Khanyi was not really the sort of employee who fetches coffee, and I thought she was going to explain that, but perhaps she suspected that Fehrson had ulterior motives, and so she went off with as much dignity as she could muster.
“Let’s start with a clean slate here,” said Fehrson when the sound of Khanyi’s high heels had faded. He swept his hand over the table as if he was clearing it of imaginary objects.
“I want you to know that I remember Lindiwe well. Very well.”
“I see,” I said because he seemed to be waiting for a response.
“When you mentioned her name, it gave me quite a turn. I will tell you what I remember about what Lindiwe did for us, we’ll show you what paperwork we have, and then I ask that you let this thing rest. Despite the allegations of your late friend, there is nothing worth digging up here, I would like you to understand that, Ben.”
Fehrson paused, so I said I understood. He sat back in his chair and adopted the pose of a man about to recall the distant past. A glaze to the eyes, and a blank gaze at the ceiling.
“She was a bright spark, Lindiwe. A few years older than my son. You know my son? I don’t mean know him, because I doubt that you’ve met him, but you know that I have a son?”
“I do,” I said. Fehrson’s son was one of the first things explained to any new member of staff, in hushed tones while waiting for the kettle to boil in the kitchen. He was the reason that Fehrson’s hair was so white. The reason that Fehrson’s marriage had not lasted. The reason, it was said, for the lengthy pauses in Fehrson’s conversation, for the times that he would gaze out of windows or stare blankly at ceilings. The son had been released from prison several years ago when the murder charge was dropped, but no one was sure that he had stopped the drugs.
“Well, just a few years older,” said Fehrson, and looked at me with damp blue eyes.
“I see,” I said. “And she worked with the Department?”
“She was very young,” said Fehrson. “Very young. Didn’t work with us, but was involved in an operation with us thirty years ago. Not the Department as we know it now. But the Service as it was then.”
“You mentioned she was just a messenger.”
“She was more than that,” said Fehrson and he sniffed. “My memory served me badly on that front. It was an operation, one that went horribly wrong from our side, and was buried as a result. I wasn’t directly involved. The files were locked away, and we all did our best to forget about it.”
Fehrson paused and so I gave another prod to keep the ball rolling. “What was the failed operation she was involved in?”
Fehrson fiddled with the papers on the table and pushed them back into a folder as if he’d decided not to share their contents after all.
“There were personal reasons I was not involved. Family reasons. I wanted you to know that.” Another damp blue stare.
“I see,” I said.
“We’ll wait for Khanyisile to get back before we discuss the operation,” he said. “She’s been reading up about it since you called.”
We sat in silence for a moment and I wondered what Fehrson had wanted to say out of Khanyi’s hearing, or whether his desire for coffee was the only reason he had sent her off.
“Lindiwe was what we used to call a free spirit,” he said suddenly. “Dynamic, bright as they come, with a future that had no bounds. She worked with us, but never for us.” Fehrson gazed down at the closed folder on the table before him, as if he was peering into a deep well. “She was her own person. Had that sense of completeness that is so irresistible. She needed no one, but everyone needed her.” Fehrson looked up at me, “you know the kind of person I mean.”
It was a statement, but I nodded in response to the question he hadn’t asked.
“She came from the dust pits of the squatter camps,” he continued, “but she had an education that was strictly the reserve of white people in those days. Her mother worked as a domestic servant, and her employer used to insist that Lindiwe sit at the table and do the homework her own child was doing. She even provided extra textbooks for her, and the two children grew up like siblings. At least that is what she used to say. Her mind was like a sponge, and she had dreams of getting herself a university degree, which was by no means impossible in those days. Difficult, but not impossible. She had a bright future and was fired up by the kind of indignation that comes from actually understanding the history she’d read. She was going to right the wrongs of the world.”
“And she chose to do that by working with the apartheid government?” I asked with barely concealed incredulity.
Fehrson shook his head. “No, no, no,” he said as if the idea was absurd. The sound of Khanyi’s heels rang out on the steel steps that climbed into the Attic, and Fehrson added another couple of no’s for good measure as she distributed the coffees.
“Latte for you, Father,” she said as she passed Fehrson an impressively large cup and several sugar packets, “and short black for our conquering hero.” She handed me the toy replica of Fehrson’s cup. “No sugar … bitter as it comes,” she said.
“No, no,” continued Fehrson as if he hadn’t noticed Khanyi’s return. “She was a woman trapped between two worlds. White on the inside, black on the outside. She was a … what is that term they use? For that kind of thing.”
“A coconut?” suggested Khanyi, not without an edge of disdain.
“That’s it. A coconut! What an absurd term. Practically raised by a white family, so she was white on the inside, they would say. At least, she identified with what they call the ‘European culture’ today.”
“And she was black on the outside,” explained Khanyi.
“Such an absurd term,” said Fehrson who had noticed Khanyi’s tone of voice.
“Not to mention insulting,” said Khanyi who had no doubt been called a coconut many times.
“Of course, of course,” said Fehrson who took sustenance from his latte, only to realise that he had not added sugar. “Not a term we use nowadays. Not at all.” He smiled at Khanyi, who did not return the gesture. She sipped her cappuccino noisily.
“Botanical comparisons aside,” I said, “could you tell me about the operation she was involved in?”
“I’m just explaining to Ben here that we don’t have much to say about the woman.”
Fehrson started tearing off the tops of the sugar packets one at a time and pouring the contents into his latte with great care as if he was counting the grains.
“Almost nothing at all,” said Khanyi obediently. “It was so many years ago.” She peered at me over her cappuccino, ready to duck down behind it if I started throwing things. I guessed that they’d reached the scripted part of the performance.
“We can tell you what we know about the operation she was involved in,” said Fehrson studying the plastic stirrer that Giuseppe had provided and wondering which end he should use. “But honestly, Ben, I wouldn’t want you jumping to any erroneous conclusions.” He realised both ends were the same and started stirring.
“Conclusions?” I said. “About what?”
“We wouldn’t want you joining the imaginary dots. I’m sure all this film stuff you do is very interesting, but you must long for something with more … what is the word?”
When I didn’t suggest any solutions to his puzzle, Fehrson looked down and gingerly extracted the stirrer from his coffee. He raised the cup to his lips and tested a micro-drop of it.
“Meaning,” he said. “That’s what I was thinking. These …” he looked at me blankly as he tried to find a suitable word.
“Documentaries,” supplied Khanyi.
“Exactly,” said Fehrson as if Khanyi had proved his point. “These documentaries you do now are all very well, but you need to get back on your feet my boy, and I would not want you to start charging at windmills just to find a little more meaning in your life.”
“By joining imaginary dots and drawing conclusions?”
“No need to get touchy,” said Fehrson
. “I’m merely suggesting that you tread carefully. Khanyisile, why don’t you tell Ben what we know?”
“Of course,” said Khanyi, returning to the script with a bump. “We pulled the register for you. There is a connection between Ms Dlomo and Mr Mbuyo, but as Father says, it is not one that is likely to lead anywhere.”
Fehrson pushed the folder of papers across the table. It contained a few typed pages, a list of subject lines and reference numbers with dates. A form of indexing system that the National Intelligence Agency had used to simplify their case files and which was referred to as the register.
“You can keep that,” said Fehrson. “Get hold of the files for yourself if you choose.” When I didn’t react he added, “We made that copy for you.” The two of them sat there as if waiting for me to leap over the table and embrace them as thanks for their boundless generosity. I disappointed them.
“Why don’t you just tell me about it?” I suggested.
“Father’s memory of the whole thing is very vague,” said Khanyi.
“Very,” affirmed Fehrson. He nodded sadly and did his best to look like a confused old man. “I was not personally involved. But I can provide you with the background if that helps.”
I said it would. Fehrson tested a little more of his coffee, then drew a deep breath. “Lindiwe came to us when things were going badly. Very badly. We were licking our wounds after losing some of our ground crawlers. What we called our people on the ground, the ones out in the field. The rebellious students who would work their way into the youth leagues, chant the slogans, lead the marches and shout about freedom for the people, then come and tell us all about it. We lost a string of them and were wondering what we could do next. The Americans and Brits were coming up with fresh ideas but none of them worked here. The Cold War was shifting, the landscape changing around the world. We tried a few of their tricks, but what works in the First World rarely translates well here in Africa, as you know.”
“This was the time of the resistance cells in the squatter camps?”
“It was. Our enemy were scattered throughout those squatter camps. There was a state of emergency, big meetings were banned. The sort of stupid political decision that made our work even harder. Instead of large groups we could easily watch, there were now small clusters of them spread all over the informal settlements. We needed to find a way to infiltrate them, which is when Lindiwe got involved.
“She had a boyfriend who was getting chummy with some of the people who’d been sent off to Moscow, and then smuggled back into the country through Angola, or Mozambique. In Moscow they’d been subjected to the kind of training that would make you cringe, but they knew which end of a gun the bullet came out of, and the talk everywhere was the big R word. There was going to be a Revolution. The communists were behind it, and they were all slapping each other on the back, and drinking the vodka they’d brought back from Moscow. The revolutionaries didn’t like the idea of communism, but they liked the idea of toppling the apartheid government more than they disliked communism, so no one worried too much about the details.”
“And Lindiwe came to you? She wanted to assist the regime? Join ranks with the apartheid security police?”
“That’s the problem with the history books,” said Fehrson in response to my tone of incredulity. He got to his feet again and took his latte over to the window. “It’s all so black and white, good and evil. You were on one side or the other. It wasn’t like that. How can I explain? When you’re in something, swimming in it as it were, it isn’t so easy to put things into their neat boxes and stick a label onto them. I don’t think Lindiwe was helping the ‘regime’ as you like to call it. She found herself in a situation that presented an opportunity that furthered her ends, and those of her boyfriend, and probably the plight of her people as she saw it, although honestly that is the kind of neat nonsense that writers of history books espouse. She took the opportunity because it was in her nature. She was probably against your ‘regime’, adamantly against it I would imagine. But I believe that she took exception with the way that her boyfriend and his chums were doing things.”
“They set up an operation,” said Khanyi. “Called ‘Spieël’,”
“Afrikaans,” said Fehrson. “Mirror to you Brits.”
I didn’t remind him that my mother had been Afrikaans and that my understanding of the language stretched to household furniture.
“I don’t remember why Spieël – could have been a play on words, or one of those meaningless code names. In those days everything was double entendre and nudge-nudge wink-wink, but in any case. The plan was simple enough. Her boyfriend was very chummy with some of the big players. He was always a rung below them as I remember, the boyfriend was. He was the one sent out to buy cigarettes when they were having adult conversation, that kind of thing. It rankled, and he passed his dissatisfaction down to Lindiwe, where it built up like steam in a pressure cooker. He was better than an office boy, she said.”
“So the boyfriend passed things on to Lindiwe who brought them back to you.”
“Not directly of course, they met up with one of the surviving ground crawlers.” Fehrson gazed out of the window at the building rain clouds. “The information was reliable, if a little dull. Low-level stuff really. They planned civil disruption, sabotage, that kind of thing. Useful but not earth shattering. Of course the Pretoria boys wanted us to expand, build a network. They were megalomaniacs with visions of grander things. Empire builders. A man called Du Toit came down from Pretoria and took himself a desk. This was when we were in that awful block in Woodstock. He told us we were doing it all wrong. Said that we’d lost control. Although as a sponge operation there didn’t seem much about it that needed controlling.”
“Sponge?”
“Information gathering only, no action. We had young Breytenbach collating it all, and he was doing a good job.”
“Breytenbach?”
“The Gold man. The Breytenbach gold mining family. The son, Riaan. Of course, he’s heading up the family business now.”
“He worked for the Department?”
“Not the Department. Not back then. We were just a small division of military intelligence. He was with us for his national service. His family wouldn’t take the risk of having him posted to the border where he could step on a mine or get shot. They secured him a cushy posting far away from the action. He was a weakling, and the family knew it. He rather resented it, I think. His father insisted that he do the full four years instead of the two years with annual camps. So he spent some time with us. He proved himself to be reliable.”
“He handled Lindiwe’s operation?”
“No, no. Operation is too grand a term for it. And he certainly wasn’t ‘handling’ it. There wouldn’t have been any contact between them. There was someone on the ground as a contact for them, who passed on their reports which he compiled and presented to us. Not very complicated.”
“But the man from Pretoria said you were doing it all wrong?”
“Du Toit, a conspiracy theorist of note. Said we had none of the necessary checks in place, and he was right about that. But it was too late by the time we realised it.”
“Too late?”
Fehrson sipped at his latte and gazed out at the darkening clouds.
“Du Toit said it would just be a matter of time before the whole house of cards came down. Of course, I wasn’t the one responsible for it, by any means. I was up and coming, as they say. Still naïve and optimistic.”
Fehrson sipped at his latte modestly.
“But things did go wrong?”
“Oh yes, things unravelled fast.”
Fehrson paused as if he’d lost his way in his memories. “It’s going to rain,” he said and turned away from the window, looking at me as if expecting I would deny it. “First winter rains.”
“Things unravelled?” I said.
“They did. There was something big being discussed by the boyfriend’s little gang. A power station, if I r
emember correctly. They were going to cripple the Peninsula, bring the Cape to its knees, all that nonsense.” Fehrson stopped talking and sat down at the table as if he’d finished his story.
“That is when it happened,” said Khanyi.
Fehrson nodded slowly as his mind pulled itself back to the present. “Oh yes, it did that. Five of them, trapped like lobsters in a shack that was burned to the ground. And a pregnant woman was injured, lost her child, which got the media doing back flips for weeks. The international media that is, the local media were censored.”
“The Khayelitsha Massacre?”
“That’s what the media called it. But there was no evidence it was anything but an accident. The whole of Khayelitsha was a death trap in those days. Shacks built of wood and corrugated iron, ten or fifteen people crammed into a shack half the size of this room. And everything done with paraffin. Lights, cooking. You knocked a paraffin lamp over, and the shack would turn into a gas oven in moments. The iron would expand and you couldn’t open a door to get out. It was nothing short of horrific.”
“But not an accident in this case?”
“It was absurd to think it could have been, despite the lack of evidence. Five leading African National Congress revolutionaries all having a sleep-over party? You think they were all so fast asleep in there they didn’t notice the tin box they were in was on fire? No, as I remember, no one tried to push the idea of it being an accident. The fact that five revolutionaries died was not generally regarded as a tragedy among the tax-paying class of the time. There were blank columns in the papers, their way of protesting the censorship. There was a story, but they couldn’t print it, was what they were saying. And a few weeks later it all blew over. No one had taken clippings of the blank columns to put into their scrapbooks. Some politicians shook their heads and bemoaned the health risks posed by the influx of illegal immigrants who had created the squatter camps. Then they turned the conversation to topics that made them look like the protectors of the people they liked to pretend they were. Protectors of the white people, of course. The fact that five members of the swart gevaar – the ‘black danger’, for you Brits – had suffered an unfortunate cooking accident was downplayed.”
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