The White Lioness (21 page)

Malan had met him on several occasions. "I take van Heerden to be very intelligent," he said.

"Quite right," Kleyn said. "He's a very dangerous man, an enemy who deserves our respect. Unfortunately, he's not a well man."

Malan raised an eyebrow. "Not well?"

"Some difficulties solve themselves. I happen to know that he's booked into a private hospital in Johannesburg next week for a minor operation. He has prostate problems."

Kleyn took a slurp of coffee.

"He'll never leave that hospital," he said. "I'll take care of that myself. After all, it's me he was trying to get at. They were my computer files he hacked into."

They sat in silence while a black waiter cleared the table.

"I've solved the problem myself," Kleyn said when they were alone again. "But I wanted to tell you about it for one reason, and one reason only. You must also be very careful. In all probability there's someone looking over your shoulder as well."

"It's good that I know," Malan said. "I'll double-check my security procedures."

The waiter reappeared, and Kleyn paid.

"You had a question," Kleyn said. "Let's take a little walk."

They took a path above the beach.

"Tsiki will be ready to fly out within ten days," Kleyn said.

"And Mabasha?"

"Presumably dead by now. I'm expecting Konovalenko to get in touch tonight, tomorrow at the latest."

"We've heard a rumour from Cape Town that there'll be a big meeting there on June 12," Malan said. "I'm investigating to see whether that could be a suitable opportunity."

Kleyn stopped. "That could be an excellent time," he said.

"I'll keep you informed," Malan said.

Kleyn stood looking down to the sea. Malan followed his gaze. Below them was a car upside down in the sand.

"The car has evidently not yet been traced," Kleyn said. "When they find it, they'll discover three black men aged about 25. They were shot and then the car was tipped onto the beach. This was where they were to get their money."

They turned and retraced their steps. Malan did not bother to ask who had carried out the executions. There were some things he would rather not know.

Kleyn avoided the highway back to Pretoria. He preferred to take roads with less traffic through Natal. He was in no hurry, and felt the need to assess how things stood. There was a lot at stake, for himself, for his fellow conspirators, and not least for all the white citizens of South Africa.

Sometimes Kleyn was scared by his own lack of feelings. He knew he was what was often called a fanatic, but he knew of no other life he would rather lead. There were two things, however, that made him unsettled. One was the recurring nightmare he had, in which he found himself trapped in a world populated exclusively by black people. He could no longer speak. What came out of his mouth were words transformed into animal noises. He sounded like a laughing hyena.

The other was that nobody knew how much time they had left. It was not that he wanted to live for ever, but he did want to live long enough to see white South Africans secure their threatened dominion. Then he could die. Not before. He made his way home by way of Witbank and stopped for dinner at a little restaurant there. By then he had thought through the plan one more time, all the assumptions and all the pitfalls. He felt at ease. Everything would go according to plan. Maybe Malan's June 12 meeting in Cape Town would be the best opportunity.

He turned into the drive leading to his big house on the outskirts of Pretoria just before 11 p.m. His black night porter opened the gate for him. The last thing he thought about before falling asleep was Mabasha. Only with difficulty could he remember what he had looked like.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Feelings of uneasiness, of insidious fear, were nothing new to him. Moments of excitement and danger were a natural part of his work in the intelligence service. But he felt more defenceless in the face of his anxiety, now that he was in a hospital bed, waiting to be operated on.

Brenthurst Clinic was situated in the north Johannesburg suburb of Hillbrow. He might have chosen a more expensive alternative, but Brenthurst suited him. It was renowned for its high standards and the level of care was beyond reproach. On the other hand, the private rooms were not at all luxurious. Indeed, the whole building was rather shabby.

Van Heerden was well off without being rich, and he did not like ostentation. On holiday, he made a point of not staying at luxury hotels, which just made him feel surrounded by that special kind of emptiness a certain class of white South Africans seemed to wallow in.

Van Heerden was in a room on the second floor. He heard laughter in the corridor, and then a tea trolley rattle past. He looked out of the window. A solitary pigeon stood guard on the roof next door. Behind it the sky was the dark shade of blue he was so fond of. The brief African dusk would soon be over. His uneasiness increased as darkness gathered.

It was Monday, May 4. The next morning, at 8 a.m., two senior and renowned specialists would perform the straightforward surgery that was supposed to cure the urinary problems he had been having. He was not fearful about the operation. His own doctor had convinced him the operation was routine. He would be discharged in a matter of days, and in another week or so he would have forgotten all about it.

There was something else. It was partly to do with his illness. He was 36 years old, but he suffered from a physical complaint which normally afflicted men in their sixties. He wondered if he were already burned out, if he had aged so prematurely and so dramatically. Working for NIS was demanding; that had been clear to him for a long time. Being the President's special messenger also increased the pressure he had anyway to live with. But he kept himself in good shape, he did not smoke, and he very seldom touched alcohol.

What continually assailed him, and was no doubt an indirect cause of his illness, was the feeling that there was nothing he could do about the state his country was in.

Van Heerden grew up in Kimberley, and had been surrounded since birth by the Afrikaner traditions. His family's neighbours were Afrikaners, as were his school-friends and his teachers. His father had worked for de Beers, the company that controlled the production of diamonds in South Africa. His mother had assumed the traditional role of
Boere
housewife, subservient to her husband and dedicated to the task of raising their children and teaching them a fundamentally religious view of the order of things. She devoted all her time and energy to Pieter and his four siblings. Until he was 20 and in his second year at Stellenbosch University, he had never questioned the life he led. He was not tempted to follow in his father's footsteps and devote his life to mining. As he did not think he possessed any special talents and cherished no startling future ambitions, he studied law and found it suited him, even if he did not distinguish himself.

One day he was persuaded by a fellow student to visit a black township not far from Cape Town. Recognising that times, like it or not, were changing, a small number of students were driven by curiosity to visit black suburbs. The radicalism claimed by the few liberal students at Stellenbosch University was active. For the first time these young Afrikaners were forced to see things as they were.

It was a shocking experience for van Heerden. He became aware of the wretched and humiliating circumstances in which the blacks lived. The contrast between the park-like neighbourhoods where the whites lived and the black shanty towns was heart-rending. He became introverted and withdrew from the company of his friends. Looking back long afterwards, it seemed to him it was like the unmasking of a skilful fake. But this was not a painting on a wall with a false signature. The whole of his life so far had been a lie. Even his memories now seemed to him distorted and untrue. He had a black nanny as a child. One of his earliest and most secure childhood memories was the way she lifted him in her strong arms and clutched him to her breast. Now he realised that she must have hated him. That meant it was not only the whites who were living in a false world. The same applied to the blacks who, to survive, were forced to conceal the hatred engendered by the injustice they constantly suffered. And this in a country that had belonged to them. The whole basis on which his life was built, with rights given by God, nature and tradition, had proved to be a morass. His conception of the world, which he had never questioned, was founded on shameful inequity. And he discovered all this in the black township of Langa, situated as far from exclusively white Cape Town as the architects of Apartheid had considered appropriate.

This discovery affected him more deeply than it did most of those he had accompanied. What for him had been a severe trauma was more like a sentimental episode for them. Whereas he thought he could see an impending apocalyptic catastrophe, his friends set about organising collections of cast-off clothing.

He took his final examinations without having come to terms with his experience. Once, when he went home to Kimberley during a holiday, his father had a fit of rage when Pieter told him about his visit to the black township. It dawned on him that his innermost thoughts were like himself - increasingly homeless.

After graduation he was offered a position in the Department of Justice in Pretoria. He accepted it without hesitation. He had proved his worth after a year, and one day was asked whether he would consider working for the intelligence service. By that time he had learned to live with his trauma, as he had been unable to find any way of solving it. His division was reflected in his personality. He could play the part of the right-thinking and convinced Afrikaner who did and said what was expected of him; but deep down, the sense of impending catastrophe was growing stronger. There was no-one he could talk to, and he lived an increasingly solitary life.

His work for NIS had many advantages. Not least was the insight he was able to get into the political process of which the general public had only a vague conception.

When Frederik de Klerk became President and made his public declaration to the effect that Nelson Mandela would be released and that the ANC would no longer be banned, it seemed to him there might yet be a possibility of averting havoc. The shame of Apartheid would never pass; but perhaps there could be a future for South Africa after all?

Van Heerden had immediately held President de Klerk in the highest regard. He knew many people who branded him a traitor, but as far as he was concerned, de Klerk was a saviour. When he was picked to be the President's contact man, he felt proud. A mutual trust rapidly developed. For the first time in his life van Heerden was sure he was doing something significant. By passing on to the President information which was sometimes not intended for his ears, van Heerden was helping those forces bent on creating a new South Africa, a country free of racial oppression.

He thought about that as he lay in bed at the clinic. Not until South Africa had been transformed, with Mandela its first black President, would the malaise within him disappear.

The door opened and Marta, one of the black nurses, came in. "Mr Plitt just called," she said. "He'll be here in about half an hour to give you a lumbar puncture."

Van Heerden looked at her in surprise. "Lumbar puncture? Now?"

"I think it's odd as well," Marta said. "But that's what he said. I was to tell you to lie on your left side right away. Best to do as you're told. The operation's in the morning. Mr Plitt's bound to know what he's doing."

Van Heerden smiled. He had every confidence in his specialist. All the same, he couldn't help thinking it was a strange time to do a lumbar puncture.

Marta helped him to lie as he was supposed to.

"Mr Plitt said you were to lie absolutely still. You shouldn't move at all."

"I always do what the doctors tell me," van Heerden said. "I usually do what you tell me, too, don't I?"

"We don't have any problems with you," Marta said. "I'll see you tomorrow, after the operation. I'm off tonight."

She went out, and van Heerden thought about the bus journey of an hour or more she had ahead of her. He did not know where she lived.

He was almost asleep when he heard the door open. It was dark in the room; only his bedside lamp was on. He could see the doctor's reflection in the window pane as he entered the room.

"Good evening," van Heerden said, without moving.

"Good evening, Pieter van Heerden," he heard a voice reply.

It was not the voice he expected. It took a few seconds before it dawned on him who was standing behind him. He turned over at once.

Kleyn knew the doctors at the Brenthurst Clinic seldom wore white coats when visiting patients. He knew everything he needed to know about the hospital routines. It had been very simple to arrange a situation in which he could pass as a doctor. They regularly traded shifts. They didn't even need to work at the same hospital. Moreover, doctors frequently called on their patients at unusual times. This was especially true before or after an operation. Once he had established when the nursing staff changed shifts, his plan was straightforward. He parked a borrowed van at the front of the hospital, walked through reception and showed the security guard an identity card issued by a transport firm often used by hospitals and laboratories.

"I'm here for a blood sample," he said. "A patient on Ward Nine."

"Do you know your way?" the guard asked him.

"I've been there before," Kleyn said, pressing the lift button. That was true. He had been to the clinic during the morning the previous day, carrying a basket of fruit. He pretended to be visiting a patient on Ward Nine. He knew exactly how to get there.

The corridor was empty. He went straight to the room he knew van Heerden was in. At the far end of the corridor a night nurse was bent over a desk, reading. He opened the door quietly.

When van Heerden turned around in terror, Kleyn already had the silenced pistol in his right hand. In his left hand was a jackal skin that he had brought in a plastic bag attached to his shoulder harness.

Kleyn sometimes liked to introduce a touch of the macabre. In this case, too, the jackal skin would distract the detectives assigned to investigate the murder. An intelligence officer shot in a hospital would cause quite a stir in the Johannesburg homicide department. They would try to establish a link between the murder and the work van Heerden was doing. His link to the President would make it the more imperative to solve the murder. Kleyn had decided to plant a red herring. Black criminals sometimes amused themselves by introducing a ritual element into their crimes. That was especially true in cases of robbery with violence. They were not content with smearing blood on the walls. The killer often left some kind of symbol by the victim's side. A broken branch, or stones arranged in a certain pattern. Or an animal skin.

Kleyn had immediately thought of a jackal. As far as he was concerned, that was the role van Heerden had been playing: exploiting other people's work.

He observed van Heerden's horrified expression.

"The operation's been cancelled," Kleyn said, in a hoarse voice. Then he threw the jackal skin over van Heerden's face and pumped three bullets into his head. A stain spread down the pillow and onto the sheet. Kleyn put the pistol in its holster and buttoned his jacket. He opened the drawer in the bedside table. He took van Heerden's wallet, and left the room. He left the clinic as unobtrusively as he had come. The security guard was busy with a family of visitors when Kleyn came out of the lift and afterwards was unable to give a clear description of the messenger who had come for a blood sample. Not that he was thought to have been the man who had robbed and killed van Heerden.

Robbery with violence was how the police classified the attack, but President de Klerk was not convinced. As far as he was concerned, van Heerden's death had been his last communique. There was no longer any doubt about it. The conspiracy was a fact.