A Sailor's Honour (12 page)

Kapitänleutnant Karl-Heinz Weber was soon to become history too, in the most undignified way for a submariner. But first he would have to conduct one final mission, a mission that would take his wife and unborn son to South Africa.

‘Come sit down,' Martin Bormann said and pointed to a chair at his desk. ‘I have an operation for you.'

Commander Weber sat down slowly.

‘
U
-891,' Bormann said. ‘She's being commissioned as we speak, with certain modifications which the particular requirements of this operation necessitate.'

‘I would be honoured to serve, sir,' Commander Weber replied.

‘Good,' Bormann said. He opened a drawer and put a bottle of schnapps on the desk. He poured two small glasses and offered one to Commander Weber. ‘I can tell you that Weissdorn gave you the best possible training for the mission I have in mind. You fit this mission as if you were born for it.'

‘Is it something like Weissdorn, sir?' Commander Weber asked.

‘Exactly like Weissdorn,' Bormann replied. ‘Exactly, from beginning to end.'

Commander Weber nodded, but didn't speak.

‘The Russians are approaching Berlin as we speak. We need to get out,' Bormann said. ‘You are to take me to Lüderitzbucht where the
SS
have made arrangements for me to be taken inland.'

‘Using
U
-891?'

‘Yes, and then you return to your base.'

‘May I ask what modifications are being made, sir?' Weber asked. ‘It is a technical issue. I need to know what my boat can do.'

Bormann laughed. ‘No, it's nothing technical. All they are doing is to make slight modifications to the commander's quarters so that I can travel in some comfort.'

Bormann seemed quite jovial, but Commander Weber still hesitated before he spoke. ‘I will need a favour, sir,' he said. ‘I would like to take my wife too, and leave her in Africa. Until I can go back for her.'

‘Very well,' Martin Bormann agreed.

‘I'm tired, my boy,' Anna Weber said on the other end of the phone. ‘It's time for my nap.'

Johann Weber looked at the photograph on his desk. It had been taken many years earlier, when his mother had still dressed him as if they were living in Bavaria. A timid boy of preschool age, dressed in lederhosen, stood next to his mother, holding her hand. The woman squinted against the light, but there was no doubt that the boy whose hand she gripped was the focus of her love.

‘It's alright, Mutti,' Weber said. ‘I'll phone you again tomorrow.'

‘I love you, my boy,' his mother said. After more than fifty years of showing her love in every act and look, his mother now felt the need to tell him that she loved him. As if he didn't know.

‘I know, Mutti,' he said. ‘I've always known.'

When Weber looked at the photograph again, he found that his eyes had misted over. He found some comfort in the lion's claw he wore around his neck. When he had first got it, it had been on a leather thong. It now hung on a fine, filigreed silver chain.

‘Mutti, why do other people ride in cars and we have to walk?'

The boy held his mother's hand very tightly. It was January 1952, his first day of school. Although he'd had a week to get accustomed to his new surroundings and to explore a bit, he still felt a stranger. He knew none of the children disgorged in the school grounds by the dusty cars and one-ton farm trucks.

Anna Weber squeezed her son's hand. She was pleased and proud in equal measure. After six years of living on the charity of others, she now had a job, a real job with a salary of £25 a month. And with the job came the head matron's flat at the school. She could take care of her son on her own for the first time. She felt free, liberated enough to want to sing, but the only tunes which came to mind were from Wagner's
Der Ring des Nibelungen
.

‘Why, Mutti?' the boy insisted.

‘Because they are rich and we are poor,' she said. ‘But not for long, and then we'll buy our own car.'

The boy pointed with his free hand. ‘A blue one with a white roof, like that one?'

‘Yes, a German car, an Opel.'

Johann Weber's passion for cars was born on that day.

Anna Weber was a handsome, striking woman, not conventionally beautiful. Perhaps it was in her upright structure, in the perfect proportion of hip to breast, or in the way she carried her shoulders or inclined her head when she looked you in the eye. Or perhaps it was in the way she always went down on one knee when she spoke to a child, reducing herself to an equal. Perhaps it was in the way she braided her long blond hair or how the braids snaked behind her when she walked quickly or shook her head.

But here, amongst these farmers and their fresh-faced wives, she felt out of place with her manicured red fingernails matching her lipstick, her floral dress and nylon stockings belying the fact that she was a hundred and twenty miles from the nearest town with a cinema.

What she didn't know was that the men and women who brought their children to school on that opening day were equally uneasy, not knowing what to make of this woman with the child at her side and no husband in sight, this woman who looked as if she had stepped out of a black-and-white film, this beautiful woman who spoke Afrikaans with a German accent. In time they would grow to love her, but the women would not allow their men to visit the school alone.

The arriving children were herded to their dormitories by the assistant matrons, each to a predetermined bed, the girls to one side near the matron's flat and the boys to the other side of the classrooms near the laundry. The older children knew the drill and slowly made their way to the concrete quad where the day would start with an assembly with prayers and speeches.

There was an air of expectancy. Lined up in neat rows facing the headmaster and his meagre team of teachers, they kept looking back.

Oom Daan van den Heever's arrival was announced by the roar of a truck that came to a halt in a cloud of dust outside the headmaster's office. The children turned as one, and when Johann turned to see what the excitement was about, he saw a man in khakis in the open space between the corner of the office and the machine room. Oom Daan was a very large man, six foot six at least, and 240 lb or so. He wore lace-up boots with leather leggings and carried a short whip made of hippo leather.

‘Are you ready?' oom Daan called to the assembly.

‘Yes, sir,' the boys and girls chanted. ‘Yes, sir!'

Oom Daan half turned and wacked the side of his boot with the whip, and a lion suddenly appeared from around the corner and rushed towards oom Daan. When the lion, a male with a reddish-brown mane, came near oom Daan, it readied itself for a lunge, but oom Daan cracked his whip against the side of his boot twice in quick succession, and the big cat stopped in its tracks and then meekly came to heel at oom Daan's side. The children cheered and clapped as oom Daan cracked the whip again. The lion jumped and sat down and stood on its hind legs with its front paws on oom Daan's shoulders.

Johann Weber saw nothing as he'd run away to his mother's flat at the first sight of the animal, too scared even to look around. His mother had to lead him back to the quad. All the children and teachers laughed at him.

Oom Daan called him over. ‘Come on, boy, he won't bite you.'

At that very moment the lion yawned and Johann was sure it could easily bite him in half if he should go near it. He tugged at his mother's hand to get away, but she held firm.

‘Come, boy, you can touch him,' oom Daan offered and stroked the lion's mane and tickled it under its chin as if it were a kitten. As if on cue, the lion started purring with a sound like a diesel engine. One of the older boys stepped across and patted the lion's head. It looked bored.

But Johann was frightened and began to cry.

Oom Daan cracked his whip again and gave the lion a command. The animal slunk off and jumped onto the back of oom Daan's truck. Johann looked through his tears. He was convinced the lion was watching him. It licked its lips and kept its yellow eyes on him.

‘Come here, boy,' oom Daan said to Johann.

Anna Weber let go of Johann's hand and pushed him towards oom Daan. The farmer put his hand in his pocket. It emerged as a closed fist. ‘Come here, my boy. I have something for you.'

Johann stepped forward slowly, keeping one eye on the lion on the back of the truck. Oom Daan's hair was the same colour as the lion's mane.

‘His name is Bosveld,' oom Daan said. ‘He is the most famous lion in the whole world.'

Johann was reluctant to believe that. He had seen only one lion before, but that was in the bioscope in Potgietersrus. The film was about to start and a great lion came on and roared and the titles then rolled down the screen. Surely that lion was more famous than this one, which now sat like a dog on the back of the truck?

Oom Daan went down on one knee in a gesture Johann had only ever see his mother do and held out his closed fist with the knuckles facing Johann. ‘Hold out your hand,' oom Daan said. Even on one knee, he towered above the boy.

Johann put his right hand forward. Oom Daan put his fist above Johann's hand and enclosed the boy's shaking hand in his. His hands were large, calloused and coarse, but somehow kind. Johann felt something in his palm. It was warm, and it had a sharp point.

Oom Daan released his hand and said, ‘Now you never have to be afraid again, ever.' He rose and guided the boy back towards his classmates.

Johann opened his hand. It was a lion's claw, about an inch long, with a tiny hole drilled through its base, and suspended on a thin leather thong.

‘Where do you come from?' the gangly Standard three boy demanded during break, prodding Johann in the chest. Johann had heard him referred to as Spokie.

‘From a ship,' he said.

‘A ship?'

It was not a credible answer, as they were hundreds of miles from the sea. Moreover, none of the children had ever seen the ocean, except in pictures, and in most cases, neither had their parents.

‘A submarine,' Johann said, to even greater incredulity.

‘Not so. Not so,' one of the boys chanted.

‘Is so. Is so too,' Johann insisted, but he could sense that no one believed him. He felt surrounded and saw no friendly faces. He tried to divert their attention from his improbable story by pulling the lion's claw from his pocket and saying, ‘Look what oom Daan gave me,' but the move was counterproductive.

‘Give it to me,' the Standard three boy said.

Johann shook his head. ‘No.'

The Standard three boy looked over his shoulder. When he saw that the coast was clear, he cuffed Johann on the side of the head. When he saw no surrender in Johann's demeanour, he grabbed him in a bear hug and wrestled him to the ground. They rolled in the dust and several blows had struck Johann before a prefect pulled them apart.

At the next assembly in the square, Johann and the older boy were directed to go to the headmaster's office. The headmaster called the boy Piet, but Johann had heard the other children calling him Spokie.

‘No names.'

The words blew away in the southeaster. They were never to use their own or any other member's names.

The men who headed up the Third Force held their first formal meeting in the autumn of 1955 at the top of Devil's Peak, thereby establishing a convention that would be honoured into the twenty-first century. All operational meetings were henceforth to be held in the open air, no matter how hard it might rain or how bad the conditions might be.

‘We have a problem,' the major said. ‘A serious problem.'

The seven men stood in a tight circle. In accordance with their unwritten rules, no one was to speak until invited to do so by their leader. ‘Comrades,' their leader went on, ‘we have a serious problem and we have to reconsider our long-term strategy. Let me get to the point.'

Below them Cape Town sat in glorious sunshine. Above their heads a blanket of mist started its descent over Table Mountain. They realised they would have to complete their business quickly or be trapped on the mountain. Table Mountain was the symbol of their resistance, an object which they considered as firmly and permanently planted in the soil as they were. An irony that would escape them was that their mortal enemy, General Jan Smuts, had identified it as the talisman of the country and all its people.

The men of the Third Force stood in silence for a while. Their organisation had founded and shaped its plans around the long-term viability of apartheid. In 1942 the population figures had already been skewed against them. There were three Africans for every European. By 1955 the disparity had grown to four to one, and according to those who were able to advise on such matters, by the end of the century it would be ten or more to one.

‘We need to adjust our strategy,' the major explained. ‘Hitherto we have been prepared to leave the matter in Verwoerd's hands in the belief that he would pursue apartheid to its logical conclusion, but things are different now. Now we know that he views the current policy as an interim measure. We have intelligence that he has said privately that apartheid is the means to ensure that white and black should meet as equals at some point in the future, and that we will reach that point before the end of this century.'

After discussion, they settled on a plan. They would launch Operation Population Control. The first phase involved exhorting white families to have more children. The second phase involved persuading black families to have fewer.

Within a short time the two groups of children, white and black, would meet each other on the battlefields of Angola and in the burning townships of every city.