The October Killings

by Wessel Ebersohn

  Even afterward, Abigail did not remember hearing any sound that might have warned her. The man’s left arm had wrapped itself around her neck before she had the chance to react. At almost the same instant his right hand rose to her neck, pressing a knife against her jugular. An African voice whispered something in her ear in a language she did not understand.

  Suddenly the cluster of crumpled papers in her bag seemed absurdly important to Abigail and she answered in English. “Listen, I’ll give you money, but…”

  Before she could finish she was pushed heavily from behind, stumbling then going down on hands and knees. Her head struck a concrete pillar just behind her right ear. It seemed to her that almost immediately she was scrambling to her feet. She tried to take a step forward, but had to reach for the pillar to steady herself. She went down on her hands and knees a second time. Her briefcase was gone and there was no sign of her assailant.

  Abigail waited five minutes before starting the car engine. The day had been dense with enough incidents, without her causing an accident on the way home. Oh God, she asked herself, did they really want the contents of her briefcase that badly? And if they did, who were they? And the damned security guards, sitting in a cozy knot in the lobby, they seemed more interested in their own security than that of the building or their clients.

  When she finally got home Robert was not yet there. There was a message from him on the apartment’s phone, saying that he may be late, but he would pick up TV dinners on the way home, if she would wait for him.

  She sat down in the chair in front of the French windows with the curtains open. The chair seemed to have become her favorite. Robert arrived an hour later with a plastic bag that contained the promised TV dinners and some cans of beer. His expression turned from good humor to alarm the moment he saw her. “Your clothes,” he said. “What happened?”

  Abigail had not noticed the smear of old grease across her jacket and blouse that she had picked up from the floor of the parking garage. Her hands, too, were covered in dust. For the first time she touched the place where she had struck her head. When she withdrew them, the tips of her fingers were covered by partly congealed blood.

  “What the hell happened?” Robert was saying.

  “They took my briefcase.”

  “Who did?”

  “I don’t know. This matter … the Leon Lourens matter. There were documents in it. I can replace them all, but … I don’t know what they’ll do next.”

  “You sit down,” Robert said. “I’ll pour you a drink.” It was Robert’s cure for most crises.

  Once she had her drink, he cleaned the graze on her head. Having him moving around her, tending her wound, plying her with drink, gave Abigail a feeling of real security for the first time since Leon Lourens had entered her office some eighty hours before.

  When Robert was done he went to the telephone and lifted the receiver. “Are you calling the police?” Abigail asked.

  “First I’m going to call your mobile. I presume it was in your briefcase?”

  “Wait, Robert. I don’t know who might be on the other end of the line.”

  Robert was a man angered by the attack on his wife. “Let’s hear what they have to say for themselves.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait?”

  “For what?” Robert called the number.

  From where she was sitting Abigail heard a male voice answer.

  “Good evening.” Robert always sounded impeccably polite when his anger was raised. “My name is Robert Mokoape. You or someone you know attacked my wife this evening. I’d like to know who you are and why you acted in this way.”

  Abigail heard the answering voice. She could not make out what was being said, but Robert’s eyes widened in surprise, then the faintest trace of a smile formed round his mouth. “Hold on,” he told the voice on the other end of the line. “You’d better tell her.” He gestured to Abigail to come to the phone. “It’s for you,” he said. Then he smiled. “It’s all right.”

  Abigail could barely believe what Robert was doing, but she came to the phone and took the receiver from him. “Yes?” To her own ears her voice was quivering.

  The voice on the other end of the line was clearly the one that had whispered into her ear in the parking garage, but now it was an octave higher and had taken on a pleading tone. “Hi, comrade. I’m so sorry about tonight, but times are tough and a man’s family has to eat.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Comrade, I found your ANC membership card in your bag. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you are a member of the party. I’ve taken your cellphone and the cash in your purse, but I left your briefcase with your credit cards and your documents with your building’s security. I can see they might be important and I don’t want to hurt the party. I’m so sorry I pushed you, sister. I hope you’re not hurt badly.”

  “No. I’m not hurt.”

  “I’m happy. I’m very happy.”

  And I’m happy, Abigail thought, that you are just an honest mugger and not some political crazy. After she hung up, she turned to Robert. Suddenly they were holding on to each other and laughing, tears running from their eyes, as if nothing had ever been funnier.

  Abigail finished her drink, showered and ate Robert’s TV dinner. He tucked her into bed. Inside a minute she was asleep. Robert poured himself another drink and drank it slowly before coming to bed himself. The matter of the mugger had been funny, but there was still the other matter. He was concerned about where it could be leading Abigail and what he could do—if anything—to protect her.

  * * *

  While Abigail slept, Yudel Gordon was awake. For a long time he lay still next to Rosa, not wanting to disturb her by getting up. He waited for her breathing to become deep and regular before slipping out of bed, scooping up his dressing gown and going to his study, where a notebook with a few jotted thoughts on the Abigail matter lay open among the clutter of his desk.

  Yudel forbade all tidying in his study, and he rarely undertook it himself. As a result, papers, note scraps, unpaid accounts, even books disappeared under the growing, shifting sea of paper on his desk. Rosa referred to his desk as a pocket of immaturity in his makeup. It was a phrase that he had often used until she started applying it to him.

  Like Abigail, he had not enjoyed the latter part of the day. During the liberation struggle he had on a number of occasions been exposed to the insufferable self-righteousness of those who had placed bombs in public places to kill randomly, or had burned to death people who may or may not have been informers for the system. And, on the other hand, he had also occasionally been exposed to those who told themselves that they were killing to protect their people from the murderous black hordes. Today’s meeting with van Jaarsveld was a reminder of those days. As far as Yudel knew, this man was the last of the apartheid killers still to be telling anyone who would listen that they had been right all along. No doubt many were still telling themselves the same in private.

  Yudel’s inability to sleep resided in a single phrase, used by van Jaarsveld, and by Abigail’s reaction to it. It had been lost in everything else that was said at this afternoon’s meeting in C-Max, but now it came back and drove away every hope of restful unconsciousness.

  It was not even the thought that possibly Abigail knew who was killing the policemen who had been in the raiding party twenty years before. It was a little phrase of five words that kept Yudel awake. They hung in his mind, a clear, sharply delineated indication of the horror of those days. “Not everyone was so lucky,” van Jaarsveld had said. Abigail had shrunk from those words, as if facing a death sentence. Perhaps there resided a death sentence within those words. Who did Abigail know who was part of the “everyone” who had not been so lucky?

  Then suddenly he knew. He got up and walked to the window. Before opening the curtains he switched off the only light in the room, the reading lamp on his desk. It was a clear night and the nearer flowers in Rosa’s garden looked pale silver in the rela
tive darkness of the Pretoria night.

  Abigail had been fifteen at the time. Van Jaarsveld had killed her parents. Yudel had no provable way of knowing it, but he was as sure as if he had been present that night. He stood at the window for a long time. He saw neither the garden, nor the floodlit form of the Union Buildings against the hill on the far side of Arcadia. He thought about Abigail, the things she would not tell him, the raid on a house in Maseru so long ago and the price the perpetrators were now paying.

  When Rosa found him at three o’clock, Yudel was still at the window. “Come to bed,” she said. “This will solve nothing.”

  14

  Tuesday, October 18

  Chief Albert Luthuli House, the ANC headquarters in downtown Johannesburg, did not seem to have woken when Abigail arrived at nine in the morning. Most of the offices she passed were empty and in one a secretary was reading the morning paper.

  The former cabinet minister rose as Abigail was ushered into her office. She was in her mid-sixties and well known for her ability to ease tensions wherever she held office. This was a quality soon to be stretched to its limit by a growing leadership struggle in the party. The older woman had been redeployed from the Cabinet to Luthuli House, where she now filled the position of the party’s deputy secretary-general.

  She came round her desk, both arms outstretched, smiling warmly. “Abby, my child. I’ve been hearing such wonderful things about you. Your parents would have been proud.”

  “Thank you for seeing me, mother,” Abigail said.

  The deputy secretary-general waved an impatient hand that seemed to indicate that she could never refuse to see Abigail. “I saw you at the Black Management Forum banquet with your husband. That was your husband, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, that was Robert.”

  “He’s the famous editor. Am I correct?”

  “That’s right. At least, I think of him that way.”

  “What a clever couple. You are going to have clever children. Are there any yet?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Don’t wait too long. You’re in your thirties already, I think.” The former minister was so obviously concerned and well-meaning that her unasked-for advice and rather prying ways never met with a rebuff from anyone. “All the uneducated rural people are having dozens of kids. We need our highly educated people to have the kids who will lead us in the future.”

  Abigail was one of the many who loved her. She smiled at the older woman. But now can we get past this? she was thinking. What if we get on to business now? Is that possible?

  “Is it you or Robert who doesn’t want babies?”

  “No, we both want children.”

  “Then the time has come to get on with it.” She frowned at Abigail for a moment, but immediately the smile reappeared. “But there’s something on your mind. Let’s talk about that first. You can allow an interfering old lady to question you later.”

  Abigail started reminding her about the raid in Maseru twenty years before, but the deputy secretary-general did not need reminding. Her face, that smiled so readily, was stern now. “Yes, child, I remember. Your parents…”

  “The night after that we were rescued in Ficksburg.”

  “Yes. It was a wonderful achievement.”

  “A man by the name of Michael Bishop was there.”

  “Ye-es…” It was said slowly, the vowel sound extended beyond its usual length. “I’m told he was there.”

  “A meeting was held to honor him in our offices a few days ago.”

  “I had heard that. I have to say that I was surprised to hear that he attended such a meeting.”

  “He didn’t attend. Our minister was there and made the speech, but Michael Bishop didn’t come.”

  She nodded. This was clearly no surprise.

  “I wondered if you knew where he is and what he is doing now.”

  “Your minister wants to know?”

  “I want to know.”

  “Abby, my child, I must ask you why.”

  “Mother…” Abigail felt very young, talking to this woman who had been a mentor to her mother and whom she knew would do almost anything for her. “Mother, I want you to believe me that this is important, but I don’t want to make my problems your problems.”

  The deputy secretary-general thought about this for so long that Abigail was beginning to see it as a refusal. “Very well,” she said at last. “To the best of my knowledge he holds no position in the party. And I only met him a few times during the struggle days. I don’t know where he is now, but I’ll take you to a male colleague who may be able to help.”

  She led the way out of her office, but stopped in the corridor as if she had just remembered something. Turning to Abigail, she spoke very gently. “It would be better if you had as little dealing with this man as possible. He is not someone you should be having contact with.”

  “I will be careful,” Abigail said.

  The male colleague was not educated, a former soldier in the liberation army, who had been given the job of handyman as a reward for his loyal service to the movement. They found him installing a lock on a storeroom door on the ground floor. He rose and dusted off his hands before folding them in front of him. It was the gesture of someone who was among superiors. The deputy secretary-general introduced Abigail and told him that they were looking for Michael Bishop.

  Although he was about the same age, he addressed her as respectfully as Abigail had. “Mother, I fought next to him in the struggle, but I know nothing about him now.”

  “Did you ever work with him in October?” Abigail burst in suddenly.

  “October, what year?” he asked.

  “Any year in the month of October.”

  The handyman looked helplessly at the deputy secretary-general. “Mother, I don’t know this.”

  “That’s all right, Ephraim,” she said. “Do you know who can help us?”

  “Yes, there’s a man in Diepsloot who was his commanding officer.”

  “Is that Jones, Jones Ndlovu?”

  “Yes. He was Michael Bishop’s commanding officer.”

  After receiving instructions on how to get to Jones Ndlovu, the deputy secretary-general accompanied Abigail toward the building’s entrance. “I don’t know how wise this is. Jones Ndlovu is no longer the man he was. They say he’s a drug addict now.”

  “I’ll go. I need to talk to him.”

  They had reached the lobby, but Abigail took the older woman’s arm above her right elbow and drew her gently into a decorative alcove. “Mother, do you remember that while we were in London, a South African businessman was murdered there? It must have been in the early nineties.”

  The deputy secretary-general’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “That was a long time ago, but yes, I believe there was such a case.”

  “Do you remember his name?”

  “I think I do, but only because of his surname. It had racial connotations and, at that time, everything seemed to have racial connotations. His name was Whiteman.”

  “Whitehead.”

  “Yes, that’s it. Whitehead.”

  “He was in the squad that raided us in Maseru that night.”

  The older woman’s head jerked back as if she had been slapped. “Are you sure?”

  “Quite. Do you remember, would Michael Bishop have been in London at that time?”

  “He may have been. He was back and forth at times, between London and different parts of Africa. But, my child, what are you suggesting?”

  “And could Whitehead have died in October?”

  “I don’t know.” The deputy secretary-general was trying to remember. “You know, I think it was some time in the English autumn.”

  Abigail released her grip. “Thank you, mother,” she said. She tried to leave, but now it was her turn to be held.

  “Wait, my child. What are you suggesting?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m only suspecting.”

  “Wait a moment.” The older
woman paused to gather her thoughts. “I need to say something.” Abigail saw a trace of pain in her face. “The struggle was a war. You know that?”

  “Of course, mother. I was there.”

  “You were. And you, as much as anyone, know how many of our finest people were murdered by the regime.” Abigail could not bring herself to answer this. “In a war you cannot always choose your weapons or methods. You have to use what is available. We used plenty of people in those days that we would like to be rid of today, but they were good comrades in the struggle and now we can’t just throw them away. We have killers from those days in high positions today, some even in law enforcement. Some of them undertook operations that resulted in the deaths of civilians, which the leadership did not approve. But the masses and other activists see them as heroes. I was in Lusaka when this man arrived there for the first time. There were immediate disagreements over whether we should use him at all. At first we didn’t trust him, this young white man who came from nowhere, and later, when he had shown that he really was on the side of the movement, I still did not want us to use him.”

  Abigail already knew where the older woman was leading her, but every moment of the first twenty years of her life, everything she had learned during that time, compelled her to listen without interruption.

  “Michael Bishop was available. We did not choose him, but he was there and he was effective. My God, he was effective. But, as far as I was concerned, his motives were wrong. He was not fighting for freedom. He was fighting for something else entirely. I don’t know how well you knew him…” This too was something Abigail could not answer. “If you find him, and I don’t believe you will, I don’t want you going to him alone. Do you hear me?”