Kruger's Alp (29 page)

The next day he was released, his head swathed in bandages, an eye closed, an intense burning feeling in his right ear, a deep rumbling groan deep in the eardrum together with a rather strange inertia of the tongue which simply wouldn't obey him, baulked at
even easy words, no matter how he whipped it up to them, refused like a horse at a jump. He was recovering in Gabriel's house when the police came and asked about the bombings of the electricity pylons.

‘He was in jail. How could he be involved?' Gabriel asked them.

The police went away.

The papers headlined the story. L
UCKY
L
OOKSMART
! ‘J
AIL
A
LIBI
'.

The next day Gabriel suddenly said he must leave. He had heard that the police were coming back. That they were definitely after him even now, whether or not he had been in jail at the time of the bombing. They had other reasons for looking for him. He must skip the country.

‘How do you know they won't arrest me as soon as I show them my passport?' That had been the question he had wanted to ask Gabriel. After all if the police were looking for them, then the airport officials would know and would turn him back.

But they did not. His passport was cursorily checked and he was waved through. An hour later he was airborne over the baked brown veld of Africa. This was even more puzzling still. For if the police wanted him they would have been watching the airport. Since they weren't, he had to conclude that they were not looking for him yet. Was it not a miraculous sign of Gabriel's power and prescience that he had known that the police would be looking for him before the police knew themselves? Thus Looksmart was long gone when the police issued a warrant for his arrest, citing information supplied which revealed that he had a hand in the maps showing the locations of the electrical pylons in the townships destroyed by Kipsel, Zandrotti and others.

D
OUBLE
B
REAK FOR
F
REEDOM
, the papers said. D
LADLA
– L
ENSKI
, F
LEE
C
OUNTRY
!

Now he stood on that Swiss mountainside did Looksmart Dladla, in his blue suit and black shoes and his odd mode of sideways locomotion, and his odder cranial rumblings, insanely beaming, turning on them a look Blanchaille later described as one of radiant ignorance. Had Blanchaille not seen examples of such deluded sweetness of temperament many times before during his years in the camps in old men and women who after their sufferings should have been eaten with rage and bitterness, he might have wept. Instead he turned patiently to Looksmart and asked about his time in America.

Looksmart beamed, ‘In America I began as a humble student of history and rose to become president of several radio stations, a
news magazine and a cable television station.'

‘America is still the land of opportunity, then?' said Blanchaille politely, without the least sign of surprise at Looksmart's meteoric rise.

‘Oah yes,' said Looksmart with another series of rapid smacks of the head as if to keep his word-hoard flexible. ‘But it was never ambition that took me to these positions.'

‘What then?' demanded Kipsel sceptically.

Again the seraphic smile. ‘Patriotism. Oah yes! Without a doubt. I am part of the new order. Now I really must go. As you can see, I walk slowly. The result of an old injury. Now forgotten. And forgiven. I must give the good news.'

‘What is the good news?' Blanchaille asked.

Looksmart produced a piece of paper from his suit pocket and waved it. ‘We are saved. I have here a treaty signed by the President himself granting to me and my dependants a territory on the east coast of Southern Africa, in
perpetuity.'
He stressed this word with reverence.

‘You're going home?' said Blanchaille. ‘But, Looksmart, you're a wanted man.'

The other laughed delightedly. ‘We are all wanted men. We are needed to rebuild our country again. What good does it do to hide in some mountain lair, some hospice, some institution set up on Boer charity for lonely exiles, frightened of their shadows? We must reinvent our country. Set out like Van Riebeeck in reverse to rediscover South Africa.'

‘The only territory they'll give you back home is six feet deep,' said Kipsel.

Looksmart gave him a look which though no less joyous was tinged with pity and a hint of scorn. ‘As his nephew wrote of the late great Benjamin Franklin, so with Looksmart, believe you me. “My resolution is unshaken, my principles fixed, even in death.”' – and he banged himself on the right ear for emphasis. ‘We have been given our African Pennsylvania, in which we will found our new Philadelphia, a city of brotherly love, and from that perhaps we shall make a new Africa, a revolution like that of the Americans, a triumph of sensible, pragmatic, independent people. They did it. So will we.'

‘We already have a Philadelphia,' said Kipsel. ‘And plenty of Pennsylvanias. Only we call them Homelands and Bantustans, Tribal Reserves and Resettlement Camps . . . We tried it, Looksmart, and it didn't work. And we don't have any sensible people.
Never mind pragmatic ones. Looksmart, don't go back!'

‘I have it in writing,' repeated Looksmart waving the paper again. ‘It has been promised to me in exchange. Now you must not delay me, I am on my way to the place on the hill to convey the good news. Step aside if you will. This is the freedom route. They will cheer when they see me. “Come home with Looksmart,” I will say. Permit me to give you a small memento of our meeting.' He handed them a coloured postcard showing a big brass bell with a crack in it. ‘The famous Liberty Bell. I have seen it with my own eyes. Soon we will have one of our own hanging in our country.' And with a cheerful wave, the black man set off on his slow, shambling progress.

They watched him helplessly.

‘Bell's not the only thing that will hang back home,' said Kipsel. ‘Tell me, Blanchie, what is this new order he muttered about?'

Blanchaille remembered his meeting with Van Vuuren in Balthazar Buildings and the pathetic outcasts in the holding cells. ‘The New Order is actually the old order, adapted. Under the old order they refused to compromise. Under the New Order there is nothing they won't compromise.'

And thinking these things over in their minds they walked on, soon overtaking Looksmart who moved at half their pace, boxing his ears, muttering and stopping to polish his shoes, but he showed no sign of recognition and they had soon left him far behind.

CHAPTER 22

Now I saw how our pilgrims, climbing ever higher, came suddenly upon a party of police manhandling a captive by the roadside. The prisoner was a plump, elderly tramp in handcuffs who must have been hiding out in the countryside for some time because he was very dirty and even more thickly bearded than Blanchaille and Kipsel. He was very frightened and kept crying that he was a diplomat of the highest standing and entitled to immunity according to all known protocols. The police, while not dealing with him harshly, bore him relentlessly towards a waiting police car. Despite the dirt, the beard, the matted, filthy hair, the travellers knew him immediately.

Blanchaille asked permission to speak to the prisoner and the Swiss police turned out to be perfectly amiable despite their appearance, for they wore rather a menacing grey uniform and carried large pistols in their belts. Perhaps it wasn't too surprising that Kipsel shrank back when one considered his dealings with policemen but I saw that it was the prisoner himself who most disturbed him, sending him scuttling for cover. Later, he was to claim that the need to relieve himself had carried him behind some large roadside boulders, but I think we know better. The wretched fugitive in the hands of the Swiss police was none other than Adolph Bubé.

Here perhaps it is fitting for me to pay tribute to the humanity and innate democratic sensibility of these Swiss officers who must have been hard put to distinguish between the large tramp who approached them and the hysterical hobo they had taken into custody. Perhaps they were influenced by their long experience in administering the Red Cross, as well as the admirable ideals enshrined in the Geneva Convention for the treatment of prisoners of war. In any event, the officer in charge granted Blanchaille's request for a few words in private with the prisoner and he and his men withdrew to their vehicles and occupied themselves by polishing windscreens and clearing the roadside verges of unsightly weeds and performing various other useful activities.

I saw in my dream an astonishing sight. The ex-priest and the former President cloistered at the side of the road in the attitude of a
father-confessor and penitent, while Kipsel hid from sight and the Swiss police tidied up the landscape. In hoarse whispers Bubé made his confession while Blanchaille listened gravely, nodding at times and comforting the old man when grief overcame him. An odd couple, to be sure, but both men were experiencing the painful dislocation of reality which had pitched them onto this Swiss mountain and so felt a curious kinship and Blanchaille listened with every sympathy, stirring only to offer his handkerchief when the tears became a flood and once intervening to restrain the old man when he attempted to dash his head against a rock. And on another occasion, he drew something in the sand with his finger and the old man beat his breast and called on God to forgive him.

When at length they finished I saw Blanchaille lead the prisoner over to the police. And as he turned I saw, as did Kipsel, now bold enough to peer over the boulders, a sign on his back which read A. BUBI.

As the police car disappeared down the mountain road Blanchaille returned to Kipsel and told him the amazing saga of that unlikely renegade, former President Adolph Gerhardus Bubé.

‘He's in serious trouble. He has committed the gravest offence this country recognises –'

‘Wait, don't tell me,' said Kipsel raising his hand. ‘He's broken financial regulations.'

Blanchaille nodded. ‘Yes, but it's worse than that –'

‘It's something to do with the missing millions, isn't it? The money Ferreira was looking for, the discrepancies in the books? The money he sent here?'

Blanchaille had to smile at his friend's naïvety. ‘Heavens, Ronnie, that's no crime! Not here. It's widely expected that the heads of various regimes should squirrel away large sums in Swiss accounts against a rainy day, the sudden coup that will pitch them into exile, or just for insurance. Hell, no, the Swiss don't get offended about that. They consider it quite natural that foreign regimes should screw their people, empty the banks, siphon off the aid cheques into secret accounts in Geneva and Zurich. African regimes especially. And to them Bubé is just another African. No, what the Swiss have set their faces firmly against is anybody diddling the Swiss.'

Kipsel blew harshly between his teeth. ‘Wowee!'

‘Precisely,' said Blanchaille, ‘though “Wowee!” hardly covers the complexities involved. It has to do with gold sales. We might
have guessed that. You remember Himmelfarber telling us about the switch from the London gold market to Zurich in what he called the gilded days? Well Bubé was largely responsible for the move. And the Swiss bullion dealers were impressed. Some of his best friends were bullion dealers and they were very grateful to get our gold. Some of them were very grateful before they got our gold and showed their gratitude. As we say back home, they “thanked” the Minister.

‘But when gold sales returned to the London market the love went out of Bubé's relationship with the dealers. It did no good to explain that it was the Swiss Government's fault for imposing the sales tax, thereby forcing the dealers to show their volumes of sales and upsetting our other friends, the Russians. As far as the dealers were concerned, one moment they had all the gold and the next moment they didn't. They insist Bubé gave them to believe that South African gold was here in Switzerland to stay. They feel aggrieved. And behind the dealers are the banks. Because of course they lent the money to the dealers. And as that pleasant young police officer from the Commercial Division of the Swiss police told me back there – in Switzerland when the banks speak the cantons tremble. The banks are very bitter. After all, they argue – who was it who arranged loans and credits to the Regime when no one else would touch them?'

‘Then the stories about the President are true?' Kipsel asked. ‘He has money stashed away?'

‘Quite a lot. Perhaps as much as twenty million. Perhaps more. Bubé himself isn't sure.'

‘That's a fortune!'

‘That what I said. Bubé became pretty peevish. “You don't plan for a government-in-exile on peanuts,” he said. “It's not like arranging a skiing trip.” It's this money that is the subject of the dispute. The bullion dealers claim that it was amassed using their contributions, their commissions, so they're laying claim to it. Meanwhile the Regime, having got wind of it, is also after the money. They say it belongs to them having been improperly acquired. Bubé says he's sick to death of this nonsense. He says that there have long been plans to establish a government-in-exile should the Regime fall. It was, as Himmelfarber told us, just one of the options. Various South American countries have been selected, as suitable where of course there are communities of the many descendants of those Boer exiles who originally fled to South America after the Boer War. Bubé referred to this money as a
contingency fund. A hedge against the day when, like it or not, the Regime may have to transfer to Paraguay or Bolivia. What's more he says that everybody in the inner ring of the Cabinet has known of this fund for years, approved of it, encouraged it. Yet when he arrived in Switzerland he found the Regime was denouncing him for fraud. They were demanding his extradition – with all the money. And the Swiss bullion dealers are demanding that what they call “earlier undertakings” must be honoured and the banks are talking menacingly of this insult to the soul of the nation; this cancer in the body of the Helvetian State – this is dangerous stuff because the banks are to Switzerland what I suppose the Roman Curia is to the Vatican, director and guardians of the faith . . . Bubé's alleged crime is not only that he has injured Swiss banks, but by turning up in person on Swiss soil he has added insult to injury. Not only are they determined to get their money back, but they want to make an example of him. I expect he will be paraded in the market squares of all the towns between here and Geneva.'

Kipsel understood. ‘Hence the notice.'

‘Right.'

‘I've got little sympathy for him,' Kipsel commented. ‘But I wonder how firm their evidence is when they can't even spell his name.'

‘It's very common in the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland to find names ending in “
i
” – Matti, Jutti and so on. That young policeman's name was Mitti. They've spelt it the way they heard it – BUBI.'

‘How come you know so much about the Swiss arrangements, Blanchie?'

‘Well, I was incarcerated for some time with a wild Swiss priest back at home. His name was Wüli. There's a case in point. Wüli had often been arrested in Switzerland and he was something of an expert on the subject.'

‘What was he doing in South Africa?'

‘Much the same sort of thing. Getting arrested. He had an overwhelming desire to expose his genitals to unsuspecting civilians. This simply didn't cut him out for parish work. So the Church confined him to one of those
gulags
in the mountains. But that didn't stop old Wüli. He was as fit as could be and would saunter off, up hill and down dale, like a bloody mountain goat in search of some sympathetic soul to whom he could make his personal revelations. Wüli warned me about the horror and detestation with which economic crimes were regarded in Switzerland. Each nation has its
love, Wüli told me: the Regime dreams of naked black women; the English are a nation of child molesters; the Swiss have exchanged their soul for financial security, they worship the franc and hold sacred the bank account.'

‘And Bubé has abased the sacred rites?'

‘It's worse than that. The account was found to be empty, it's tantamount to religious blasphemy. He's in deep trouble.'

‘All of it – gone? But Blanchie – where? How?'

‘Bubé was very cagey about that. He kept trying to defend himself. Said he had no option. He was a victim. The Swiss would wring him out and hand him back to the Regime who'd spent so much time washing their hands of him they had to wear gloves. They were going to blame him for their own decisions, crucify him for saving his country. I put it to him straight. You've transferred the money to the other fund, I said. He was ready for this. He looked almost triumphant. There was a flash of the old Bubé, the truculent jeerer of the political platform, scourge of the press, whirlwind diplomat, baby creator – “How could I?” he asked. “There is no
other
fund.” What about the Kruger fund, I asked. He laughed. “You don't believe that old story, do you? There were no millions, there is no fund.”'

‘Clever,' said Kipsel.

‘The President's vanishing trick. Where are the missing millions? Now you see them, now you don't. Like Kruger, like Bubé. Clever, and inevitable,' said Blanchaille. ‘The old man may suffer in the short term, because the Swiss are convinced he's got the money stashed away. But they won't find it since the other fund doesn't exist. And that's official. The Regime denies the story of the Kruger millions. The Swiss deny the existence of a Kruger asylum here. Therefore it's not possible for Bubé's treasure to have joined it. After a while the Swiss will convince themselves that the money Bubé owes them never existed. They never bribed Bubé and he never welshed on his promises to them. The banks will absorb their losses stoically and save face. The Regime will appreciate the value of this. If the money does not exist, nor the secret accounts, then neither does the fraud or the defection of the President, nor the plan for a government-in-exile.'

‘Yes,' said Kipsel, savouring the beauty of it, ‘and I won't be surprised if the Regime starts threatening anyone who tells these stories of the missing Bubé's missing millions. People will get into trouble for telling stories.'

‘The chances are,' said Blanchaille, ‘that Bubé will be completely
cleared, his name will be incised on all the war monuments and the attacks upon him cited as further evidence of the Total Onslaught against our country. The missing presidential millions have their uses.'

Kipsel nodded emphatically. ‘What would we do without them?'

They sat by the roadside and gazed down at the lake far below. A tiny white steamer moved in a wide arc across the still blue water, it followed a great circle, creeping round like the second hand of a watch. Running down the sides of the lake the vineyards seen from this height stretched out with a green and metalled regularity.

After some while I heard Kipsel ask: ‘Blanchie, what were you drawing in the sand when you were talking to Bubé?'

In reply, Blanchaille drew in the dust the letters ASK 3. ‘When I was in London, before Van Vuuren was killed, we met Father Lynch. He had been following us. Don't ask me how. We talked about death. His and ours and Ferreira's. Having explained to us why the price of shares fell after Tony's murder we asked if he knew who'd killed him. He said he didn't. But he said something interesting. What if the letters scrawled on the wall did not stand for the Afrika Straf Kaffir Brigade, or the Azanian Strike Kommando No. 3? What if those letters had not been written by his killers, or even by someone wanting everyone to think they'd been written by his killers? What if they'd been written by Ferreira himself? I remember his words, “If you can read the writing on the wall you may be close to the killer.” Back there, when we saw the police with Bubé, something suddenly occurred to me. Look at the letters again – ASK 3. Now imagine someone writing them in a hurry, someone in a state of shock, in pain, someone dying. Maybe he would write clearly. Look at the number
3
– and remember that the people who saw it said they “thought” it looked like a
3
. But say it wasn't. Say the dying man had been trying to write not
3
but
B
.'

‘All right, say they were,' said Kipsel. ‘All it does is to make the message even more mysterious. You can't make sense of B. At least ASK 3 can be made to fit the initials of two known organisations both of which were capable of murdering a Government official who had discovered something nasty about them.'