Michael Ridpath - See No Evil

‘I came to see you.’

‘From London?’

‘You’ve done an awful lot for my family over the last few weeks,’ Cornelius said. ‘I thought you deserved an explanation. In person.’

‘Todd talked to you?’

‘He did. Come on. Let’s get out of here.’

Calder followed Cornelius out of the hotel and through a series of walkways, constantly looking over his shoulder as he did so. In a few minutes they came to a kind of modern piazza, presided over by a thirty-foot bronze statue of Nelson Mandela and with a fountain in the middle. Around the piazza were a series of cafés and restaurants under awnings. It was cool, and very few people were sitting outside. Cornelius had no problem finding a quiet table.

‘Todd’s doing well,’ Cornelius said.

‘He shouldn’t have spoken to you. I didn’t want him to.’

‘I’m sorry about your sister,’ Cornelius went on. ‘And very grateful for all you have done for Todd and Kim. I realize you nearly got yourself killed on two occasions for them.’

‘Three,’ said Calder, remembering Visser’s bullet. ‘And I’m doing this for me now. How did you find out where I was?’

‘Kim told me.’

Calder remembered the voicemail message he had left for her. But why had she disclosed his location to Cornelius, of all people?’

Cornelius ordered coffee. Shoppers strolled through the square. A gaggle of white teenage girls paused in front of them, giggling and shrieking. One of them pulled out a dinky mobile phone and started flicking her thumbs while the others looked on.

‘It’s true that Daniel Havenga came to see me at Hondehoek with a friend, Andries Visser. It’s also true that they offered to finance the bid for the Herald. And not just that. They wanted to provide funding for a string of newspaper and magazine acquisitions afterwards.’

‘Did they say where the money was coming from?’

‘Yes. Something called the Laagerbond. They said it was a highly secret group that existed to promote the interests of the Afrikaner nation. They didn’t believe in violence or even in the continuation of apartheid, which they recognized was an obsolete ideology, but they did believe in the power of public opinion. They had access to substantial funds which were lodged in Switzerland. Daniel said the group wasn’t part of the government and it would continue to exist if the government fell. They wanted to fund someone, a man with influence in the world’s media, who could build an international stable of newspapers and magazines which would put the Afrikaner point of view in the future. Daniel felt that the main threat to Afrikaners was international public opinion. He had seen what had happened to Nazis after the fall of Germany and he didn’t want something similar to happen here. He said he believed that Afrikaners were not evil, but someone had to persuade the rest of the world of that. Me.’

‘What about the Cape Daily Mail? ’

‘They were happy to see that closed. They wanted me to keep hold of the other South African papers, although in the climate of US hostility to investment in South Africa at that time, I think that would have been difficult. Their idea was that my papers would gradually take on a more favourable editorial slant, not necessarily pro-government, but pro-Afrikaner.’

‘Did they want you to become a member of this Laagerbond?’

‘They didn’t say so specifically, but I got that impression.’

‘And you said yes?’

‘I said I’d consider it. And I did.’

‘But why? After all you had done to fight apartheid?’

Cornelius sighed. His eyes moved over to the giant statue. Nelson Mandela was laughing. It said a lot for a country that it would build a monument to its founder not looking grim and statesmanlike but having a good time. ‘By then I could see that apartheid was finished. What scared me was what would come later. South Africa was in the middle of a violent revolution. The townships were in flames, people were killing each other, my brother was blown up by guerrillas, the communists had an execution list with my name on it. I was torn. Part of me wanted to flee the country, go to America and start a new life. But part of me was reluctant to abandon my roots. My Afrikaner roots. Three hundred years of family history. Generations of hard-working, honest, decent people who suffered terrible hardship and survived through prayer and strength of character. I had denied them for most of my adult life, I had married two English-speaking women, but I knew that much of the Afrikaner way of life was good, and I didn’t want to see it disappear in flames.’

‘Did Beatrice Pienaar influence you?’

Cornelius glanced quickly at Calder. ‘You know about her?’ Calder didn’t answer. ‘Yes. Yes, she did. She was a perceptive woman: she felt that the Afrikaner nation was facing its biggest challenge. The answer wasn’t in preserving the past, it was the duty of her generation to find a position for Afrikaners in the world of the future.’ Cornelius smiled. ‘She sounded like Daniel Havenga’s pupil. And yes, she made me think that perhaps I had a duty as well.’

‘So. Are the Laagerbond funding your bid for The Times?

Cornelius laughed. He and Nelson shared the joke.

‘What’s so funny?’ said Calder.

‘I said no. After Martha died, I said no. Then I really did want to quit the country as soon as possible. I told Daniel and his friends I wasn’t interested, sold my newspapers here, and went to the States.’

‘But you bought the Herald? ’

‘Yes. For some reason that I have never been able to fathom, Lord Scotton ignored Evelyn Gill’s bid and went for mine. We bought the Herald, we turned it around, we battled through the recession of the early nineties and came out the other side all guns blazing. Zyl News never looked back. And we never took a cent of the Laagerbond’s money.’

‘Do you expect me to believe that?’

Cornelius looked at Calder levelly. ‘Yes. That’s why I came down here.’

Cornelius looked like a man who was used to getting his way. But he also looked honest.

‘Hold on,’ Calder said. He pulled out his mobile phone and called Tarek’s home number. It was a Saturday and Tarek’s small daughter answered with a disconcerting Home Counties accent. A moment later, Tarek was on the line.

‘Hi, it’s me,’ said Calder. ‘Any luck?’

‘Actually, yes. I spoke to our media analyst in New York. He’s been covering Zyl News for fifteen years and knows the company very well. When the first US acquisitions were made in the early eighties Bloomfield Weiss did some fancy stuff with parallel loans to get around South African exchange controls. But since then all their acquisitions have been made with either internally generated funds, the syndicated loan market, or high-yield bonds. The accounts are all public and they add up. Our guy is sure that there is no major South African financing.’

Calder glanced at Cornelius. ‘Thanks, Tarek.’

‘Wait,’ said Tarek. ‘We were discussing The Times takeover. My analyst said that the more interesting question is where Evelyn Gill’s funding comes from. We know he has relationships with Swiss private banks. Three years ago a Sunday newspaper in London ran a story that the money had ultimately come from Islamic sources, but Gill denied this and sued the paper successfully. My man believes that South Africa is a more likely possibility.’

‘Really?’

‘As it happens, I went to school with a guy called Jeff Tidwell, who was FD of Beckwith Communications until a couple of years ago.’ Calder knew that Tarek’s expensive education had included a stint at an English public school, before university in the States. ‘I called him yesterday. He said he had no idea what I was talking about, he said Gill had used his own funds all along, he’d never taken a penny from outside investors.’