The morning was bright and unutterably dazzling. David was woken by a knock on the door. Another employee, explaining:
‘Mistah Kellerman want you to join him on the terrace.’
David glanced across. He must have fallen asleep again, and the exhausted sleep had been profound: they hadn’t noticed the sun rising behind the flimsy curtains.
He tried not to think about the nightmare as they showered.
But Amy sensed something.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes. Yes of course…Thank God we made it.’
She looked at him.
‘Let’s go and find Eloise.’
They changed into clean clothes, sourced from a wardrobe, then they exited into the corridor. Immediately the assistant appeared, and guided them out onto a sunlit terrace, overlooking the sea.
The wind had dropped. The view was austere but pristine: an entirely empty beach, a couple of small rocky islands in the bay. The barking of distant seals. South and north
stretched rocky wilderness, echoing coves and cliffs. Only the hulking metal shape of a diamond mine interrupted the abject desolation, far in the distance.
A table was set up on the terrace. Angus was there, drinking coffee. Kellerman was beside him, dressed in a cream linen suit, and a discreet silk tie.
And Eloise was sitting across the table.
Amy ran over, and hugged the young Cagot girl.
Nathan gestured in David’s direction.
‘Please sit.’
They sat. They talked animatedly with Eloise. She seemed relaxed, even happy. Or at least, not afraid.
Someone served a basket of pastries, and more fresh coffee, freshly squeezed juice, and cold meats and bread. The luxury was sumptuous and startling: like they had just checked into a surprisingly good hotel in Hell.
David and Amy both fell upon the food: instantly realizing how hungry they were. But then David stopped, and paused, and shuddered – and slid the glistening pink ham off his plate back onto the serving dish. He chose more fruit and bread. Not meat. He didn’t want meat.
Kellerman watched them, sipping his coffee from a china cup. Silent and aloof. His slender cellphone resting on the table. David had never seen such an anorexic cellphone.
Angus spoke first: ‘Guys. We’re safe here for the moment. I’ve been talking with Nathan. They won’t dare to come into the Sperrgebiet. Not past the guards.’
‘Are you sure?’
Angus flashed a glance at Nathan. Who nodded, rather casually; he was checking something on his phone.
Angus turned back.
‘So we can relax. For a day or two.’
David nearly laughed, with open and outright contempt, at the word
relax.
Relax?
The image of Alphonse was cut into his thoughts, tattooed on his neocortex. A man burnt to cinders, screaming his death agony: Miguel inhaling the scent of the meat. The Cannibalistic Cagot…
He suppressed his shudder and finished breakfast. Bread and fruit and cheese. No meat. They talked about the penguins and the seals on the islands offshore. Eloise said she had found a sandrose on the beach the previous day, a beautiful sandrose.
‘And there are agates too!’
Her enthusiasm was touching, and teenage, and winning, but David couldn’t cope. It was all too much. He just couldn’t make small talk. Just couldn’t. He pushed back his chair, and stretched and apologized – he needed to be alone. Amy looked his way and he tried to smile and failed, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to talk about anything.
David walked across the terrace, down some concrete steps onto the empty beach. A big factory ship was way offshore, beyond the islands. The sands were grey and shining in the hot sun. The coastline, as far as he could see, was lunar in its sterility. The coastline of the Forbidden Zone. Last refuge of the Cagots.
‘Hey?’
He swivelled. It was Angus, joining him.
‘David. You OK?’
A brief and piercing pause.
‘I’m fine.’
The Scotsman’s answering smile was sad, and sceptical. He said nothing. David could bear it no longer. He had to confess; he needed to confess.
‘Angus…do you think it is possible…’ He had to force the words out of himself. ‘That I am a Cagot? Of Cagot decent, at least. I’ve been thinking about my grandfather.
His guilt and shame. The only thing that makes sense is…that he was a Cagot too. Maybe he found out at Gurs, like José Garovillo.’
The scientist tilted his head, his pale white face even paler in the harsh Sperrgebiet sun.
‘I had wondered if you would reach that conclusion.’
‘So? What do you think?’
‘To my mind, you do not present any of the obvious Cagot syndromes, but you do have, maybe, the colouration.’
‘S’what I thought. Jesus.’
‘It doesn’t mean you will go mad. Not definitely. You may be fine, like Eloise. And then again you may not be.’
‘Christ.’
‘The only way we can know for sure is genetic testing. If you want. If you want I can do that here, in the labs. Do you really want to know?’
The truth was close, yet utterly unbearable. Like an HIV test, but infinitely worse. David stared out to sea. A smaller boat was floating there, closer than the great factory boat. Maybe a skiff, belonging to local fishermen.
David exhaled.
‘I don’t know, Angus. It’s…so fucking difficult. I’m frightened, if I’m honest. I don’t want to know that…I am like Miguel. How could I tolerate knowing that?’
‘Of course.’
The two men kicked stones, and walked further down the beach, talking quietly. Angus was in pensive, discursive mood: speaking of the Serpent Seed, the Biblical tales of separate races of men. Then the scientist stopped, and stared at the virulent blue sea, the little islands offshore; he was speaking of earlier forms of hominid,
Homo antecessor, Homo habilis
, and then
Homo floresiensis
, a dwarf-like relative of man.
‘You know they may have lived into recorded history,’
Angus surveyed the rocky islets. ‘How creepy is that? Lost on the islands of Indonesia: an elf, a hobbit, a goblin…’
David barely listened. Silent and brooding.
Angus pointed out to the waters.
‘Sea nettles.
’
A few metres out, the coastal seawater was patched and dotted with dozens of diaphanous scarlet jellyfish, some of them a metre across, their fronds and tentacles pulsing organically.
They were beautiful yet repulsive. Angus elaborated.
‘
Chrysaora Hysoscella.
Namibian sea nettles. They always remind me of vaginas. The colour and movement. The peristalsis of female orgasm.’ He gazed. ‘But now they remind me of floating…wounds. Big floating red wounds.’
Angus looked at David. And then the scientist said, quite fiercely: ‘I just let him die. Didn’t I?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Alfie. My little Alfie. I let them kill him – that fucker Miguel.’
‘No, Angus. You tried to save him.’
‘But I failed. I
failed…
’
The Scotsman looked vulnerable; the chutzpah was gone, the persistent smile, the chattering self confidence. His face was twitching, close to tears.
‘I was trying to think of a better way out! I really was. I was. And I did. The euphorbia. But it was too late.’ The Scotsman knelt and picked up a beautiful seashell, a whorl of creamy porcelain veined with pink and yellow, and a thread of tenderest red. Tender and vulnerable.
The seashell lay nestled in his palm. Angus gazed down; he was choked, almost sobbing.
‘This is why I believe in God, David. I mean.
Look at this shell.
Why is it so beautiful? Why? It’s pointlessly beautiful, isn’t it? Purposelessly beautiful, why make a seashell so beautiful? Who does that
benefit? What’s the point? It’s excessive. Evolution is itself
excessive
. This is where creationists have it
wrong
, the universe isn’t designed – it is
inspired.
’
He dropped the shell. He kicked it away. Again David didn’t know what to say.
Angus was still talking.
‘I lied back then, David.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘At breakfast, I lied.’
‘How?’
‘I’m not sure they will be stalled by the guards. The Society. Not for long.’
‘So…’ David felt the horror of the inevitable thought: Miguel still out there, coming for them. ‘What do we do?’
‘Nathan is too arrogant to listen. I tried to tell him earlier but he wouldn’t listen. He thinks he is impregnable here, the Forbidden Zone. Safe in his dynastic fortress. The great Kellermans of the Sperrgebiet. But he
isn’t
safe. Kellerman Namcorp is powerful, but not
that
fucking powerful. The whole church? If they want to get at us they will find a way.’ The sunlight made Angus’s red hair almost coppery. ‘We need a plan. Because they will come. Tomorrow, a few days, next week. They are coming for us as we speak.’
David stared across the tarnished silver of the sea. The Scotsman was surely right: they needed a means of escape.
The barks of the seals on the island were carried by the hot and savoury breeze. Penguins were chittering in their colonies on the smaller islands. It was, David realized, a world of unwitnessed beauty, the beauty of nothingness, no one ever saw this: the dead quartz and glittering ashes, the agates and buried sandroses: a wasteland of loveliness.
Out there on the blue severe waves, someone was observing. David looked, hard. It was a man, standing on the deck of the skiff. A man with a pair of binoculars, or something.
The man was standing and gazing through the binoculars – at the buildings on the shore.
This man was staring straight at them. And there was a man next to him, pointing. But the man wasn’t pointing.
David felt the uncomfortable prickle of anxiety.
Now he realized: the man had some kind of…device. A long black shape. Directed their way.
Angus was heading for the sheltering rocks. ‘Run! David!
Run!
’
But David stood on the beach, gaping with the horror.
The first missile streaked eagerly through the clear blue sky.
The fireballs were huge and billowing: monstrous black clouds tinged with Satanic tangerine. Towers of pungent smoke filled the sky.
‘Amy! Amy!’
David edged up over the parapet of sand: the complex of buildings was
gone.
Replaced by a hideous wall of flame and devastation; the air was shuddering with the heat of the blaze; secondary explosions added to the surging noise.
Angus was prone beside him. Lying on the sand. He put a hand on David’s shoulder.
‘It’s the oil generator – the fuel’s gone up.’ The Scotsman turned on his back, and looked towards the sea. ‘The boat…The bastard boat…
Fuck –
’
David was staring in horror at the destruction: anyone in or around the building would have stood no chance. No hope. No chance.
Angus muttered:
‘They must have come from Walvis Bay? Maybe Oranjemund…’
‘David?’
A softer voice. David swivelled.
It was Amy. She was unharmed. Standing in the sand. Trembling.
And behind her was Nathan Kellerman, bleeding profusely, and staggering.
Amy sank into David’s embrace.
‘I was coming down to see you…then I got knocked over…’
He hugged her close. Angus asked Nathan:
‘Eloise?’
Kellerman’s voice was slow, and wearied:
‘She was engulfed.’
His suit was smeared with a tar-like substance; David realized it was
blood.
Kellerman was bleeding from a chest wound.
And now a new noise joined the tumult, cars were screaming to the shoreline, and men in blue overalls and desert boots were jumping out. David recognized Solomon and Tilac, the Kellerman Namcorp guards. Nathan lifted an arm:
‘Shoot.’
The men obeyed: they unhoisted rifles and knelt in the sand, and took aim. The boat was already departing, churning south – job done. But the Namcorp men fired anyway, and the echoes of the crackling rifle fire joined the roar of the burning fuel dumps, and the soft explosion of buildings crumpling in the flames. The smell of burning petrol was vicious, greasy black smoke was fogging the oceanic sky. Amy was shivering now. Angus was remonstrating with Nathan.
David could barely hear their conversation. He caught the odd word:
Amsterdam, helicopter, dinghy
. He looked between the two of them. Nathan was handing something to Angus. It looked like a gun, a pistol – and something else: a small black velvet pouch. Despite his deep tan, Nathan Kellerman had a notably white pallor; and the blood was still oozing from some hideous wound, staining his soft linen jacket a
blatant burgundy. Angus, by contrast, seemed energized; he turned to David and Amy.
‘Nathan wants us to use the company boat, down there.’ He pointed. ‘He’s right. We actually have a chance – let’s take it.’
‘What?’
Angus gestured at the wide black cloud now drifting down the beach. ‘They’ll have zero visibility for an hour or two. The guards can hold them off with gunfire.’
David protested:
‘Eloise…’
‘She is dead, David. Nathan wouldn’t lie.
Come on.
They’ll be watching the roads out of the Forbidden Zone, but if we take the boat to Luderitz –
’
Amy said, very softly: ‘I think he’s right.’
Angus was already hoisting Nathan’s sagging arm over his shoulder, assisting him down the beach. David and Amy swapped glances, then followed, stunned and frightened. A few more rifle shots smacked the hot air behind them.
Behind the next cove was a small pier, and a tethered rubber speedboat with a powerful looking engine.
Angus got in, and assisted his benefactor into the boat. But his boss’s head was lolling, unsteady on its axis. Amy climbed in alongside; David swiftly followed. The oily smoke from the explosions blotted out the sun, turning the desert day into twilight. The Scotsman ripped the cord, the motor growled, and moments later they were speeding along the coast.
Flames and burning buildings receded behind. For a while they were silent, watching the dismal spectacle slowly dwindling, the dinghy buffeted through the blue choppy waves. They passed a disused diamond mine: a skeleton of eroding steel looming above the cliffs.
Nathan was almost whispering, as he lay back on the black
rubber of the boat. His face wet with sweat, a Navajo smear of red blood across his cheek.
‘So Eloise is dead. The last Cagot…’
‘Yes.’ Angus wore a regretful smile. ‘They won, Nathan. Miguel is no damn use.’
An anxious pause. Nathan Kellerman reached out a hand, and touched Angus’s wrist. The gesture was delicate, gracious, refined.
‘Angus. There is one more way.’
‘What?’
‘Find the Fischer results.’
‘What?’
The glittering green eyes of the Scottish scientist were fixed on the pained and twitching face of his boss, Nathan Kellerman. David leaned close to try and overhear this pained and fraught conversation. Angus asked Kellerman, ‘You know where they are?’
‘No. But…Dresler maybe. Maybe he does. He was the last option. If we failed at Tamara that was my very last option – I think he knows where they kept the data – but he will – it will be difficult to get it out of him.’ Kellerman coughed, into his own hand. He looked down at his palm, now cupping his own blood. The Jewish dynast fell back, and gazed at the sky, a kind of wild acceptance in his eyes. Accepting the sky and the sea. Then his barely focussed eyes turned to Angus, once more.
‘So Dresler knows, I think. And I always felt I could force it out of him, if I was truly desperate, but you’d have to take him…very close to the edge. I never wanted to risk it before, he was too useful.’ Another anguished cough. Then he continued, grimacing. ‘But now? What does it matter? Try it. Nothing to lose.’ Kellerman was sweating in the sun. ‘And this is my stop, Angus. Here’s where I get off.’
Angus grabbed at Kellerman. ‘C’mon, Nathan.’
‘I am fucked, Angus. Look.’ Nathan opened the jacket, like a prostitute letting fall her nightgown; a huge glistening oval of blood, like a red scarlet sea nettle, pulsed in his chest. Amy and David stared at each other. Angus had turned, he was trying to slow the boat; but even as the motor puttered out, Nathan Kellerman lifted himself to the side of the boat.
David shouted, reflexively:
‘No!’
It was too late. Kellerman was over the side and slipping into the water, into the cold Namibian waters. David stared, aghast. Kellerman’s white face was a sad oval in the blueness; Angus was steering the boat to a halt.
But Nathan was already half under, slipping deeper into the waves. His chest smoking blood.
And now the sharks were on him. The water was crazy with dorsal fins, evil and swooping. David glimpsed a vicious serration of teeth, already stained red. The devouring fish were tearing in a frenzy at the bleeding and flailing body, pulling it under. David couldn’t help watching: the sight was transfixing. The sharks were ripping at the arms and the legs, like a kind of obscene children’s game. Tagging and taunting the scapegoat. And then moving in for the kill.
Nathan Kellerman didn’t scream. He seemed to accept his hideous death as he was torn apart, and pulled under the waves for the final time. David stared down into the sapphire fathoms; the sharks were pirouetting around the dim black corpse. A belch of blood and gas burst to the surface, foaming the waters red.
And then silence.
Angus said nothing. He started the boat, once again, and they cruised through the anxious waves, under the dignified sun.
They motored past the desolate coves. Sea birds wheeled,
their cries like dying falls. David stared at the black rocks and yellow sands.
He thought of the blood in the water; a man being eaten alive.
Then the Scotsman spoke.
‘All the data and the bloods were in that building. And Eloise. Everything’s gone. And he thought we’d be safe…’ Angus was shaking his head. ‘Kellerman was so stupidly stupidly wrong. Poor bastard.’ The Scotsman adjusted the rudder, to steer them closer to the shore. ‘We’ll be in Luderitz soon.’
David voiced the obvious question:
‘And then?’
‘We’ve got a few hours’ grace. But the Namibian authorities will have to intervene. So it will become common knowledge that we got out.’
Amy said, ‘And we’ll be stuck in Luderitz. What good is that?’
‘There is a means of escape.’
‘How?’
Angus explained, quite calmly.
‘The diamond shipment. Nathan reminded me. Every other day, Kellerman Namcorp transports rough diamonds to Amsterdam. Just like De Beers, flying gems into London.’ Another tilt on the rudder. ‘The shipments go via Windhoek.’
David protested:
‘But –’
‘I can get you on. They know me. And passport control is essentially run by the company itself. You’ll be landed at Kellerman HQ in Amsterdam. Back in Europe. Home safe and sound.’
‘And you?’
‘Dunno. Might take brunch…
Whatever.
’
‘You’re just gonna give up?’
The red-haired scientist gazed down the sunlit coast. The smoke storms were a long way away now.
‘What do you expect me to do? Go back and start over? I’m done. I’m finished. It was my stupid ego that got me this steeped in blood. I thought I could repeat Fischer, get his data, then get the Nobel, God knows. With Nathan’s help. But were they ever really gonna give me prizes for revealing something so apocalyptic? For guaranteeing war? I was an idiot. Race is the curse, the curse of God on man. And Kellerman had his own motives. Leviticus 25. I was so bloody
stupid.
’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Work it out. My ego got Alphonse killed, Eloise killed. Nathan is dead. You guys nearly killed. Fazackerly is dead. It’s so fucking over. I’m moving on. Turning a new leaf. Drawing a line. Might take up golf.’
‘
But I’m not done
.’ It was Amy talking. The two men looked at her; blonde hair floating on the hot salty breeze.
‘Remember what José said?’ She looked first at Angus, then at David. ‘When he said I know what happened to the Jews – that’s the whole key to this isn’t it, Angus? Whatever this…secret is…that you were working towards. It explains why the Jews died in the Holocaust, doesn’t it? Eloise told us that. You told her something.’
Angus piloted the boat without a word.
But Amy’s face was set in that determined expression. She insisted:
‘That’s the big mystery, isn’t it? Why the Holocaust? That’s what this is all headed towards, isn’t it?’
Angus was still silent, but Amy was fired up: ‘Tell me this is it, Angus.
Tell me.
Hitler could have used the Jews as slave labour – and he had plans to put them in some homeland, in Russia or Africa, right? But then suddenly he changed his mind.’ She gazed at Angus. ‘Suddenly he decided he had to
kill them. All of them. Even if it crippled – overextended and destroyed – the German war effort. Why did he do that?’
Angus was quiet, then he sighed.
‘Yes. Sort of. It does explain the Holocaust. Maybe. Who knows. I only mentioned it to Eloise…’ His expression darkened. ‘Because I felt sorry for her. The last Cagot in the world. She was in pain. She deserved a little explanation for what was happening.’
‘So what is it? What did Fischer find?’
‘
Can’t fucking tell you.
Because I have no proof. I never make a statement without proof. I am a scientist.’ He gazed their way, angrily. ‘Why not cut me some. Eh? My boyfriend is dead
and
Eloise’s blood is also on my damn hands. Enough.
Enough.
’
‘You won’t tell us.’
‘No.
Because I don’t know for sure.
I never did the fucking Fischer experiments. But…but if Kellerman was right, there is a man who can maybe help
. That’s what Nathan was saying.’
The switchback moods of the Scotsman were bewildering. He was now staring ahead. David followed his gaze along the austere coast. He could see buildings, the spire of a church, brightly painted houses. Another surreal German town perched on the desert coast, overlooking the brutal sea.
David returned to the conversation.
‘What man?’
Angus slowed the boat as they began their approach to the port. And said:
‘Nazi. Cancerous old Nazi named Dresler, who worked with Fischer at Gurs. Knew Grandpa Kellerman. And as you heard – just here on the boat –
Dresler knows.
’
Amy said:
‘Please explain. Knows what?’
‘Herr Doktor Dresler fled here from Europe, in the 1990s.
He was uncovered somehow. Don’t know how. So he came here. Good place to hide, Luderitz, million miles from the next
kartoffelsalat
. And he already knew the Kellermans.’
‘And?’
‘Remember. Rewind. Go back.’
‘Sorry?’
‘In 1946 Eugen Fischer got in touch with his old friends, the Kellermans, and told them what he had found at Gurs. And
naturlich
the Kellermans were…very excited by the news of what the Germans had discovered.’ The boat was slowing. ‘But the Kellermans had no proof – they didn’t have the actual data. So they have been waiting for genetic science to catch up with the Germans – for six decades.’ Angus smiled, laconically. ‘They take a long view, these dynastic Jews. They’ve been waiting since the Babylonian Captivity, you might say. Anyway the Kellermans had hopes of the Diversity Project at Stanford but
that
folded.’ He blinked as water splashed the boat. ‘Then GenoMap kicked off – and so they basically took us over, and used us. To repeat the Fischer experiments. Then Dresler was coaxed south, he came to live here in the 1990s and he was able to help, with lots of info. People to bloodtest and so forth. Routes to explore. And eventually…the Cagots.’
He looked at David.
Amy asked: ‘But…how can Dresler help us
now
?’
‘Because. If what Nathan said is right, then Dresler also knows what the doctors did after the war. He knows the lot.’
‘
After
the war? What does that mean?’
A shrug.
‘Angus!’
The Scotsman slowed the dinghy further. Sea birds wheeled behind. He gazed at Amy, then at David: ‘The Nazis discovered DNA – during the war.’