Ghosts of the Past

by Tony Park

  Nick looked up and down the main thoroughfare. Here and there were people living off the street, one man sitting against the building with a wine bottle between his legs. His overall impression of the town was one of a place at the far reaches of care.

  There was a bustle about the place, though. It was clearly the largest settlement for hundreds of kilometres and people were coming and going from a supermarket. The traffic, while not heavy by any stretch of the imagination, was quite chaotic.

  ‘Do you know the Schützenhaus? I’m not sure if I pronounced that correctly,’ Nick asked.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It’s the best place to stay and eat in Keetmanshoop, and no doubt it was the same when Peter Kohl and Claire Martin lived here. We could go have a quick beer and a burger there.’

  Nick checked his watch. ‘It’s only just gone twelve.’

  She laughed, the first time he’d seen her do so, and it was like a different person had jumped into her body. ‘This is Africa, Nick. The normal rules don’t apply. Come.’

  ‘What the hell, OK.’ He paid the pump attendant and followed Anja through town and down a side street, jinking wildly to the left at one point to avoid being sideswiped by a mall taxi.

  Anja drove to a boom gate, spoke to a security guard and drove into a fenced compound. The Schützenhaus was an historic-looking stone building, with newer accommodation units tacked onto the back. Another block had sprouted up out of the dirt car park and Nick saw a swimming pool enclosed behind a fence topped with barbed wire as he got out of his car.

  Anja led him to a side entrance and through sliding glass doors into the older part of the building. They entered the bar and it was like stepping back in time.

  On the wall was a picture of Kaiser Wilhelm II, emperor of Germany at the time South West Africa was his colony. While Anja went to the bar and spoke to the white bartender in German, Nick wandered slowly around the walls, taking in the colonial-era memorabilia.

  ‘This place was the first German club in the colony,’ Anja said. ‘The name actually means shooting club, or marksmen’s club.’

  ‘So I gather from these pendants.’ The flags were encased in clear vinyl, which was just as well as the protective coating was stained brown from past decades of exhaled smoke, but they dated from the colonial era and showed motifs of rifles and targets.

  Anja took two Tafel lagers from the barman and handed one to Nick. ‘I’ve ordered us burgers.’

  They clinked bottles and Nick lowered his voice. ‘This place is like a time capsule.’

  She smiled. ‘A little old-fashioned, but people here are proud of their German heritage. Despite everything that happened during the Herero and Nama wars, and then later in the seventies and eighties in the liberation struggle, people in Namibia get on with each other these days. It’s a harmonious country where different cultures are respected.’

  As he drank Nick studied photographs of settlers from the early 1900s. ‘It’s funny to think that Dr Kohl and Claire Martin might have been in this very room.’

  ‘Well,’ Anja said, ‘this was not the original building. The original Schützenhaus was made of timber. This stone structure was built later, though it’s still very old.’

  All the same, he thought, they had been here, maybe even on this spot, and while Keetmanshoop now had supermarkets, fuel stations and a few other twenty-first-century trappings, he guessed it had still had the same dusty edge-of-the-world feel in 1906 as it did now. Their food arrived and they ate in silence, both of them hungry.

  Nick stared up into the Kaiser’s unsmiling eyes. The Germans had only officially ruled South West Africa for thirty years, until South Africa took it off them in 1915, but they had left their mark indelibly on this desert land.

  He finished the last of his food. ‘How did studying horses lead you to the story of Cyril Blake and Claire Martin?’

  ‘Claire and Peter’s horse stud was one of several established by order of the imperial German government in the early years of the colony. The settlers knew they would need a good supply of horses to explore and open up the interior of Namibia and the demand increased dramatically when the Herero and Nama wars started. I was searching the archives in Germany for mentions of both of them and Claire’s name started coming up in documents from around the turn of the century. That’s where I found her dispatches from South Africa, during the Anglo-Boer War. To be honest, I didn’t think those papers would help me with my research, but I became fascinated by the story of a young Irishwoman spying for the German government, and her letters mentioned Blake again and again.’

  Nick thought back to his first meeting with Susan. ‘When Susan Vidler came to visit me in Australia she told me that Cyril Blake had fought with the Nama against the Germans, but that was before anyone, presumably, even knew about Dr Kohl’s manuscript, which to the best of my knowledge wasn’t published. Who made the connection?’

  ‘It was Susan who first mentioned Blake to me, in the context of him living in Upington and trading with the Nama. Blake used an alias, Edward Prestwich.’

  Nick nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Prestwich is actually in a couple of books on the history of Namibia and about the Nama and Herero wars. They both mention an Australian, Prestwich, who rode and fought with Jakob Morengo, and was assassinated on German orders.’

  ‘So who worked out that Prestwich was, in fact, Blake?’

  ‘Susan, I think, or perhaps this Scott Dillon she worked for who is fascinated by the Boer War. There is a book about an irregular unit that your Blake was part of . . .’

  ‘Steinaecker’s Horsemen. I’ve got it.’

  ‘Exactly. If you look in the back of the book there is a list of all the men who served in the unit and what happened to them. Edward Prestwich died of malaria at Komatipoort in 1902, the day the war ended, and the same day Blake and Claire Martin slipped across the border from South Africa into Portuguese East Africa. Susan or Scott Dillon must have noticed a mention of Prestwich in the book about Steinaecker’s Horse and put two and two together.’

  ‘And they came up with the right answer.’ Nick finished his beer.

  ‘Yes. Dr Kohl’s manuscript confirms the theory. What we don’t yet know is if there will be more clues to where the gold might have been hidden, assuming no one found it before Claire Martin died at sea. Now, I need to have a look at Scott Dillon online – I charged my iPad in the Land Rover.’

  Nick looked on as she typed Dillon’s name into her web browser. The same links and images that he had seen came up.

  Anja nodded. ‘Yes, it’s him.’

  ‘Then we need to confront him. Are you up for that?’ Nick asked.

  ‘I am. If he is the man who arranged for me to be attacked, I want to face him.’ Anja went back to translating the manuscript on her iPad. Nick’s mind churned with thoughts of Susan and the gnawing worry that she might have befriended him merely to gain his trust and spy on him. But what, he wondered, had happened when she went back to Cape Town?

  He felt restless, impatient to hear the rest of Dr Kohl’s story. If Scott Dillon was indeed after Claire Martin’s stash of Kruger’s gold, then they would have to work fast.

  From Kohl’s manuscript and Anja’s research they knew Claire had died young, around the same time as Blake, and that she’d had some of her hoard stolen by Jakob Morengo’s men just a few months before. There was also a reference to a missing cache of her gold somewhere near Lüderitz, where she had drowned at sea.

  Anja looked up from the device. ‘I’ve just worked out how the Cape police knew Blake’s real identity, I mean, that he wasn’t Edward Prestwich.’

  ‘How?’ Nick asked.

  ‘Your great-great-uncle was an amateur photographer.’

  Chapter 39

  The Karasberge, German South West Africa, 1906

  ‘What are you looking at?’ the Schutztruppe
guard asked Liesl in German.

  Liesl rolled over in the sand, onto her belly, but she felt the man’s fingers on her forearm, biting into her flesh. She was fluent in German and despite his order she was not going to let him see what she had been looking at.

  ‘Let me see.’

  She tried to resist, but her hands were tied together with rope and her ankles were manacled and chained to the wheel of a wagon. She had no blanket, no cover against the elements, and Liesl thought she was the coldest she had ever been – until then.

  The soldier grabbed a handful of her hair, wrenched her head back, and forced her to roll over. He set down his rifle and his hands roamed over her breasts, under her jacket and between her thighs. She tried to scream but he put a palm over her mouth and drew his bayonet, holding the blade against her neck.

  ‘If you scream I will kill you.’

  She blinked away tears and he found the photograph.

  ‘A white man?’

  She sneered at his outrage and the guard slapped her face and spat on her.

  *

  For three days Blake rode at Jakob Morengo’s side as the Black Napoleon drew von Deimling’s forces deeper into the eastern Karasberge, teasing them with occasional glimpses of his men on ridge tops, infuriating them with the odd volley of fire and a casualty here and there.

  Blake chafed at the rebel leader’s insistence that they stick to the plan, and that did not involve Blake riding off on a solo mission to rescue Liesl from the Germans.

  ‘Will we go for her today?’ Blake asked Morengo on the dawn of the fourth day as they paused at a place where water had pooled in a shaded chasm, to allow their horses to drink and the men to refill their water bottles.

  ‘Now we leave the Germans and we circle around them and position ourselves on the road to Keetmanshoop,’ Jakob said as he broke off half a stick of biltong and handed it to Blake.

  Blake took the salty dried gemsbok and chewed on it. ‘What makes you think they’re ready to turn back?’

  ‘They have wounded, and their supplies are limited. The German commander will want to return and report a victory, that he has routed us and our remnants have fled their military might. He knows he won’t catch me or my people in these mountains.’

  ‘You seem sure.’

  Morengo shrugged. ‘There is no such thing as surety in warfare, you should know that.’

  Blake nodded.

  ‘And,’ Morengo continued, ‘you should know I could not allow you to risk capture by heading off on your own after Liesl. I know the Germans. They would not risk sending their doctor and their wounded back to Keetmanshoop alone, or with a light escort, but nor can the Schutztruppen live out here indefinitely. This is a good plan that you and I hatched together, Blake; you must stay the course. Liesl is of my blood and I care for her as well.’

  Blake knew Morengo was right, and the fact that he had not ridden off in hot pursuit of Liesl either did not mean that Jakob cared less for his niece than Blake thought. Morengo had not earned his German nickname by being an impetuous romantic.

  They rode hard all that day, down out of the rocky hills onto the flat desert, skirting the range and looping north and westwards. By late afternoon they could see an orange dust cloud hanging long and low in the distance, backlit by the setting sun.

  Jakob called a halt and the Nama settled in between low dunes covered with scrubby, hardy grass. The night passed slowly, the temperature below freezing as men and horses huddled close to each other for warmth. The fighters could not afford to make a fire as the flames would have been easily seen by German pickets. Blake saw the warm glow of campfires on the horizon and envied his enemies.

  He lay on his back, his horse blanket pulled up over his nose, and looked up at the night sky ablaze with stars. There was so much beauty in this place, and the same infinite supply of bloodshed and sadness. All the same, his heart had been captured by this wide open land despite, or perhaps because of its attendant danger.

  Liesl was out there, hopefully still alive and inviolate, and if she had the courage to fight for her people and their freedom then it was not for him to run away. He cared for her, but he found his thoughts returning to the red-haired woman who had been seen in Upington between his forays in and out of the desert.

  What if it was Claire?

  He had guessed she might return to German South West Africa, where she had spent time before heading to South Africa. She would have a hard time getting a wagon load of gold into some European port, he imagined, but she was well connected in Germany’s African colony and would have had connections on the docks thanks to her first husband, who had run a shipping company. He was sure she could have smuggled old Paul’s treasure into Lüderitz Bay by greasing the right palms.

  It was ironic, he thought, that at some point when the fighting died down Jakob would pay him for the horses, guns and ammunition, with gold Blake may have helped steal.

  There was a squeak of feet on sand behind his head and Blake rolled over, shrugging off the blanket, his finger already on the trigger of the Lee Enfield. He’d learned in his war against the Boers that a rifle could seize up from frost on the open veld and sleeping with your weapon meant it was warm and ready.

  ‘It’s me,’ Jakob whispered.

  ‘Are we moving?’ Blake asked.

  ‘No,’ said the rebel leader. ‘I wanted to talk.’

  Blake set his rifle down. ‘What about?’

  ‘Liesl.’

  ‘I hope she’s still alive,’ Blake said.

  ‘So do I. You care for her.’ It wasn’t a question and Blake didn’t answer, so Jakob carried on. ‘As do I. We will find her, at the rear of the column, and if we can, we will rescue her. But if she is chained to a wagon, we will not take the time to break her bonds while the Germans regroup. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ Blake said.

  ‘Do you understand that I cannot jeopardise the lives of the majority for the sake of one person?’

  Blake looked into those eyes, as cold as the night air. ‘I do.’

  ‘Then you will not take part in the morning’s attack on the column.’

  ‘What?’ Blake was taken aback.

  ‘You are a good shot, Blake, you proved that in the mountains. However, I cannot let the Germans see that a white man is riding with me. Von Deimling will take casualties, maybe lose some wagons and supplies to us, but if he sees you he will be duty-bound to report a foreigner fighting with the Nama. The Germans will come for you, and for me, instead of returning to lick their wounds in Keetmanshoop and claiming a false victory.’

  Blake bridled. He knew Jakob wanted him out of sight not just because of the colour of his skin, but because he was worried he might do something foolish in order to rescue Liesl. ‘Do you want me to leave?’

  ‘No. I want you to find a high spot, in the dunes, and cover us when we raid the wagons.’

  Blake let out a long breath. ‘All right.’

  The Nama broke camp an hour before dawn and circled around the Germans, who would take some time to get on the move. The rebels took up ambush positions two kilometres further on, in the direction of Keetmanshoop, hidden in the dunes.

  Jakob waited until the column had moved past them. Blake lay next to him, just below the crest of a dune. ‘The sand is soft here,’ Jakob said.

  Blake looked through his binoculars. He could see a German wagon driver at the end of the column savagely whipping his oxen. The supply wagons, still laden with enough food and ammunition for the long drive back, and burdened with artillery shells that had found no use, were making hard work of the soft surface. As usual, Jakob had enlisted the help of the land he lived in, and knew so well, in his fight against the enemy.

  ‘The escorts are moving out,’ Blake said. The German commander, von Deimling, probably realising progress would be slow on this section, had b
een smart enough to issue orders for small parties of Schutztruppen to range out to the flanks in search of any rebels who might be lying in wait.

  ‘Yes,’ Jakob said. ‘I sent two men ahead, and off to the right of the column. They should make themselves known some time soon.’

  Blake was impressed. Jakob was a step ahead of the enemy, as always. He had let the entire column get past them, knowing that the Germans would not send their flankers out until they were already on the move, and now he had given them some bait.

  Sure enough, they soon heard shots fired to the right of the column, and the Schutztruppen on horseback galloped off in pursuit of the two Nama who had just opened fire. The Germans who had been scouring the left flank cut through the column and joined their comrades on the right in pursuit of the pair of rebels who had set up the diversion.

  ‘Hendrik and Johan are two of my best men, on our fastest horses. The Germans will not catch them,’ Jakob said, smiling. He started to get up. ‘It is time. If Liesl is alive, I will find her and do my best to rescue her.’

  Blake gave a reluctant nod. ‘I’ll move abreast of the wagons.’ He got up, slung his rifle and mounted his horse. Moving between the dunes, Blake allowed Bluey to gallop, then pulled him up within easy shot of the rearmost wagons. He dismounted, scaled the loose slope and set himself up with a sniper’s view of the floundering column below.

  Jakob and his band mounted up, galloped over the crest of the dune and descended on the struggling wagons like vultures swooping down on a dying beast. Through his binoculars Blake could see that the wagon masters hadn’t spotted the dust cloud rising up like a gathering storm, and had no idea of the hell approaching them from behind.

  The need for the Germans on the left flank to join their comrades on the right in pursuit of Hendrik and Johan had cut the column in two, and five supply wagons at the rear, those that had to wait for the Schutztruppen to pass in front of them, were now lagging even further behind. These were Jakob’s target.