“There’s something else,” he said to his wife.
“What?”
“I’ve got the Interior Ministry. I was told tonight officially.”
She looked at her son. “And then he had to arrive!”
“I need your help,” said Deaken, understanding now the reason for his father’s silence in the car.
“What do the authorities say?” asked his mother.
“They deny all knowledge or involvement,” said her husband.
“They think I’m insane,” added Deaken.
She looked at him. “Are you?”
“Of course not.”
“You don’t look well.”
“Karen’s been kidnapped. I’ve been tricked, cheated and left for dead in the middle of nowhere. I’ve just flown four thousand miles. How do you expect me to look?”
“We’ve a meeting with the Director in the morning.” As always the old man tried to come between them. “They’re making more inquiries.”
The woman didn’t look at him, eyes fixed on her son. “You almost ruined your father’s career once,” she said. “I won’t have you do it again.”
“I’ve no intention of ruining anything,” said Deaken wearily. “I just want Karen back.”
She didn’t speak for several moments and when she did Deaken realized she hadn’t listened to him.
“I’d have you committed rather than let it happen again,” she said.
Deaken knew that she meant it.
27
The appointment with the Director of the Department of National Security had been arranged for ten, but just as Deaken and his father were preparing to leave the Parkstown house there was a telephone call from Skinner Street, postponing it until midday.
“Why?” asked Deaken.
“I don’t know. They didn’t say,” replied his father.
Deaken was still at the breakfast table, set out on the wide, sweeping verandah overlooking the gardens. The water sprinklers were already revolving over the grasses and shrubbery to beat the cooking heat of midday. Deaken noted that the arbour was still as colourful and as carefully kept as he remembered it. He could see four Africans working in the grounds but knew there would be more. The maintenance staff had been twenty strong when he had lived there. His mother had always insisted on neatness and efficiency. He was glad he didn’t look such a mess this morning. Whoever had cleaned, pressed and mended his suit had made an excellent job of it.
His father, who had remained standing after returning to report the telephone call, sat down again and gestured for the waiting houseboy to clear the breakfast debris. Deaken saw that the serving staff still wore white gloves.
“I’m sorry about last night,” said the older man unexpectedly.
Deaken shrugged. “1 suppose she’d reason enough.”
“It was still rude… unnecessary. She was very hurt by what happened last time.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Your mother was always ambitious. She thinks if I’d got the original appointment, I could be premier now.”
“Couldn’t you still?”
“I’ve got to make a success of the Interior Ministry first.”
Deaken looked back at the garden and the working Africans. His father epitomized the Boer: member of the Broederbond, the closed, secret society of ruling class, always a participant in the Voortrekker marches, which commemorated the occupation of the country and their subsequent fight against the British. There was everything he hated in the man he loved so much.
“Do you believe Swart… that this country wasn’t involved?”
“My appointment has been rumoured for some time,” said the older man. “They wouldn’t lie to me, knowing that I can find out easily enough.”
“Then I won’t do anything to embarrass you,” promised Deaken. “I intended to. The threat of publicity was the only weapon I had to protect Karen. But not now.”
The old man nodded.
“Do you believe me?”
“It’s difficult to.”
“I’m not mad.”
“I don’t think you are.”
“What do you think then?” demanded Deaken.
“That it’s going to be difficult to convince anyone else.”
Deaken caught a movement from the French windows. It was one of the house servants. Seeing his expectation, his father said, “She won’t be coming out.”
“Oh,” said Deaken. He supposed half a reconciliation was better than none. Was this really a reconciliation with his father? Or the action of a man who had lost one opportunity and was trying to minimize the risk of losing another? It really wasn’t important. Deciding what to do next was important and he realized, emptily, that he didn’t know.
“We’d better go,” said his father. “They said noon.”
The limousine which had brought them from Johannesburg was waiting, with the uniformed driver at the wheel; it had been washed and polished and gleamed in the sun. They moved off along the broad residential roads, between landscaped gardens jewelled by mansions and villas and beneath the purple and violet jacaranda trees. Deaken was surprised to feel a certain nostalgia.
The Department of National Security was a modern, tall, tinted-glass building and the office of its Director, Brigadier Heinrich Muller, was on the top floor, occupying a corner with a panoramic view over Pretoria. Deaken followed his father into the room and closed the door behind them. Muller was a large, heavy-bodied man, fullfeatured and with thick, heavy hands. Like Swart, who stood alongside and was the only other man in the room, he wore plain clothes. In fact Swart didn’t appear to have changed since the previous night. Deaken saw that the expressions weren’t as sceptical as he had expected, just blank. His father made the introductions and Muller offered his hand. Deaken took it, surprised.
“I’m sorry for the delay,” said Muller, gesturing to chairs. “Things took longer than we thought.”
“What things?” said Deaken.
“Checking that a yacht owned by a man called Adnan Azziz, who has a son in a Swiss school, was in harbour at Monte Carlo,” elaborated Muller. “That there was an unexplained and so far unsolved assault upon a holiday villa near a small French town called Rixheim. And that a freighter named the Bellicose, owned by the Levcos shipping company, sailed from Marseilles over a week ago and made a call within the last two days at Dakar.”
Deaken experienced the sensation of being in a lift that suddenly descends faster than expected.
“Thank you,” he said, soft-voiced. “For believing me… for bothering to make the inquiries.”
“It wasn’t altruism,” said Muller. “We’ve an interest in stopping major campaigns in Namibia.” He hesitated. “Which remains a problem.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Deaken’s father.
Muller looked at Swart. The stocky man cleared his throat and said, “According to what you told me last night, Azziz has ordered the Bellicose to return for a rendezvous off Algiers.”
The falling sensation hit Deaken again, but this time it was a result of fear-fear and blinding anger. “Don’t say the bastard has-!”
“Lloyds report a northerly course,” said Swart. “The last report put the freighter forty miles off the Mauritanian coast, making twelve knots in a medium swell.”
Deaken frowned at the man. “So he is doing what he said?”
“We’ve long-range reconnaissance aircraft,” interrupted Muller. “We ordered a check, initially little more than a precaution. At dawn this morning a freighter, later identified from aerial photographs to be the Bellicose, was proceeding southwards towards Angola.”
There was a protracted silence in the room. Deaken’s father broke it. “That doesn’t make sense,” he said.
“Only if there are two ships,” said the security chief. “And we know there aren’t. That’s why we delayed this meeting. We overflew the Mauritanian position two hours ago-a supposed Air Force training flight to the Azores. We’ve swept the area. There are ships certainly. But none of them is the Bellicose. ”
“So Underberg…” said Deaken, beginning to understand, “or whoever he is will think we’re keeping to the arrangement,” he said. “He is getting his information from Lloyds.”