Christopher Hope - Kruger's Alp

‘Who ordered the killing? Bubé?’

‘He swears not. He says that this was a Bureaucratic decision, as he puts it. He says the order came directly from Terblanche.’

‘— who may not exist.’

‘Correct. Bubé’s story is strengthened by the fact that men from the Bureau were the first to arrive on the scene after the murder. I believe they probably expected to find Ferreira neatly dispatched and the place turned over and robbed so as to make it look like some sort of violent burglary. But what did they find instead? They find Ferreira dead, or damn nearly, and Sidelsky dying on the carpet. You can imagine the problem this gave them. I believe, at least Bubé says, they came close to panicking. You see it meant they first had to dispose of the killer and then return to the house and pretend to discover the body of the dead accountant. It was a very hairy business. Bubé’s story had the ring of truth to it. You should have heard the way he sounded off about the Bureau. He says that the Bureau chose Sidelsky because he was broke and unemployed in England and they got a real bonehead for their pains. False economy. He says the money they saved on the contract then got eaten up by the burial costs of the dead Sidelsky and they couldn’t even claim on his return ticket because they’d booked him Apex, or something like that. Cost-cutting costs money, Bubé told me, showing a flash of the old financial brain that made him the big wheel he was. He was absolutely scathing!’

‘For Christ’s sake, you can’t swallow that! Bubé controls the Bureau. He is or was the President and the Bureau is his army.’

‘In a manner of speaking that’s right — but to say that is to say very little. What exactly is the Bureau? We like to think of it as the Secret Police, run by the mysterious Terblanche — who probably doesn’t exist. Well, I’ve got news for you, Ronnie. Not only does Terblanche not exist, but neither does the Bureau. Not as a single entity; some super-secret unit. The Bureau is simply a term, a useful fiction which we use to describe a whole range of options — the police; the Hand of the Virgin; the Ring; the Papal Nuncio; the New Men; the New Order; the Old Guard; the Straf Kaffir Brigade; the Azanian Strike Kommando; the Department of Communications; the Bureau is all of them and none of them. It’s Bubé and Kuiker and Yssel and the entire establishment which controls our view of reality. It exists so that we have something to fear. But more importantly, it exists so we have someone to blame. It is that force which the Regime as much as its enemies needs to believe in. It gives clarity and purpose to what is otherwise a long, ugly, dirty grab at power. We need the Bureau, we love the Bureau. We would be lost without it. You ask if the Bureau killed Ferreira? The answer you want is, yes. All right, the Bureau killed him, they paid the incompetent Englishman who pulled the trigger. But Ferreira stumbled on the truth and every new discovery was a nail in his coffin.

‘Ferreira took three hammer blows to his faith. Firstly he believed in books, in fact, in figures. One day he was taking a routine look through the books. He began by checking the budget figures of the various departments of the Regime and in those figures he found discrepancies. Consider what this did to him. His whole life depended upon a single premise. The Regime might be mad, it might be stupid, it might be cruel — but it was sincere. It was honest. Tony believed that utterly. Well, the books told another story.

‘To begin with he found that some of the monies listed in departmental spending had actually been channelled elsewhere, they appeared to him to have gone to Minister Gus Kuiker. It disturbed him. He went to Sidleman, the Government Accountant, and reported his discovery. Sidleman hit the roof. He was another Government man. He didn’t understand why the official figures did not reflect the truth. Apparently he asked Ferreira if he was suggesting that elected officials were setting up secret funds of public money. Ferreira replied that he wasn’t suggesting anything of the sort, but he wanted to know why the figures didn’t add up. Sidleman went to the President who promised a full investigation. In the meantime he told Sidleman to call off Ferreira and to stop his enquiries. But that was impossible. He had to follow where the figures led. There was no stopping Ferreira. Everywhere he looked he uncovered further mysteries. Not only did he find, as he went through the files of the various Government departments, that there was money leaving the country for unexplained reasons, there were also funds reaching Government coffers which he couldn’t account for. The figures led him abroad. To South America, Bermuda, France. He was shown houses on the Italian Riviera, farmhouses in the South of France and learnt they belonged to Gus Kuiker and Trudy Yssel. The Department of Communications was waging a foreign war against secret funds. He travelled on, to Rome, Washington and then Switzerland. Everywhere he went he heard the most astonishing stories. He heard of wild nights in Montevideo, week-long sex parties in Las Vegas, of private jets for American politicians and free holidays for British editors. He learnt about dummy companies set up in Bermuda and Panama which were used to buy up or buy off political commentators; he found deals as bizarre as the plan to arrange a tour of Japan by our rugby players in exchange for a tour of the casino nightclubs by Japanese sumo wrestlers and for the tour to be extensively covered by a Taiwanese news agency which would circulate the story as evidence of our racial tolerance; in Switzerland he found companies set up to translate South African currency into American dollars, apparently an expensive business, and he found that this accounted for some of the millions he had detected draining out of our foreign reserves; in Switzerland too he came across disturbing rumours of deals between important men of the Regime and the whole raft of currency manipulators, he learnt of promises not kept, of secret deals, secret accounts, gold sales and Russian contacts. Perhaps he unearthed the true story of Popov. By the time he got to London he was shattered. He got in touch with Zandrotti. Perhaps he needed to talk to a friend. He got drunk, he probably told Roberto more than he’d intended. Of course Zandrotti got it in one. Ferreira still didn’t realise the full implications of his discoveries but Zandrotti did. I think with that wild, anarchic mind of his he probably got it in a flash, saw the horrible black farce it was. Ferreira was overwhelmed by the tragedy. But Zandrotti saw the joke.’

‘And Zandrotti went home — to find out for himself?’ Kipsel asked. ‘He couldn’t believe it.’

Blanchaille looked surprised. ‘Oh no, he went home because he refused to believe it. I remember how he was in Balthazar Buildings after he’d been caught by the police. Zandrotti was broken, he’d lived his whole life in the belief that the Regime was genuinely, thoroughly, consistently and impressively, let’s face it, evil. He grew up in that belief, he’d suffered for it, he’d gone to jail for it, he’d lived in exile for it. It was, when you think about it, a very high expectation. He had a worthwhile enemy. You can imagine what it did to him when Ferreira told him he was dealing with a bunch of crooks. He hadn’t been a hero. He’d been a fool. He was not going to have that. My guess is that he booked his flight home and then saw Magdalena.’

‘Who shopped him, of course,’ Kipsel snapped.

Blanchaille understood the anger of his friend; how the business of Magdalena’s betrayal still hurt.

‘My feeling — guess — is that was just what he wanted. Heaven knows what came pouring out between bursts of the litany in the bar where Ferreira told Zandrotti his story. Some clue, perhaps, which gave Magdalena’s double game away. And Zandrotti used her.’