now on he was a Zambian citizen, Richard Motombwane. Since he was in transit, he had not been through passport control with either his Swedish or his Zambian passport. Moreover, he had two separate tickets. As he had no check-in baggage, the girl at the desk in Sweden had only seen his ticket to London. At the transit desk in Heathrow he showed his other ticket, the one to Lusaka. He had flushed away the first ticket together with the remains of his Swedish passport.
At half past eleven the Zambia Airways DC-10 Nkowazi took off for Lusaka. Tsiki arrived there at half past six on Saturday morning. He took a cab into town and paid for a South African Airways ticket for the afternoon flight to Johannesburg. It had been booked some time ago. This time he used his own name. He returned to Lusaka Airport, checked in, and had lunch in the departure hall restaurant. He boarded at three, and shortly before five his plane landed at Jan Smuts Airport outside Johannesburg. He was met by Malan, who drove him straight to Hammanskraal. He showed Sikosi Tsiki the deposit receipt for the half-million rand constituting the next to last part of the payout. Then he left him on his own, saying he would be back the next day. Meanwhile, Tsiki was not to leave the house and walled-in yard. When Sikosi Tsiki was alone, he took a bath. He was tired, but contented. The journey had passed without any problems. The only thing worrying him was what had happened to Konovalenko. On the other hand, he was not especially curious about the fact that he would soon know who he was being paid so much to shoot. Could any individual person be worth so much money, he asked himself. But he did not bother to answer. Before midnight struck he had settled down between cool sheets and fallen asleep.
On the morning of Saturday, May 23, two things happened more or less simultaneously. Jan Kleyn was set free in Johannesburg. Nevertheless, Scheepers informed him he could expect to be called in for further questioning.
He stood by a window, watching Jan Kleyn and his lawyer, Kritzinger, making their way to their cars. Scheepers had asked for him to be watched around the clock. He took it for granted Jan Kleyn was expecting that, but thought it would at least force him to be passive.
He had not managed to extract any information at all from Jan Kleyn to clarify the circumstances surrounding the Committee. On the other hand, Scheepers now felt certain the real scene of the intended assassination was to be Durban on July 3, and not Cape Town on June 12. Every time he had come back to the notebook Jan Kleyn displayed signs of nervousness, and Scheepers thought it was impossible for anybody to fake reactions such as sweating and shaking hands.
He yawned. He would be glad when it was all over. At the same time he could see the chances of Wervey being pleased about his efforts had now increased.
He suddenly thought about the white lioness lying by the river in the moonlight.
He would soon have time to visit her again.
At about the same time as Jan Kleyn was being released in the southern hemisphere, Kurt Wallander was back at his desk in the Ystad police station. He had received the congratulations and good wishes of those colleagues who were at work early that Saturday morning. He smiled his lopsided smile and mumbled something inaudible in response. When he got to his office he closed the door behind him and took the telephone off the hook. His whole body felt like he had been raving drunk the night before, even though he had not touched a drop of alcohol. He had feelings of remorse. His hands were shaking. He was also sweating. It took him nearly ten minutes to gather sufficient strength to call the Kalmar police station. Blomstrand answered the phone, and passed on the disappointing news that the African they were looking for had probably slipped out of the country the night before, at Arlanda.
“How is that possible?” asked Wallander indignantly.
“Carelessness and bad luck,” said Blomstrand, explaining what had happened.
“Why the hell do we bother?” asked Wallander when Blomstrand had finished.
Wallander ended the conversation, but left the receiver off the hook. He opened the window and stood listening to a bird singing in a tree outside. It was going to be a hot day. It would soon be June 1. The whole month of May had passed by without him really noticing that the trees were now in leaf, flowers were starting to grow, and the scents of early summer were in the air.
He went back to his desk. There was something he could not postpone until the following week. He fed a sheet of paper into his typewriter, took down his English dictionary, and started slowly to write a brief report for his unknown colleagues in South Africa. He put down what he knew about the planned assassination and described in detail what had happened to Victor Mabasha. When he got to the end of Victor Mabasha’s life, he inserted another sheet of paper into the typewriter. He continued typing for an hour, and finished with the most important information: that a man by the name of Sikosi Tsiki was Mabasha’s replacement. Unfortunately he had managed to slip out of Sweden. It could be assumed he was on his way back to South Africa. He said who he was, found the telex number to the Swedish section of Interpol, and invited them to get back to him if they needed any more information. He gave the secretary instructions to send it urgently to South Africa that same day.
Then he went home. He crossed the threshold again for the first time since the explosion.
He felt like a stranger in his own apartment. The furniture that had been damaged by the smoke was stacked in a heap, covered by a plastic sheet. He pulled out a chair, and sat down.
The atmosphere was stifling.
He wondered how he was going to get over everything that had happened.
About then his telex message arrived in Stockholm. A stand-in not fully familiar with procedures was instructed to send the message to South Africa. Because of technical problems and careless checking, page two of Wallander’s report was never sent. And so the South African police were informed that night, May 23, that a gunman by the name of Victor Mabasha was on his way to South Africa. The police in the Johannesburg section of Interpol were puzzled by this strange message. It was unsigned, and ended very abruptly. Nevertheless, they had been requested by Inspector Borstlap to send all telex messages from Sweden to his office immediately. As the telex arrived in Johannesburg late on Saturday evening, Borstlap did not receive it until the following Monday. He contacted Scheepers right away.
They now had confirmation of what was in the letter signed by the secretive Steve.
The man they were looking for was called Victor Mabasha.
Scheepers also thought the telex was strangely abrupt and was concerned that it was unsigned. But since it was merely a confirmation of something he already knew about, he let the matter rest.
From now on all resources were concentrated on the hunt for Victor Mabasha. Every border post was put on standby. They were ready.
Chapter Thirty-three
The day he was released by Georg Scheepers, Jan Kleyn called Franz Malan from his house in Pretoria. He was convinced his telephones were tapped. But he had another line nobody knew about, apart from the BOSS special intelligence officers in charge of security-sensitive communications centers throughout South Africa. There were several telephone lines that did not exist officially.
Franz Malan was surprised. He did not know Jan Kleyn had just been released. As there was every reason to suspect Malan’s telephone was also tapped, Kleyn used an agreed code word to prevent Malan from saying anything that should not be mentioned on the telephone. The whole thing was camouflaged as a wrong number. Jan Kleyn asked for Horst, then apologized and rung off. Franz Malan looked up his special code list to check the meaning. Two hours after the call, he was to make contact from a specified public phone booth to another.
Jan Kleyn was extremely eager to find out immediately what had been happening while he was under arrest. Franz Malan must also be clear that he would continue to take main responsibility. Jan Kleyn did not doubt his own ability to shake off shadows. Even so it was too risky for him to make personal contact with Franz Malan or to visit Hammanskraal, where Sikosi Tsiki was presumably already in residence, or would soon arrive.
When Jan Kleyn drove out through his gate, it did not take him many minutes to locate the car tailing him. He knew there was also another car in front, but he did not worry about that for the moment. They would naturally be curious when he stopped to make a call from a public phone booth. It would be reported. But they would never find out what was said.
Jan Kleyn was surprised that Sikosi Tsiki had arrived already. He also wondered why there was no word from
