Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen.
But nothing. They sorted and sifted through scientific instruments, somehow gynaecological and ghastly in their pristine steeliness. Nothing. David shunted aside a box of desiccated human bones, feeling guilt and horror as he did so. He was mistreating the evidence of two forgotten genocides, the hideous relics of a lost racial empire.
There was nothing. They were confounded. It was done. The three of them knelt in the centre of the little hut and shared their despair: whispering and quick. Angus was looking at his watch.
'That chopper goes in forty minutes — if we don't get it — '
Amy stared around, her eyes bright and hostile. The Herero Skulls grinned at them, from the tragic plinth in the corner. She coughed the dust and said.
'Horrible place. Horrible. I don't understand, Angus. There is nothing here from Germany, nothing at all, it's all Namibian. German Empire but Namibian. How could the Fischer data be here anyway?'
Angus nodded, his voice low and resigned. 'You're right. It's all Namibian…'
David listened. Saying nothing. The skulls smiled at him, laughing at the Cagot. Was he a Cagot? They were mocking him. He tried to drive the thought from his mind. Focussed himself on the map. The clue.
'Zugspitzstrasse. What does it mean?'
'Nothing obvious.' Angus sighed, and shook his head. 'It's a common German street name. I've heard it before…' His expression stilled, and changed, and flashed, and was transformed. 'I've heard it before! Jesus!' He stood up. 'I've heard the name before. David. The map! One more time, yes yes, this is it — '
They all stood. Life quickening in the veins.
The map was unfolded in the dusty light. Angus held the paper a fraction from his face, reading the tiny line of writing.
'It's the address of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut. In Berlin! Zugspitzstrasse. 93. The store rooms.'
'How — '
'Famous in…eugenic circles. Not really known to anyone else. This was a note made by Dresler for your father, right?'
'Yes.'
'So he's given him an address. Where to find the Fischer data, maybe, or some clue as to where the data might be…This is the Institut.'
'But it's in Berlin. How does it relate to here — '
The scientist's smile was triumphant. Even in the pure and horrifying drama, he was helplessly exulting in his own cleverness.
'I worked it out! There is something in this room from Germany.'
He turned and pointed. At the Herero Skulls.
'Them?'
'They were repatriated, from Berlin, in 1999. After years of wrangling. They used to be kept in the Kaiser Wilhem Institut. Now they are here. They have been to Germany. They were in Fischer's possession throughout the war, and after at the Institut. The answer must be in them somehow.'
Angus moved quickly to the plinth and picked up the biggest skull. He turned the sad and smiling cranium in his hand.
'An obscene joke. The Nazis loved obscene jokes, they paved Jewish ghettos with Jewish gravestones, so the Jews would trample their own dead. And — ' He was examining the skull, closely. 'And where better to hide something very, very…important…than a skull like this? A sacred relic of a terrible genocide. Fischer must have known no one would ever smash it open, retrieve the secret, unless they definitely knew what they wanted, where they were seeking.' He lifted up the skull, squinted inside, then he lifted it higher, talking quietly to the skull. 'Sorry, brother, I am so very fucking sorry — but I have to do this. Forgive me.'
He dropped the skull on the floor. The dry aged bone shattered at once, almost gratefully. Crumbling in the dust, adding dust to orange dust.
A tiny steel cylinder glinted on the floorboards, amidst the scattered shards of bone. Angus picked it up.
'Hidden in the olfactory cavity.'
Amy and David gathered around. Faces tensed, and perspiring.
Angus ripped the top off the slender metal tube, and pulled out a tiny, exquisitely rolled piece of paper, almost leathery in consistency, like parchment but somehow finer.
The Scotsman focussed and examined the yellowed slip of paper. Etched across the paper, in faded old ink, was a tiny map.
'Zbiroh!' A sigh of exultant relief. 'Zbiroh…'
Any explanation was truncated. A shadow had just flickered the dusty light of the hut. A Namibian security guard had passed the window, and was standing at the door, pushing his way inside.
Angus shoved the map in the tube, pocketed the tube, and ran to the entrance; he flung the door open, and confronted the guard — waving his gun at the terrified guard's chest.
The guard stepped back, retreating into the dazzling sun.
'No! No trouble! Want no trouble!'
'Good,' said Angus, as he advanced, and patted the guard's pockets. He drew out a pistol and phone, and handed them to David. And tilted a head at the sea.
Grabbing the items with gusto, David hurled the gun and the phone into the crashing waves, just metres away. Seagulls fluttered and shrieked in alarm.
Angus was gesturing at the guard. 'OK. Stay here. Don't move. We're going. Take a staycation. All-fucking- right?'
They sprinted down the path to the mainland; David glanced behind — the guard was indeed standing there, black and statuesque in the sun, staring at them, perplexed, immobile, a silhouette of doubt.
The path turned onto the road and they ran right into the traffic — Angus waved a wad of South African rand at the very first Toyota sedan. The driver grinned and squealed his brakes.
The three of them jumped in, sweating and cramped. Angus snapped.
'Airport! Fast as you can.'
The drive took ten minutes: swerving and racing through the sun-dusted streets. They tilted past the Bank of Windhoek, an old pool hall, and a Shell garage — and then they were out of town: on the surrounding flats. David was remembering Miguel. The big black cars, roaring up the canyon.
The thought was horrifying. Miguel could be around here, right now. Any minute he could just show. The big black car door flashing open.
Found you.
The whirring yellow sands were writhing across the road, making serpents of dust. They were out in the desert again. They were motoring through the wilderness. Angus took out the map and scrutinized it. And then he sat back. And yelled.
'Look!'
Terrible panic filled David: he looked, and saw nothing. Miguel?
Angus was still pointing: 'Look at that. That's a rare and precious sight. Look at the horse!'
It wasn't Miguel. David felt absurd relief, as he and Amy stretched to see through the scratched car window. But what were they looking for?
At first there was nothing. And then he saw: a horse, thin and solitary and loping across the dirt road. Then David saw more — dozens, then hundreds. Curvetting and playing in the sandy heat-haze.
Angus was rhapsodizing.
'The wild horses of the Namib. I love these animals. They're the last remnants of the Schutztruppe — the German colonial army. The horses escaped and turned feral.' He gazed, almost serene, at the dreamlike spectacle. 'Now they are the only wild desert horses in the world — becoming a new species, specially adapted to dryness.' Angus sat back. 'I always think they look like the souls of horses, roaming free in the afterlife…That's why this place is so hard to leave. Things like that. But here's the airport. Just past the dunes.'
The car prowled around the last of the soft Barchan dunes. They were slowing onto a wide flat space. The driver stopped at the perimeter of a surreally bleak airstrip.
A small plane and two helicopters sat on some asphalt amidst acres of sun-scorched dust. One of the
