A Sailor's Honour (8 page)

But they were wrong.

Weber came from Baltic stock. His ancestors had sailed the northern seas when Lübeck and Hamburg were but tiny settlements and all communication with those on land was lost the moment a ship disappeared over the horizon. His ancestors had survived at least three sackings of Hamburg by a succession of invaders, from the Vikings to the Poles to the Allied bombers of Hitler's War. Each time the Webers had returned and had rebuilt their city. Each time they had built it better and higher than it had been before the fires. Among his ancestors were men who were prepared to face the unknown dangers of the icy waters right up to the Barents Sea. His mother had come to South Africa in the captain's quarters of a
U
-boat, surrounded by rough men and facing an uncertain trek across the desert, but had not once complained. The Webers were not prone to fear, and Johann Weber was not a man to leave a problem unsolved or a challenge unanswered.

As he stood at his window looking out over the harbour, a truck carrying a Hamburg Süd container made its way through the slow-moving traffic. Weber remembered that he had met his wife in Hamburg. Container shipping was in its infancy, and Hamburg Süd had flown him out to Hamburg to advise on the readiness of the port in Durban to handle containerised cargo. Weber had looked right instead of left crossing the road and had been knocked down by a taxi. The arbitrage nurse in the emergency room had laughed at his accent when he spoke German and had teased him. ‘Your German is old fashioned,' Liesl had said. ‘Grammatically correct, but very old fashioned, like my grandfather's.'

Weber had been in pain and was short on humour. ‘I didn't come here for a lecture on my German,' he said. ‘I'm hurting.'

‘Oh my,' she had said. ‘Can't stand a little pain. Perhaps you should be more careful, then, when you cross the road.'

Weber could never get her to take him seriously. When he berated the boys for some misdemeanour, she would pull faces behind his back and the boys would start laughing. When he was in a miserable mood or sulking in his study, she would sneak up behind him and put her hands over his eyes. ‘Guess who?' she would say. ‘Look left, not right!'

Yes, he could never get her to take him seriously, which was just as well, he now thought to himself. It kept his feet on the ground. It's difficult to put on airs and graces when your wife and children make fun of you all the time.

But it wasn't only Weber's family who didn't take him seriously. When the Third Force had detailed their man in Durban to provide a report on Weber, the man had spoken to a number of the advocates and even one of the judges who had been a member of the Third Force in his younger days. The report had emboldened them, because it painted a picture of a man who was risk-averse and a stickler for formality and procedure. His cases were presented with meticulous care, but without fanfare. His name seldom appeared in the papers, and when it did, it was unaccompanied by any public statements or comments made by him. The only interesting thing the report disclosed was Weber's passion for cars and, in particular, for his current project, a vintage Porsche Carrera. Otherwise he was a boring fellow, with no known vices or predilections. They concluded that he would present no appreciable risk to their operation.

The subject of their investigation now sat staring out of the window of his chambers, apparently lost in thought, but in reality hard at work to find a solution. Johann Weber often worked like that; after reading the papers in a complex case, he would stare out of the window with unseeing eyes and allow his subconscious to work on the problem. For some reason he did not care to explore, his inner mind worked best when left alone. It was as if there was a second Weber in his subconscious, working away where no one could see him, until the job was done. His mind wandered to strange places and to men he had never met. But the job would be done on time.

Johann Weber was oblivious to the fact that the container ship settling ever so slightly deeper in the water at the terminal outside his window was a German ship, with Hamburg as its home port and a master mariner called August Weber as its captain. His thoughts were wandering, and he thought of Bram Fischer, also a respected senior advocate at the time, and of what must have gone through Fischer's mind when he had to make the decision to go underground and outside the law, to continue the struggle for justice from there. Fischer was an idealistic communist; one who believed that all men – and women – are born equal and are entitled to be treated equally, and that the system he advocated would provide for that. An advocate's word is his bond, Weber knew, as Fischer must have. But there are higher laws than the law of the land. The state's laws were ephemeral, and could be changed by politicians. Fischer must have thought that the time would come when the very laws against which he had been induced to struggle would eventually be repealed. They were, a mere twenty-five years later.

Weber had returned all his current briefs for court appearances to the instructing attorneys, who were sympathetic to his plight, and promised to continue briefing him when he felt ready to return to practise again. Liesl Weber was more than a wife to Weber. She was his life partner, mother of his sons, a guiding light who kept his personal world in order and gave him purpose. His wife was part of his personality: she made him whole. In her absence, he felt broken apart and incapable of functioning.

What would I do if they should harm her? he wondered. I'll kill them, the answer came quickly. I'll kill the lot of them. Like Bram Fischer, I'll go outside the law. He looked down at his hands. They were the soft hands of a man of words and principles and legal reasoning. His was a world where the cold power of reason and a compelling argument based on the facts, the law and logic always prevailed and was designed to achieve justice, to restore the equilibrium and balance the scales again. That was, after all, the whole idea of justice: to restore the equilibrium which existed before the transgression which disturbed it.

But how do you reason with people who kidnap women and children, the devil on his shoulder demanded, people who won't even tell you why?

His subconscious made the decision for him. He would take the law into his own hands, but stop short of killing. The police were useless, in any event. After the mandatory 48-hour wait, they had sent a barely literate constable to his chambers to take a statement from him. Then nothing. When Weber complained that the police were not taking the matter seriously enough, the station commander was unsympathetic. ‘Who do you think you are? We have more serious crimes to investigate.' It didn't help when Weber retorted, ‘Like the corruption in your station?'

So Johann Weber decided to go outside the usual legal channels.

There were several advocates in the building who had once been magistrates. They now held a virtual monopoly on the paid criminal briefs. Their clients were the very same criminals they had once sent to jail with regular monotony. Jail, after all, was what magistrates dispensed, and jail, everyone knew, was an occupational risk to the career criminal. These advocates had as their clients those to whom crime was more than a way of life; it was a business, to be conducted on the basis of the strict application of business principles, in which the degree of profit is always commensurate with the risks to be taken. Hijacking syndicates exporting luxury cars to neighbouring countries – several Zimbabwean ministers of state drove some of these – cash-in-transit robbers, Ponzi schemers,
VAT
frauds. Criminals with money to pay for their defence when they were caught. Money mostly taken from their victims. But Weber wasn't interested in the white-collar criminals. He needed serious muscle, men who were not afraid to shoot or be shot at.

‘I need help,' Weber announced after walking into Steph van Onselen's chambers without knocking and making a show of closing the door behind him.

Van Onselen practised in a small room with no books six floors below Weber's own chambers. The room was untidy and there was a stack of briefs on the windowsill. Suspended for misconduct for a year, Van Onselen had only recently returned to practice. He was a man who was not overly respectful of the law or the rules of the society of advocates. In court he bullied witnesses and bamboozled magistrates and prosecutors.

Van Onselen stood up and extended his hand. He stood a head taller than Weber and his handshake was of the crushing variety. Everything about him shouted loudly: his size, his bearing, his voice and tone, even the colour of his tie and the garish pictures on his walls. Not for Van Onselen the black-and-white photographs of dead chief justices, or the faded caricatures of French courtroom scenes. The man was loud and spoke loudly.

‘I owe you one,' he said in a voice that could be heard in his reception twenty metres away. ‘A big one and I have not forgotten.' When he had been in trouble before the Bar Council's ethics committee, Weber had defended him on a pro amico basis – on behalf of a friend. He had still got the year's suspension, but the general view amongst the advocates was that, without senior counsel standing up in his defence, Van Onselen might well have been struck of the roll.

Weber didn't waste time. ‘I need to be put in contact with a cash-in-transit robber,' he said. ‘A good one.'

Van Onselen raised his eyebrows.

‘Don't even ask,' Weber cautioned. ‘You don't want to know. It's better for both of us that you don't know.'

Van Onselen asked anyway. ‘Does this have something to do with your wife's disappearance?'

‘Yes,' Weber said. ‘Now don't ask any more questions.'

Van Onselen sat down and pointed at a visitor's chair for Weber. Weber could see him wondering if this was a trap, some elaborate scheme by the Bar Council. But then he must have remembered the vigour with which Weber had defended him, to the extent of calling the chairman of the Bar Council a sanctimonious Bible-punching hypocrite without an ounce of mercy in his make-up.

‘I think I have what you want,' he said, and leaned down to take a lever-arch file from his briefcase. ‘James Mazibuko,' he said and opened the file on his desk. ‘Serial cash-in-transit robber, often a fugitive from justice, the general who does the scouting and the planning and gives the orders, but is never seen anywhere near the action. Out on bail at the moment on a charge of robbing a cash van at Ballito while out on bail for two similar offences, one of them in Cape Town.'

‘Does he speak English?' Weber asked.

‘Better than me.' It was said with a smile. Van Onselen's English was of the murderous variety and had become a joke amongst the legal fraternity after a cantankerous judge had shouted at him, ‘Mr van Onselen, I could give you a thrashing for the way you murder the English language!'

‘How good is his intelligence?'

‘He's a very clever man, I think.'

‘No, I mean his information. He must have a network of informants about shipments' dates and times and places and so on.'

‘Oh, I see what you mean.'

‘Well?'

‘As far as I know, and he won't tell me everything, he has contacts within the banks' security and also in the police and
NIA
.'

So the rumour he had heard was true, Weber thought. The National Intelligence Agency was staffed by erstwhile freedom fighters who were not averse to making some money on the side. It was rumoured that the section looking into organised crime was in cahoots with the cash-in-transit gangs and took a cut, a solid thirty per cent of the take, in return for providing reliable intelligence to facilitate the lifting of the money and afterwards to put the police off the scent by providing false intelligence reports.

‘He should do,' Weber said and stood up.

‘What's in it for James?' Van Onselen wanted to know. ‘He's going to ask me.'

‘You may tell him that I'll defend him free of charge on every one of the charges he currently faces.'

‘That might do it,' Van Onselen said. ‘He's never had senior counsel on his side. On the prosecuting side, often, but not on the defence team. As you know, the judges here just don't take me seriously.'

Weber stopped at the door. ‘I need to see him sooner rather than later. And you'll have to set it up so that he comes to see me with a proper brief from a proper firm of attorneys. After that, you and the attorney stay well out of it.'

Van Onselen made a last effort. ‘You're not going to tell me anything about it, are you?'

‘No, because if I do, you
will
get struck off.' Weber closed the door behind him before Van Onselen could respond. ‘Both of us,' he said softly to himself.

‘Mr James Mazibuko is here, a little early.'

‘Offer him tea and make some for me too, please. I'll come out in a minute.'

He felt his secretary's eyes on him. She was still at the door. ‘What?' he asked.

‘You're in for a surprise,' she said.

‘I'll be out in a minute,' he said again.

James Mazibuko was paging through an old copy of
Christophorus
, the official Porsche magazine. He wore a blue pinstriped suit with a white button-down shirt, a red-and-blue club tie, and brown brogues which matched his leather belt. Weber's first impression was of a
BEE
billionaire or tenderpreneur, gorging on public funds while essential services were being neglected in all provinces.

‘Mr Mazibuko?' Weber began somewhat tentatively.

James Mazibuko stood up and smiled. He was short and slight. ‘I'm the only one here, aren't I?'

They shook hands. His hand was soft. There was none of the triple shake some Africans employ. ‘Here's your brief,' he said and handed a folder tied with pink ribbon to Weber.

‘Let's go through,' Weber said and indicated that Mazibuko should go ahead.