by Wilbur Smith
“Yes, sir . . . but there’s . . .” Horst felt the sweat prickling under his armpits. “There’s something else. The man who said the words in question was, ah . . . Luftwaffe Oberstleutnant Gerhard von Meerbach, sir . . . Your brother.”
“I know who my brother is, Hauptsturmführer. I’m not a complete imbecile. But I fail to see why you are informing me of this incident . . .”
“Well, sir, there was a belief in Taganrog and here in Berlin that you should be told because . . . ah . . .”
“Because I would want to do my brother a favor? Is that what you are suggesting?”
“I wouldn’t say that, sir.”
“But you would think it all the same. Evidently you, and the others, imagine that I am the sort of soft-hearted sentimentalist who puts his family before his duty. Is that it?”
“I didn’t think at all, Brigadeführer, I was doing as I was commanded by—”
“Enough! I don’t want to hear any more excuses or explanations. What did my brother say?”
“We don’t have a transcript yet, sir. The proprietor’s command of German is far from perfect, and he was in his office, behind the bar at the time. But he thought he heard—and he swore that his barman confirmed it—that Oberstleutnant von Meerbach described the Führer as . . .” Horst paused. It shocked and terrified him to say the next words, even though they were not his. “He described the Führer as ‘goddamned,’ he suggested that the Führer had lied about what was happening in Stalingrad and he called the Führer’s sanity into question.”
“How exactly?”
“The proprietor wasn’t sure, but he thought your . . . Oberstleutnant von Meerbach called the Führer a maniac, or a crazy person. Something like that.”
“Something like that . . . but he can’t be sure because he’s a sniveling, shit-for-brains Ukrainian sub-human and you don’t have any proper German witnesses.”
“Well, it’s not me, sir, it’s Taganrog.”
“I know who it is!” shouted von Meerbach, smashing his fist on his desktop. “It’s a bunch of incompetent, gutless officers who failed to do their duty and investigate an incident of treason-speech because they were frightened that I might object. Wouldn’t you agree, Horst?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And now, because they sat on their arses doing nothing, all the men who were in that bar are now back with their units and we won’t be able to track them down without combing the entire Army Group South warzone!” Von Meerbach’s fist pounded onto the desk again. “In the middle of the Russian winter! . . . With the damned Ivans attacking along the whole . . . length . . . of the front!”
Horst winced with each further crash of the Brigadeführer’s fist.
“I agree that the effort required would be considerable, sir,” he said, in a bid to pacify him.
“It would be disproportionate to the nature of the accusation,” said von Meerbach. “It would be a fault the other way, on my part. People might say that I was pursuing some kind of grudge or vendetta against my brother.”
Horst knew better than to comment on that. He asked, “So how would you like to proceed, sir?”
Von Meerbach sat back in his chair to consider the question, then responded, “Have our people in Taganrog get the word out to all SD and Gestapo officers in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine that Oberleutnant von Meerbach is to be regarded as a potential threat to the Reich. Make sure he is watched. Have any suspicious activities, or improper opinions, noted, with witness statements. Keep a file on my brother. He has a long record of actions hostile to the state. He will trip himself up eventually. And then, Horst . . .”
“Yes, sir?”
“Then we will get him.”
“Morning, Vorster,” said the camp guard, handing out the mail. “Looks like it’s your lucky day, mate. Marlize has added you to her list. Thinks you’re a general, too, the daft bint.”
At once the other men who slept in the bunks near Balthazar Johannes Vorster, prisoner No. 2229/42 in Hut 48, Camp 1, of the Koffiefontein Detention Center, clustered around him. They pushed and shoved for a better view of the large pink envelope, addressed in a rounded, girlish script and sprayed with an intense rose scent, that Vorster held in his hand. The envelope had already been opened and its contents examined by the camp’s censors. It had been posted by a young woman called Marlize Marais, whom every man in the hut, and the others alongside it, now knew as Mooi Marlize, “mooi” being the Afrikaner word for “pretty,” for this was the third letter she had sent to the camp, as part of what appeared to be a one-woman campaign to improve morale among its inmates.
Vorster did not betray any signs of excitement. Another of the lawyers who were prominent in the ranks of Afrikaner politics, both legitimate and revolutionary, he had enjoyed a stellar start to his career. In his early twenties he had been clerk to the president of the South African Supreme Court, and within a few years had founded two law firms before his devotion to the Afrikaner cause began to outweigh his legal ambitions. Having joined the Ossewabrandwag in the early days, he had attained the rank of general within the organization, yet claimed to have had no hand in the many acts of sabotage and criminality carried out by the OB’s Stormjaear assault troops.
Vorster was a big, barrel-chested man. He had neat, dark hair swept back from a high forehead, the base of which, like bushes on a cliffside, sprouted a brace of thick black eyebrows. His face was fleshy, his eyes sharp, his normal expression stern. Yet he was still a young man, who had only celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday a couple of months earlier, and he could not suppress a degree of curiosity as he opened the envelope.
He pulled out the ten-by-eight-inch black and white photograph. As in the two previous photographs that she had sent his fellow inmates, Mooi Marlize was engaged in the good, clean exercise that was appropriate for a fascist maiden entering her prime breeding years. She wore the same costume that they had all seen in the newsreels of Nazi maidens cavorting for Herr Goebbels’s cameramen: a short, white, sleeveless singlet, tight at the top, but flared at the hips to form a hint of a skirt that fluttered over a pair of matching white gym-knickers.
As Goebbels had been aware, this was an outfit that was virginal, redolent of healthy sporting activity—and flagrantly sexual. Marlize had grasped the point, because she had been photographed out of doors on a summer’s day, smiling happily, with her legs apart, holding a large hoop above her head. The sex-starved camp inmates were treated to a splendid view of her breasts, lifted jauntily by her rising arms. They could run their eyes all the way up her long, sun-kissed bare legs and, because her skirt had risen higher than usual, they could linger on the view between her legs, where her fresh white cotton pants pressed tightly against her crotch, folding with her flesh so that they could practically reach out and run a finger along the full length of the inviting gap between her labia.
“Oh, Jesus,” a man gasped. He turned, ignored the furious look that his blasphemy provoked from Vorster, and ran off like a startled hare, desperate to be first into the hut’s only toilet cubicle. He wanted to derive the maximum pleasure from Mooi Marlize while her image was still fresh in his mind.
Vorster allowed the men to pass the photograph around, so that each man could feast his eyes. As much as he disliked pandering to baser instincts, he was enough of a realist to know that it would be good for their morale. When the picture was returned to him, he put it back in the envelope, saving it for private contemplation later. His attention turned to the letter.
Dear General Vorster,
I hope you do not mind that I wrote to the others first. But I was thinking of those wonderful Olympic Games in Berlin. The gold medal was always the last to be handed out. Of all the heroes who have been rounded up by the cruel British, you are the most important. So I give you the position of greatest honor!!
I know it is crazy! I am just an ordinary girl and you are one of the greatest, most important men in all South Africa. What right do I have to say anything to you? How
can I expect you to pay any attention to little me? I cannot! But I am writing to you anyway because I want you to know that you are not forgotten.
Your courage and your suffering inspire me. I, too, believe that South Africa belongs to the people who have built our nation. My father’s ancestors were Voortrekkers. My great-grandfather fought under Pretorius at Blood River. What right do blacks and Jews and British have to take away what we white Christian Afrikaners created?
I know that it is my duty to be a mother, so that I can raise more strong young men to defend our people. War and politics are men’s work! But when the men are taken away, then the women must stand up in their place. So I want to do my part, before giving myself to my duties as a wife and a mother.
My mother, who died when I was sixteen, was Flemish. She always used to tell me about the bond between all the Dutch-speaking peoples, and of the close racial connection between we Dutch and our German cousins. I do not know how, but I want to help make that bond stronger, because we all believe in the same things and stand for the same ideals.
In the meantime, I can only say the words of “Die Stem”—
We will answer your calling
We will offer what you ask
We will live, we will die,
We for thee, South Africa
I hope that maybe I have cheered your spirits a little bit. I send you my very best wishes and pray for your release.
Yours sincerely,
Marlize Marais
Vorster considered this text with lawyerly detachment. What conclusions could he deduce from the evidence in front of him? It was clear both from its appearance and the quality of the Afrikaans in which it was written that the letter was the work of a young woman who possessed a modest degree of education. She was by no means stupid, but was neither intellectual nor sophisticated. Vorster considered these to be points in her favor. An attractive, healthy young woman, with plenty of common sense and an understanding of her true purpose, was always to be preferred to some over-educated, pampered, neurotic and decadent madam whose head was filled with ideas she could not possibly understand.
Granted, Miss Marais had ideas whirling around in her mind too. Her dream of uniting the Dutch peoples against their British enemies was patently absurd coming from an unknown Afrikaner girl, as if she were a South African Joan of Arc. But the principle was a sound one and in line with the sort of thing one heard coming from the mouths of senior men within the OB hierarchy. Vorster wondered for a moment whether this girl might have family connections with the movement. The fact that she referred to him as “General Vorster” suggested that. His OB rank had been mentioned in newspaper coverage of his arrest as a means of justifying his detention. She had noticed and remembered, which suggested that she had a strong identification with the cause.
Unless the whole thing was a joke, or even a trap. Was someone in the Smuts government trying to trick him into revealing beliefs and allegiances that he had hitherto been careful to keep under wraps? Or were they trying to provoke him into writing something that could be used to threaten his marriage, or even leave him open to blackmail? Vorster doubted that either of these possibilities was realistic. Smuts was a damn traitor, a Boer commander who had betrayed his own people by reconciling with the British. He’d even campaigned for English to be the sole official language of South Africa. But he, too, had studied law. He believed in doing things correctly. As for those plum-in-mouth men at the Interior Ministry, Malcomess and his one-eyed sidekick Courtney, they would never have the cunning, or imagination, to set up some kind of entrapment scheme. They’d think it was beneath them.
On balance, Vorster concluded that the letter was genuine. He felt beholden to write a short, sober reply to Miss Marais. It made no mention of her physical appearance, since that would be both unwise and unseemly. Vorster took care to avoid direct expressions of support for Nazism or the German war effort, since that would be bound to catch the censor’s eye. He thanked her for her support, congratulated her on her appreciation of what was best for her people and the country they loved, and wished her success in her efforts to bring unity and mutual understanding to the Dutch-speaking peoples of Europe and Africa, mentioning the Germans only in the most general and passing terms. He allowed the photograph of Mooi Marlize to be stuck onto one of the walls of the hut, for the benefit of his men, but he barely glanced at it himself.
B. J. Vorster dreamed of being the dictator of a one-party, Afrikaner state. He had much bigger things to think about than the fate of a young woman.
•••
Saffron perched on the edge of Shasa’s desk, in his office at the Interior Ministry, as she read Vorster’s letter aloud. “‘I share your belief in the supremacy of the white, Christian race, the common bond between the Dutch-speaking peoples, and the natural, racial affinity between them and the Germanic population. May I wish you every success in your endeavors to promote this honorable cause . . .’ Honestly, it’ll be meat and drink.”
“I think you hit the jackpot with that, Saffy,” Shasa agreed. “A hand-written letter from the great white hope of Afrikaner fascism, written on cheap prison notepaper and addressed from the Koffiefontein Detention Center—and it specifically mentions the Dutch. Honestly, I don’t think you could have done any better. It’ll be meat and drink to all your Flemish and Dutch Nazis. They’ll welcome you to the fold like a long-lost child.”
“It saves me the trouble of having to forge the thing myself.”
Shasa laughed. “My God, Saffy, is there any dirty trick you don’t know?”
“I haven’t told you the half of it,” she replied cheerfully, while behind her smile she was thinking, Darling Shasa, I haven’t even told you a quarter.
“Then the Special Operations Executive has trained you well.”
Saffron’s eyes widened, her mouth dropped open and with a hoot of triumph Shasa crowed, “You should see the look on your face!”
“How . . . how did you know . . . I’m sure I didn’t . . .”
“No, you were very good. You maintained perfect discipline. Blaine and I were impressed . . . honestly, we were.”
“Then . . . ?”
“Ou Baas is not only a member of the Imperial War Cabinet and a Field Marshal in the British Army, he’s been a close colleague and friend of Mr. Churchill for thirty years. And you will be glad to hear that Winston has a soft spot for your outfit. He rates Gubbins damn highly, too. The word went out that if Gubbins wanted us to help you, then Winnie himself would see it as a great kindness. Smuts called Blaine and said, ‘Give this agent whatever she needs.’ We’ve got orders to push the boat out for you . . . literally.”
Shasa set out a journey, planned down to the last detail, that would get Saffron, in her guise as Marlize, from Cape Town to the port of Walvis Bay, on the Atlantic coast of South West Africa, complete with a travel permit, issued because she claimed to need to go there to care for a dying grandmother.
“Of course, you don’t need a permit to go anywhere in South Africa, or the colony of South West Africa, but the Jerries don’t know that and they probably wouldn’t believe it,” Shasa said. “We’ve arranged for a freighter bound for Luanda, in Portuguese Angola, to take you aboard as a passenger for cash. From there you can catch a ship to Lisbon. You’ll be there by the end of the month.”
“That’s wonderful, thank you so much!” Saffron leaned across the desk and planted a kiss on Shasa’s face. “What a wonderful cousin you are,” she said, before pushing herself back up. “Would it be too much to ask about Marlize’s identity papers?”
“Not at all,” Shasa replied. He searched through a pile of papers in a wire tray on his desk and pulled out a large envelope, which he passed to Saffron.
“Open it . . . You’ll find the birth certificate of Marlize Christien Marais, genuine and proof against any investigation . . . until someone thinks of asking whether she has a death certificate. Along with that we have a genuine South African passport in her name, but w
ith your photograph, and an almost genuine Belgian passport, issued by their South African consulate.
“So,” Shasa concluded, “you’ve got almost everything you need.”
“Only van Rensburg to go.”
“Ah yes,” said Shasa, with the grin of a man who has been keeping one final piece of good news up his sleeve. “I think we’ve managed to get you the sort of thing you need. The law faculty of the University of Pretoria is throwing a dinner and dance for its former alumni. It happens to be twenty years since van Rensburg received his Masters there, so he has accepted the invitation.”
Shasa pulled one of his desk drawers open and took out a piece of white card, covered in embossed, copper-plate print. “This is your stiffy, inviting you to be a guest of the law faculty. Yes, dear Cinders, you shall go to the ball!”
•••
A few days later, Saffron was in the august hall of the University of Pretoria. The crowded room reverberated with the low hum of self-importance and occasionally the higher register of feminine approval. Shortly after the last after-dinner toast had been proposed and the band prepared to strike up the first dance, Saffron took a bead on Johannes van Rensburg. Like a hunter lining up a shot, she strode across the banqueting-room floor toward him. She was wearing a strapless black evening gown that displayed her charms in a manner that had many of the older, more conservative female guests hissing in disapproval, though their menfolk seemed to find less fault. For Saffron this was a small mission in itself and a rehearsal for the more serious challenges to come. For the first time in her life, she was playing a role and she wanted to get it right.
Van Rensburg’s wife had disappeared, along with a couple of the other women from their table. The three of them would be gone some time, Saffron reckoned, as they queued for the loos, used them, repaired their faces and finished their gossiping. Van Rensburg was sitting by himself, smoking a cigarette and nursing a glass of brandy. He looked like a man enjoying his temporary solitude.