by Tom Sharpe
‘Practising what?’ Luitenant Verkramp asked incredulously when his men reported this new activity to him.
‘Fishing from a bucket,’ the Security men told him.
‘He’s off his rocker,’ Verkramp said.
‘Keeps muttering to himself too. Repeats “Fascinating” and “Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir” over and over again.’
‘I know that,’ said Verkramp who had listened in to the Kommandant’s monologue on his radio.
‘Here’s a list of all the things he’s bought,’ said another Security man. Verkramp looked down the list of waders and deerstalkers and boots, completely mystified.
‘What’s all this about him meeting some woman at the Golf Club?’ he asked. He had never given up his original idea that the Kommandant was engaged in some sort of illicit love affair.
‘Chats her up every day,’ the Security men told him. ‘Plump little thing with dyed hair aged about fifty-five. Drives an old Rolls.’
Verkramp gave orders to his men to find out all they could about Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon and went back to his study of Fact & Fiction in Psychology. He had no sooner started than his phone rang with a message that the Kommandant wanted to see him. Verkramp put the book away and went along the passage to the Kommandant’s office.
‘Ah, Verkramp,’ said the Kommandant, ‘I’m taking a fortnight’s leave as from Friday and I’m leaving you in charge here.’ Luitenant Verkramp was delighted.
‘Sorry to hear that, sir,’ he said diplomatically. ‘We’ll miss you.’ The Kommandant looked up unpleasantly. He didn’t for one moment believe that Verkramp would miss him, particularly when he had been left in command.
‘How are you getting on in the search for those Communists?’ he asked.
‘Communists?’ said Verkramp, puzzled for a moment. ‘Oh well it’s a long business sir. Results take a long time.’
‘They must do,’ said the Kommandant feeling that he had punctured Verkramp’s irritating complacency a bit. ‘Well, while I’m away I expect you to concentrate on routine crime and the maintenance of law and order. I don’t want to find that rapes, burglaries and murders have gone up in my absence. Understand?’
‘Yes sir,’ said Verkramp. The Kommandant dismissed him and Verkramp went back to his office in high spirits. The opportunity he had been waiting for had arrived at long last. He sat down at his desk and considered the manifold possibilities offered by his new authority.
‘A fortnight,’ he thought. ‘A fortnight in which to show what I can really do.’ It wasn’t long but Luitenant Verkramp had no intention of wasting time. There were two things he had particularly in mind. With the Kommandant out of the way he would put into effect Plan Red Rout. Crossing to his safe he took out the folder in which all the details of the operation were kept. Months before he had drawn up the plan in secret. It was time to put it into practice. By the time Kommandant van Heerden returned from his holiday, Luitenant Verkramp was certain that he would have uncovered the network of saboteurs he was convinced was operating in Piemburg.
During the course of the morning Verkramp made a number of phone calls and in various firms throughout the city employees who didn’t normally receive phone calls during working hours were called to the phone. In each case the procedure was the same.
‘The mamba is striking,’ said Verkramp.
‘The cobra has struck,’ said the secret agent. Designed as an infallible method of communicating the order to his agents to meet him at their prearranged rendezvous, it had its disadvantages.
‘What was all that about?’ the girl in agent 745396’s office asked when he put down the phone after what could hardly be called a prolonged conversation.
‘Nothing,’ agent 745396 replied hastily.
‘You said “The cobra has struck,”’ said the girl, ‘I distinctly heard you. What cobra’s struck? That’s what I want to know.’
All over Piemburg Verkramp’s system of code words aroused interest and speculation in the offices where his secret agents worked.
*
That afternoon Luitenant Verkramp, disguised as a motor mechanic and driving a breakdown truck, left town for the first of his appointments, and half an hour later ten miles out on the Vlockfontein road was bending over the engine of 745396’s car pretending to mend a broken distributor to lend verisimilitude to his disguise while giving 745396 his instructions.
‘Get yourself fired,’ Verkramp told the agent.
‘Done that already,’ said 745396 who had taken the afternoon off without permission.
‘Good,’ said Verkramp wondering how the hell he was going to get the distributor together again. ‘I want you to work fulltime from now on.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Infiltrating the revolutionary movement in Zululand.’
‘Where do I start?’ 745396 asked.
‘Start hanging about Florian’s café and the Colonial Bar. Plenty of students and Commies go there. The University canteen is another place where subversives gather.’ Verkramp explained.
‘I know all that,’ said 745396. ‘Last time I went there I got chucked out on my ear.’
‘The last time you went there you hadn’t blown anything up,’ said Verkramp. ‘This time you won’t just say you’re a saboteur, you’ll be able to prove it.’
‘How?’
Verkramp led the way round to the cab of his breakdown truck and handed the agent a packet. ‘Gelignite and fuses,’ he explained. ‘On Saturday night blow the transformer on the Durban road. Put it there at eleven and get back into town before it goes up. It’s got a fifteen-minute fuse.’
745396 looked at him in astonishment. ‘Jesus wept,’ he said, ‘you really mean it?’
‘Of course, I do,’ snapped Verkramp, ‘I’ve given the matter a lot of thought and it’s obviously the only way to infiltrate the sabotage movement. No one’s going to doubt the dedication to the Communist party of a man who’s blown up a transformer.’
‘I don’t suppose they are,’ 745396 agreed nervously. ‘What happens if I get arrested?’
‘You won’t be,’ Verkramp said.
‘That’s what you told me when I had to pass those messages in the men’s lavatory in the Market Square,’ said 745396, ‘and I got nabbed for soliciting.’
‘That was different. Uniformed branch got you that time.’
‘Uniformed branch could get me this time,’ said 745396. ‘You never know.’
‘I’m in charge of the uniformed branch from now on. I’m Kommandant from Friday.’ Verkramp explained. ‘And anyway who paid your fine?’
‘You did,’ 745396 admitted, ‘but I got the publicity. You want to try working in an office where everyone thinks you make a habit of soliciting old men in public lavatories. It took me months to live that down and I had to move my lodgings five times.’
‘We’ve all got to make sacrifices for a White South Africa,’ said Verkramp, ‘which reminds me. I want you to move your digs every few days. That’s what real saboteurs do and you’ve got to be really convincing this time.’
‘All right, so I blow the transformer. What then?’
‘Do as I say. Mingle with the students and the lefties and let it be known you’re a saboteur. You’ll soon find the swine letting you in on their plans.’
745396 was doubtful. ‘How do I prove I blew the transformer?’ he asked. Verkramp considered the problem.
‘You’ve got a point there,’ he agreed, ‘I suppose if you could show them some gelignite it would do the trick.’
‘Fine,’ said 745396 sarcastically, ‘and where do I get gelly from? I don’t keep the stuff handy you know.’
‘The police armoury,’ said Verkramp, ‘I’ll have a key cut and you can take some out when you need it.’
‘What do I do when I’ve found the real saboteurs?’ 745396 asked.
‘Get them to blow something up and inform me before they do so that we can nab the bastards,’ said Verkramp, and having arranged to drop the k
ey of the police armoury at an arranged spot, he handed over 500 rand from Security Branch funds for expenses and left 745396 to fix the distributor he had taken to bits.
‘Remember to get them to blow something up before we arrest them,’ Verkramp told the agent before he left. ‘It’s important that we have proof of sabotage so we can hang the swine. I don’t want any conspiracy trials this time. I want proof of terrorism.’
He drove off to his next rendezvous and during the course of the next two days twelve secret agents had left their jobs and had been given targets round Piemburg to destroy. Twelve keys for the police armoury had been cut and Verkramp felt confident that he was about to strike a blow for freedom and Western Civilization in Piemburg which would significantly advance his career.
Back in his office Luitenant Verkramp checked the scheme and memorized all the details carefully before burning the file on Operation Red Rout as an added precaution against a security leak. He was particularly proud of his system of secret agents whom he had recruited separately over the years and paid out of the funds allocated by BOSS for informers. Each agent used a nom de guerre and was known to Verkramp only by his number so that there was nothing to connect him with BOSS. The method by which the agents reported back to him was similarly devious and consisted of coded messages placed in ‘drops’ where they were collected by Verkramp’s security men. Each day of the week had a different code and a different ‘drop’ which ensured that Verkramp’s men never met his agents, of whose existence they were only vaguely aware. The fact that the system was complex and that there were seven codes and seven drops for each agent and that there were twelve agents would have meant that there was an enormous amount of work being done had it not been for lack of Communist and subversive activity in Piemburg to be reported. In the past Verkramp had been lucky to receive more than one coded message per week, and that inevitably of no value. Now it would be different and he looked forward to an influx of information.
*
Having initiated Operation Red Rout, Luitenant Verkramp considered his second campaign, that against miscegenating policemen, which he had code-named White Wash. Out of deference to Dr Eysenck he had decided to try apomorphine injections as well as electric shock and sent Sergeant Breitenbach to a wholesale chemist with an order for one hundred hypodermic syringes and two gallons of apomorphine.
‘Two gallons?’ asked the chemist incredulously. ‘Are you sure you’ve got this right?’
‘Quite sure,’ said Sergeant Breitenbach.
‘And a hundred hypodermics?’ asked the chemist, who still couldn’t believe his ears.
‘That’s what I said,’ insisted the Sergeant.
‘I know that’s what you said but it doesn’t seem possible,’ the chemist told him. ‘What in God’s name are you going to do with two gallons?’
Sergeant Breitenbach had been briefed by Verkramp.
‘It’s for curing alcoholics,’ he said.
‘Dear God,’ said the chemist, ‘I didn’t know there was that number of alcoholics in the country.’
‘It makes them sick,’ the Sergeant explained.
‘You can say that again,’ muttered the chemist. ‘With two gallons you could probably kill them all off too. Probably block the sewage system into the bargain. Anyway I can’t supply it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well for one thing I haven’t got two gallons and wouldn’t know where to get it and for another you need a doctor’s prescription and I doubt if any doctor in his right mind would prescribe two gallons of apomorphine anyway.’
Sergeant Breitenbach reported his refusal to Luitenant Verkramp.
‘Need a doctor’s prescription,’ he said.
‘You can get one from the police surgeon,’ Verkramp told him and the Sergeant went down to the police morgue where the surgeon was performing an autopsy on an African who had been beaten to death during questioning.
‘Natural causes,’ he wrote on the death certificate before attending to Sergeant Breitenbach.
‘There’s a limit to what I’m prepared to do,’ said the surgeon with a sudden display of professional ethics. ‘I’ve got my Hippocratic oath to consider and I’m not issuing prescriptions for two gallons. A thousand cc is the most I’ll do and if Verkramp wants anything more out of them he’ll have to tickle their throats with a feather.’
‘Is that enough?’
‘At 3cc a dose you should get 330 pukes,’ said the surgeon, ‘Don’t overdo it though. I’ve got my work cut out signing death certificates as it is.’
‘Stingy old bastard,’ said Verkramp when Sergeant Breitenbach returned from the chemist with twenty hypodermics and 1000 cc of apomorphine. ‘The next thing we need is slides of kaffir girls in the raw. You can get the police photographer to take those as soon as the Kommandant leaves on Friday.’
*
While his deputy was making these preparations for Kommandant van Heerden’s holiday, the Kommandant was adjusting himself to the change of plans occasioned by Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon’s letter. He was just passing the desk in the police station when Major Bloxham arrived.
‘A letter for Kommandant van Heerden,’ said the Major.
Kommandant van Heerden turned back. ‘That’s me,’ he said. ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance,’ and shook the Major’s hand vigorously.
‘Bloxham, Major,’ said the Major nervously. Police stations always had this effect on him.
The Kommandant opened the mauve envelope and glanced at the letter.
‘Hunting season. Always the same,’ said the Major, by way of explanation, and alarmed by the suffusion of blood to the Kommandant’s face. ‘Damned awkward. Sorry.’
Kommandant van Heerden stuffed the letter hurriedly into his pocket.
‘Yes. Well. Hm,’ he said awkwardly.
‘Any message?’
‘No. Yes. I’ll stay at the hotel,’ said the Kommandant and was about to shake hands again. But Major Bloxham had already left the police station and was getting his breath back in the street. The Kommandant went upstairs to his office and read the letter again in a state of considerable agitation. It was hardly the sort of letter he had expected to receive from Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon.
‘Darling Van,’ he read, ‘I feel so terrible writing to you like this but I’m sure you’ll understand. Aren’t husbands a frightful bore? It’s just that Henry’s being awkward and I would so love to have you but I think it would be better for all our sakes if you stayed at the hotel. It’s this wretched club thing of his and he’s so stubborn and anyway I’m sure you’ll be more comfortable there and you can come and eat with us. Please say you will and don’t be angry, Your loving Daphne.’ It was heavily scented.
Unaccustomed as he was to receiving perfumed letters on mauve deckle-edged paper from other men’s wives, the Kommandant found the contents quite bewildering. What Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon meant by calling him Darling Van and describing her husband as a dreadful bore he could only surmise, but he was hardly surprised that Henry was being awkward. Given half an inkling that his wife was writing letters like this, the Colonel had every right to be awkward and the Kommandant, recalling the Major’s enigmatic remark about the hunting season being always the same, shuddered.
On the other hand the notion that he found favour in Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon’s eyes, and if the letter was anything to go by there wasn’t much doubt about that, appealed to the chivalrous instincts of the Kommandant. Of course, he wouldn’t be angry. Circumspect certainly but not angry. After consulting Etiquette for Everyman to see what it had to say about replying to amorous letters from married women and finding it of little use, the Kommandant began to draft a reply. As he couldn’t decide for ten minutes whether to use Dearest, My Dear, or simply Dear the letter took some considerable time to write and in its final form read, ‘Dearest Daphne, Kommandant van Heerden has pleasure in accepting Colonel & Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon’s kind invitation to stay at the hotel. He also has pleasure in accepting your invitation to dinner
, Yours affectionately, Van,’ which the Kommandant thought was a nice blend of informal and formal and unlikely to offend anyone. He sent it up by police messenger to the Heathcote-Kilkoons’ house at Piltdown. Then he turned his attention to the map and planned his route to Weezen. Lying at the foot of the Aardvark mountains, the little town had something of a reputation as a health resort – had once in fact been something of a spa – but in recent years had been forgotten like Piemburg itself and replaced as a holiday centre by the skyscrapers and motels along the coast.
6
On Friday morning the Kommandant was up early and on the road to Weezen. He had packed his fishing rod and the paraphernalia he had acquired for his holiday in the boot of his car the night before and was wearing his Norfolk jacket and brown brogues. As he drove up the long hill out of Piemburg he looked down at the red tin roofs without regret. It was a long time since he had permitted himself a holiday and he was looking forward to learning at first hand how the British aristocracy really lived on their country estates. As the sun rose the Kommandant turned off the national road at Leopard’s River and was presently bucketing over the corrugations of the dirt road towards the mountains. Around him the countryside varied according to the race of its occupants, being gentle undulating grassland in the white areas and, down by the Voetsak River, which was part of Pondoland and therefore a black area, badly eroded scrub country where goats climbed the lower branches of the trees to gnaw at the leaves. The Kommandant practised being British by smiling at the Africans by the side of the road but got little response and after a while gave it up. At Sjambok he stopped for morning coffee which he asked for in English instead of his usual Afrikaans and was delighted when the Indian waiter diplomatically asked him if he was an overseas visitor.