The October Killings (2 page)

She had worked out a strategy for dealing with the meeting. She would leave her car downtown as an excuse for coming late, telling anyone who asked that it had developed a fault. She would make sure that she was seen by some of the department's senior people, but would try to stay shielded from the minister, slip away as soon as the main formalities were completed and avoid the socializing afterward.

Already her plan was falling apart. She had left the car downtown and timed her leaving it to get to the meeting late, but despite her intentions, she had found herself running up the arcade. Hot and flustered, she would probably not be as unobtrusive as she had hoped.

Johanna, her desperately busy personal assistant, met Abigail in a passage that was crowded with the overflow from the meeting. “You look like you've been running,” the younger woman said.

“My car broke down,” Abigail told Johanna. “I hope the meeting's not over yet.”

“It hasn't even started…” Johanna began.

Oh, Christ, she thought. All this for nothing.

“The minister has just arrived, but Michael Bishop is not yet here.”

That was his name. It was only the second time she had come across it in twenty years. The first time had been just the day before, when she had received an e-mail instructing her to be at the meeting.

They had reached the door of the meeting room. “I'll wait out here for a moment,” she said.

“No–o.” Johanna's eyes had grown wide at the idea. “The minister's been asking after you.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said you'd been held up in court.” Johanna was a township girl and life on the township streets had taught her to think on her feet. Her parents were schoolteachers, who had insisted on her spending her afternoons studying and had been present to enforce their ruling. Right now, she was aiming for her second degree. She was in her mid-twenties, some ten years younger than her boss, almost as ambitious and unconsciously modeling herself on Abigail. “I said that being held up in court was the only possible reason that you were not yet here. I said I'd tell you that he wanted to see you the moment you got here. I said you wouldn't miss this for anything.”

Johanna was out of breath from telling Abigail all the things she had said to the minister. She stopped to breathe. “What did he say?” Abigail asked.

“He said, please. Please bring her to me the moment she arrives.”

“The guest of honor's not here yet?”

“No.” Johanna's eyes were wide again. “I can't wait. He's so mysterious.”

There must have been more than one hundred people in the meeting room. Most were senior government functionaries from the justice department, the men in dark suits and ties, and the women in muted colors. They were the new government elite. Most were under forty, African and looking for better paid options in the corporate world. Here and there a white or Asian face, often belonging to a former trade unionist who had found this new place in which to stay out of the rain, dotted the confined landscape. The only casually dressed people were to be found among the handful of reliable journalists, the kind who knew to be careful about the questions they asked, or perhaps to whom the difficult questions never occurred.

The gathering had split into small, chattering groups, one of which now gathered around the minister. He had spotted Abigail and was gesturing for to her to come closer. “Here she is,” he was saying. Around the minister were two directors-general, three deputy directors-general and one chief director who, given his relatively modest rank, was lucky to be included in the company. The minister turned to Abigail and smiled. The other men all smiled too. Whatever they thought about ambitious young women who may yet overtake them could keep for a more appropriate moment. “How are you getting on?” the minister asked. “I've told these gentlemen not to crowd you, that they must give you room to move.” He paused only a moment. “Well, Abigail, are they giving you room to move?”

All except my own deputy DG, she thought. She saw the object of her thoughts looking directly at her, lips pursed, like a schoolmaster observing an unreliable pupil. “Of course they are, Mr. Minister. You instructed them to,” she said.

The minister laughed. “If only life were that simple.” He turned to the men around him. “Do you gentlemen always do as I instruct you?” He led the laughter that followed and nodded with real amusement at the protestations of absolute obedience.

The minister was speaking to the group as a whole now. “This occasion is overdue,” he said. “It is astonishing that this hero of the liberation struggle has gone so long without recognition.” There were murmurs of agreement from the other men. He turned again to Abigail. “Did you ever meet him during the exile years?” he asked.

How do I answer this? Abigail asked herself. Had I ever met him?

“Did you ever meet Michael Bishop?” the minister asked again.

“I think so,” she said. “Perhaps.” Oh God, she thought.

“Of course that was long ago. You would have been very young.”

Not that young, she thought. “Yes,” she said. “I was very young.”

“Yes,” the minister said, “a genuine hero of the struggle. While the rest of us were getting educated at international universities, he was in the front lines, risking his life. It just shows how sound our nonracial policies are.” The last reference was to the fact that Bishop was white. Again, all those around the minister were nodding in agreement. “Now, gentlemen, if you will excuse me for a moment, I need to venture down the passage.”

Abigail took the opportunity to extricate herself from the group and joined Johanna on the other side of the room. “There's no word from him,” Johanna said. “He's already half an hour late, but we've heard nothing.”

Abigail had only ever seen Bishop once and that one occasion would be with her as long as she lived. In all the many party meetings and public occasions she had attended she had never been aware of his presence at any of them. She had never heard of an invitation to speak at a meeting being issued to him or even any public acknowledgment of his existence—until now.

“He may not come,” she told Johanna, the words issuing forth unplanned, almost surprising herself.

“But everyone is here, even two cabinet ministers.”

“I know.”

“Do you know him?”

“No.”

None of this satisfied Johanna, but there was something in the tone of Abigail's answers that forbade further questions.

“I do hope he comes,” Johanna said.

The minister waited another half hour, then, trying hard to conceal his irritation, made his speech about the power of selfless devotion to the cause and how Michael Bishop's life confirmed this. The recognition of his part in the liberation struggle would not be confined to this day and the country would never forget the sacrifices he had made.

The minister's speech continued for some thirty minutes, but Abigail stopped listening after only a minute or two. She had found a place at the back of the room and, resting against the wall, barely took in the content of the minister's speech. There were times when a blank mind was its best possible state.

3

Abigail was still hurrying. Her evening function followed so close behind her afternoon one that she barely had time to shower and change before leaving.

As was her way, she had paused only briefly before the mirror before leaving. Abigail knew that her face and figure were pleasing to men. She also knew that a little more weight in the bosom would have further improved matters, but she was perfectly content with the way things were. For the occasion she had dressed in a plain black pants suit, broken only by a single string of pearls, the first present Robert had ever given her. The thought that this would be very simple attire compared to that worn by most of the ladies had not entered her mind.

Robert Mokoapi, her husband, had been putting the day's edition of his newspaper to bed and would shower and change at work, meeting her at the home where the function was being held. Abigail had no clear idea of the reason for this evening's occasion, except that Robert wanted her to strengthen her relationship with the controlling shareholders of the company he worked for.

At night the run from their apartment on the Groenkloof hillside overlooking eastern Pretoria to Johannesburg's northern suburbs took no more than thirty minutes. Now, with the evening commuter rush not quite over, the drive from city to city could take more than twice as long.

Following the directions Robert had given her, she found the high-walled multimillion-rand house at the end of a short street of other high-walled multimillion-rand houses. In much of South Africa, and especially in Johannesburg, if your lifestyle revealed that you had money, you needed to take precautions to safeguard it and your family. Every house in the street had electrified fencing along the tops of its walls, closed-circuit television cameras at the gates, electronic alarm systems and rapid-response armed guards on call. Abigail's own home too was protected by all of these devices.

A uniformed guard compared her name to those on a list before opening the gate. She drove into a garden that did not seem to contain a house at all. It was surrounded by five acres of garden and was not visible from the garden walls. As she followed the drive, the house came into view through a network of jacaranda, palm and plane tree branches. The parking area alone, to which she was guided by another uniformed guard, covered half an acre.

There were perhaps twenty cars in the parking lot. Among them was Robert's Mercedes, a perk on which the company had insisted. Robert always said that the symbols of status meant nothing to him. He was after the real thing, he said, not just the appearance of power.

As she opened the car door she could hear the sound of many animated voices against the background of Beethoven's
Pathétique
sonata. She smoothed down the pants of her suit. The glass sliding doors were open and the guests had flooded out onto a broad patio, paved with Italian tiles and fringed with tiny, stunted palms. The pianist, a young blond woman in tuxedo and bow tie, was working a grand piano that had been positioned under a yellow canvas awning on the edge of the patio. To Abigail's ears, she was adding little floral bits that would have surprised the composer had he been present.

A middle-aged man, whose receding hair was so black that to Abigail it had to be dyed, was scurrying around the patio giving orders to waiters and others. He came forward to meet her. His public relations company had sent out the invitations. “Abigail,” he said, in a tone that suggested that her presence had made the evening for him.

“Martin,” she said, trying to capture in her voice some of his enthusiasm. “How good of you to invite me.”

“I always invite the really important people, my dear.” They laughed, both knowing that he had nothing to do with the invitation list. “Robert has been asking after you,” he said. “He's over there with the bigwigs.”

She recognized the man with her husband as the controlling shareholder and chairman of Robert's company. Nearly as tall as Robert and in his late sixties, but lean and tanned, in immaculately tailored slacks and turtleneck sweater, he looked like an advertisement for a luxury cruise line. He was, in fact, the third-generation custodian of his family's gold-mining money. During the apartheid years, when sanctions kept his company confined by South Africa's borders, he had invested in many nonmining activities, from shoe stores to real estate. He had since rid himself of all non-core businesses, excepting Robert's newspaper.

“The food tonight is something really special.” Martin was still next to her, no new guests having followed her from the parking area. Abigail raised an eyebrow in a feigned attempt at curiosity. “Fried mopani worms and locusts for starters.”

Since she had left home she had been aware that some irritant had been at work, just below the surface of full consciousness. Now that she gave the matter her attention for the first time, she realized that it was the label on her suit that had been scratching the back of her neck. Over the last half hour it had been tearing persistently at her skin and was now almost impossible to ignore.

“Say again…?” she said to Martin.

“Followed by crocodile steaks with phutu porridge, and then fermented Amarula fruit with sour cream for dessert. To drink we have KwaZulu palm wine, distilled in their kraals by Zulu peasants.”

“Are you serious?”

Martin was indeed serious. “We decided to go all-African tonight. What do you think?”

“Astonishing,” was all Abigail could manage politely.

“I thought you'd be taken with our menu. Oh, here comes the deputy chairman. Got to go.”

He hurried in the direction of the parking lot while Abigail started across the patio. Almost everyone present was a member of one of two groups, each with its own agenda. One group was made up of very rich white men who were determined to keep what they had by enriching a small band of influential black men beyond any possible imaginings. The other group was made up of influential black men: politicians, senior bureaucrats, one former cabinet minister who had recently resigned to pursue richer pickings, all determined to be part of the group that was being enriched by the very rich white men.

Robert saw her long before she reached him and met her in the center of the patio. “You look great,” he said.

A waiter swept up to them with a tray of crisply fried insects. Abigail waved him away. With her right hand she tried to reposition the offending label. “Have you seen the menu?” she asked. “Real African stuff, to make us darkies feel at home, no doubt.”

“They're just trying to be accepting,” Robert said. Abigail recognized his patient tone of voice.

“Mopani worms, locusts, fermented Amarula with sour cream? Palm wine, made by Zulu peasants? For God's sake. I grew up in Hampstead, just down the road from Buckingham Palace.”