about sixteen, would fall to eleven after the turn of the millennium. The Government, he announced, might have to introduce a programme. It would not shrink from introducing a programme. This programme might well involve penalising certain groups if they had too many children as well as offering sterilisation and abortion on demand. He felt sure that many black people would welcome abortion on demand, and even, he hinted with that famous frown wrinkling across his forehead, also by command. He was not afraid to speak plainly, if non-whites were not able to limit their own fertility, then the Government might have to step in to find a way to help them do it. This was not a threat but a promise. The Regime might also have to remind white women where their duty lay. Requests were not enough (this was a clear jibe at Bubé). Despite countless fertility crusades, tax incentives for larger families among whites, the ratio of black people to white people in the country was still five or six to one, and rising. The Government looked with new hope to the extraordinary advances in embryology and fertility drugs, much of which was due to the pioneering work of the brilliant young doctor, Wim Wonderluk. There were those who were clearly breeding for victory, who planned to bury the Boer. Well the Government would not stand by idly and see this happen. If offers of television sets and free operations did not work, then other measures must be taken. Soon rumours reached the capital that vasectomy platoons were stalking the countryside, that officials in Landrovers were rounding up herds of young black matrons and giving them the single shot, three-monthly contraceptive jabs. There were stories of secret radiation trucks known as scan vans, far superior to the old Nagasaki ambulances Bubé had sponsored, raiding the townships and tribal villages and the officials in these vans were armed with demographic studies and at the first sign of a birth bulge would visit those potential centres of population growth after dark and give them a burst of radiation, enough, the theory was, to impair fertility. A kind of human crop-spraying technique. People said it couldn’t be true until they remembered that anything you could think about could very easily be true. Kuiker was as forthright in his address to white women, ‘our breeders of the future’ he called them and he talked of introductory programmes of fertility drugs for all who wanted or needed them. Teams of researchers were working with selected females of child-bearing age on Government sponsored programmes to increase the white birth-rate without excluding the possibility, difficult though it might be, of obligatory implantation of fertilised ova in the selfish white wombs of women who had put golf and pleasure before their duty to the country. Pregnancy was good for the nation. He compared it with the military training which all young men had to undergo and pointed out that nine months’ service was not too much to ask of a woman. Gus Kuiker was clearly going places. He caught the public eye. He didn’t look to the past, he looked to the future which could be won if allied to technology. ‘Breed or bleed’ had been his rallying cry and he asked the eminent embryologist, Professor Wim Wonderluk, to prepare a working document encompassing his plans for the new future. Yes, Blanchaille knew all about Kuiker. Knew more than enough to be going on with.

‘Why have you got me here? I was heading out under my own steam. It would have been easier, cleaner.’ Blanchaille stood up knowing the policeman was not ready to release him.

‘Two reasons. Mine and Lynch’s. I wanted to make you take another look at things you thought you knew all about. I don’t want to be left alone with my mysteries. You’re going out. Fine. So maybe you’ll be able to use some of what I show you to get some answers out there in the outside world. That’s my reason. Lynch’s was more practical. He knew you’d never get out without my help.’

‘Why not? How many have gone already?’

Van Vuuren’s look was cold. ‘Not all those who disappeared have left the country. Getting out is not what it was. It has become a police matter. Things got difficult when Bubé and Kuiker issued instructions that disappearances were becoming too frequent and a close watch was to be kept on ports and airports.’

‘Then disappeared themselves.’

‘Yes, but the orders are still in force,’ Van Vuuren said.

Blanchaille sat down again. ‘O.K. What else do you want to tell me?’ he asked warily.

‘Turn around,’ Van Vuuren ordered, ‘and watch the screen.’

On a television monitor behind him there appeared a group of men sitting at a long table, six to a side, all wearing earphones.

‘A delegation from the Ring are meeting a delegation from an Italian secret society known as the Manus Virginis, the Hand of the Virgin. The Hand is some sort of expression of the Church Fiscal. This lot arrived in the country claiming to be a male voice choir and they all have names like Monteverdi and Gabrielli and Frescobaldi. The Hand appears very interested in investment. Each chapter or cell of the Hand is called a Finger and takes a different part of the world for its investment which is done through their own bank called the Banco Angelicus. On the other side of the table is the finance committee of the Ring. They read from left to right: Brother Hyslop – Chairman; Brother van Straaten – he’s their political commissar; Brother Wilhelm – Treasurer; Brother Maisels – transport arrangements. Don’t laugh. Getting here in style and doing it in secret is very important to them. Brother Snyman – catering and hospitality. Since the Brothers regard themselves as hosts they put themselves out for these meetings, they bring along wine, a good pâté, a selection of cheeses. Headphones are for simultaneous translation.’

‘But why are you monitoring the Ring? All the major figures in the Regime are members of the Ring, so why get you to spy on it?’

‘Because though all members of the Government are in the Ring, not all members of the Ring are in the Government.’

Blanchaille looked at the heavy men on both sides of the table with their earphones clamped around their heads like Alice-bands which had slipped, and thought how alike they looked with their big gold signet rings, hairy knuckles, gold tie-pins, three-piece suits, their burly assurance. Here were devoted Calvinist Afrikaners who spat on Catholics as a form of morning prayers, sitting down with a bunch of not only Catholics, but Roman wops! To talk about – what?

‘Money,’ said Van Vuuren. ‘Highly technical chat about investments, exchange controls, off-shore banks, letters of credit, brokers, money moving backwards and forwards. But how are such meetings arranged and, more importantly, why?’

‘Ferreira would have understood,’ said Blanchaille. ‘But I don’t. What is the connection?’

‘I think,’ said Van Vuuren, ‘that the connection isn’t as odd as it seems. The philosophical ideas behind the Ring are not too dissimilar to those practised by Pope Pius X. He fired off salvos at the way we live. He attacked the ideas about humans improving themselves. He pissed on perfectability. He lambasted modern science and slack-kneed liberal ideas. So does the Ring. They have more in common than we think. Perhaps we do too.’

Blanchaille stared at the men on the screen. ‘I still can’t believe what I’m seeing.’

The picture faded into blackness. ‘You haven’t seen anything,’ said Van Vuuren. ‘Now come along and look at what we have in the holding cells.’