“Let me go on,” said Jan Kleyn. “If you just think for a moment, you’ll see that’s obvious. There is a fear of conspiracy in this country, and rightly so. De Klerk has every reason to be afraid of some of the thinking current in some parts of the military high command. Similarly, he can’t be sure of the automatic loyalty of those in charge of the state intelligence service. There’s great uncertainty in South Africa today. Not everything can be calculated or taken for granted. That means there’s no limit to the amount of information that needs to be collected. There’s only one person in the cabinet the president can trust absolutely, and that is Foreign Secretary Botha. Once I’d got that far in my analysis, all I needed to do was to go through the list of feasible candidates for the post of secret messenger to the president. For reasons I don’t need to go into, it soon boiled down to just one possibility. Pieter van Heerden.”
Franz Malan knew who that was. He had met him on several occasions.
“Pieter van Heerden,” said Jan Kleyn. “He has been the president’s messenger boy. He’s been sitting at the president’s feet and exposed our most secret thoughts.”
“I regard van Heerden as very intelligent,” said Franz Malan.
Jan Kleyn nodded.
“Quite right,” he said. “He’s a very dangerous man. An enemy who deserves our respect. Unfortunately, he’s on the sickly side.”
Franz Malan raised an eyebrow.
“Sickly?”
“Some difficulties solve themselves,” said Jan Kleyn. “I happen to know he’s going into a private hospital in Johannesburg next week, for a minor operation. He has some prostate problems.”
Jan Kleyn took a slurp of coffee.
“He’ll never leave that hospital,” he went on. “I’ll take care of that myself. After all, it’s me he was trying to get at. They were my computer files he hacked into.”
They sat silently while a black waiter cleared the table.
“I’ve solved the problem myself,” said Jan Kleyn when they were alone again. “But I wanted to tell you about it for one reason, and one reason only. You must also be very careful. In all probability there’s someone peeking over your shoulder as well.”
“It’s good that I know,” said Franz Malan. “I’ll double-check my security procedures.”
The waiter reappeared with the check, and Jan Kleyn paid.
“Let’s take a little walk,” said Jan Kleyn. “You had a question.”
They walked along a cliff path in the direction of some steep precipices that gave the beach its name.
“Sikosi Tsiki leaves for Sweden Wednesday,” said Jan Kleyn.
“You think he’s the best?”
“He was number two on our list. I have every confidence in him.”
“And Victor Mabasha?”
“Presumably he’s dead by now. I’m expecting Konovalenko to get in touch tonight, or tomorrow at the latest.”
“We’ve heard a rumor from Cape Town that there’ll be a big meeting there on June 12,” said Franz Malan. “I’m investigating to see whether that could be a suitable opportunity.”
Jan Kleyn stopped.
“Yes,” he said. “That could be an excellent time.”
“I’ll keep you informed,” said Franz Malan.
Jan Kleyn stood on the brink of a precipice dropping straight down to the sea.
Franz Malan peeked down.
Far down below was a car wreck.
“The car has evidently not been traced yet,” said Jan Kleyn. “When they discover it, they’ll find three dead men. Black men aged about twenty-five. Somebody shot them and then pushed the car over the cliff.”
Jan Kleyn pointed to a parking lot just behind them.
“The agreement was they’d get their money here,” he said. “But they didn’t, did they?”
They turned and retraced their steps.
Franz Malan did not bother to ask who had executed the three men responsible for the restaurant massacre. There were some things he would rather not know.
Shortly after one that afternoon Jan Kleyn dropped Franz Malan at an army camp near Durban. They shook hands and parted rapidly.
Jan Kleyn avoided the freeway back to Pretoria. He preferred to take roads with less traffic through Natal. He was in no hurry, and felt the need to assess how things stood. There was a lot at stake, for himself, for his fellow conspirators, and not least for all the white citizens of South Africa.
It also occurred to him that he was driving through Nelson Mandela’s home territory. This is where he was born, this is where he was raised. Presumably he would also be brought back here when his life was over.
Jan Kleyn was sometimes scared by his own lack of feelings. He knew he was what was often called a fanatic. But he knew of no other life he would prefer to lead.
There were basically just two things that made him uneasy. One was the nightmares he sometimes had. In them he saw himself trapped in a world populated exclusively by black people. He could no longer speak. What came out of his mouth were words transformed into animal noises. He sounded like a laughing hyena.
The other was that nobody knew how much time they had been allotted.
It was not that he wanted to live forever. But he did want to live long enough to see white South Africans secure their threatened dominion.
Then he could die. But not before.
He stopped for dinner at a little restaurant in Witbank.
By then he had thought through the plan one more time, all the assumptions and all the pitfalls. He felt at ease. Everything would go according to plan. Maybe Franz Malan’s idea about June 12 in Cape Town would be a good opportunity.
Just before nine that evening he turned into the drive leading to his big house on the outskirts of Pretoria.
His black night porter opened the gate for him.
The last thing he thought about before falling asleep was Victor Mabasha.
He already found it difficult to remember what he looked like.
Chapter Fourteen
Pieter van Heerden was depressed.
Feelings of uneasiness, of insidious fear, were nothing new to him. Moments of excitement and danger were a natural part of his work in the intelligence service. But it seemed he was more defenseless in the face of his unrest, now that he was in a hospital bed at Brenthurst Clinic, waiting to be operated on.
Brenthurst Clinic was a private hospital in the north Johannesburg suburb of Hillbrow. He could have chosen a much more expensive alternative, but Brenthurst suited him. It was famous for its high medical standards, the doctors’ skills were tried and tested, and the level of care was beyond reproach. On the other hand, the wards were not luxuriously appointed. On the contrary, the whole building was rather shabby. Van Heerden was well off without being rich. But he did not like ostentation. On vacation, he avoided staying at luxury hotels, which just made him feel surrounded by that special kind of emptiness white South Africans seemed to wallow in. That was why he preferred not to have his operation in a hospital that treated the best-placed white citizens in the country.
Van Heerden was in a room on the second floor. He could hear someone laughing outside in the corridor. Shortly afterwards a tea cart rattled past. He looked out the window. A solitary pigeon was sitting on the roof of a house. Behind it the sky was the dark shade of blue he was so fond of. The brief African dusk would soon be over. His uneasiness increased as darkness rapidly drew in.
It was Monday, May 4. The next day, at eight in the morning, Doctor Plitt and Doctor Berkowitsch would perform the straightforward surgery that would hopefully cure the urinary problems he had been having. He was not
