The driver put out some cups and saucers, and placed the coffee pot on a mat in the middle of the green cloth. Nobody said a word until he had left the room and closed the door behind him.
"In about ten days we want you to leave South Africa," Kleyn said. "In the meantime you'll go back to Ntibane. Tell everybody you know there you're going to Botswana to work for an uncle who has an ironmonger's store in Gaborone. You'll be receiving a letter postmarked in Botswana, offering you a job. Show people this letter as often as you can. On April 15, in a week, you'll take the bus to Johannesburg. You'll be picked up at the bus station and spend the night in an apartment, where you'll meet me in order to receive your final instructions. The next day you'll fly to Europe, and then on to St Petersburg. Your passport will say you're from Zimbabwe, and you'll have a new name. You can choose one yourself. You'll be met at the airport in St Petersburg. You'll go by train to Finland, and go from there to Sweden by boat. You'll stay in Sweden for a few weeks. You'll meet somebody there who will give you your most important instructions. On a date as yet unfixed you'll return to South Africa. I'll take over responsibility for the final phase. It'll be all over by the end of June at the latest. You can collect your money wherever you like in the world. You'll be paid an advance of 100,000 rand as soon as you've agreed to carry out the assignment."
Kleyn now stared intently at him. Mabasha wondered if his ears had deceived him. St Petersburg? Finland? Sweden? He tried to picture a map of Europe, but he could not.
"One question," he said after a while. "What's this all about?"
"It shows we are cautious and meticulous," Kleyn said. "You ought to appreciate that, because it's a guarantee for your own safety."
"I can look after myself," Mabasha said, dismissively. "But let's start from the beginning. Who'll be meeting me in St Petersburg?"
"As you may know, the Soviet Union has undergone big changes these last few years," Kleyn said. "Changes we're all very pleased about. On the other hand, it has meant that a lot of very efficient people are out of a job. Including officers in the old KGB. We get a steady stream of enquiries from these people, wondering if we're interested in their skills and experience. In some cases there's no limit to what they'll do to get a residence permit in our country."
"I'm not working with the KGB," Mabasha said. "I don't work with anybody. I'll do whatever I have to do, and I'll do it alone."
"Quite right, too," Kleyn said. "You will be working on your own. But you'll get some very useful tips from our friends in St Petersburg. They're good."
"Why Sweden?"
Kleyn took a sip of coffee. "A fair question, and a natural one to ask," he said. "In the first place, it's a diversionary measure. Nobody in this country who's not closely involved has any idea what's going on, but it's a good idea to put out a few smokescreens. Sweden is a neutral, insignificant country, and has always been aggressively opposed to our social system. It would never occur to anybody that the lamb would hide away in the wolf's lair. Second, our friends in St Petersburg have good contacts in Sweden. It's easy to get into the country because the border controls are pretty casual, if indeed there are any at all. Many of our Russian friends have already established themselves in Sweden, with false names and false papers. Third, we have some reliable friends who can arrange appropriate living quarters for us in Sweden. But most important of all, perhaps, is that you keep well away from South Africa. There are far too many people interested in knowing what a fellow like me is up to. A plan can be exposed."
Mabasha shook his head. "I have to know who it is I'm going to kill," he said.
"When the time is ripe," Kleyn said. "Not before. I'll conclude by reminding you of a conversation we had nearly eight years ago. You said then that it's possible to kill anybody at all, provided you plan it properly. The bottom line is that nobody can get away. And now I'm waiting for your answer."
That was the moment it dawned on Mabasha whom he was going to kill. The thought sent him reeling. But it all fitted. Kleyn's irrational hatred of blacks, the increasing liberalisation of South Africa. An important man. They wanted him to shoot President de Klerk.
His first reaction was to say no. It would be taking too big a risk. How could he possibly get past all the bodyguards surrounding the President night and day? How could he possibly escape afterwards? President de Klerk was a target for an assassin who was prepared to die in a suicide attack.
At the same time he could not deny he still believed what he had said to Kleyn. Nobody in the world was immune from a skilled assassin. And a million rand. Mind-boggling. He couldn't refuse.
"An advance of 300,000," he said. "I want it in a London bank by the day after tomorrow at the latest. I want the right to refuse to go along with the final plan if I consider it to be too risky. In that case you would have the right to require me to work out an alternative. In those circumstances I'll take it on."
Kleyn smiled. "Excellent," he said. "I knew you would."
"I want my passport made out in the name of Ben Travis."
"Of course. A splendid name. Easy to remember."
There was a plastic file on the floor next to Kleyn's chair. He took out a letter postmarked in Botswana and handed it to Mabasha.
"There's a bus to Johannesburg from Umtata at 6 a.m. on April 15. That's the one we want you to take."
Kleyn and the man who said his name was Frans got to their feet.
"We'll take you home by car," Kleyn said. "As time is short, you'd better go tonight. You can sleep on the journey."
Mabasha nodded. He was in a hurry to get home. A week was not long for him to sort out all the things he needed to do. Such as finding out who this Frans really was. Now his own safety was on the line. It needed all his concentration.
They parted on the veranda. This time Mabasha did not hold out his hand. His weapons were returned to him, and he got into the back seat of the car.
President de Klerk, he thought. Nobody can escape. Not even you.
Kleyn and Malan remained on the veranda, watching the car lights disappear.
"I think you're right," Malan said. "I think he'll do it."
"Of course he'll do it," Kleyn said. "Don't I always choose the best?"
Malan gazed up at the stars. "Do you think he realised who the target was?"
"I think he guessed it was de Klerk," Kleyn said. "That would be the obvious person."
Malan turned from the stars and looked at Kleyn. "That was what you wanted him to do, wasn't it? Guess?"
"Of course," Kleyn said. "And now we'd better go our separate ways. I have an important meeting in Bloemfontein tomorrow."
On April 17 Mabasha flew to London under the name of Ben Travis. By then he knew who Frans Malan was. That had also convinced him the target was President de Klerk. In his suitcase he had a few books on de Klerk. He would have to find out as much about him as possible.
The following day he flew to St Petersburg. He was met there by a man called Konovalenko.
Two days later a Finland ferry pulled into the docks in Stockholm. After a long car journey south, he came to a remote cottage late in the evening. The man driving the car spoke excellent English, even though he did have a Russian accent.
On Monday, April 20 Mabasha woke at dawn. He went out into the yard to relieve himself. A mist lay motionless over the fields. He shivered in the chilly air. Sweden, he thought. You are welcoming Ben Travis with fog, cold, and silence.
CHAPTER NINE
Pik Botha was first to notice the snake.
It was almost midnight and most members of the government had said goodnight and withdrawn to their bungalows. The only ones left around the campfire were President de Klerk, Foreign Minister Botha, Home Secretary Vlok and his private secretary, plus a few of the security men. They were all officers handpicked by the President and his cabinet. They had all pledged special oaths of allegiance and secrecy to de Klerk personally. Further away, barely visible from the campfire, some black servants were hovering in the shadows.
It was a green mamba, and difficult to see as it lay motionless at the edge of the flickering light. The foreign minister would probably never have noticed it had he not bent down to scratch his ankle. He started when he saw the snake, then just sat motionless. He had learned early in life that a snake can only see and attack moving objects.
"There is a poisonous snake two metres from my feet," he said in a low voice.
President de Klerk was deep in thought. He had adjusted his deck chair so that he could stretch out. As usual he was sitting some distance from his colleagues. It had struck him some time ago that his ministers never placed their chairs too close to him when they were gathered around the campfire, presumably to show their respect. That suited him fine. President de Klerk was a man who often felt a burning necessity to be on his own.
The foreign minister's words slowly sunk in, dissolving his thoughts. He turned to look at his foreign minister's face in the light of the dancing flames.
"Did you say something?" he said.
"There is a green poisonous snake by my feet," Botha said again. "I don't think I've ever seen such a big mamba."
President de Klerk sat up slowly in his chair. He hated snakes. He had an almost pathological fear of crawling animals in general. At the presidential residence, the servants knew they had to search every nook and cranny every day for spiders, beetles or any other insects. The same applied to those who cleaned the President's office, his cars and the cabinet offices.
He slowly craned his neck and located the snake. He felt sick immediately.
"Kill it," he said.
The home secretary had fallen asleep in his deck chair, and his private secretary was listening to music on his headphones. One of the bodyguards slowly drew a knife from his belt, and struck at the snake with unerring accuracy. The mamba's head was severed from its body. The bodyguard picked up the snake's body, still thrashing from side to side, and flung it into the fire. To his horror de Klerk saw how the snake's head, still lying on the ground, was opening and closing its mouth, displaying its fangs. He was overcome by dizziness, as if about to faint. He leaned back quickly in his chair and closed his eyes.
A dead snake, he thought. But its body is still writhing away, and anyone not in the know would think it was still alive. That's just what it's like here, in my country, my South Africa. A lot of the old ways, things we thought were dead and buried, are still alive. We're not just fighting alongside and against the living, we've also got to fight those who insist on coming back to life to haunt us.
Every four months or so President de Klerk took his ministers and selected secretaries to a camp at Ons Hoop, just south of the border with Botswana. They stayed for a few days, and all business was conducted very openly. Officially, the President and his cabinet gathered away from the public eye to consider important matters. De Klerk had introduced this routine when he first came to office as head of state. Now he had been President for nearly four years, and some of the government's key decisions had been made in the informal atmosphere, around the campfire, at Ons Hoop. The camp had been built with government money, and de Klerk had no difficulty in justifying its existence. It seemed he and his assistants thought more liberal and perhaps also more daring thoughts while sitting around the campfire under the night sky, enjoying the scents of ancient Africa. De Klerk sometimes thought it was their
Boere
blood coming to the fore. Free men, always linked with nature, who could never quite get used to a modern era, to air-conditioned studies and cars with bulletproof windows. Here in Ons Hoop they could enjoy the mountain horizon, the unending plains, and not least a roast over an open fire. They could have their discussions without feeling hounded by time, and de Klerk felt it had produced results.
Pik Botha watched the snake being consumed by the fire, then turned his head and saw de Klerk was sitting with his eyes closed. He knew that meant the President wanted to be left alone. He shook the home secretary gently by the shoulder. Vlok woke with a start. When they stood up, his secretary quickly switched off his music and collected the papers that were lying under his chair.
Pik Botha hung back after the others had disappeared, escorted by a servant with a lamp. It sometimes happened that the President wanted to exchange a few words with his foreign minister in confidence.
"I think I'll be going, then," Botha said.
De Klerk opened his eyes and looked at him. That particular night he had nothing to discuss with Botha.
"You do that," he said. "We need all the sleep we can get."
Botha wished him good night and left the President on his own.
De Klerk would sit there alone for a while, thinking through the discussions that had taken place that day and evening. When they went out to the camp at Ons Hoop, it was to discuss overall political strategies, not routine government affairs. In the light of the campfire, they would talk about the future of South Africa, never about anything else. It was here they had developed the strategy for how the country would change without the whites losing too much influence.
But on that night, April 27, 1992, de Klerk was waiting for a man he wanted to meet by himself, without even his foreign minister, his most trusted colleague in the government, knowing about it. He nodded to one of the bodyguards, who disappeared immediately. When the guard returned a few minutes later, he had with him a man in his forties, dressed in a plain khaki suit. He greeted de Klerk and moved one of the deck chairs closer to the President. At the same time de Klerk gestured to the bodyguards that they should withdraw. He wanted them close by, but not within earshot.
There were four people de Klerk trusted in this life. First of all his wife. Then his foreign minister, Pik Botha. And there were two others. One of them was sitting right now in the chair beside him. His name was Pieter van Heerden, and he worked for the South African intelligence service, NIS. But even more important than his work for the security of the republic was the fact that van Heerden played the role of special informer and messenger to de Klerk, bringing him news of the state of the nation. From Pieter van Heerden, de Klerk received regular reports about what was foremost in the minds of the military high command, the police, the other political parties, and the internal organisations of NIS. If a military coup was being planned, if a conspiracy was under way, van Heerden would hear of it and immediately inform the President. Without van Heerden, de Klerk would be missing a pointer to the forces working against him. In his private life and in his work as an intelligence officer, van Heerden played the role of a man openly critical of President de Klerk. He performed skilfully, always well balanced, never exaggerated. No-one had ever suspected him of being the President's personal messenger.
De Klerk was aware that by enlisting the aid of van Heerden, he was compromising the confidence he placed in his own cabinet. But he could see no other way of guaranteeing himself the information he considered essential to carry out the huge changes South Africa needed to avoid a national catastrophe.
This was not least associated with the fourth person in whom de Klerk placed absolute trust. Nelson Mandela. The leader of the ANC, the man who had been imprisoned for 27 years on Robben Island, who had been incarcerated for life at the beginning of the 1960s for alleged but never proven acts of sabotage.
President de Klerk had few illusions. He could see that the only two people who together could prevent a civil war from breaking out and the bloodbath that would inevitably follow were himself and Mandela. Many a time he had prowled sleepless through the presidential residence at night, gazing at the lights from the city of Pretoria, and thinking how the future of South Africa would depend on the compromise he and Mandela would with good fortune be able to reach.
He could speak quite openly with Mandela. He knew that feeling was mutual. They were very different in character and temperament. Mandela was a truth seeker with philosophical leanings, who used those characteristics to enhance the decisiveness and practical drive he also possessed. President de Klerk lacked that philosophical dimension. He would head straight for a practical solution to every problem. For him the future of the republic lay in changing political realities, and constant choices between what was possible to achieve and what was not. But between these two men with such different qualities and experience was a level of trust which could only be destroyed by open betrayal. That meant they never needed to disguise their differences of opinion, never needed to resort to unnecessary rhetoric when talking to one another. But it also meant they were fighting on two different fronts at the same time. The white population was split, and de Klerk knew that everything would collapse if he could not manage to make progress bit by bit, by means of compromises that could be accepted by a majority of the white population. He would never manage to persuade the ultra-conservative right. Nor would he ever convince the racist members of the officer class in the army and the police force. But he had to ensure they did not become too powerful.
President de Klerk knew Nelson Mandela had similar problems. The blacks were also divided among themselves. Not least between the Inkatha movement, dominated by the Zulus, and the ANC. This meant they could come together in an understanding of each other's difficulties, but at the same time they need never deny the disunity that existed.
Van Heerden was a provider of the information de Klerk needed to have. He knew it was necessary to stay close to his friends, but to stay even closer to his enemies and their thoughts.
They normally met once a week in de Klerk's office, often late on Saturday afternoons. But on this occasion, van Heerden had requested an urgent meeting. At first de Klerk had been unwilling to let him come to the camp. It would be difficult to meet him there without someone in the government finding out. But van Heerden had been unusually persistent. The meeting could not be put off until de Klerk returned to Pretoria. At that point de Klerk had given way. He knew van Heerden was thoroughly cold-blooded and disciplined, and would never act impulsively; he must have something of exceptional importance to share with the President.
"We're alone now," de Klerk said. "Pik found a poisonous snake right by his feet just a few minutes ago. I wondered for a moment if it might have been fitted with a recording device."
Van Heerden smiled. "We haven't started to employ poisonous snakes as informers yet," he said. "Maybe we'll have to one of these days. Who knows?"
De Klerk looked at him searchingly. What was so important that it couldn't wait?
Van Heerden moistened his lips before starting to speak. "A plot to assassinate you is at an advanced planning stage," he said. "There is absolutely no shadow of a doubt that this is a serious threat. To yourself, to government policy in general, and in the long run to the whole nation."
Van Heerden paused. He was used to de Klerk firing questions at him. But on this occasion de Klerk did not say a word. He merely stared attentively at his messenger.
"I'm still short of information about much of the detail," van Heerden said. "But I'm aware of the main thread, and that's serious enough. The plotters have links with the military high command, and with extreme conservative circles, notably the Afrikaner Resistance Movement. We should not forget that many conservatives, most of them in fact, are not members of any political organisation. In addition there are signs that foreign terrorist experts, primarily from the KGB, are involved."
"There's no such thing as the KGB any more," de Klerk said, interrupting him. "At least, not in the form we are familiar with."
"There are unemployed KGB officers, though," van Heerden said. "As I have told you before, Mr President, we are frequently approached by officers of the former Soviet intelligence service, offering us their services for some future occasion."
"A conspiracy always has a hard core," de Klerk said, after a while. "One or more people, usually very few, in the background, very much in the background, pulling the strings. Who are they?"
"I don't know," van Heerden said. "And that worries me. There's somebody in the military intelligence service called Frans Malan - you can be quite sure he's involved. He has been careless enough to store some material connected with the conspiracy in his computer files, without blocking them. I noticed it when I asked one of my trusted colleagues to run a routine check."
If only people knew, de Klerk thought. It's reached a hitherto unthinkable point where security service members spy on one another, hack their way into one another's computer files, have reason to suspect one another of treachery.
"Why just me?" de Klerk said. "Why not Mandela as well?"
"It's too soon to say," van Heerden said. "But of course, it's not difficult to imagine what effect a successful assassination attempt on you would have in the current circumstances."