turned to the memos and investigation documents he had received from Chief Inspector Borstlap. Maybe there would be something there which could point him in the right direction? He read the autopsy report with distaste, and shut his eyes when he came to photographs of the dead man. He wondered whether it was just robbery with violence after all. The long-winded report of police proceedings gave him no clues. He turned to the personal memoranda.
Right at the back of Borstlap’s file was an inventory of what the police had found in his office at BOSS headquarters. Chief Inspector Borstlap had made the ironic comment that of course, there was no way of knowing if van Heerden’s superiors had removed any papers or objects they considered unsuitable for the police to get their hands on. He glanced casually down the list of ashtrays, framed photographs of his parents, some lithographs, a pen rack, diaries, blotting pad. He was just going to put it on one side when he suddenly paused. Among the items listed by Borstlap was a little ivory sculpture of an antelope. Very valuable, antique, Borstlap had written.
He put down the memo and typed antelope on the keyboard. The computer responded by asking for the correct password. He thought for a moment. Then he typed kudu. The computer’s response was negative. He picked up the telephone and called home to Judith.
“I need your help,” he said. “Can you look up antelopes in our wildlife encyclopedia?”
“What on earth are you doing?” she asked in surprise.
“My assignment includes formulating a stance on the development of our antelope species,” he lied. “I just want to make sure I don’t forget any.”
She got the book and recited the various species of antelope for him.
“When will you be home?” she asked when she had finished.
“Either very soon, or very late,” he answered. “I’ll call you.”
When he hung up he saw right away which word it must be, assuming the little sculpture in the list was in fact the right link.
Springbok, he thought to himself. Our national symbol. Can it really be as easy as that?
He keyed the word in slowly, pausing for a moment before the last letter. The computer responded right away. Negative.
One more possibility, he thought. Same word. But in Afrikaans. He keyed in spriengboek.
Immediately the screen started flashing. Then a list of contents appeared.
He had cracked it. He had found his way into van Heerden’s world.
He noticed he was sweating. The elation of a criminal when he’s just opened a bank vault, he thought.
Then he sat down to read the screen. Afterwards, at nearly one in the morning when he came to the end of the texts, he knew two things. In the first place he was now certain van Heerden had been murdered because of the work he was doing. Second, the premonition of imminent danger he had felt previously was justified.
He leaned back in his chair and stretched.
Then he shuddered.
Van Heerden had compiled the notes recorded on his diskette with cool precision. He could see now that van Heerden was a deeply split personality. The discoveries he made in connection with the conspiracy had reinforced the feeling he had earlier, that his life as an Afrikaner was based on a lie. The deeper he penetrated into the reality of the conspirators, the deeper he penetrated his own. The world as depicted in the loose sheets of paper, and the cool precision of the diskette, existed in the very same person.
It occurred to him that in a sense, van Heerden had been close to his own destruction.
He stood up and walked over to the window. Somewhere in the distance he could hear police sirens.
Just what have we believed? he asked himself. That our dreams of an unchanging world were in fact true? That the small concessions we made to the blacks would be sufficient, although they did not really change anything?
He was overcome by a feeling of shame. For even if he was one of the new Afrikaners, one of those who did not regard de Klerk as a traitor, the many years of passivity on the part of Judith and himself had enabled the racist policies to continue. He too had inside himself the kingdom of death van Heerden had written about.
It was ultimately this silent acceptance that formed the basis of the conspirators’ intentions. They were counting on his continued passivity. His silent acceptance.
He sat down at the screen once more.
Van Heerden had done good work. The conclusions Scheepers was now able to draw, and which he would pass on to President de Klerk the very next day, were impossible to miss.
Nelson Mandela, the self-evident leader of the blacks, was going to be murdered. During his last days van Heerden had worked feverishly to try and find the answers to the crucial questions of where, and when. He had not found the answer when he switched off his computer for the last time. But the indications were that it would be very soon, in connection with a speech given by Mandela to a large public gathering. Van Heerden had drawn up a list of possible locations and dates over the coming three months. Among them were Durban, Johannesburg, Soweto, Bloemfontein, Cape Town and East London, with dates attached. Somewhere abroad a professional killer was making preparations. Van Heerden had managed to discover that a former KGB officer was hovering indistinctly in the murderer’s background. But there were a lot of other things to be clarified.
Ultimately there was the most important question. Georg Scheepers read one more time the section where van Heerden analyzed his way to the very center of the conspiracy. He spoke of a Committee. A loose collection of people, representatives of dominant groups among the Afrikaners. But van Heerden did not have all their names. The only ones he knew about were Jan Kleyn and Franz Malan.
Georg Scheepers was now convinced the chameleon was Jan Kleyn. On the other hand, he had not identified Franz Malan’s code name.
He realized van Heerden regarded this pair as the chief actors. By concentrating on them, he hoped to be able to figure out who the other members of the committee were, and just what they were intending to achieve.
Coup d’etat, van Heerden had written at the end of the last text, dated two days before he was killed. Civil war? Chaos? He did not answer the questions. He merely asked them.
But there was one more note, made the same day, the Sunday before he went into the hospital.
Next week, wrote van Heerden. Take it further. Bezuidenhout. 559.
That’s his message to me from the grave, thought Georg Scheepers. That’s what he would have done. Now I have to do it instead. But what? Bezuidenhout is a suburb of Johannesburg, and the number must surely be part of the address of a house.
He suddenly noticed he was very tired and very worried. The responsibility he had been given was greater than he could ever have imagined.
He switched off the computer and locked the diskettes in his filing cabinet. It was nine o’clock already, and dark outside. Police sirens were wailing non-stop, like hyenas, keeping watch in the darkness of the night.
He left the deserted prosecutor’s offices and walked to his car. Without really having decided to do so, he drove toward the eastern edge of the city, to Bezuidenhout. It did not take him long to find what he was looking for. Number 559 was a house bordering the park that gave Bezuidenhout its name. He parked by the curb, switched off the engine and put out the headlights. The house was white, in glazed brick. A light was on behind drawn drapes. He could see a car in the drive.
He was still too tired and worried to think about how he should proceed next. First of all, the whole of this long day would have to sink into his consciousness. He thought of the lioness lying motionless by the riverbank. How she stood and came towards them. The wild beast is clawing at us, he thought.
It suddenly dawned on him what was the most important thing.
The murder of Nelson Mandela would be the worst thing that could happen to the country just now. The consequences would be horrific. Everything they were trying to achieve, this brittle attempt to reach a settlement between blacks and whites would be demolished in a fraction of a second. The dikes would be breached and the flood would rage over the whole country.
There were people who wanted this apocalyptic flood to take place. They had formed a committee to open the floodgates.
That was as far as he got in his thoughts. Then he saw a man leave the house and get into the car. At the same time one of the drapes was pulled back in a window. He could see a black woman, and another one behind her, younger. The older woman waved, but the one behind her did not move a muscle.
