The Mandela Plot

by Kenneth Bonert

  Oberholzer comes back by himself, gets in behind the wheel. “You like my Jag, hey?”

  “Not bad,” I say, “for a used car.”

  “Ha. Good one.” He starts up and drives us off. “There’s investigating ongoing for your Mr. Bleznik, who run away following a double homicide involving his business partner. This vehicle was impound. When you’re a Special Branch, C Section, like I am, you can have any impounded vee-hicle you want. Because people, they want to help you when you’re SB. People who use to laugh behind my back, they on their knees at my shoes nowadays. No one wants to mess with a major of the Branch. I’m a powerful man now, Martin. Don’t you feel good knowing I am your friend?”

  I think about asking where we are going but decide not to. Oberholzer asks me how I’ve been keeping. I don’t answer, thinking about Hugo telling me a thousand times how dangerous this man is, that he’s got us in his sights. And in his letter: Definitely I do not want to give that scum Captain you-know-who any bloody chance to get me alone in a cell and neither must you!

  “You been going through hell, I know,” Oberholzer is saying. “But all that’s about to end now. I’m here to help you, Martin.”

  “I’m sure,” I say.

  He says, “I understand you feel bitterness. Your parents murdered by animals. Now a bunch of vagrants move in and kuk all over your family home. You not thinking right, and you are lost. You need to understand I’m on your side, Martin. I am the one arresting these munts who took your ma and your da and stuffed them into that safe to die. What a way to go. Gas chamber is what it was. And you ganna make nice with these pieces of shit? These miserable ANC kieme.” It takes me a second to remember that kieme means germs in Afrikaans and by then he’s saying he’s the only one on my side, catching “daardie bliksem naaiers”—those blasted fuckers—and making them pay for what they did.

  We are driving east on the M2 highway. I can see the tops of the mine dumps, not so yellow at night, our sandbergs made of what we’ve been disemboweling from mama earth for like a hundred years, hauling out her kishkes of gold. There’s some chatter from the Motorola under Oberholzer’s seat. I swallow and say, “We left that guy behind, hey, Major?” He doesn’t answer. I ask where we’re going. “Shush now,” he says.

  We pass the turn-off to Jan Smuts Airport and get off the highway at the next. We find our way to a narrow road with no streetlights and fields of wild grass on either side and drive for another quarter of an hour till we come up on a perimeter of chain-link with a gate and guard. The time on the dashboard clock is five past three in the morning. I see the bright lights of the airport in the distance and hear jet engines, faintly. The guard comes to Oberholzer’s window and lets us through. Ahead is a square building, a government-type block of red bricks. I haven’t seen any signs. We drive around the back and park and Oberholzer takes me to a metal door which he unlocks. There’s a gross chemical smell. He flicks on fluorescent tubes overhead. The place has green tiles underfoot, bare brick walls. He’s got his Motorola in his hand as he takes me left down a passage. I hear machine humming. He stops, opens a cupboard, and takes out a plastic apron and a pair of gloves, puts em on. Then I follow him through a set of swing doors into a large, cold room. There’s a smell of rotting meat plus that chemical stink, both very strong. A row of air-conditioner fans is whooshing loudly from the far wall. There’s a wide space down the middle and on either side against the walls there are metal scaffolds. They’re full of long steel trays in rows, each as long as I am tall. On some of the trays I see long plastic bags. Full bags, full of lumpy things. Oberholzer turns and waves me closer. I’m starting to feel very bad, my skin is prickling with cold, my heart punching. For some reason I think he’s about to show me Arlene and Isaac—even though I know they’re buried. But I think he’s dug them up, that’s what he’s done. What a way to go. Gas chamber. I step forward as he pulls a tray, sliding it partway out. The blue plastic bag has a draw cord at the top and he unties it and looks at me. “I’m sorry about this, Martin. I truly am. But it’s important for you to see. She’ll be going in there.” He’s pointing farther down. At the end of the scaffold there is a coffin made of steel sitting on a metal stretcher with wheels. “Aww,” Oberholzer is saying. “Such a shame, hey. Such a waste.” And I hear crinkling as I look back. One of Oberholzer’s big plastic hands is gripping a handful of dark curly hair while the other one folds the plastic down over the shoulders. He sets the head back down on the tray and I am looking at Annie Goldberg. Her beautiful olive skin looks white and she’s greeny blue around the lips and eyes and her eyeballs are sunk into the skull. Her mouth is open. Oberholzer is holding her head straight with his plastic fingers. I say the word no about twenty times and look away and when I look back I tell him that’s not her, it’s someone else, it’s not Annie. “I’m sorry,” he says, “this is the American, Martin. She’s going in that coffin to be flown home tomorrow. You need to look at her. I want you to see what they done to her.” He pushes the plastic down to her waist. It’s like a bad model of her carved out of cold fat. Never again that shining smile, that laugh—ha!—with her head kicking back.

  “Puncture wounds here, here, here, and here,” he’s saying. “See. I think they used a sharp screwdriver or an ice pick.” He rolls her onto her side. “Most of them are in her back. Dozens. They just butchered away at her. She probably dropped and rolled up in a ball.” I ask him who they are. But he doesn’t hear me over the whooshing and I have to raise my voice. “Who do you think?” he says. “The same people she came here to assist. Communist blacks, terrorist blacks. She thought they were the goodies and we are the baddies like in movies where it is goodies versus baddies, but it turns out she’s wrong. She learned the lesson too late. All they see is a white skin, that’s it. That’s how it is.” He looks up. “Exactly like they did to your parents, Martin.” I find that I’m swaying, getting black dots on my vision. One of my hands touches the scaffold, the ice-cold steel. Annie’s head is turned away from me. “I am speaking the truth, Martin,” says Oberholzer. “I want you to understand why I do the things I do. Why we all have to, if we are going to survive together in this place. Are you oright?”

  65

  That tattoo. The dynamite fist I saw drawn on the muscleman’s skin—it comes back to me, pops right up to the surface like an underwater bottle as I follow Oberholzer back down the passage of green tiles. It was on the sign at the Dynamite Gym on Marshall Street. Muscleman is probably one of them. But what’s a bouncer doing with Oberholzer at my house at two in the morning? The security light is shining on the red Jag and Oberholzer stands there, me next to him, as an old Valiant comes bumping down the dirt road and pulls up, three black guys inside. They get out and Oberholzer talks to them in Zulu for a while, then he turns to me and waves me closer. I shake hands. “These guys are on our side,” Oberholzer is saying. “We call them Askaris, and they do a hell of a job. Nothing is more dangerous than undercover work.” He speaks some more in their language and they laugh a little and go around to the boot. They open it and there’s a man tied up in there with a burlap mielie sack on his head. Oberholzer gives an order and they lift him out. He starts struggling, wriggling like a fish, but his hands are tied to his feet. They slap his sack head a few times. Then they carry him over to the Jag and Oberholzer opens up the boot. “We’ll take him from here,” he tells me. The Askaris swing him up and dump him hard. Oberholzer pulls out a penlight and grins at me and says, “Say hello to your old pal, Martin.” He plucks off the sack, shining the light into the eyes of Comrade Shaolin, who starts struggling again. There’s insulation tape around his mouth. Oberholzer grabs him by the hair, the way he held Annie in there. The late Annie. “Had my eye on this bastard for a long while. Ons het hom nou.” We’ve got him now. He puts the hood back on and slams the boot lid, says to the others, “How’s about a little celebration drink, hey, fellows?” They all smile and we head in, with one of them staying behind with the cars. We climb to the second floor
where there’s a little cafeteria, empty. Oberholzer brings out a bottle of Klipdrift brandy and we sit at a plastic table as he pours the Klippies into three paper cups and then tops them with Coke, giving his own cup only the Coke. He lifts it and says cheers, “to a good job blerry well done.” Everyone touches cups and I join in. We drink and Oberholzer says to me, with a smile, “How’s business with the kill tapes, hey?” I keep my face under control, saying nothing. “That you carried for her to Dolfie Viljoen,” he says. “Vidyos that shows how you build bombs from scratch. Pure evil. The kind of communist stuff when you look at it it’s worse than porno.”

  “I have no idea about any of that,” I say, my throat stiff so that my voice creaks. The other men laugh, Oberholzer only grins. “After we finish up our drinks here, you and me are going to take your pal out to a classified location in the countryside. A happy little farm we keep for people like him. There you are ganna help us get a few answers from him and then we’ll show you how we dispose of our veilgoed.” Trash. I take a big swallow of Klippies. He tops me up at once. “That’ll be your start of your trainings,” he says. “You’re going to meet someone very special. Someone I know you’ll be very glad to see.”

  I say, “Captain—”

  “Major!”

  “Sorry, Major.”

  He thumbs his chest. “Tenth floor, me. Ukay. Don’t forget it. Major Oberholzer! Special Branch.”

  “Sorry, I understand.”

  “Diden I tell you that I would achieve my goal? If you focus, if you believe in yourself, you can do anything. And that’s what you’re going to learn with us. You want to eradicate those kieme who murdered your parents and your American girl, don’t you? Hey? You’re a man, aren’t you? Well this is how it starts. Covert operations. We are fighting a war in the shadows here. And I want you on our side, man. The right side. We are ganna put you through your trainings at the farm, accelerated course. I’ve cleared it all. Then I’m ganna stick you back into that school of yours, for your first assignment.”

  “School?”

  “Ja. That’s right. Your Wisdom of Solomon.”

  I’m staring at him, trying to understand, and he goes into his coat and brings out a notebook and his reading glasses, licking his thumb. “Back with your little mates,” he says, reading. “Solovechik and Horvitz and Moskevitz and the rest.”

  “Jesus. Have you been to my school?”

  “I had a nice talk with Headmaster Volper. Following up on the murders. Turns out you haven’t been there in ages. He gave me a tour. Huge! That is some place you Jewish boys have for yourselves, I have to give it to you. Nothing but the best. Computers even, unbelievable. No wonder you lot are so far ahead of the rest of us, hey? Anyway, it strikes me, hell man, look around there, all these families prolly represent half the bladdy economy of our country. We must keep a better eye on these kids.” Oberholzer leans forward. “After you have your trainings, Martin, you’ll be ready to be my eyes and ears in there. Keep me posted on all the doings of all the kids of these powerful peoples at that school of yours, find me out their little secrets we can use. We’ll work together and make progress. You’ll see. I’ve got new goals.”

  “Okay,” I say. I’m thinking of Annie’s skin in that cold room, her sad, dead tits hanging sideways, and it’s a terrible feeling. I want to vomit. I take a drink to cover it.

  “That Volper. He said I should come give a talk sometime. I reckon he was trying to be clever and bluff me, make me feel small. You should have seen his face when I said fine, ukay. He doesn’t know Bokkie Oberholzer. I look for opportunities to grow as a person. So I’m coming there. It’s been booked. I am the official honoured guest and you won’t believe when for. It’s coming up Friday, 29 September 1989—the day before your Jewish new year starts. Rosh Hashoony. Talk about honoured guest.” He lifts the bottle and pours for everyone but himself. I give him a half-smile, like I know he’s joking. “I’m serious,” he says. “I’m giving that speech.” He lifts his cup. “Cheers, hey. To the Helgers!” We all drink and he lifts again. “To memory of fathers, to strength of sons!” We drink. He pours again. “To winning!” We drink. He turns to me. “Listen, Martin. I want you to see the opportunity here. We are ganna get the evil ones who did that to your parents. And we ganna build you up as a man. You’ll learn how to shoot. How to use a knife. How to kill with your hands. You’ll learn navigation and climbing and kayaking and skydiving. They will build you from the ground up and make you a real man. You understand the opportunity here? You’ll set some high goals. It won’t be easy, it’s a tough course and you are slightly young, but I believe in you, Martin Helger. You’ll report to me. You’ll be part of the action.”

  “Major—”

  “If your brother was sitting here, don’t you think he would tell you go for it?” The brandy is in my head now. I have to concentrate to follow what he’s saying, which is “Tell me what’s your answer. You want to do it? Think of your poor parents.” I look at the other two and they are grinning away at me. Maybe they’re Zulu men from the hostel on the hill in Jules, the ones we almost ran over with the BMW that time. Maybe once upon a time they were ANC cadres themselves, before someone like Oberholzer turned their minds inside out. Kop draai, they call it in Afrikaans—head twisting. And now I’m the one whose head is being twisted. Oberholzer’s getting antsy-pantsy. “What’s your answer, hey?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You know. You’re coming with me.”

  It’s my bladder that saves me, giving me the next words. “Is there a toilet?” He snorts and points and I get up and walk to the far side of the cafeteria. I have to go around the end of the counter and there’s a tray with knives and forks. My hand slips over the tray, snags a steak knife, I’m expecting to hear a shout behind me but nothing comes and when I look back the three of them are talking and laughing as I push in the swing door and enter the toilets. I tuck the blade into my sock against my ankle. Wait for a chance and . . . what? Try to stab him? No. I have to get away. But there are no windows in here. And even if I could get out, one of them is still down by the cars and there’s a chain-link perimeter around this place with a guard at the gate. My bladder is throbbing, I use the urinal. Nothing I can do but go along with Oberholzer to the farm he’s talking about. And then there’s a part of me, a scarily strong part, that is thinking maybe the man’s got a point—maybe I should be stepping up for my folks. I’m too soft. I did nothing to Sammy when he might have been the one who gassed them. Maybe I’m meant to go with Oberholzer to this farm now and learn how to revenge. But I can’t not remember his other farm where he put his rifle to Hugo’s lips. And that something else that’s been bothering me all along—those detectives at the Yard said that a “dumb giraffe” had sent for me the day my parents died. A giraffe—who else could that mean? And if it’s him, why would he have wanted me brought to the Yard? Unless . . . but my mind is back at his farmhouse, excited now, remembering how after he made Hugo pick up the money and we were outside, Hugo dropped the car keys and couldn’t find them so he gave up and went to the front left of the Jag where he always kept a spare key.

  I’m looking up now as I back away from the urinal. The ceiling is made of those ugly white squares like Styrofoam with dimples. No time. I climb up on the sink and push, knock away some squares and stick my head into the roof. Smells of dust. I see a steel beam up in there and I reach up and grab it. I do a hard pull-up, lifting first my body and then get my legs up into the roof space. I find I can rest a lot of the weight of my legs on the panels under me, they bend down but they hold. I pull myself along, my legs sliding behind. I’m making a lot of noise but I don’t care—the brandy is helping me, my fear’s gone numb. When I’m sure I must have passed over the bathroom wall, I kick away the panels. It’s dark in the room below, I see something bulky. No time. I let go and drop, hit something soft, sinking in. A couch. There’s a window—I rush and open it. The drop is two stories. I climb out onto the windowsill and hang fro
m it and look down and let go. My feet catch the next windowsill below and for half a second I’m scratching at the window and then I fall backwards, twisting, and land on my side on gravel hard enough to slam the air out me as grit flies into my teeth and my shoulder goes ow. The steak knife has spilled from my sock. I pick it up and run to the corner of the building where I stop and peek around. The night is dense and black beyond the dirt parking lot floodlit by security lights, the Valiant is parked next to the Jag and the Askari guy is sitting in it, smoking. In about a second I reckon they’ll be in the toilets upstairs and see where I’ve gone if they’re not already, they’ll radio down. I start moving across, bent over and as quietly as I can. If he turns his head he’ll probably see me, but he’s looking forward. When I get close I go to my belly and then roll onto my back and squirm my way right underneath. Without jacks, there’s hardly any room to work, but my father’s voice is in my memory ears, all those years passing him tools, so when I stare up into the Valiant’s engine I soon spot the distributor cap with its four nubby fingers of rubber where the thick wires plug in. I move the knife up there, threading through all the engine parts, seriously hoping he doesn’t decide to start the car cos it’ll chew my arm to dog food. It’s a stretch, but I get the serrated blade to where the wires are bracketed together to the body and start sawing. Just as the knife digs in a radio gives a squawk and then the man’s voice sounds right over me. I bite my lip but go on sawing quietly till the knife reaches steel. This engine is a dead thing now. The guy is still talking. I manage to roll myself over, my sore shoulder seriously paining, and worm out from under the back end and then cross the gap to the Jag and around to its far side. Lights turn on in second-floor windows, my hand is feeling under the wheel well but there’s nothing but grit against my fingers. I take a breath and make myself slow down. Maybe they searched the car and removed it. Calm down. Go slow. There. You beauty. It’s a hard little box and I break a nail getting it open. The key drops into my palm. I reach up and unlock the driver’s door as quietly as I can. I send my arm up and slowly push the key into the ignition. Then the steel door bangs open and one of the other Askaris comes out and shouts to the Valiant guy. Valiant guy gets out and walks toward him. I worm myself up onto the seat, staying bent over, and click the door shut and then I get one hand to the automatic shift and the other around the key. I blow out two quick breaths and turn the key and move the shifter to D and stamp the accelerator flat. The big Jag jumps like a stabbed bull. I rip the wheel around with the engine overrevving like a scream and the building flashes across the windshield with dust and gravel boiling up under the security lights. In the mirror I see one of the guys lifting his hands and then there are cracking sounds, like stones hitting the steel and the glass back there. When I realise he must be shooting I jerk the wheel and go off the track into the open dark of the field, the car humping up and down crazily. I hear heavy knocks from the back where Shaolin must be getting smashed around, and I smell burning. The airport lights shine beyond the chain-link fence ahead. I slow down and notice the handbrake is still on, schmock, that’s what’s making the burning smell, I take it off and switch on the headlights and see the ruts of a dirt road running parallel to the fence, right against it. I steer for it and turn left and start following along with the fence to my right, gunning it as fast as I can. I whip past a gate and hit the brakes. The gate is locked. I swing the Jag out and then reverse at the gate with the accelerator mashed flat. I can see the locking chain in the red of the taillights and there’s a second to hope this doesn’t crush Shaolin—but I don’t want to risk smashing out the headlights by ramming with the front. We hit with a jingling crunch and the gates fly open. I do a three-point turn and I’m facing a dirt track into more bush, disappearing into blackness.