Chapter 6
On Holger and Holger and a broken heart
Part of Ingmar’s plan had always been that Holger would be drilled in the spirit of republicanism from birth. On one wall of the nursery he put up side-by-side portraits of Charles de Gaulle and Franklin D. Roosevelt, without stopping to think about how neither of them could stand the other. On another wall he put up Finland’s Urho Kekkonen. The three gentlemen earned these places because they had been elected by the people. They were presidents.
Ingmar shuddered at the dreadful idea that someone could be born into one day being the formal leader of an entire nation, not to mention the personal tragedy of having certain values drilled into one’s head from day one, without being able to defend oneself. That ought to be considered child abuse, he thought, and to be on the safe side he also put up former Argentinean president Juan Perón on the still-gestating Holger’s wall.
One thing that concerned Ingmar, who was always getting ahead of himself, was that the law said that Holger must go to school. Of course the boy needed to learn to read and write, but in addition to that children were force-fed Christian knowledge, geography and other nonsense – things that only took time away from a true education, the important home education: that the king, possibly by democratic means, must be deposed and replaced by a representative elected by the people.
‘Possibly by democratic means?’ said Henrietta.
‘Don’t quibble now, my dear,’ Ingmar replied.
At first, the logistics were made even more difficult when Holger came into the world not only once but twice in a matter of minutes. But as he had so often before, Ingmar managed to turn lemons into lemonade. He had an idea so revolutionary that he thought it through for forty seconds before making up his mind and presenting his decision to his wife.
What he had figured out was that Holger and Holger could divide their time at school. Since the birth had happened at home, all they had to do was register the birth of one of them, whichever one they wanted, and keep the other one a secret. One fortunate fact of their situation was that Ingmar had yanked the telephone cord out of the wall, which meant that the midwife-slash-witness had never been summoned.
Ingmar’s idea was for Holger One to go to school on Mondays, while Holger Two stayed at home to be drilled in republican knowledge by his father. On Tuesdays, the boys would switch, and they would keep going like this. The result was meant to be an adequate dose of general school-learning along with sufficient amounts of something that meant something.
Henrietta hoped she had misheard. Did Ingmar mean that they should keep one of the boys a secret all his life? From the school? From the neighbours? From the world?
‘More or less.’ Ingmar nodded. ‘In the name of the Republic.’
Incidentally they should watch out for the school, because too many books could make a person stupid. After all, he’d become an accountant without reading too much along the way.
‘Accountant’s assistant,’ Henrietta corrected him, and was told that she was quibbling again.
What else was she worried about? What the neighbours and the world would say? Please. They didn’t have any neighbours to speak of, out there in the forest. Except Johan on the hill, but what did he do besides poach moose? And without sharing, to boot. And surely the world in general didn’t deserve much respect. Monarchies and dynasties everywhere.
‘What about you?’ said Henrietta. ‘Are you going to give up your job at the post office to stay home with one of the boys full-time? Were you planning for me to bring in every single krona our family needs?’
Ingmar pitied Henrietta for being so narrow-minded. Of course he had to give up his job at the post office; he couldn’t have two full-time jobs, after all. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to take responsibility for his family. He was happy to help in the kitchen, for example. It was no longer important for his scrotum to remain cool.
Henrietta replied that the only reason Ingmar could even find his way to the kitchen was because their house was so small. She supposed she could manage her seamstress work, her cooking, and all the nappies if Ingmar and his scrotum would just stay away from her oven.
And then she smiled, in spite of everything. To say that her spouse was full of life would be an understatement.
Ingmar gave notice at work the next day. He was allowed to leave that very day, with full pay for three months, and his departure led to a spontaneous party that night among the otherwise so quiet and dull men and women in the accounting department of the post office.
The year was 1961. Incidentally, that was the same year an unusually gifted girl was born in a shack in Soweto, half an eternity away.
* * *
During Holger and Holger’s early years, Ingmar divided his days between being in his wife’s way at home and heading off to pull pranks of varying but republican quality.
He also joined the Republican Club, under the moral leadership of the great Vilhelm Moberg. Moberg, the legendary author, was angry with all the treacherous socialists and liberals who had written ‘republic’ into their party platform without doing anything about it.
But because Ingmar didn’t want to overstep the mark too soon, he waited until the club’s second meeting before he suggested that he himself could administer the club’s considerable funds, with the intention of kidnapping and hiding the crown prince, thus cutting off the constant stream of claimants to the throne.
After a few seconds of shocked silence around the republican table, Moberg had personally sent Ingmar packing, with a well-aimed kick to the backside as a farewell.
Moberg’s right foot and the subsequent fall down the stairs had hurt, but otherwise no damage had been done, Ingmar thought as he limped away. They could keep their Republican Club for Mutual Admiration. Ingmar had other ideas.
For example, he joined the spineless Social Democratic Party. The Social Democrats had been in power in Sweden since Per Albin Hansson had guided the nation through the horrors of the Second World War with the help of horoscopes. Hansson himself had made a career out of demanding a republic before the war, but once the old champion of temperance rose to a position where he could do something about it, he prioritized poker and whisky with the boys over following his own convictions. This was even more tragic, considering that Hansson was talented as a matter of record – otherwise, he would never have managed to keep both wife and mistress happy for years, with two children in each camp.
Ingmar’s plan was to climb so high in the Social Democratic hierarchy that he would one day have the power to send the damn king as far away as possible by parliamentary means. The Soviets had already managed to launch a dog into space; next time they were welcome to take the Swedish head of state instead, he thought as he made his way to the district office in Eskilstuna, since the Social Democrats of S?dert?lje had an office next door to his father-in-law’s Communists.
But Ingmar’s political career turned out to be even shorter than his career in the Republican Club. He was registered as a party member on a Thursday and immediately received a bundle of leaflets to hand out outside the off-licence on the next Saturday.
The problem was that the internationally oriented Eskilstuna district was demanding the resignation of Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon. But Diem was a president! After a thousand years of imperial dynasty, no less.
Sure, not everything had been done quite correctly. It was said, for example, that his brother had smoked his brain out on opium and then, in the capacity of vote counter in charge of the Vietnamese presidential election, hallucinated two million extra votes for Diem.
Of course that wasn’t how things should be done, but to demand the president’s resignation because of it would be to take things too far.
So Ingmar threw the leaflets he had been given into the Eskilstuna River. Instead he printed his own, in which he applauded Diem and the efficiency of the American military in the name of social democracy. The damage to the Social Democratic Party was limited, however, because three of the four members of the district leadership happened to have business to take care of at the off-licence that Saturday morning. Ingmar’s leaflets ended up in the rubbish instead of in the hands of potential voters, while Ingmar himself was asked to hand over immediately the party book he hadn’t yet had time to receive.
* * *
The years went by. Holger and Holger grew and became, in accordance with their papa Ingmar’s plan, nearly identical.
Mama Henrietta devoted her days to sewing clothes, smoking calming John Silvers, and showering all three of her children with love. The oldest of them, Ingmar, spent a great deal of his time singing the praises of republicanism to his boys, and he spent the rest of it on sporadic missions to Stockholm to throw the monarchical ranks into chaos. Each time the latter happened, Henrietta had to start all over again with her collection of money in the sugar bowl she never managed to hide well enough.
Despite certain personal setbacks, one could still count the 1960s as a relatively good decade for Ingmar and his cause. For example, a military junta took over in Greece and chased King Constantine II and his court all the way to Rome. There was every indication that the Greek monarchy was history and that the country was headed for a flourishing economic future.
The experiences of Vietnam and Greece showed Ingmar that, when all was said and done, violence could bring about change. So he had been right, and Vilhelm Moberg was wrong. He could still feel that kick to the backside, several years later. Author bastard.
For that matter, the Swedish king might as well move to Rome, too, if it didn’t work out for him to keep Laika company in space. Then he would have people to spend time with in the evenings. Those confounded royals were all related to each other anyway.
And now a new year, 1968, was just round the corner. It would be Ingmar’s year, he proclaimed in front of his family that Christmas. And the Republic’s.
‘That’s nice,’ said Henrietta, opening her Christmas present from her beloved husband. She hadn’t expected much, but still: a framed portrait of the Icelandic president, ásgeir ásgeirsson.
‘To Henrietta, who was planning to stop smoking.’
In the autumn of 1968, Holger and Holger entered the Swedish educational system according to the every-other-day principle Ingmar had decided upon on the same day they had turned out to be more than one person.
At school, the teacher thought it was strange that whatever Holger had learned on Monday was already forgotten the next day, and that Tuesday’s lessons were lost the day after that, while Monday’s had returned.
Oh well, the boy still seemed to function well for the most part, and despite his young age he seemed interested in politics, so there was probably nothing to worry about.
In the years that followed, the general craziness was put on the back burner to such an extent that Ingmar prioritized education in the home above fluttering around in public. When he did go out, though, he always took the children with him. One of them in particular needed extra supervision: the one who was originally called Holger Two showed signs early on of wavering in his faith. That didn’t seem to be the case for One.
It so happened that Holger One was the one who was registered – he was the one, for example, with a passport, while Two didn’t legally exist. It was as if he were a spare. The only thing Two seemed to have that One didn’t was a gift for studying. So it was always Holger Two who went to school when it was time for an exam, no matter whose turn it was according to the schedule. Except for one time when Two had a fever. He was called to the front to talk to his geography teacher a few days later, to explain how he had managed to place the Pyrenees in Norway.
Henrietta noticed Two’s relative misery, and through him she became more and more miserable herself. Could it really be the case that her beloved fool had no limits whatsoever?
‘Of course I have limits, dear Henrietta,’ said Ingmar. ‘I’ve actually been doing some thinking on that topic. I’m no longer certain that it’s possible to take over the whole country at once.’
‘Take over the whole country?’ said Henrietta.
‘At once,’ said Ingmar.
Sweden was, after all, an impressively oblong country. Ingmar had started to entertain the notion of converting the nation bit by bit, starting in the south and working his way up. He could have started at the other end, of course, but it was so damned cold up in the north. Who could transform the government when it was forty below zero?
What was even worse for Henrietta was that One didn’t seem to have any doubts at all. His eyes would just shine and shine. The crazier the things Ingmar said, the more his eyes shone. She decided she would not accept any more madness, otherwise she would go mad herself.
‘That’s it, you need to stay at home. Or else you’re out of here!’ she said to Ingmar.
Ingmar loved his Henrietta and respected her ultimatum. The boys’ schooling continued according to the every-other-day principle, as did the never-ending accounts of different presidents past and present. The madness remained and continued to torment Henrietta. But Ingmar’s various excursions ceased, up until the children neared graduation.
Then he had a relapse and took off to demonstrate outside the Royal Palace in Stockholm, for within its walls a crown prince had just been born.
With that, enough was enough. Henrietta called Holger and Holger over and asked them to sit down in the kitchen with her.
‘Now I’m going to tell you everything, my dear children,’ she said.
And so she did.
Her story ended up being twenty cigarettes long, starting with the very first time she and Ingmar met in S?dert?lje District Court in 1943.
She avoided a value judgement of their father’s life work; she just described what had happened up to that point – including how he mixed up the newborns so it was impossible to say which of them had come first.
But the country still managed to get on, because the trade embargo was far from global. And there were many who argued against increased sanctions. Prime Minister Thatcher in London and President Reagan in Washington expressed roughly the same opinion on this matter: that each new embargo ought to have the greatest effect on the poorest citizens. Or as Ulf Adelsohn, party leader of the Swedish Moderates, so elegantly put it, ‘If we boycott goods from South Africa, the poor Negroes down there will become unemployed.’
In reality, the shoe was pinching elsewhere. The thorny issue for Thatcher and Reagan (and Adelsohn, for that matter) wasn’t a dislike of apartheid; racism hadn’t been politically marketable for several decades. No, the problem was what would appear in its place. It wasn’t easy to choose between apartheid and Communism, for instance. Or rather: of course it was, not least for Reagan, who had already fought to make sure that no Communists would be let into Hollywood during his time as a union leader for the Screen Actors Guild. What would people think if he spent billions upon billions of dollars arms-racing Soviet Communism to death while simultaneously allowing a variant of the same to take over in South Africa? Plus, the South Africans had nuclear weapons now, those bastards, even if they denied it.
Among those who didn’t agree one bit with Thatcher’s and Reagan’s hemming and hawing when faced with apartheid politics was the Swedish prime minister, Olof Palme, and Libya’s guide through socialism, Muammar Gaddafi. Palme roared, ‘Apartheid cannot be reformed; apartheid must be eliminated!’ Soon after that he himself was eliminated by a confused man who didn’t fully comprehend where he was or why he did what he did. Or by the exact opposite of that man; the mystery was never quite solved.
Gaddafi, on the other hand, would remain in good health for many more years. He allowed tons of weapons to be shipped to the South African resistance movement ANC, and he spoke vociferously about the noble fight against the white regime of oppression in Pretoria, all while hiding mass murderer Idi Amin in his very own palace.
This was more or less the way things stood when the world showed once more how strange it can be when it wants to. In the United States, the Democrats and Republicans joined forces and threw in their lot with Palme and Gaddafi, simultaneously creating a congressional revolt against their president. Congress passed a law that forbade all forms of trade with South Africa, as well as all types of investments in it. It was no longer even possible to fly directly from Johannesburg to the United States; anyone who tried to do so could choose between turning back or being shot down.
Thatcher and other leaders in Europe and the rest of the world realized what was about to happen. No one wants to be on a losing team, of course; more and more countries got behind the United States, Sweden and Libya.
South Africa as the world knew it was starting to crack at the edges.
From her house arrest at the research facility, Nombeko’s ability to follow the developments in the outside world was limited. Her three Chinese friends still didn’t know much other than that the pyramids were in Egypt and had been there for quite some time. The engineer was no help, either. His analysis of the outside world was increasingly restricted to random grunting:
‘Now those queers in the American Congress are starting an embargo, too.’
And naturally there were limits to how often and how long Nombeko could scrub the overscrubbed floor in the waiting room with the TV.
But in addition to what she managed to catch from the TV news, she was observant. She noticed that things were happening. Not least because nothing seemed to be happening at all any more. No one rushed through the corridors; no prime ministers or presidents came to visit. Another hint was that the engineer’s alcohol intake had started to go from a lot to even more.
Nombeko imagined that the engineer might soon be able to devote himself to his brandy full-time; he could sit and dream his way back to the years when it was possible to convince those around him that he had a clue. His president could sit in the chair next to him, for that matter, muttering that it was the blacks’ fault that the country had capsized and gone under. What might happen to her in that situation was something she chose to repress.
‘I’m starting to wonder if reality is catching up with the Goose and his ilk,’ Nombeko said one evening to her three Chinese friends.
She said this in fluent Wu Chinese.
‘It would be about time,’ said the Chinese girls.
In Xhosa that wasn’t half bad.
* * *
Times got tougher and tougher for P. W. Botha. But, big crocodile that he was, he could stand being in deep water, with just his nostrils and eyes above the surface.
He could entertain the notion of reform, of course: he had to keep up with the times. People had been divided into blacks, whites, coloureds and Indians for a long time. Now he made sure to give the latter two the right to vote. And the blacks, too, for that matter, but not in South Africa – in their homelands.
Botha also eased the restrictions on the general relations between races. Nowadays, blacks and whites could – at least theoretically – sit on the same park bench. They could – at least theoretically – go to the same cinema and see the same film at the same time. And they could – at least theoretically – share bodily fluids (they could do this in practice, too, but in that case either money or violence would be involved).
In addition, the president made sure to centre the power on himself, thin out some human rights, and introduce censorship of the press. The newspapers had only themselves to blame if they didn’t have the sense to write anything sensible. A country that is being rocked to its core requires clear leadership, not page after page of this let’s-all-hug-each-other journalism.
But no matter how Botha spun things, they turned out all wrong. The country’s economy had hardly started moving before it stopped short and then began going in the other direction. It wasn’t exactly cheap for the military to subdue every bit of unrest in practically every single shantytown. The darkies simply weren’t satisfied with anything. Just think about the time Botha offered to free that damned Nelson Mandela if he promised in return to comply with the government. ‘Stop being difficult’ was the only demand Botha made. ‘No, I’d rather stay where I am,’ that f*cker said after twenty years on his prison island, and so he did.
As time passed, it became clear that the greatest change P. W. Botha had managed to bring about with his new constitution was to turn himself from prime minister into president. And Mandela into a bigger icon than ever.
Otherwise, everything was the same. No, incorrect. Otherwise, everything was worse.
Botha was starting to tire of it all. He realized that things might really end with the ANC taking over. And in that case . . . well, who would voluntarily put six nuclear weapons into the hands of a Communist Kaffir organization? Better to dismantle the weapons, and make a PR spectacle out of it! ‘We are taking responsibility’ and all that, while the IAEA looked on.
Yes, that might actually work. The president still wasn’t ready to make a decision about it, but he personally called the engineer in charge at Pelindaba to put him on standby. Wait, was he already slurring his words at nine in the morning? No, that couldn’t be.
* * *
Engineer van der Westhuizen’s little mathematical error (the one that turned six bombs into seven) suddenly turned into an extremely atrocious secret. The president had mentioned the possibility that the six atomic bombs would be destroyed. The six bombs. Not the seventh one. Because, of course, it didn’t exist.
Now the engineer either had to admit his mistake, confess that he had kept it secret for over a year and receive a disgraceful dismissal and a minimal pension – or he could make things work out to his own advantage. And become financially independent.
The engineer was full of anxiety. But only until the last half litre of Klipdrift made it into his blood. After that, the decision was easy.
He could tell the time. He knew that his was up. Time to have a serious chat with Mossad Agents A and B.
‘Hey, whatsyourname,’ he slurred. ‘Can you get both of the Jews in here. We’ve got some business to discuss!’
Engelbrecht van der Westhuizen had worked out that his task was about to come to an end, that the ANC would soon take over the country, and that he could not expect to have a career left. So he had to put his house in order while he still had a house to see to.
Whatshername went to find the agents, who had overseen the entire process off and on, on behalf of South Africa’s partner Israel. As she wandered through the corridors, she thought that the engineer was about to go at least one step too far. Probably two.
Mossad Agents A and B were shown into the engineer’s office. Nombeko stood in the corner where the engineer always wanted her to be when things heated up.
Engineer Westhuizen set the tone.
‘Ah, Jew One and Jew Two, shalom! Have a seat. May I offer you a morning brandy? You, whatsyourname, get our friends a drink!’
Nombeko whispered to the agents that water was available should they prefer it. They did.
Engineer van der Westhuizen told it like it was, saying that he had always been lucky in life and that it just so happened that this luck had placed a nuclear weapon in his lap, an atomic bomb that no one knew existed and thus no one would miss. Really, the engineer said, he ought to keep it for himself and fire it straight into the presidential palace once Mandela was inaugurated, but he was a bit too old to wage a war on his own.
‘So now I’m wondering, Jew A and Jew B, if you might want to check with the head Jew in Jerusalem about buying one bomb of the more potent sort. I’ll give you the friends-and-family discount. No, wait a second, never mind. I want thirty million dollars. Ten million per megaton. Cheers!’ said the engineer, and he drained his brandy and then looked with displeasure at the now-empty bottle.
Mossad Agents A and B thanked him politely for the offer and promised to check with the government in Jerusalem to see how it felt about this sort of business deal with Mr Westhuizen.
‘Well, I kowtow to no one,’ said the engineer. ‘If this doesn’t work I’ll sell it to someone else. Now, I don’t have time to sit here jabbering with you.’
The engineer left both his office and the facility, on the hunt for more brandy. He left behind the two Mossad agents and whatshername. Nombeko realized what was at stake for the Israelis.
‘Please excuse me for saying so,’ she said, ‘but I’m wondering if the engineer’s luck didn’t run out just about now.’
She didn’t add ‘And mine, too.’ But she was thinking it.
‘I’ve always been impressed by your cleverness, Miss Nombeko,’ said Mossad Agent A. ‘And I thank you in advance for your understanding.’
He didn’t add ‘Things aren’t looking so good for you, either.’ But he was thinking it.
It wasn’t that Israel didn’t want what the engineer was offering; they did. It was just that the seller was a serious alcoholic and a very erratic man. If they made a deal, it would be perilous to have him walking around free on the streets, slurring and chattering about where all his money had come from. On the other hand, they couldn’t just say no to the offer, because then what would happen to the bomb? The engineer was likely in a condition to sell it to anyone at all.
So they had to do what they had to do. Mossad Agent A hired a beggar from the slum in Pretoria to steal a car for him the next night; it was a 1983 Datsun Laurel. As thanks, the beggar received fifty rand (according to their agreement) as well as a shot to the temple (on the agent’s own initiative).
Agent A planned to use the car to bring the engineer’s endless luck to an end by running him over a few days later, as he was on his way home from the bar he always frequented when his personal supply of Klipdrift was gone.
The engineer’s new-found bad luck was such that he was run over a second time when A stopped and reversed, and a third time when the agent roared off as fast as he could.
Ironically enough, the engineer had been walking on the pavement when it happened.
Was that all? he thought between the second and third times he was run over, just as Nombeko had done in a similar situation eleven years earlier.
And it was.
* * *
Mossad Agent B went to find Nombeko just after the news of the death had come to the research facility. The incident was still being classified as an accident, but that would change when witnesses and various technicians on the scene had had their word.
‘We might have something to discuss, you and I, Miss Nombeko,’ he said. ‘And I’m afraid it’s urgent.’
Nombeko said nothing at first, but she was thinking very hard. She was thinking that the guarantor of her physical well-being, the eternally drunk Westhuizen, was now dead. She was thinking that she herself might very soon be in a similar condition. If she didn’t think quickly.
But she did. So she said, ‘Yes, we do. May I therefore ask you, Mr Agent, to bring your colleague here for a meeting in the engineer’s office in exactly thirty minutes?’
Agent B had long since learned that Miss Nombeko had her head on straight. He knew that she understood that her situation was precarious. This put him and his fellow agent in a position of power.
Miss Nombeko was the one who had the keys and the permission to enter the most forbidden of corridors. She was the one who would make sure that the agents got their hands on the bomb. In return, they would offer her a white lie.
The promise that she would be allowed to live.
But now she had bought herself half an hour. Why? The agent understood most things, but not this. Oh well, half an hour was just half an hour, after all, even if they were in a hurry. The South African intelligence service might realize at any moment that the engineer had been murdered. Soon after that it would become considerably harder to carry a three-megaton bomb out of the facility, even for an agent from a collaborating intelligence agency.
Oh well, half an hour was still just half an hour. Agent B nodded in reply.
‘Then we’ll meet here at twelve-oh-five.’
‘Twelve-oh-six,’ said Nombeko.
During those thirty minutes, all Nombeko did was wait for time to pass.
The agents were back exactly when they were meant to be. Nombeko was sitting in the engineer’s chair, and she kindly asked them to sit down on the other side of the desk. It was a strange scene. A young black woman in the director’s chair, in the heart of the South African system of apartheid.
Nombeko began the meeting. She said that she understood that the Messrs Mossad Agents were out to get the seventh atomic bomb, the one that didn’t exist. Or had she misunderstood?
The agents didn’t say anything: they didn’t quite want to put the truth into words.
‘Let us be honest in this meeting,’ Nombeko urged them. ‘Otherwise we won’t get anywhere before it’s too late.’
Agent A nodded and said that Miss Nombeko had understood things correctly. If she could help Israel get its hands on the bomb, they would help her get out of Pelindaba in return.
‘Without causing me to end up just as run over as the engineer afterwards?’ Nombeko asked. ‘Or shot and buried in the nearest savannah?’
‘Why, Miss Nombeko, please!’ Agent A lied. ‘We aren’t planning to harm a hair on your head. What do you think we are?’
Nombeko seemed to be satisfied with the agent’s lie. She added that for the record she had already been run over once in her life, and that would suffice.
‘How are you planning on getting the bomb out of here, if I may ask? Assuming I give you access to it.’
Agent B replied that it ought to be relatively easy, if they only hurried. The crate containing the bomb could be addressed to the Israeli Foreign Office in Jerusalem, and here on the base it could be supplied with documentation to class it as diplomatic post. Diplomatic letters were sent via the embassy in Pretoria at least once a week; a largish crate wouldn’t make any difference that way. As long as the South African intelligence service didn’t ramp up their security and open the crate – and Nombeko and the agents could count on this happening as soon as they realized how the engineer had really died.
‘Yes, Messrs Agents, I owe you special thanks for that measure,’ Nombeko said, simultaneously honestly and treacherously. ‘Which of you did the honours?’
‘I don’t think that matters,’ said Agent A, who was the guilty party. ‘What’s done is done, and we know you understand that it was necessary, Miss Nombeko.’
Oh yes, Nombeko understood. She understood that the agents had just fallen into her trap.
‘So how are you planning to make sure that little old me is safe?’
The agents’ plan was to hide Nombeko in the boot of their car. There would be no risk of detection as long as the security measures remained at their current level. The Israeli intelligence agency at Pelindaba had remained above suspicion for all these years.
Once out in the open, all they had to do was drive straight out into the bush, pull the woman from the boot and give her a shot to the forehead, temple or back of the neck, depending on how much she struggled.
It was a bit sad: Miss Nombeko was an exceptional woman in many ways and, just like the agents, she had been subjected to Engineer Westhuizen’s ill-disguised scorn, based on nothing more than the engineer’s muddled idea that he represented a superior people. Yes, it was a bit sad, but they had more important things to worry about.
‘Our idea is to smuggle you out of here in the boot of our car,’ said Agent A, leaving out what would happen afterwards.
‘Good,’ said Nombeko. ‘But insufficient.’
She continued, saying that she did not intend to lift a finger to help the Messrs Agents until they had handed her an airline ticket, Johannesburg–Tripoli.
‘Tripoli?’ said Agents A and B in unison. ‘What are you going to do there?’
Nombeko didn’t have a good answer. For all these years, her goal had been the National Library in Pretoria. But she couldn’t go there now. She had to leave the country. And Gaddafi in Libya was on the ANC’s side, wasn’t he?
Nombeko said that she wanted to go to a friendly country for a change, and that Libya seemed like a good choice in this situation. But by all means, if the Messrs Agents had a better idea, she was all ears.
‘Just don’t try to say Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. Because my plan includes surviving the week, at least.’
Mossad Agent A was becoming increasingly enchanted with the woman in the chair in front of him. They had to be on their guard to make sure she didn’t get her way. She had to realize that her bargaining position was weak – that in order to be smuggled off the base, she had no choice but to trust the agents she couldn’t trust. But after that, at least, she could make the situation work to her advantage. Her problem was that there would never be any step two or three. As soon as the boot was closed, she would be on her way to her own grave. And then it wouldn’t matter what it said on the ticket. Tripoli, why not? Or the moon.
But first they had to play the game.
‘Yes, Libya would probably work,’ said Agent A. ‘Along with Sweden, it’s the country that is loudest in protesting against the South African system of apartheid. You would be granted asylum there within ten seconds if you asked, miss.’
‘Well, there you go!’ said Nombeko.
‘But Gaddafi does have his drawbacks,’ the agent went on.
‘Drawbacks?’
Agent A was happy to tell her all about the lunatic of Tripoli, who had once attacked Egypt with grenades just because its president had chosen to answer when addressed by Israel. It couldn’t hurt to show some concern for Miss Nombeko. To build up trust until the necessary shot to the back of the head.
‘Yes, Gaddafi is out fishing for nuclear weapons as much as South Africa; it’s just that he hasn’t fished as successfully so far.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Nombeko.
‘Anyway, he can take solace in the fact that he must have at least twenty tons of mustard gas in storage, and the world’s largest chemical weapons factory.’
‘Oh my,’ said Nombeko.
‘And he has forbidden any opposition, and all strikes and demonstrations.’
‘Oh no,’ said Nombeko.
‘And he has anyone who disagrees with him killed.’
‘Does he have any humane side at all?’ said Nombeko.
‘Oh yes,’ said the agent. ‘He took good care of the ex-dictator Idi Amin when Amin was forced to flee from Uganda.’
‘Yes, I read something about that,’ said Nombeko.
‘There is more to tell,’ said Agent A.
‘Or not,’ said Nombeko.
‘Don’t get me wrong, Miss Nombeko. We are concerned about your well-being, and we don’t want anything to happen to you, even if you recently insinuated that we are not to be trusted. I confess that we were both hurt by that insinuation. But if you want to go to Tripoli, we will certainly arrange it.’
That sounded perfect, thought Agent A.
That sounded perfect, thought Agent B.
That is the stupidest thing I have heard in my entire life, thought Nombeko. And I have spent time with assistants from the sanitation department of the City of Johannesburg and alcoholic engineers with distorted self-images.
The agents were concerned about her well-being? She might have been born in Soweto, but it hadn’t happened yesterday.
Libya didn’t seem as much fun any more.
‘What about Sweden?’ she said.
Yes, it would probably be preferable, the agents thought. Of course, they had just killed their prime minister, but at least ordinary people could walk down the street unharmed. And, as they’d said, the Swedes were quick to accept South Africans, as long as they said they were against the apartheid regime – and the agents had reason to believe that Nombeko was.
Nombeko nodded. Then she sat there in silence. She knew where Sweden was. Almost at the North Pole. Far from Soweto, and that was obviously a good thing. Far from everything that had been her life so far. What, she wondered, might she miss?
‘If there’s anything you want to take to Sweden, Miss Nombeko, we will certainly do our best to help you get it,’ said Agent B, in order to build up more trust with zero substance.
If you keep on like this I might almost start believing you, Nombeko thought. But only almost. It would be exceedingly unprofessional of you not to try to kill me as soon as you’ve got what you want. ‘A carton of dried antelope meat would be nice,’ she said. ‘I can’t imagine that they have antelope in Sweden.’
No, A and B didn’t think so either. The agents would arrange address labels for one small and one large package right away. The bomb in the crate would go to the Foreign Office in Jerusalem, via the embassy in Pretoria. And Miss Nombeko could sign for the carton of antelope meat at the Israeli embassy in Stockholm in just a few days.
‘Do we have an agreement, then?’ said Agent A, thinking that everything was working out for the best.
‘Yes,’ said Nombeko. ‘We have an agreement. But there’s one more thing.’
One more thing? Agent A had a well-developed sense for the sort of business he did. He suddenly suspected that he and his colleague had counted their chicks before they hatched.
‘I realize we don’t have much time,’ said Nombeko. ‘But there’s something I need to take care of before we can leave.’
‘Take care of?’
‘We’ll meet here again in one hour, at one twenty; you probably ought to hurry if you’re going to have time to get both an airline ticket and antelope meat before then,’ she said, and she left the room through the door behind the engineer’s desk, to the room the agents didn’t have access to. The agents were left alone in the office.
‘Have we underestimated her?’ said A to B.
B looked concerned.
‘If you get the ticket I’ll get the meat,’ he said.
* * *
‘Do you see what this is?’ Nombeko said when the meeting resumed and she placed a rough diamond on Engineer Westhuizen’s desk.
Agent A was a multifaceted man. He had, for instance, no problem dating a pottery goose from the Han dynasty to 1970s South Africa. And he could immediately tell that the object before him now was probably worth about a million shekels.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘Where are you trying to go with this, Miss Nombeko?’
‘Where am I trying to go? I want to go to Sweden. Not to a hole behind a bush on the savannah.’
‘And for that reason you want to give us a diamond?’ said Agent B, who, unlike Agent A, might have still been underestimating Nombeko.
‘What kind of person do you think I am, Mr Agent?’ she said. ‘No, I just want to use this diamond to make it seem plausible that I managed to get a small package out of the facility since we last saw one another. Now you must decide whether you believe I succeeded in doing so, for example with the help of another diamond like this. And whether I subsequently received confirmation that the package in question reached its destination with the help of yet another diamond. And whether you believe that one of the two hundred and fifty proud and constantly underpaid workers at Pelindaba might have agreed to such an arrangement. Or whether you don’t believe it.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Agent B.
‘Well, I suspect the worst,’ Agent A mumbled.
‘That’s right,’ said Nombeko, smiling. ‘I recorded our last conversation, in which you confessed to murdering a South African citizen, as well as to the theft of one South African weapon of mass destruction. I am sure that both of you understand the consequences you and your nation would face if the tape were to be played in . . . well, who knows? I’m not going to tell you where I sent it. But the recipient has confirmed via the messenger I bribed that it is where I want it to be. In other words, it is no longer here on the base. If I pick it up within twenty-four – no, sorry, twenty-three hours and thirty-eight minutes – time flies when you’re having fun – you have my word that it will disappear for ever.’
‘And if you don’t pick it up, it will become public?’ A filled in.
Nombeko didn’t waste time on a reply.
‘Well, I think this meeting is over. It’ll be exciting to see if I survive my trip in the boot. It certainly feels like my chances have increased. From zero.’
And then she stood up, said that the package of antelope meat should be delivered to the department of outgoing post within thirty minutes, and that she herself would make sure the same went for the larger crate; after all, it was in the next room. Beyond that she was looking forward to receiving proper documentation: stamps and forms and whatever else was necessary for the crate would be sufficiently inaccessible to each and every person who didn’t want a diplomatic crisis on his hands.
A and B nodded sullenly.
* * *
The Israeli agents analysed the situation. They considered it likely that the damned cleaning woman did have a tape of their earlier conversation, but they weren’t so sure that she had managed to smuggle it out of Pelindaba. There was no question that she had at least one rough diamond in her possession, and if she had one she could have more. And if she did have more of them, it was possible that one of the many workers with high security clearance at the facility had fallen into temptation and secured his family’s financial position for the rest of his life. Possible, but not certain. On the one hand, the cleaning woman (they no longer called her by name – they were far too annoyed to do so) had been at the facility for eleven years; on the other hand the agents had never seen her with a single white person, except for the late engineer and the agents themselves. Had one of the 250 workers really sold his soul to the woman they called Kaffir behind her back?
When the agents added the dimension of sex – that is, the possibility, or rather the risk, that the cleaning woman had added her body to the pot – the odds were shifted to the agents’ disadvantage. Anyone who would be immoral enough to run errands for her for the sake of a diamond would also be immoral enough to report her. But anyone who could expect the added possibility of future sexual adventures would just be biting himself in the arse. Or somewhere else, if only he could reach.
All in all, Agents A and B figured that there was a 60 per cent chance that Nombeko really was sitting on the trump card she claimed to have, and a 40 per cent chance that she wasn’t. And those odds were too poor. The harm she could bring them and – above all! – the country of Israel was immeasurable.
Thus their decision had to be that the cleaning woman would come along in the boot as planned, that she would receive a ticket to Sweden as planned, that her twenty pounds of antelope meat would be sent to Stockholm as planned – and that she would not receive the shot to the back of the head as planned. Or to the forehead. Or anywhere else. She was still a risk as long as she was alive. But now she was an even greater risk if she was dead.
Twenty-nine minutes later, Nombeko received airline tickets and the antelope meat Agent A had promised her, as well as duplicate copies of properly filled-in forms for the diplomatic post. She thanked them and said that she would be ready to leave within fifteen minutes; she just wanted to make sure that both packages were handled correctly. What she meant by this – but didn’t say – was that she was going to have a serious talk with the Chinese girls.
‘One large and one small package?’ said the little sister, who was the most creative of them. ‘Would Miss Nombeko mind if we . . .’
‘Yes, that’s just it,’ said Nombeko. ‘These packages must not be sent to your mother in Johannesburg. The small package is going to Stockholm. It’s for me, and I hope that’s reason enough not to touch it. The large one is going to Jerusalem.’
‘Jerusalem?’ said the middle sister.
‘Egypt,’ the big sister explained.
‘Are you leaving?’ said the little sister.
Nombeko wondered how the engineer could ever have come up with the idea of putting these three girls in charge of the post.
‘Yes, but don’t say anything to anyone. I’m going to be smuggled out of here in a little bit. I’m going to Sweden. I guess we have to say goodbye now. You’ve been good friends.’
And then they hugged one another.
‘Take care of yourself, Nombeko,’ the Chinese girls said in Xhosa.
‘再见,’ Nombeko replied. ‘Farewell!’
Then she went to the engineer’s office, unlocked his desk drawer and took her passport.
‘Market Theatre, please, the marketplace, downtown Johannesburg,’ Nombeko said to Agent A as she crawled into the boot of the car with its diplomatic plates.
She sounded like any old customer talking to any old taxi driver. It also seemed as if she knew Johannesburg inside out – and as if she knew where she was going. The truth was that a few minutes earlier she had paged through one last book among those in the Pelindaba library and found what was probably the most crowded place in the whole country.
‘I understand,’ said Agent A. ‘Will do.’
And then he closed the boot.
What he understood was that Nombeko wasn’t planning to let them drive her to the person who held the tape so that they could kill them both. He also understood that once they had arrived, Nombeko would manage to disappear in the crowd in under two minutes. He understood that Nombeko had won.
Round one.
But as soon as the bomb had arrived in Jerusalem, there would no longer be any physical evidence on the loose. After that, the tape could be played any number of times, anywhere at all; all they had to do was deny it. Everyone was against Israel anyway; of course there were tapes of that nature circulating. Believing them just because they existed, however, would be silly.
Then it would be time for round two.
Because you don’t mess with the Mossad.
* * *
The agents’ car left Pelindaba at 2.10 p.m. on Thursday, 12 November 1987. At 3.01 the same day, the day’s outgoing post was transported through the same gates. It was eleven minutes late because they’d had to switch vehicles due to an extra-large item.
At 3.15 the director of the investigation surrounding the death of Engineer van der Westhuizen confirmed that he had been murdered. Three independent witnesses had given similar testimonies. Furthermore, two of them were white.
Their testimonies were corroborated by the observations the director of investigation made at the scene. There were traces of rubber at three points along the engineer’s demolished face. It must have been run over by at least three tyres – that is, one tyre more than a normal car has on each side. Thus the engineer had either been run over by more than one car, or – as the witnesses unanimously agreed – several times by the same car.
It took another fifteen minutes, but by 3.30 security at the research facility was increased by one level. The black cleaning woman in the outer perimeter was to be dismissed immediately, along with the black cleaning woman in the central G wing and the three Asians in the kitchen. All five would be subjected to the intelligence service’s risk analysis before they were at the most possibly set free. All entering and exiting vehicles would be checked, even if the commander of the army himself were behind the wheel!
* * *
Nombeko asked her way around the airport, followed the stream of people and was past the security check before she even understood that it existed and that she had been subjected to it. She realized after the fact that diamonds in the lining of a jacket won’t set off a metal detector.
Because the Mossad agents had had to buy tickets at such short notice, only the most expensive seats were available. Her seat in the cabin was, accordingly, a good one. It took the staff quite some time to convince Nombeko that the glass of Champagne de Pompadour Extra Brut she was offered was included in the price. Just as was the food that followed. She was also kindly but firmly shown back to her seat when she tried to help clear the other passengers’ trays.
But she had figured it out by the time she received dessert, which consisted of almond-baked raspberries, and which she washed down with a cup of coffee.
‘May I offer you some brandy with your coffee?’ the flight attendant offered kindly.
‘Yes, please,’ said Nombeko. ‘Do you have Klipdrift?’
Soon thereafter she fell asleep. She slept serenely and well – and for a long time.
When she arrived at Stockholm Arlanda airport, she followed the instructions of the so elegantly duped Mossad agents. She went up to the first border policeman she saw and asked for political asylum. The reason she gave was membership of the banned organization the ANC, which sounded better than saying she had just helped another nation’s intelligence agency steal a nuclear weapon.
Her initial interrogation with the Swedish border police took place in a bright room with windows looking out onto the runway. Something was happening out there, something Nombeko had never before experienced. It was snowing. It was the first snow of winter, right in the middle of the South African spring.