Smokescreen

by Dick Francis

  They all grinned. ‘We want payment,’ one said.

  I must have looked bewildered. I was wondering what was right. How much.

  ‘Your autograph,’ one of them explained.

  ‘Oh…’ I laughed. ‘O.K.’

  One of them produced a notebook, and I wrote a thank-you to each of them, on three separate pages. And cheap at the price, I thought.

  The mine’s doctor swabbed stone dust from the cut on my head, said it wasn’t deep, nothing serious, didn’t need stitching, didn’t need a plaster, even, unless I wanted one…

  ‘I don’t,’ I said.

  ‘Good, good. Swallow these, then. In case you develop a headache.’

  I swallowed obediently. Collected Conrad, now breathing normally again, from a rest room next door, and followed directions to the bar and dining-room for lunch. On the way, we swopped operations, so to speak. Neither of us felt much pleased with himself.

  The five of us sat at a table with Quentin van Huren, plus two other senior executives whose names I never learned. My narrow escape was chewed over by everyone all over again, and I said with feeling to Roderick that I would be much obliged if he would keep my embarrassment out of his inky columns.

  He grinned. ‘Yeah… Much better copy if you’d been blown up. Not much news value in a checker doing his job properly.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ I said.

  Conrad looked at me sideways. ‘There must be a jinx on you in South Africa, dear boy. That’s the second time you’ve been close to extinction within a week.’

  I shook my head. ‘No jinx. Just the opposite. I’ve survived twice. Look at it that way.’

  ‘Only seven lives left,’ Conrad said.

  The talk worked back to gold. I suspected that in Welkom it always did, like Newmarket and horses.

  ‘Say, how do you get it out of the rock?’ Danilo demanded. ‘You can’t even see it.’

  Van Huren smiled indulgently. ‘Danilo, it is simple. You crush the rock in mills until it is powdered. You add cyanide of potassium, which holds the gold particles in solution. You add zinc, to which the gold particles stick. You then wash out the acid. You then separate the zinc from the gold again, using aqua regia, and finally you retrieve the gold.’

  ‘Oh simple,’ Conrad agreed. ‘Dear boy.’

  Van Huren warmed to him, and smiled with pleasure. ‘That is not exactly all. One still has to refine the gold… to remove impurities by melting it to white heat in giant crucibles, and pouring it out into bricks. The residue flows away, and you are left with the pure gold.’

  Danilo did a rapid calculation. ‘You’ll have gotten around three thousand five hundred tons of reef out of the mine, for one little old brick.’

  ‘That’s so,’ agreed van Huren, smiling. ‘Give or take a ton or two.’

  ‘How much do you bring out in a week?’ Danilo asked.

  ‘Just over forty thousand metric tons.’

  Danilo’s eyes flickered as he did the mental arithmetic. ‘That means… er… about eleven and a half gold bricks every week.’

  ‘Do you want a job in the accounting department, Danilo? asked van Huren, much amused.

  But Danilo hadn’t finished. ‘Each brick weighs 72 lbs, right? So that makes… let’s see… around 800 lbs of gold a week. Say, what’s the price of gold per ounce? Gee, this is sure the right business to be in. What a gas!’ He was deeply stimulated, as he had been by the whole trip, with a strong inner excitement shining out of his eyes. An attraction towards money-making, and the calculations needed to work out estate-duty dodging, seemed to me to be all of a piece.

  Van Huren, still smiling, said, ‘You’re forgetting the wages, the maintenance, and the shareholders. There are only a few grains of dust left after they’ve all taken their cut.’

  Danilo’s curving mouth showed he didn’t believe it. Roderick shot an orange cuff out of the brown suéde sleeve to reveal half a ton of tiger’s eye doing duty as a cufflink.

  ‘Don’t you own the mine altogether, then, Quentin?’ he asked.

  The executives and van Huren himself both smiled indulgently at Roderick for his naïvety.

  ‘No,’ van Huren said. ‘My family own the land and the mineral rights. Technically, I suppose, we do own the gold. But it takes an enormous amount of capital, many millions of rands, to sink a shaft and build all the surface plant needed. About twenty-five years ago my brother and I floated a company to raise capital to start drilling, so the company has hundreds of private shareholders.’

  ‘That mine doesn’t look twenty-five years old,’ I objected amiably.

  Van Huren shifted his smiling eyes in my direction and went on explaining.

  ‘The part you saw this morning is the newest tunnel, and the deepest. There are other tunnels at higher levels… in past years we have taken out all the up-slope areas of the reef.’

  ‘And there’s still a lot left?’

  Van Huren’s smile had the ease of one who would never be short of a thousand. ‘It will see Jonathan out,’ he said.

  Evan chose to find the mechanics and economics less interesting than the purpose, and waved his arms about as he pinned every gaze down in turn with the fierce eyes and declaimed with his usual intensity.

  ‘What is gold for, though? This is what we should be asking. What everyone should be asking. What is the point? Everyone goes to so much trouble to get it, and pays so much for it, and it has no real use.’

  ‘Gold plated lunar bugs,’ I murmured.

  Evan glared at me. ‘Everyone digs it out of the ground here and puts it back underground at Fort Knox, where it never sees daylight again… Don’t you see… the whole thing is artificial? Why should the whole world’s wealth be based on a yellow metal which has no use?’

  ‘Good for filling teeth,’ I said conversationally.

  ‘And for pure radio contacts in transistor units,’ Roderick added, joining the game.

  Van Huren listened and watched as if he found the entertainment a nice change for a Monday. I stopped baiting Evan, though, because after seeing the mine I half held his views.

  I travelled back to Johannesburg in the Dakota that evening sitting next to Roderick and feeling a trifle worn. A hot afternoon spent walking round the surface buildings of the mine, watching gold being poured from a crucible, seeing (and hearing) the ore being crushed, and visiting one of the miners’ hostels, had done no good at all to a throbbing head. Half a dozen times I had almost dropped out, but, especially with Roderick’s ready typewriter in the background, I hadn’t wanted to make a fuss.

  The visit to the hostel had been best: lunch was being cooked for the next surface shift off work, and we tasted it in the kitchen. Vast vats of thick broth with a splendid flavour, vegetables I couldn’t identify and hadn’t the energy to ask about, and thick wads of cream-coloured mealie bread, a sort of fat-less version of pastry.

  From there we went next door into the hostel’s bar, where the first of the returning shift were settling down to the serious business of drinking what looked like half-gallon plastic tubs of milky cocoa.

  ‘That’s Bantu beer,’ said our afternoon guide, who had proved as sweet as Losenwoldt was sour.

  We drank some. It had a pleasant dry flavour but tasted nothing like beer.

  ‘Is it alcoholic, dear boy?’ Conrad asked.

  The dear boy said it was, but weak. Considering that we saw one man dispatch his whole tubful in two great draughts, the weakness was just as well.

  Our guide beckoned to one of the men sitting at a table with his colleagues, and he got to his feet and came over. He was tall and not young, and he had a wide white grin which I found infectious.

  The guide said, ‘This is Piano Nyembezi. He is the checker who insisted we had left someone down the mine,’

  ‘Was it you?’ I asked with interest.

  ‘Yebo,’ he said, which I later learnt meant yes in Zulu. (‘No’ turned out to consist of a click, a glottal stop, and an ‘aa’ sound. As far as a
European was concerned, it was impossible to say no in a hurry.)

  ‘Well, Piano,’ I said. ‘Thank you very much.’ I put out my hand and he shook it, an event which drew large smiles from his friends, an indrawn breath from our guide, a shake of the head from Roderick and no reaction whatsoever from Evan, Conrad or Danilo.

  There was a certain amount of scuffling in the background, and then one of the others brought forward a well thumbed copy of a film magazine.

  ‘It is Piano’s paper,’ the newcomer said, and thrust it into his hands. Nyembezi looked embarrassed, but showed me what it was. Full page, and as boring-looking as usual.

  Wrinkling my nose I took the magazine from him and wrote across the bottom of my picture, ‘I owe my life to Piano Nyembezi,’ and signed my name.

  ‘He’ll keep that for ever,’ the guide said.

  Until tomorrow, perhaps, I thought.

  The Dakota droned on. The evening sun fell heavily across my eyelids as we banked round on to a new course, and I gingerly lifted my head off the seat-back to put it down the other way. The cut on my head, though not deep, was sore.

  For some reason the small movement triggered off a few sleepy nerve cells, and in a quiet fashion I remembered that there had been someone with me in the stope.

  I remembered I had been turning round to leave feet first, and had stopped to let someone else in. I remembered that I hadn’t seen his face: didn’t know who he was.

  If he had been there when I bashed my head, why on earth hadn’t he helped me?

  Such was my fuzzy state of mind that it took me a whole minute more to move on to the conclusion that he hadn’t helped me because he’d applied the rock himself.

  I opened my eyes with a jolt. Roderick’s face was turned towards mine. I opened my mouth to tell him. Then I shut it again, firmly. I did not in the least want to tell the Rand Daily Star.

  Chapter Eleven

  I used a lot of the time I could have more profitably spent sleeping that night in coming to terms with the thought that someone might have tried to kill me.

  Didn’t know who. Couldn’t guess why. And still was not certain whether my memory was complete: perhaps the other man in the stope had gone away again, and I had forgotten it.

  Also, even if I had been a hundred per cent certain, I didn’t know what I should do about it.

  Telephone van Huren? Start an investigation? But there had been so many people down the mine, all dressed alike, and half in darkness. Any investigation was going to produce more talk and doubt than results, and ‘Lincoln complains of attempted murder’ were gossip-column snippets I could do without.

  Twice within a week, Conrad had said, ‘Close to extinction.’

  It didn’t make sense. It was only in films that the chaps I played got threatened and attacked, and made miraculous escapes.

  Yet if I did nothing about it, what then? If someone really had been trying to kill me, there was nothing to stop him trying again. How could I possibly protect myself every minute of every day… especially against unforeseen things like microphones and rocks in gold mines?

  If… and I wasn’t altogether convinced… two murder attempts had been made, they had both been arranged to look like accidents. So it was of little use taking future precautions against things like poison and bullets and knives-in-the-back down dark alleys. One would have to beware instead of cars with no brakes, deadly insects in one’s shoes, and disintegrating balconies.

  I shied away for a long time from thinking about who, for it had to be someone who had been down in the mine.

  A miner who didn’t like my films taking steps to avoid sitting through any others? He wouldn’t have to kill me: could simply vote with his feet.

  Someone smouldering from ungovernable professional jealousy? The only person I knew of who regularly swore undying hatred was Drix Goddart, but he was not yet in South Africa, let alone 4,000 feet under Welkom.

  None of the people working in the mine had known I was going to be there, and before the incident, none of them had used my name.

  That left… Oh hell, I thought. Well… it left Evan… and Conrad… and Danilo… and Roderick. And also van Huren, who owned a lot of souls and could have things done by proxy.

  As for why… Evan’s professional resentment was surely not obsessive enough, and Danilo didn’t know my guess of what he was up to with the horses; and in any case, even if he did, he wouldn’t try to cover up such a minor crime with murder. More likely to confess and laugh, I would have thought, and meet a warning-off with a what-the-hell shrug.

  Motives for Conrad, Roderick and van Huren took even less cogitation. I couldn’t rake up a decent one between them.

  They had all (except Conrad who had been in the surgery) looked relieved when I stepped safely out of the mine… Could they possibly have looked relieved just because I said I couldn’t remember how I got knocked out?

  It all seemed so improbable. I couldn’t imagine any of them plotting away in murky labyrinths of villainy. It didn’t make sense. I must, I concluded, be imagining things. I had been involved in too much fiction, and I had begun to project it on to reality.

  I sighed. Realised that my head had stopped aching and that the unsettled feeling of concussion was subsiding, and presently, imperceptibly, went to sleep.

  In the morning the night thoughts seemed even more preposterous. It was Conrad who had suggested a connection between the mike and the mine; and Conrad had got it wrong.

  Roderick telephoned at breakfast time. Would I care to have dinner at his flat, with Katya, just the three of us and no fuss: and when I hesitated for a few seconds over replying, he added quickly that it would all be strictly off the record, anything I said would not be taken down and used against me.

  ‘O.K.,’ I agreed, with a smile in my voice and reservations in my mind. ‘Where do I find you?’

  He told me the address, and said, ‘That chauffeur of yours will know where to find it.’

  ‘Oh. Yes,’ I agreed.

  I put the receiver down slowly: but there was no reason why he shouldn’t know about the hired car-and-driver, and there was of course his source at the Iguana. Roderick had all along known where I was going, what I was doing, and how often I brushed my teeth.

  Almost before I had taken my hand off it, the telephone rang again.

  Clifford Wenkins. Could he, er, that was to say, would it be convenient for him to come to the club that morning to discuss, er, details, for the, er, premiere?

  Er yes, I said.

  After that, Conrad rang. Was I going to travel down to the Kruger Park with him and Evan?

  ‘How long are you staying there?’ I asked.

  ‘About ten days, I should think.’

  ‘No, then. I’ll have to come back by next Tuesday, at the latest. I’ll drive down separately. It will be better anyway to have two cars, with you and Evan concentrating on locations.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, sounding relieved: hadn’t wanted to spend a week at close quarters keeping Evan and me off each other’s throats, I imagined.

  They would come around for a drink before lunch, he said. Evan, it appeared, was bursting with inspirations for his new film. (When was he not?)

  After that, Arknold.

  ‘Look, Mister Lincoln. About Mrs Cavesey’s horses… Look…’ He petered heavily out.

  After waiting in vain for him to start up again I said, ‘I’ll be here all morning, if you’d care to come over.’

  Three heavy breaths. Then he said, ‘Perhaps. Might be as well. Yes. All right. About eleven, then, after I’ve watched the horses work.’

  ‘See you,’ I said.

  Hot sunshine, blue sky.

  I went downstairs and drank my coffee out on the terrace, and read the newspaper. Close columns filled with local issues, all assuming a background of common knowledge which I didn’t have. Reading them was like going into a film halfway through.

  A man had been murdered in Johannesburg: found two days ago, with
a wire twisted round his neck.

  With a shiver I put down the paper. No one was trying to murder me. I had decided it was nonsense. Another man’s death had no business to be raising hairs on my skin. The trouble was, no one had told my subconscious that we were all through with red alerts.

  ‘Morning.’ said a fresh young voice in my ear. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Watching the flowers grow.’

  She sat down opposite me, grinning all over her fifteen-year-old face.

  ‘I’ve come to play tennis.’

  She wore a short white dress, white socks, white shoes, and carried two racquets in zipped waterproof covers. Her dark shoulder length hair was held back by a green head-band, and the van Huren wealth spoke as eloquently as ever in her natural confidence and poise.

  ‘Coffee?’ I suggested.

  ‘Rather have orange juice.’

  I ordered it.

  ‘Didn’t you just love the gold mine?’ she demanded.

  ‘I just did,’ I agreed, imitating Danilo’s accent, as she had done his turn of phrase.

  She wrinkled her nose, amused. ‘You never miss a damn thing, do you? Dad says you have an intuitive mind, whatever the hell that is.’

  ‘It means I jump to conclusions,’ I said.

  She shook her head dubiously. ‘Uhuh. He seemed to think it was good.’

  The orange juice came and she drank some, clinking the ice. She had long dark eyelashes and more cream than peaches. I stifled as always the inner lurch of regret that young girls like Sally gave me: my own daughter might grow up as pretty, but the zest and the flash would be missing.

  She put down the glass and her eyes searched the hotel buildings behind me.

  ‘Have you seen Danilo anywhere?’ she said. ‘The swine said he’d be here at ten, and it’s a quarter after already.’

  ‘He was busy doing sums all yesterday,’ I said gravely. ‘I expect they wore him out.’

  ‘What sums?’ she said suspiciously.

  I told her.