Henning Mankell - The White Lioness

He went back to his desk. There was something he could not postpone until the following week. He fed a sheet of paper into his typewriter, took down his English dictionary, and started slowly to write a brief report for his unknown colleagues in South Africa. He put down what he knew about the planned assassination and described in detail what had happened to Victor Mabasha. When he got to the end of Victor Mabasha’s life, he inserted another sheet of paper into the typewriter. He continued typing for an hour, and finished with the most important information: that a man by the name of Sikosi Tsiki was Mabasha’s replacement. Unfortunately he had managed to slip out of Sweden. It could be assumed he was on his way back to South Africa. He said who he was, found the telex number to the Swedish section of Interpol, and invited them to get back to him if they needed any more information. He gave the secretary instructions to send it urgently to South Africa that same day.

Then he went home. He crossed the threshold again for the first time since the explosion.

He felt like a stranger in his own apartment. The furniture that had been damaged by the smoke was stacked in a heap, covered by a plastic sheet. He pulled out a chair, and sat down.

The atmosphere was stifling.

He wondered how he was going to get over everything that had happened.

About then his telex message arrived in Stockholm. A stand-in not fully familiar with procedures was instructed to send the message to South Africa. Because of technical problems and careless checking, page two of Wallander’s report was never sent. And so the South African police were informed that night, May 23, that a gunman by the name of Victor Mabasha was on his way to South Africa. The police in the Johannesburg section of Interpol were puzzled by this strange message. It was unsigned, and ended very abruptly. Nevertheless, they had been requested by Inspector Borstlap to send all telex messages from Sweden to his office immediately. As the telex arrived in Johannesburg late on Saturday evening, Borstlap did not receive it until the following Monday. He contacted Scheepers right away.

They now had confirmation of what was in the letter signed by the secretive Steve.

The man they were looking for was called Victor Mabasha.

Scheepers also thought the telex was strangely abrupt and was concerned that it was unsigned. But since it was merely a confirmation of something he already knew about, he let the matter rest.

From now on all resources were concentrated on the hunt for Victor Mabasha. Every border post was put on standby. They were ready.

The day he was released by Georg Scheepers, Jan Kleyn called Franz Malan from his house in Pretoria. He was convinced his telephones were tapped. But he had another line nobody knew about, apart from the BOSS special intelligence officers in charge of security-sensitive communications centers throughout South Africa. There were several telephone lines that did not exist officially.

Franz Malan was surprised. He did not know Jan Kleyn had just been released. As there was every reason to suspect Malan’s telephone was also tapped, Kleyn used an agreed code word to prevent Malan from saying anything that should not be mentioned on the telephone. The whole thing was camouflaged as a wrong number. Jan Kleyn asked for Horst, then apologized and rung off. Franz Malan looked up his special code list to check the meaning. Two hours after the call, he was to make contact from a specified public phone booth to another.

Jan Kleyn was extremely eager to find out immediately what had been happening while he was under arrest. Franz Malan must also be clear that he would continue to take main responsibility. Jan Kleyn did not doubt his own ability to shake off shadows. Even so it was too risky for him to make personal contact with Franz Malan or to visit Hammanskraal, where Sikosi Tsiki was presumably already in residence, or would soon arrive.

When Jan Kleyn drove out through his gate, it did not take him many minutes to locate the car tailing him. He knew there was also another car in front, but he did not worry about that for the moment. They would naturally be curious when he stopped to make a call from a public phone booth. It would be reported. But they would never find out what was said.

Jan Kleyn was surprised that Sikosi Tsiki had arrived already. He also wondered why there was no word from Konovalenko. In their master plan was an agreement to inform Konovalenko that Sikosi Tsiki had actually arrived. That check should be no later than three hours after the assumed arrival time. Jan Kleyn gave Franz Malan some brief instructions. They also agreed to call from two other specified phone booths the following day. Jan Kleyn tried to discern whether Franz Malan seemed worried at all on the telephone. But he could hear nothing apart from Malan’s usual slightly nervous way of expressing himself.

When the call was over he went to have lunch at one of the most expensive restaurants in Pretoria. He was pleased at the thought of the horrified reaction when his shadow handed his expense report to Scheepers. He could see the man at a table at the other end of the dining room. Jan Kleyn had already decided that Scheepers was unworthy of continuing to live in a South Africa that, within a year or so, would be well organized and faithful to its old ideals, created and then defended forever by a close community of Boers.

But there were moments when Jan Kleyn was hit by the awful thought that the whole business was doomed. There was no turning back. The Boers had lost, their old territory would be governed by blacks who would no longer allow the whites to live their privileged lives. It was a sort of negative vision he had difficulty in fending off. But he soon recovered his self-control. It was just a brief moment of weakness, he told himself. I’ve allowed myself to be influenced by the constantly negative approach South Africans of British origin have toward us boere. They know the real soul of the country is to be found in us. We are the people chosen by God and history, not them, and so they cherish this unholy envy they cannot shake off.

He paid for his meal, smiled as he passed the table where his shadow was sitting, a small, overweight man sweating profusely, and then drove home. He could see in the rearview mirror that he had a new shadow. When he had put his car away in the garage, he continued his methodical analysis of who could possibly have betrayed him and provided Scheepers with information.

He poured himself a little glass of port and sat down in the living room. He drew the drapes and switched off all the lights apart from a discreet lamp illuminating a painting. He always thought best in a dimly lit room.

The days he had spent with Scheepers had made him hate the current regime more than ever. He could not get away from the feeling that it was humiliating for him, a superior, trusted, and loyal civil servant in the intelligence service, to be arrested under suspicion of subversive activities. What he was doing was the exact opposite of that. If it were not for what he and the Committee were doing in secret, the risk of national collapse would be real rather than imaginary. As he sat sipping his port, he became even more convinced that Nelson Mandela must die. He no longer regarded it as an assassination, but an execution in accordance with the unwritten constitution he represented.

There was another worrisome element that added to his irritation. It was clear to him from the moment his trusted security guard on the president’s personal staff called him that somebody must have supplied Scheepers with information that should really have been impossible for him to obtain. Someone close to Jan Kleyn had quite frankly betrayed him. He had to find out who it was, and quickly. What made him even more worried was that Franz Malan could not be completely excluded. Neither he nor any other member of the Committee. Apart from these men there could possibly be two, or at most three, of his colleagues in BOSS who could have decided, for some unknown reason, to sell him down the river.