Sitting at a desk, illuminated by a single lamp, was the balding man he was destined to meet. Scheepers remained standing hesitantly in the doorway until the man at the desk beckoned him to approach and gestured towards a visitor’s chair.
President de Klerk looked weary. Georg Scheepers noticed he had large bags under his eyes.
The president came straight to the point. His voice had a note of impatience about it, as if he was always having to talk with people who did not understand anything.
“I am convinced the death of Pieter van Heerden had nothing to do with robbery,” said de Klerk. “It’s your job to insure the police investigators are properly aware of the fact that it’s his intelligence work that lies behind the murder. I want all his computer files investigated, all his index files and documents, everything he’s worked on over the last year. Is that understood?”
“Yes,” said Georg Scheepers.
De Klerk leaned forward so that the desk lamp lit up his face and gave it an almost ghost-like appearance.
“Van Heerden told me he suspected there was a conspiracy afoot that was a serious threat to South Africa as a whole,” he said. “A plot that could result in complete chaos. His death must be seen in this context. Nothing else.”
Georg Scheepers nodded.
“You don’t need to know any more than that,” said de Klerk, leaning back in his chair again. “Chief Prosecutor Wervey selected you to keep me informed because he considers you to be completely reliable and loyal to the government authorities. But I want to stress the confidential nature of this assignment. Revealing what I have just told you would be high treason. As you are a prosecutor, I don’t need to tell you what the punishment is for that particular crime.”
“Of course not,” said Georg Scheepers, shifting uncomfortably on his chair.
“You will report directly to me whenever you have anything to say,” de Klerk went on. “Talk to one of my secretaries, and they will make an appointment. Thank you for coming.”
The audience was over. De Klerk turned back to his papers.
Georg Scheepers stood up, bowed, and walked over the thick carpet back to the double doors.
The security guard accompanied him down the stairs. An armed guard escorted him as far as the parking lot, where he had left his car. His hands were sweaty as he slid behind the wheel.
A conspiracy, he thought. A plot? Which could threaten the whole country and lead to chaos? Aren’t we there already? Can things get any more chaotic than they already are?
He left the question unanswered and started the engine. Then he opened the glove pocket, where he kept a pistol. He loaded a magazine, released the safety catch, and placed it on the seat beside him.
Georg Scheepers did not like driving at night. It was too unsafe, too dangerous. Armed robbery and assault took place all the time, and the level of brutality was getting worse.
Then he drove home through the South African night. Pretoria was asleep.
He had a lot to think about.
Chapter Eighteen
Days and nights had merged to form a vague whole from which he was no longer able to pick out the parts. Victor Mabasha did not know how long it was since he left the dead body of Konovalenko behind in the remote house set in muddy fields. The man who had suddenly come back to life and shot at him in the disco filled with tear gas. That was a shock for him. He was convinced he had killed Konovalenko with the bottle. But despite the smarting in his eyes, he had seen Konovalenko through the clouds of smoke. Victor Mabasha escaped from the premises via a back staircase full of screaming, kicking people in a panic, trying to flee the smoke. For a brief moment, he thought he was back in South Africa, where tear gas attacks on black townships were not uncommon. But he was in Stockholm and Konovalenko had risen from the dead and was now chasing him in order to kill him.
He had reached town at dawn and spent hours driving around the streets, not knowing what to do. He was very tired, so weary he did not really dare trust his own judgment. That made him scared. Before, he had always felt that his judgment, his ability to think himself out of difficult situations with a clear head, was his ultimate life insurance. He wondered whether to take a room in a hotel somewhere. But he had no passport, no documents at all to establish his identity. He was a nobody among all these people, an armed man without a name, that was all.
The pain in his hand kept returning at irregular intervals. Soon he would have to see a doctor. The black blood had seeped through the bandages, and he could not afford to succumb to infections and fever. That would make him completely defenseless. But the bloody stump hardly affected him. His finger might never have existed. In his thoughts he had transformed it into a dream. He was born without an index finger on his left hand.
He slept in a cemetery in a sleeping bag he bought. He was cold in spite of it. In his dreams he was pursued by the singing hounds. As he lay awake watching the stars, he thought how he might never return to his homeland. The dry, red, swirling soil would never again be touched by the soles of his feet. The thought filled him with sudden sorrow, so intense he could not remember feeling anything like it since the death of his father. It also occurred to him that in South Africa, a country founded upon an all-embracing lie, there was seldom room for simple untruths. He thought about the lie that formed the very backbone of his own life.
The nights he spent in the cemetery were filled with the songoma’s words. It was also during these nights, surrounded by nothing but the unknown dead, white people he had never met and would never meet until he entered the underworld, the world of spirits, that he remembered his childhood. He saw his father’s face, his smile, and heard his voice. It also occurred to him that the spirit world might be divided, just like South Africa. Perhaps even the underworld consisted of a black and a white world? He was filled with sorrow as he imagined the spirits of his forefathers being forced to live in smoky, slummy townships. He tried to get his songoma to tell him how it was. But all he got was the singing hounds, and their howls he was unable to interpret.
At dawn the second day he left the cemetery after hiding his sleeping bag in a tomb where he had managed to pry open an air vent. A few hours later he stole another car. It all happened very quickly: an opportunity arose, and he grasped it without hesitation. Once again his judgment was beginning to assist him. He had turned a corner onto a street where he saw a man leave his car with the engine running and disappear into a doorway. There was nobody around. He recognized the make, a Ford; he had driven lots of them before. He sat behind the wheel, threw a briefcase the man had left behind onto the street, and drove off. He eventually managed to find his way out of town and had searched for a lake where he could be alone with his thoughts.
He could not find a lake, but he came upon the seashore. Or rather, he thought it had to be the seashore. He did not know which sea it was or what it was called, but when he tasted the water it was salty. Not as salty as he was used to, from the beaches at Durban and Port Elizabeth. But there could hardly be salt lakes in this country? He clambered over a few rocks, and imagined he was gazing into infinity through a narrow gap between two islands in the archipelago. There was a chill in the air and he felt cold. Even so, he remained standing on a rock as far out as he could get, thinking that this was where his life had taken him. A very long way. But what would the future look like?
Just as he used to do in his childhood, he squatted down and made a spiral-shaped labyrinth from pebbles that had broken loose from the rock. At the same time he tried to delve so deeply into himself that he could hear the voice of his songoma. But he couldn’t get that far. The noise of the sea was too strong and his own concentration too weak. The stones he had arranged to form a labyrinth did not help. He just felt scared. If he could not talk to the spirits, he would grow so weak he might even die. He would no longer have any resistance to illnesses, his thoughts would desert him, and his body would become a mere shell that cracked the moment it was touched.
Feeling uneasy, he tore himself away from the sea and returned to his car. He tried to concentrate on the most important things. How was it possible for Konovalenko to trace him so easily to the disco recommended by some Africans from Uganda he started talking to in a burger bar?
That was the first question.
