“And we couldn’t find the kitchen!” the princess chimed in with perfect timing.
“And it turned out to be exactly 78 yards away,” the Prince said, glancing around the gathering to ensure he had full attention for the punchline. “And through a tunnel so that you couldn’t smell the cooking!”
I could no more imagine them looking seriously for a kitchen than I could envisage them knowing how to boil an egg.
Watching Jessica de Vere move so fluidly and reassuringly among her guests, I felt a rare hankering for what might have been. Her graciousness made it all the easier to imagine her in the role of a diplomatic hostess, flattering ministers and power brokers in gilded salons, with her devoted spouse – the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary – at her side: the power duo of the diplomatic circuit.
She had come a long way from the wrong side of the tracks in the Backlands. I wondered how much of her story she had told Chris de Vere. He would surely have recognised the blend of artifice, ambition and opportunity that had propelled her on her way, if only from his own ancestry.
In the mid-19th century, the founder of the De Vere clan – initially known as Jack Bramford, a poacher and brawler – had fled his home in the county of Hampshire in England. He was one quick step ahead of the constabulary investigating a jewel theft from a large mansion on the banks of the River Test during which a member of the domestic staff had been sexually assaulted.
Bramford had taken ship from Southampton, South Africa-bound, his first-class passage paid by his loot, with a sizeable amount locked in his steamer trunk to stake his future. He embarked as Bramford but disembarked in Cape Town as Michael de Vere – inspired by the name of his Hampshire village, Micheldever.
The official biography – the kind you found in sleek corporate brochures – made no reference to those episodes. The family myth – the early stake in the diamond mines, the partnership with Rhodes, the establishment of Anglo Vere Mining Corporation – had been written and circulated as if Michael de Vere stepped ashore fully formed as a member of some new aristocracy. Honoré de Balzac once said that every great fortune hid a great crime. It was never clear to me whether the De Veres’ discomfort at their history related to the truth of this statement – or the tawdriness of Jack Bramford’s particular crime.
Now, the De Veres had constructed a more cultured legend – the art collection at the family seat on 25 acres of prime real estate in Johannesburg, the apartments in Paris and New York, the sponsorships at the MOMA and the Musée d’Orsay.
Chris de Vere himself had been one of the very smart, very few businessmen to see the great transformation that was to come, making the mental leap into pole position for the race to riches in the new South Africa. He spoke out against apartheid before it became the vogue to do so. He met in secret with Oliver Tambo and Thabo Mbeki even as the government sought to outlaw any contacts with them.
“If we hold onto everything now, we will lose everything,” he had famously proclaimed. “The moral imperative is clearly in favour of change. The global mood urges change. And I implore you, as citizens and business representatives, to consider this one single argument if no other: without change we remain locked in a single, shrinking market at the tip of Africa that has become too small for all of us; political change is the key to a much greater market, both at home and abroad, that will be to the benefit of all in this great nation of ours.”
Jessica de Vere moved in a world quite remote from anything I might ever have offered her. The official residences I had enjoyed – including, briefly, in Paris – might have seemed spectacular at the time with their art collections and tapestries and long, dark banqueting tables. But they were all on loan from Uncle Sam, debts that would be – and, indeed, were – called in abruptly at Washington’s whim.
Chris de Vere and his wife stood four-square on the more solid ground of title deeds and ownership in a world that bore no relation to the circumstances of most of the planet. Jess presided over it as if she had never known any other way.
No one around her table felt anything but flattered by her attentions, her memory of their children’s names and greatest triumphs, her ability to debate political initiatives or the latest off-Broadway hit with the same ease as she might recommend a masseuse or a tennis coach. How could she not be admired, coveted, cherished? It seemed inconceivable to me that De Vere would not have had Kroll or some other high-ticket investigator trace the timelines and cross-references of her past before he committed a portion of the family fortune to her pre-nuptial ambitions. But, knowing his own history, he would doubtless have concluded that great bloodlines sometimes need a roguish gene to flourish.
Chris ran the occassion with easy authority, ensuring that those meant to feel relaxed did so as he tended to their wishes for pre-lunch drinks – beer for the entrepreneur, who barely sipped it, Punt e Mes for the prince, white wine for the rest of us. In navy blue slacks and matching silk blouse that offset the dark tan of her skin and her lustrous black hair, his wife appeared from the kitchen escorting a black maid in pale-blue gingham uniform carrying a huge platter of fresh oysters on ice.
I took the opportunity to stroll out onto the lawn, pausing to peer through the telescope. It did not surprise me to find it focused on the same area of beach where we had picnicked a day earlier.
“That was not too smart – knew your wife, read her articles et cetera.” She spoke quietly through a cocktail-circuit smile I found hard to recognise from our earlier days. “He knows a lot. He doesn’t know about us. For reasons I will leave to your imagination, let’s keep it that way.”
“I wanted to tell you something. About the meeting with Nyati. It seems the authorities knew.”
“They knew? Of course they knew. How could you be so naïve as to imagine they would not know? Getting cold feet? Please say you have had second thoughts and we can all get on with our lives.”
“I’m not cutting and running.” I had lowered my voice in a way that made me sound like a conspirator.
“Because Americans don’t? “
“Because this American won’t.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Can’t you drop this this witch-hunt? Please.” She, too, was speaking in little more than a whisper.
I took the clipping of her Theron interview from a pocket and unfolded it.
“Did you write this?”
She glanced at it and nodded.
“Did you meet him?”
“I was not in the habit of making up quotes. Who gave you this?”
“I’ll ask the questions, please. Did you stay in touch with him?”
“Possibly.”
“Do you know where he is, for Chrissakes?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe? What kind of an answer is maybe?”
“Maybe the only kind you are going to get if you go on bullying.”
I took a deep breath.
“I need to meet him now. I need to go to the source. The one person who knows. Kobus Theron. The killer. He set it all up. The whole thing. And you knew he set it up. Goddam it, Jess, you interviewed him and never told me.”
“There were plenty of things I couldn’t tell you.”
“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”
“However you want to phrase it. Dammit, Tom. Have you forgotten what was at stake? You were America. You were the embassy. I had to play my cards close.”
“Please, Jess. An address. A cell phone. An e-mail for Theron. His lawyer. One call and I’m out of here. I’ll even give you your lighter back and not tell your husband where you left it.”
She glanced over my shoulder and took a step away from me.
“Monopolising the hostess! How very undiplomatic! Still. I should be used to it.” Chris de Vere had approached almost stealthily. Now, he looped a proprietorial arm around his wife. She smiled, bright and loving.
“Five minutes à table.” She pronounced the last words in the French way and headed back across the lawn. Zoë Jou
bert rose to meet her and said something that drew laughter. De Vere followed my gaze. His eyes flickered between the two women.
“So you knew Jess back then. Zoë, too?” His voice was harsher now, the boss-man in him elbowing aside the host.
“Not at all, in fact. My job was press, so, of course, you had to be aware of the star reporter in town.”
“And that was it?”
“That was what?”
“You know what I’m saying, Mr Ambassador.”
“I don’t think I do.”
“I’m asking a simple question. I know a lot about relationships. I have had many. Once a man and a woman have slept together they maintain a certain claim on one another.”
“And you want to know if I have a claim on your wife? For what it’s worth, the answer is no. If it makes you feel any better.”
“Lunch everybody,” he said, tuning back to his guests.
Twenty
I WAS SEATED ACROSS FROM Strikes Dube and next to Princess Irena in her squirmy mini skirt. We ate in a companionable cocoon spun by our host and hostess with questions and anecdotes. Children? How many? Teenagers? What can you do with them? Join the SKI club! Spend the Kid’s Inheritance! Laughter at the very thought that anyone in this charmed circle would do anything so un-dynastic.
“Strikes,” the princess said. “That is an interesting name.”
“A nickname,” the entrepreneur said.
“Nom de guerre, more like!” Chris de Vere interjected with a snort of laughter.
Dube’s baptismal first name, it turned out, was Gabriel but he took his more familiar nickname from the weapon he once deployed frequently as a labour union negotiator against the mining magnates like Chris de Vere, calling out thousands of workers to support pay claims and political strategies.
His association with his former adversary had made Strikes Dube extremely rich extremely quickly, opening the doors to the BMW dealership and the realtor’s offerings of galleried mansions and en suite bathrooms.
He took easily to the designer loafers and gold watches and fine whiskies of his new persona: his humidor contained nothing less than Davidoff and his cellar was filled with the finest vintages. Even in the old days, I seemed to recall, he had a reputation for ordering old single malts by the double when others were paying. Now he could afford entire distilleries if he so chose.
Solomon Nyati had died fighting for the country in which this had all become possible, but I had my doubts whether he would have approved some of the material by-products of The Struggle while so many remained jobless and hungry.
“You talk of our tribalism, but you too are tribalist,” Strikes Dube was saying. “Look here. At this table. You have a De Vere and a Joubert. English and Huguenot.”
Zoë blushed and De Vere came to her rescue.
“Strikes, I am ashamed of you,” he said with a complicit grin. “Zoë may have a Huguenot surname, but she is, as we all know, detribalised. And as for myself, my Englishness was absorbed by history a long time ago. I am as much an African as you are!”
“So you know how it is to live without shoes?”
De Vere shot his lower leg from the cuff of his trousers to reveal loafers over tanned skin.
“Without socks, even!”
“Chris, you are impossible,” Zoë said.
“Blame Strikes. He started it.”
“That’s what you always said in the old days, too.”
“And what is it you are doing here, Ambassador?” The Princess said.
“Well, a bit more than I figured,” I said. “I came here for a conference and now I’m staying on for some other reasons.”
Jessica de Vere and Zoë Joubert both looked at me sharply.
“You know,” I went on, as casually as I could, “I was here many years ago and one of the people I met was a guy called Solomon Nyati. You remember him, Mr Dube?”
Strikes Dube was midway through lighting a cigar, making a show of the platinum cutter and long matches that ignited a perfect circle of fine tobacco.
“And I figured I would just look up his widow and a few other folks because I guess there’s a lot of unfinished business from way back then. Loose ends. Maybe even guilty consciences.”
It may have been the heavy smoke from the Davidoff cigar, but Strikes Dube began to cough and his wife, Pumla, glanced quickly at a dainty Rolex. “My goodness. Is that the time?”
“Nyati?” the Prince interjected. “Wasn’t he some kind of terrorist?”
“Freedom fighter,” I replied. “Fought against entrenched privilege, that kind of thing.”
“Now I’ve heard everything,” Chis de Vere said, making it sound like a joke. “A diplomat with a conscience.”
“Former,” Jessica de Vere said when the laughter subsided. “A former diplomat. Right, Tom?”
As the lunch guests offered their farewells, the big double-doors leading to the street opened and Mills and a boy in his early teens entered, clutching tennis rackets, their white shoes stained with the rust-brown dust of a clay court.
“Tom, meet my son Charlie,” Jessica de Vere said.
A son!
Somehow I had never thought of her having children. The boy looked at her, as if inquiring whether he was expected to know me.
“Charlie, Tom’s an old friend. A diplomat.”
“Oh, right,” the boy said. “Mills has been talking about you.”
It was easy to guess what she had been saying.
“Hi, Charlie. Who won?” Chris de Vere interrupted.
“We didn’t keep score, did we Charlie? Just a knockabout,” said Mills.
Jess Chase had moved behind her son so that she could rest her hands on his slender, somewhat drooped shoulders. The boy had his father’s blonde hair, flopping across his vision in a long fringe, crimped where a sweatband had held it in place.
“Just a knockabout?” Chris de Vere said. “No such thing, is there Strikes? Only winners and losers. That’s how life works, boy, and don’t you forget it.”
“Well, actually, Charlie won, but he’s too much of a gentleman to say so,” Camilla Joubert said. She moved towards her mother and their hands joined together.
“Ready, Mama?” she said.
Zoë had told me that she and a small group of her friends planned to undertake an expedition on foot across the gap at the base of the Robberg Peninsula and on to the rocky point where, finally, the last of the land fell away into the Indian Ocean. She would be accompanied by her daughter. Riaan van Rensburg would act as guide and protector. Who else?
As I made my farewells, Jess Chase shook my hand and palmed a scrap of paper into it.
She was waiting in the public area below the stairs of the Blue Wing, where my suite was located.
Vanessa van Rensburg beckoned to me to join her on a sofa in the entrance hall beneath a huge, marine-themed oil painting in blues and greens. I sat next to her. Playing by the rules of some arcane game of her own devising, she placed a hand on my knee. By my Victorian version of the same game, I removed it.
She was wearing an opaque orange sarong and – as far as I could see – only an opaque orange sarong. The rim of her left nostril was very lightly powdered in white.
“It’s about Riaan. But not the way you think. He has gone into some kind of rage about you. He thinks you are out to destroy us all, the Old Deep set. He thinks he knows why. He says you have been asking too many questions.”
“I’m sorry he feels that way. It’s not true.”
“He feels that way because he’s vulnerable.”
“In what sense?”
“In the sense that his contacts, back then, in the old days, were not what they should have been. A lot of people were taken in. They were complicated times. Sometimes you couldn’t tell friend from foe.”
“I’m not sure you want to be telling me this. I’m not some kind of prosecutor. I’m just an ex-ambassador with an interest in history. No more. No less.”
“Bullshit!” Her an
ger flushed her cheeks crimson. “You come here out of nowhere. Nobody knows who you are and suddenly you are everybody’s friend. Don’t think I wasn’t listening to you wheedling away with Ferd and Porter and the rest on the beach. You even caught me: who went to the meeting? Who didn’t? Why is that fucking meeting so fucking important? Why is it so important whether Riaan was there or not? Are you from the CIA or something?”
Vanessa van Rensburg used a corner of her sarong to wipe a slight dampness from her eyes. She took a deep breath.
“I want to tell you something to change your mind. So that you stop asking all your questions and leave us alone. Perhaps when you have heard what I have to say you will understand how dangerous all this is. The only reason I am telling you this is to try to head off a huge mess that none of us will recover from. Do you want to hear it?”
“Yes.”
“Off the record?”
“I can’t guarantee that. But I will try. You have my word.”
“You have heard of Spencer Guillaume?”
I had indeed. Spencer Guillaume had been the security police’s secret weapon, a top-drawer operative with tentacles that spread through an empire of informers and double agents, turncoat guerrillas and naïve patsies. Guillaume’s cover had been to portray himself as an enemy of the system, a friend of The Struggle. Once he had won trust, he used it to burrow into networks of anti-apartheid campaigners, tunnelling away under their foundations until the edifice collapsed
“Riaan knew Guillaume?”
“He didn’t know who he was or what he did. He thought Guillaume was his friend. They drank together. He told him things. Not big things, just stupid things. Who was with whom. What people thought about this and that. Small things. No state secrets. Just gossip. But he never realised who he was talking to.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because Riaan thinks you know already and will unmask him.”
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