there, she suddenly decided to stay overnight. She took one look at the overgrown yard and announced her intention to tidy it up before returning to Ystad. That would take her at least two days.
“If you change your mind, just give me a call,” said Wallander.
“You should thank me for cleaning up your apartment,” she said. “It looked awful.”
“I know,” he said. “Thanks.”
“How much longer do I have to stay?” she asked. “I’ve got lots to do in Stockholm, you know.”
“Not much longer,” said Wallander, aware that he did not sound very convincing. But to his surprise, she seemed satisfied with his reply.
Afterwards he had a long talk with the prosecutor, Akeson. When he got back, Wallander gathered together all the investigation material with the help of Martinson and Svedberg.
At about four in the afternoon he went shopping and bought some food before driving home. Outside the apartment door was an unusually big stack of leaflets from some store or other. Without looking to see what they were, he shoved them into the garbage sack. Then he made dinner and went through all the practical details of the journey with Victor Mabasha one more time. The lines he had memorized sounded better every time he pronounced them.
After dinner they went through the finer points. Victor Mabasha would have an overcoat over his left arm to hide the bandage he still had on his injured hand. He practiced taking his passport from his inside pocket while keeping the coat over his left arm. Wallander was satisfied. Nobody would be able to see the injury.
“You’ll be flying to London with a British airline,” he said. “SAS would be too risky. Swedish air hostesses will probably read the newspapers and see the TV news. They’d notice your hand and sound the alarm.”
Later that evening, when there were no more practical details to discuss, silence fell and neither seemed inclined to break it for a long time. In the end Victor Mabasha got up and stood in front of Wallander.
“Why have you been helping me?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” answered Wallander. “I often think I ought to slip the handcuffs on you. I can see I’m taking a big risk in letting you go. Maybe it was you who killed Louise Akerblom after all? You say yourself how good a liar everybody becomes back home in your country. Maybe I’m letting a murderer go?”
“But you’re doing it even so?”
“I’m doing it even so.”
Victor Mabasha took off his necklace and handed it to Wallander. He could see that it featured the tooth of a wild animal.
“The leopard is the solitary hunter,” said Victor Mabasha. “Unlike the lion, the leopard goes its own way and only crosses its own tracks. During the day when the heat is at its height, it rests in the trees alongside the eagles. At night it hunts alone. The leopard is a skillful hunter. But the leopard is also the biggest challenge for other hunters. This is a canine tooth from a leopard. I want you to have it.”
“I’m not sure I understood what you mean,” said Wallander, “but I’ll be glad to have the tooth.”
“Not everything is understandable,” said Victor Mabasha. “A story is a journey without an end.”
“That’s probably the difference between you and me,” said Wallander. “I’m used to stories having an end, and expect one. You say a good story doesn’t have one.”
“That may be so,” said Victor Mabasha. “It can be a good thing to know you’ll never meet a certain person again. That means that something will live on.”
“Perhaps,” said Wallander. “But I doubt it. I wonder if that’s the way things really are.”
Victor Mabasha did not answer.
An hour later he was asleep under a blanket on the sofa, while Wallander sat looking at the tooth he had been given.
Suddenly he felt uneasy. He went out into the dark kitchen and looked down at the street. All was quiet. Then he went out into the hall and checked that the door was securely locked. He sat down on a stool by the telephone, and thought maybe he was just tired. Another twelve hours and Victor Mabasha would be gone.
He examined the tooth once more.
Nobody would believe me, he thought. If for no other reason, I’d better keep quiet about the days and nights I spent with a black man who once had a finger cut off in a remote house in Skane.
That’s a secret I’d better take to the grave.
When Jan Kleyn and Franz Malan met at Hammanskraal in the morning of Friday, May 15, it did not take them long to establish that neither of them had found any significant weaknesses in the plan.
The assassination would take place in Cape Town on June 12. Nelson Mandela would be speaking in the stadium, and from the summit of Signal Hill Sikosi Tsiki would have an ideal position for his long-range rifle. Then he could disappear unnoticed.
But there were two things Jan Kleyn had not mentioned to Franz Malan, nor to the other committee members. In fact, they were matters he had no intention of mentioning to anybody at all. In order to ensure the continued dominance of white rule in South Africa, he was prepared to take certain selected secrets with him to the grave. Certain events and connections would never be revealed in the history of the country.
The first thing was that he was not prepared to take the risk of allowing Sikosi Tsiki to live with the knowledge of whom he had killed. He did not doubt for a moment that Sikosi Tsiki could keep his mouth shut. But just as the pharaohs of ancient times killed off those who had built the secret chambers in the pyramids, to ensure that any knowledge of their existence would be lost, he would sacrifice Sikosi Tsiki. He would kill him himself, and make sure the body would never be found.
The other secret Jan Kleyn would keep to himself was the fact that Victor Mabasha had been alive as recently as the previous afternoon. Now he was dead, no doubt about that. But it was a personal defeat for Jan Kleyn that Victor Mabasha had managed to survive as long as he had. He felt personally responsible for Konovalenko’s errors and repeated inability to bring the Victor Mabasha chapter to a close. The KGB man had displayed unexpected weaknesses. His attempt to cover up his shortcomings by lying was the biggest weakness of all. Jan Kleyn always regarded it as a personal slight when anybody doubted his ability to keep abreast of the information he needed. Once the assassination of Mandela was accomplished, he would decide whether or not he was ready to receive Konovalenko into South Africa. He did not doubt the man’s ability to take care of the necessary preliminary training of Sikosi Tsiki. On the other hand, he thought it could well be that the downfall of the Soviet empire had been ultimately due to the same kind of unreliable skills that Konovalenko had. He did not exclude the possibility that even Konovalenko might have to go up in smoke, together with his henchmen Vladimir and Tania. The whole operation needed a thorough spring cleaning. He had no intention of delegating that job to anyone else.
They were sitting at the table with the green felt cloth, going over the plan one more time. The previous week Franz Malan had been to Cape Town to examine the stadium where Nelson Mandela was due to speak. He also spent an afternoon at the spot where Sikosi Tsiki was to fire his rifle. He made a videotape, which they watched three times on the television set in the room. The only thing still missing was a report on Cape Town’s usual wind conditions. Pretending to represent a yacht club, Franz Malan had been in touch with the national weather center, which had promised to send him the information he had asked for. The name and address he gave would never be traced.
Jan Kleyn had not done any legwork. His contribution was of a different kind. His specialty was a theoretical dissection of the plan. He had considered unexpected developments, tried out a one-man role-play, and kept at it until he was convinced no undesirable problems could crop up.
After two hours their work was completed.
“There’s just one more thing,” said Jan Kleyn. “We have to establish before June 12 exactly how the Cape Town police will be deployed.”
“I can take care of that,” said Franz Malan. “We can send out a flyer to all the police districts in the country requesting copies of their security plans, to give us time to prepare all the political measures that need to be taken when big crowds are expected.”
They went out onto the veranda, waiting for the rest of the committee to arrive. They contemplated the view in silence. On the far horizon was a heavy blanket of smoke over a black shanty town.
“There’ll be a bloodbath,” said Franz Malan. “I still have trouble envisioning what will happen.”
“Regard it as a purification process,” said Jan Kleyn. “Those words sound rather better than bloodbath. Besides, that’s what we are hoping to achieve.”
“Nevertheless,” said Franz Malan. “I sometimes feel uneasy. Will we be able to control what happens?”
