The Harbinger

by Mark Graham

  Mansell smiled thinly. “Eat your candy bar, Anthony, and listen. This isn’t target practice. This is the real thing. The ladies’ bathroom is off limits, and you know it. There are questions that need answering. Now, I’m not Security. Understand? So I suggest you talk to me now, because they’ll be talking to you later. Hear?”

  “You and Security. There’s a difference?”

  Spent ash fell from Mabasu’s cigarette onto the table. Glazed eyes stared at it momentarily, and then, with the flick of his wrist, he swept the remains onto the floor.

  “The baggage department,” Mansell said, “is on the opposite side of the depot from the ladies’ lounge and down in the basement. That’s a long way to go for a ten- or fifteen-minute break, pal, and most of the men I know don’t normally hang out in the ladies’ locker room. Why you?”

  Mabasu’s eyes drifted. Callused fingers strummed the tabletop. “Sylvia. My lady. See, it’s her privilege to clean that filthy pigsty they call a bathroom. Great job, huh?” His fingers stopped. He buried his hands in his lap. “Trouble is . . .”

  Mansell leaned across the table. “The trouble is what?”

  “Trouble is, she ain’t got a goddamn . . . work permit.”

  Mansell sat back, arms extended, disappointed. But as he stared across at Anthony Mabasu’s leathery face—his sheet gave his age as twenty-nine, but he could have easily passed for forty—disappointment gave way to embarrassment and a new thought occurred to him.

  “Your wife. Sylvia. She wasn’t at work last night, was she?” Mabasu drew fitfully on his cigarette, like a child sucking on a straw. “See, we ain’t been doin’ too well lately. Know what I mean? Anyway, she split yesterday. Tells me she plans spendin’ some time with her sister.”

  “And you were going to try and cover for her.”

  “That’s right.”

  “By cleaning the ladies’ lounge during your breaks.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Yeah,” said Mansell calmly.

  Silence, the policeman’s ally, charged into the room. Fluorescent bulbs hissed. The walls seemed to close in. Mabasu chewed nervously on a candy bar, and Mansell pushed strands of tawny hair off his forehead, watching.

  “Tell me about your sister-in-law.”

  “Her name’s Flora. Flora Amadi. She lives in Butterworth, in the Transkei. You need more, ask her.”

  “What route did you take from the baggage department to the lounge? Through the terminal?”

  Mabasu shook his head. “I walked along the freight platforms back of the terminal. It’s quicker, less law.”

  “Then you would have walked down the drive that passes along the rear of the ladies’ lounge. Did you see anything out of the ordinary? Did you see anyone? Or hear anything?”

  “I didn’t see nothin’, okay?” Their eyes clashed. Silence again. Mansell touched cold tea to his lips. Mabasu slouched down in his chair, sighing. “All right. There was a guy, in a ticket agent’s uniform. Catching some air or something.”

  “Where?”

  “Just walking, man. Just walking.”

  “Why didn’t you say so before?”

  “Because the guy was white, that’s why.”

  “Bullshit.” Mansell slapped the table and stood up.

  “All right, all right. He was smoking a number. Pot, you know? He could lose his job, man. Hell, I could lose my job just saying so.”

  “I asked you what you did when you saw the body.”

  “I ran, God damn it. I ran to the information center. The phone’s free there if you ask. I called you bastards. I didn’t think I was gonna get hauled in for being a good citizen.”

  The phone’s free there if you ask. Mansell dissected the phrase, played the tone of it back in his head, watched Mabasu’s hands as they gripped the teacup.

  “We found a blue-and-white handkerchief in the locker room. A blue-and-white bandana. You know the kind I mean. Yours?” “No, man, not mine. Blue and white ain’t my colors.”

  The chief inspector excused himself to refill their empty cups. Anthony Mabasu was escorted to the lavatory.

  Mansell took the stairs two at a time to his office. A note from SB Lieutenant Rhoodie was propped up against the desk lamp, requesting a briefing later that day. The initials at the bottom belonged to Major Hymie Wolfe. Mansell wadded the paper into a tiny ball and propelled it haphazardly toward the wastebasket.

  He reached for the in-house telephone and punched two numbers. When Merry Gosani came on the line, Mansell explained about Mabasu’s wife.

  “She left on a sour note. And on top of that, she should have been the one cleaning that locker room last night.”

  “Does that give Mabasu an alibi or a motive?”

  “Probably a coincidence, all in all.”

  “Except you don’t believe in coincidence.”

  “Exactly. So I want you to track down the wife in the Transkei. Don’t make an issue out of the work permit. Just follow up on Mabasu’s story. Try and spend a minute talking to the sister. She should have an inside ear on their marriage. All sisters do.”

  His second call caught Joshua in the middle of his own question-and-answer session with the sales clerk at the depot’s newsstand.

  “It’s beginning to look like our victim spent more time at the train station than your ordinary man in the street,” Joshua told him.

  “Excellent.”

  “No one seems to know why, though.”

  “Did you get a statement from the ticket agent? A white guy. . . ?”

  “Horwood. Thomas Horwood,” answered Joshua quickly. “His shift ended at seven this morning, but he left early. Around five, according to the other agent. A matter of the flu or something. Somehow he managed to slip past our cordon. I sent Piet Richter to his house. Shall we bring him in?”

  “No. Not yet. Let’s hear what he has to say.” Finally, Mansell mentioned the Mabasu interview and said, “I’m curious to know what Mabasu’s co-workers down in the baggage department think about our witness. It could be important.”

  “I’m on it.”

  “Good. We’ll conference at six unless something breaks before.”

  Mansell called the elementary school where his wife, Jennifer, was the assistant administrator. He was relieved when they told him she wasn’t available; disturbed, however, by the very potency of that feeling. He left a message saying that he would probably have to spend the night at the station.

  At the door to the holding cell Mansell loosened his tie, unbuttoned the top button, and mussed his hair slightly. Appearances, he thought. Always stay in line with your witness.

  ****

  The Westland-TL swooped down over the city of Springs. Gold mines the envy of every nation in the world appeared on the horizon. Huge mountains of discarded ore formed an artificial range for as far as the human eye could see.

  From his briefcase, Jan Koster produced a gridded geological map of the East Rand. Blue squares pinpointed the locations of twenty-two active mines covering 225 square kilometers. Near the center of the map he’d drawn a red circle, and within the circle lay four blue squares and a black X. Koster opened the panel between the passenger compartment and the cockpit, tapped the pilot on the shoulder, and motioned to the circle. The pilot nodded. He cut power in half and altitude to 400 meters.

  Koster alerted the minister to the facility ahead. “Target One,” he said. “Highland Vaal.”

  Leistner placed a hand on Koster’s shoulder. Tension and excitement colored his face. He thrust a square jaw forward and absently passed his other hand through the silver streaks that now touched what had once been coal-black hair.

  Highland Vaal Mining Corporation was the world’s deepest mining operation, tunnels and shafts creating a maze of stone five kilometers below the earth’s delicate skin. The chopper swept over an industrial complex seething with energy and enormity. Blue flames licked at the sky from the roofs of the refinery. Cloudlike plumes of smoke gushed from the exhaus
t portals of the reduction plant. Acre after acre, it stretched out before them: concrete and steel storage tanks, conveying systems, trains and trucks and tractors, drilling components, warehouse space, office facilities, and living quarters. The site, as always, left Koster’s stomach filled with butterflies.

  “We can’t be serious about this,” he whispered, to himself as much as to the minister. “It’s impossible.”

  “But we are,” Leistner replied. “And it is possible, Mr. Koster. It is.”

  Koster raised a hand, pointing to an ore dump five kilometers to the east. “The tunnels from Highland Vaal run that far in every direction, Minister. Those same tunnels . . . They overlap and intrude upon all but one of the other mining operations within this circle.”

  The irony, the irony that made their entire operation possible, was not lost on the minister of justice; his head bobbed in response.

  The helicopter banked in a lazy arc over the area. Ore dumps twenty-five stories high surrounded Target Two, the White Ridge Mines, the jewel of the industry. And over the next ridge lay South Africa’s most productive mine. This, Homestake Mining Incorporated, was Target Three on Koster’s telltale map.

  The circle closed. Five kilometers to the southeast was Brakpan Holdings. Target Four. An older mine than her three illustrious neighbors, the shining star over Brakpan’s head had not dimmed much with age.

  “They sucked forty-two thousand kilograms of gold out of that hole last year, Minister. Not a dozen other mines in the free world can boast of that kind of production, and yet, it’s hardly worth mentioning compared to the other three. The miners call her the `Ragged Bitch.’ “

  “And we have our own private back door.”

  Koster nearly smiled. “Yes. An apropos analogy.”

  All four targets were under union contract. All but six of the major mines in the country were now unionized, and Koster had to credit Leistner. It represented a show of remarkable political maneuvering, and not a dozen people realized the extent of the minister’s hand in the matter.

  Koster signaled to the pilot again: the black X. They drifted lower. The mine taking shape below them was miniature in comparison to its four neighbors—ninety acres helplessly under siege from below. Its name, East Fields Mining Corporation.

  “That’s our baby, Mr. Koster,” Leistner said.

  Koster nodded, remembering the old miner’s story. . .

  Originally, the land had been owned by an Afrikaner farmer from Germany named Ira Mueller. This was back at the turn of the century, when Johannesburg was in its embryonic stage and gold was mined only to the west of the city. When Mueller’s wife died of tuberculosis in 1899, he lost his interest in farming in favor of a new pastime: drinking. One year later, trapped by the hands of alcoholism and penury, Mueller lost his plot of land in a poker game.

  The land’s new owner was Alfred Jurgen. A man already wealthy because of his holdings in two prosperous mines along the west basin and two brothels located in the heart of the city’s red-light district, Jurgen had no need for ninety acres of farmland. Still, he hung on to it.

  Even when the big mining corporations began snapping up huge chunks of the East Rand for outlandish prices, Jurgen held out. He passed the land on to his second son, who in turn deeded it to his son, Cyprian Jurgen.

  Unlike father and grandfather, however, Cyprian Jurgen was a temerarious fool. Despite inherited wealth, a seat on the Transvaal Provincial Council, and a membership in the ultrasecret Broederbond, Jurgen decided, rather abruptly, that he needed his own private gold mine. The year was 1955.

  East Fields died a premature death three years later. The reason: simple arithmetic. Even in those bygone days, when gold could still be found a few hundred meters below ground, the cost of bringing a mine on-stream was a hundred million in dollars. Jurgen’s wealth was not that great, nor was his influence. He submitted a public offering. Few investors responded. He submitted second and third offerings with the same result. In 1958, the project ceased. Cutting his losses while the cutting was good was how Jurgen described it. Facilities half built were abandoned. Four boreholes, four hundred meters deep, were sealed but never filled. Tunnels outfitted with electric cables and wench ropes were vacated on a day’s notice.

  There were no buyers. The four potentials—Highland Vaal, Brakpan, White Ridge, and Homestake—were unsympathetic. They didn’t need Jurgen’s ninety acres. The ground beneath the mine became fair game. The four giants extended their own systems beneath East Fields, gobbling up every ounce of gold-bearing reef, and in turn, leaving empty tunnels by the hundreds.

  Came that day, seven years ago, when Jan Koster found his life forever altered, Cyprian Jurgen had lost much of his wealth. An aberration with sudden purpose, Leistner had called him.

  It had taken Koster, Deputy Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Affairs, six months to discover East Fields. It had taken Cecil Leistner, Minister of Justice and fellow Broederbonder, ten minutes to convince Jurgen to accept their proposition—a twenty-year lease for R20,000 a year, and one very critical stipulation: complete confidentiality. It was a stipulation Jurgen gladly accepted.

  Alterations began six weeks later.

  The first step was to acquire skilled, safe labor, so Koster recruited mining engineers from East Germany. Laborers were hired from Malawi—experienced miners and hard workers.

  Living quarters were modified and replenished to meet the needs of a swollen population. Rusted train cars and idle shaft elevators were rebuilt. Pneumatic drills, ultrasound equipment, and computers were brought on site.

  Access shafts leading from the surface were reconstructed. A pumping system capable of pushing a million cubic meters of refrigerated air through sweltering tunnels every day was installed. A second pumping system was required to clear tunnels of underground water, an ongoing task.

  In time, existing tunnels beneath East Fields were connected with existing ones from beneath each target, and reconstruction of the primary tunnels initiated phase two. Lighting was restored. Debris was laboriously cleared. Electric cable systems, winch ropes, and tunnel tracking were all replaced.

  The first breakthrough, into the Homestake system, occurred a month before the first snow, two years ago.

  Over the course of the next eighteen months, connections were made with each target, and the last hookup, one leading to a “dead” access shaft directly below Highland Vaal, had been completed and duly celebrated on New Year’s Day, seven months ago.

  The minister of justice remembered the event without emotion. There had been no emotion then either, and he wondered what his reaction would be come the twenty-second.

  Craving a drink, Leistner busied himself instead with his pipe and asked, “So our status, as of this moment, is what exactly?”

  “We still have about seven, maybe eight hundred men working underground. Say two hundred others on the facility,” answered Koster.

  “That’s cutting it damn close, Mr. Koster.”

  “Close, yes, but the contracts on all but a handful expire on Sunday, the sixth. We’ll be fine, I assure you.” Koster passed Leistner the file containing their operational plans. He felt a sudden vacancy in the pit of his stomach. “Beyond that, we’re on schedule. The tunnels are all fully stocked, and we have immediate access to all four targets. As you already know, we’re waiting on one last shipment of arms. The freighter ARVA II is due in New York tomorrow morning for pickup. We’ll distribute our current arms stock as soon as the labor force is gone, a week from today latest. And, as for our friends in Mozambique, a day’s notice is all they’ll need.”

  “I wouldn’t call twenty thousand gun-toting Kaffirs our friends, Mr. Koster, but I assume you’ll leave for Maputo tomorrow anyway.”

  Koster nodded. “Figure two weeks to move the whole lot.”

  “Very well. And the detonators, beneath each of the target mines, have they been—”

  At that moment, the spit and crackle of the chopper’s radio filled the co
ckpit, and the words stuck in Leistner’s throat. He watched as the pilot answered the call, his head as it turned, and his hand as it opened the panel.

  “For you, Minister. Urgent, he says.”

  Leistner hesitated for an instant before accepting the headphones and his eyes flashed unreadable clues in response to the message. Then he returned the phones and absently closed the panel.

  Koster recognized the signs. “What is it?”

  “That was my press secretary, Oliver Neff.”

  So, Koster thought, the little weasel who likes his . . . No, this wasn’t the time. Neff was surely Leistner’s loyal servant, but he was also his Achilles’ heel. “And?”

  “Elgin. He’s been murdered. In Port Elizabeth.”

  “Murdered? My God. How?”

  “How? Is it important how? He’s dead. .

  “And we have a problem.”

  Leistner faced him. “I don’t know what astounds me more, Mr. Koster. Your equanimity or your gift for the rhetorical.” “Nonetheless. Do we abort or do we postpone?”

  “Neither,” growled Leistner. “We proceed as scheduled. Is that clear? We don’t need Elgin now. I’m not sure we ever did.”

  After a moment, the minister opened the cockpit panel. “Church Street,” he ordered the pilot. “With speed, please.”

  The Westland-TL sprang forward, and the browning hills of the East Rand were soon behind them. Pretoria loomed in the foreground.

  The remainder of the excursion passed in silence, two passengers lost in thoughts as different as night and day.

  ****

  Thirty-five minutes into their second session, Mansell was pacing, smoking, and reading the last page of Anthony Mabasu’s now obsolete passbook. Still, for police purposes, a useful guide into past indiscretions. The binding showed years of use, cracked and shedding leather; bleached pages curled at the edges. Mansell tossed it back on the table. He dropped into a chair.

  “Nasty things, aren’t they?” he said. Like an embarrassed urchin, Mabasu stowed the book in his hip pocket. “Why were you fired from the docks?”