Pinnacle Event

by Richard A. Clarke

  Johann Potgeiter shook his head. He seemed a typical upper-middle-class Viennese, but he was being unusually cooperative with two men who had just appeared on his driveway. “To tell the truth, while he picked good investments, he kept bad records. I don’t really know too well what happened before he died.”

  Konrad Voltke looked at Ray Bowman in a way that suggested that there was not too much point in pressing the issue with Johann, at least not now. Bowman nodded his head, indicating that Konrad should pick up the questioning.

  “About his death, I’m sorry to bring you back to that day, but did you talk with him that morning,” Konrad asked in perfect English.

  “No, unfortunately. Usually we would speak in the evenings. I had talked to him the night before and he was in good spirits. Naturally, I have been over all of this with the Polizei.”

  “And do you know why he was turning into the street, the Daringergasse?” Konrad inqired.

  Johann Potgeiter stared out and up at the vineyards. “I have wondered that so many times. So many times because I have to drive that way so often, past the spot.” He turned back to Konrad Voltke. “My conclusion is that he forgot something at home and was going to turn around. He could be so focused in thought sometimes that he would not notice the world around him. That’s why we never had him babysit with our girls. They are hard enough for us to handle.”

  Bowman wondered to what degree Johann Potgeiter’s answers were rehearsed, or at least thought out, not spontaneous. Had the son of the late nuclear bomb maker been waiting for a visit like this from the authorities? Bowman knew he needed to change the tempo of the discussion.

  “Your father was a member of the Trustees, a cabal of the leaders of the former South African defense industrial complex. So, have you replaced him in that role? Are you coordinating your investment decisions with those of the other Trustees who also each got a half billion dollars days before your father died?”

  Potgeiter did not blink. “I am not a Trustee of anything, Herr Thomas. And no one tells me how to invest.” His demeanor did not change. “And, as I said, I don’t really know about funds that moved around before my father died.”

  Bowman tried again. “Johann, if you knew that your father was murdered, that the controls for his car were hacked and he was driven into the oncoming tram, that he did not drive himself into it, would you want to find out who did that to him?”

  Johann Potgeiter was silent for a moment, a blank look on his face. He turned to the Austrian security man. “Is that what happened, Herr Voltke?” There was still no emotion.

  Konrad Voltke was caught off guard, first by Bowman’s line of attack and then by Potgeiter’s question to him. “The Polizei’s official conclusion is that it was a traffic accident, but we, ah, we wondered if you accepted that?”

  “I have no reason not to accept what the Polizei told me. Unless there is some new information. Is there, Herr Thomas? Does the U.S. Treasury Department know something that the Polizei missed?” He pronounced the words U.S. Treasury Department in a tone that almost implied he thought his houseguest was perhaps from some other part of the American government.

  “We are always suspicious when billions of dollars slosh around in strange channels and then people die, Herr Potgeiter,” Bowman said rising from the table. “If you should be contacted by the Trustees, please do let us know. Thank you for your time.”

  Back in the BMW, Konrad Voltke looked at a text message on his mobile. “The boss wants to see us at his home. It’s not far, it’s here in the Eighteenth District.”

  “What did you think of Johann?” Bowman asked as they drove down the hill.

  “Practiced liar.”

  “What part?”

  “I couldn’t tell, perhaps all of it,” Konrad replied.

  The Deputy Director of the BVT lived in a house that looked too small for the tall iron gate and fence around it. Indeed, it had been an out building, a carriage house, for the larger villa next door. The fencing had been part of the original estate. Now it was a small home in a neighborhood of large homes, many of which had been divided up into multiple units. Konrad had an electronic gate opener that worked at his boss’s house. He was obviously a regular visitor. “I often drive him to work,” he explained as they parked.

  Inside, the former carriage house seemed spacious and warm. A wing addition provided a large, open plan dining room and kitchen. Bowman heard music coming from the second floor. “My sons,” Gunter Rosch said, pointing upstairs. “They say they cannot study without their music. I think it is why their mother volunteers at the hospital in the late afternoon.”

  At home, the Deputy Director of the Austrian domestic intelligence service looked more like a farmer: unfashionable blue jeans, a plaid short-sleeved shirt, and a tall beer in one hand. “So you had a successful meeting with Potgeiter?”

  “No we didn’t, I’m afraid,” Bowman said, taking a proffered glass of the local brew. “He was uninformative.”

  Konrad Voltke joined them. “I’ve been out at the car, using the radio to chat with my boys down at the Polizei. The charred wreck of the late Potegeiter’s car was crushed after the investigation. We will not be able to examine its computers.”

  “Ach, so,” Rosch smiled. “Well, if Johann was not informative, his neighborhood was very interesting. My countersurveillance team on you detected two, amazing, two distinct sets of people looking at the house while you were in it. You are quite a magnet, Raymond.”

  “The U.S. Embassy boys and who else?” Ray asked.

  “That’s what is so fascinating. Neither one of them were the Americans from this morning. We waved them off at the Palais Modena and they stayed away after that.”

  Rosch was smiling, hardly able to contain his enthusiasm that his team had stumbled into something fascinating. “My countersurveillance unit on you was not big enough to handle such a surprising situation, but they got enough information that we should be able to track down your tails and identify them. It was a good drill for my boys. They had never caught a double surveillance before.”

  The enthusiasm was contagious. “Well, maybe we are flushing the birds we wanted to find. Maybe I should stay a few more days before I go to Israel,” Ray thought aloud.

  “May I suggest you do consider altering your travel plans, Ray? I talked to a friend today, after you left my office, my counterpart in South Africa,” Rosch said. “They knew all about the Trustees and they, too, are suspicious about their deaths. In fact, the investigation is apparently their number one priority. They would very much like to compare notes with you as soon as possible, in Cape Town.”

  “Never been to Cape Town,” Ray replied. “Well, I can delay the trip to Israel a couple of days if the South Africans have been investigating all this and think they have something to share. Tell him I accept his invitation.”

  Gunter Rosch emitted a good belly laugh. “You are booked in First on the Qatar flight tomorrow morning out of Schwechat to Doha and then on to Cape Town, courtesy of my friend Mbali, but, Raymond, make no mistake, Mbali Hlanganani is definitely not a him.”

  7

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20

  ABOARD QATAR AIR FLIGHT #808

  DOHA TO CAPE TOWN

  The din was gone. Cocooned by the J. S. Bach from the Bose headphones, mesmerized by the clouds catching the sunset’s rays below, he felt a clarity as he moved south toward Africa. His mind had been blank for almost an hour. Rarely was he ever fully in a moment, but at thirty-eight thousand feet, sipping the Dom, staring out the overly large window of the Dreamliner, he had let his prefrontal processor idle. He knew what would happen.

  When it started again, whatever his internal analytics would bring up first would be the most salient, the thing they had been chewing on while the part of his brain of which he was most fully aware had been thinking about the annoying rituals of the airports in Vienna and Doha.

  When they began to surface now for consideration, the thoughts came softly, as though he ha
d always known that they were there, waiting in the queue to be fully recognized.

  Why, part of him asked, why did it have to be him, again?

  He had found the strength to run away and try a different life after all the deaths, on both sides, in the drone program. For a long time after Sandra’s death he woke in the middle of the night in a sweat, thinking that drone was going to fly into his window. That dream had stopped happening, thanks to Dr. Rosenthal and thanks to his new life.

  And that new life was pleasant. It was good for his body and good for his mind. He realized slowly what normal was like, realized how on edge his prior life had been. Sure, he was not contributing to anything, except perhaps raising the level of bar service at Skinny Legs, but why did you have to contribute to something? Most people just lived their lives, without any sense of obligation to do anything more than to be good to their family, their friends.

  Where had he gotten this crazy internal imperative that he had to contribute on a higher plain, make things better, or at least stop them from getting worse? Why did he think that he had to give purpose to his life when we were, after all, just a speck in a multiverse that no human had ever fully understood?

  He had been hiding in paradise, hiding from himself, from dealing with choices he did not want to confront openly. The central choice came down to this: Should he continue to do the work at which he was very good, in a business that was very bad, at least for its participants? It was work that had to be done, but it ate away at those who did it and left them unfulfilled, left some a hollowed-out shell, left others dead. And with some of the now dead, he had let himself develop a bond in life. He had decided that doing nothing, or close to it, was better. The sunsets and the sands, the beer and the books, the wine and the women could fill his day and most of the night.

  Yet he had taken the mission. Because it was an excuse to go back to it all? Because this was a mission, which, if it failed, would have consequences that would make life so much worse for so many? Because he believed, despite suppressing his arrogance, that he might really be the only one who could figure it out? But he was an analyst, that was his strength, and now he was once again in the field, alone and at a disadvantage in almost everything he did. Maybe Jefferson and Locke were more profound than he had given them credit for, arguing that the pursuit of happiness was a goal. Well, he had found some degree of happiness on the hill overlooking that sleepy Caribbean harbor, with Emily and Linda. He wondered if he could ever get that back.

  The sunset on the clouds was fading, even at altitude. It was night in Zanzibar, below, or was that just the name of a track from Thelonious Monk? The Dom was gone and now a new Bach Passion began to play.

  8

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20

  THE BAY HOTEL, CAMPS BAY

  CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

  “My name is Cammil,” the bartender began. “You look like you have had a long day.” The small Traders bar was empty, but a welcoming fire was lit in the fireplace, despite the fact that the air conditioning was on.

  Having been until recently a bartender himself, Raymond Bowman felt suddenly at home with Cammil’s greeting, even though he had never been to South Africa before. “Yeah, long flight. Just checked in to the hotel. Very nice place.” He had not known what to expect, but the clean, modern airport, the quick ride to this beach resort, the sleek hotel, all made him feel more like he was in Malibu than in South Africa. “What local beer do you recommend?”

  “Well, most people will have Windhoek, maybe their Tafel, but if you be asking me what I would drink on expense account, I would go micro,” Cammil explained as he reached for a beer mug. “Best microbrewery now be Robson’s East Coast. You like a pale ale, try theirs.”

  “Well, that’s what I’ll be having then.”

  Cammil poured it perfectly, almost to the point of overflowing, but not quite. Then he excused himself. “I be right back, if anyone else show up, you tell them, I be right back.”

  Ray liked the idea of being alone in a bar again, as he was when he closed up at Skinny Legs. He looked out at the ocean, dark as night beyond the beach. He thought a nice run on the sand and a dip in the waves would be a good way to start the day in the morning, before he got a taxi into downtown Cape Town to meet his hosts, the local security service.

  “Is the bartender here?” It was a woman who was seated behind him in a wingback chair by the fire. He hadn’t noticed her before.

  “No,” Ray said, turning and smiling. “He’ll be right back.”

  “That’s what the termite asked,” she said.

  “I beg your pardon?” Ray said, shaking his head at the striking, tall woman in the chair. As he walked toward her, he realized he was staring at her long legs. “I didn’t get that.”

  “Most people don’t. Termite walks into a bar and asks, ‘Is the bartender here?’” she said. “Here, have a seat with me by the fire, Mr. Bowman.”

  The jet lag, the strangeness of the last few days, the incongruity of him being in Cape Town, and now a beautiful woman who knew who he was. “My name is Brad Radford,” he said, sitting in the chair opposite her.

  “No, that is the name on your passport, but you are Raymond J. Bowman” she said in an accent he could not place, a formal, precise, lilting, slightly pinched English. “And you like Cohibas. So there is one here for you. After all, Traders is the best cigar bar in Cape Town. That is why I booked you into the hotel here. That and the fact that it is a little bit out of town.”

  He shook his head in surprise, then laughed. “You are my host?” Ray asked, sniffing the Cohiba.

  “Mbali Hlanganani, at your service, sir.” She reached a long bare arm across the drinks table. “Forgive my rudeness. I wanted to meet you at the airport, but the day went long so I thought I would come out and share a drink with you.”

  Cammil had returned and was standing by their seats.

  “Mbali, sorry for the delay. I had to go downstairs to find your Pinotage. Here you go. The L’Avenir ’99 from Stellenbosch.”

  “Thank you, Cammil, and thank you for closing the bar tonight for us.” She sloshed the purple liquid in the glass and then delicately sniffed the air above it. “Perfect.”

  “Mondays are slow,” the barkeep admitted.

  “We’ll still pay the usual for closing the bar,” she smiled back at him.

  “You’re a regular?” Ray asked.

  “I live nearby. Small place near the beach my father bought for me. I could never afford it on a civil servant’s salary, but he has done very well for himself in Durban, part owner of a food store chain with some Indian gentlemen. Durban has always been a place where the races got along, not like Joburg and Pretoria.”

  “So you’re from Durban?”

  “Yes, well, KwaZulu. We were Inkatha up there,” she said after sipping the wine. “So my family was not ANC.”

  “And yet you are the Director of the Special Security Services Office. A Zulu? How did that happen?” he asked.

  “I did my graduate work on the AWB, the Afrikaner Resistance Movement. You know, the guys with the Nazi flag imitation? My professor introduced me to Thabo Mbeke and he hired me as a young security advisor. Then, when he became President after Madiba stepped down, Tabo created the SSSO, Special Security Services Office, and put me there. Then after him Zuma liked the work I did tracing some of the state assets that disappeared just before Madiba became President. President Zuma is a Zulu. He wanted a fellow Zulu running the shop. So, like a tree vine in the forest, I kept getting higher because I happened to be attached to the right tree.”

  Bowman suddenly had the impression he was sitting across from one very accomplished individual, one who had probably overcome a lot of obstacles of race, gender, ethnicity, bureaucracy. “So, where was this very well-connected professor? Where did you go to university?”

  “Oxford. They needed a black girl so they didn’t feel like racists,” she smiled.

  “Sounds like you are an expert on racists, the
AWB and all that,” Bowman observed.

  “They are not the real threat, Mr. Bowman.”

  “Call me Ray, please, or Brad, or…” he said. “Who is the real threat?”

  “The AWB are farmers, like the Boeremag group were. Big, tall men, overfed, but dumb as oxen. The real white power structures, Afrikaner and English, laugh at those guys and their little Hitler clubs,” she said in a softer, but deeper, more serious tone. “The power men ran the banks, the mines, the defense industry, the labs. They had the money and the real arms. They had the Special Forces in the Army and the intelligence units.”

  “I thought the whites still do run the banks and industry?” Ray asked.

  “They do, but we took control of the Army, even Special Forces. We took over the intelligence services and the elite police units right away in the mid-nineties. They still run what’s left of the defense industry, but it’s nothing like what ARMSCOR was in the eighties. And we no longer have WMD programs in the labs. That I can assure you.”

  Ray was beginning to think that he might like working with this woman. She was a no-nonsense professional. “So, again, who is the threat?”

  “The people I worry about are the expats. When they left they took billions in gold and diamonds, their own and the state’s, plus what they could steal from the corporations. That kind of money is power, even if they haven’t used it yet. And they do have an organization, still.”

  “The Trustees?” Ray asked.

  “I’ve known about them for twenty years now. I gather Washington just figured out they exist,” she laughed.

  “Well, let’s say Washington’s recent attention to them was occasioned by their all acquiring a lot of money and then, their simultaneously dying by walking into bullets and falling off boats and balconies, and being hit by trolleys and trains,” Ray replied.

  “Washington does not share enough with us. We are not one of the Five Eyes. The Five Eyes are not just all English-speaking nations, they are all white majority nations.” Mbali sat back in her chair. “You all shared with each other, the Brits, the Canadians, Australians, even New Zealand, but not with English-speaking nations run by brown people, not with India, not with Barbados, not with us. So, yes, we do not normally share much with Washington. We believe in two-way streets here, even if we do drive on the left.”