"The dates?" said Chandler. "Is Hammond the twins' father? Ted's in the Arctic when he arrives. Dora falls for Hammond, then he's off. Nine months later, his kids are born. Which might explain why Ted shot himself that night."
"I'll check if Medicine Hat still has a record of the inquest."
"Hammond wrote from London as an agent for African interests. I worked the Ghoul case with Scotland Yard. DCS Hilary Rand is a commander now. If Hammond's alive, she'll find him."
"He may not be in Britain."
"I'll have her search wide."
"The fifties saw African independence delegates in London. From 1955 on, decolonization boomed. Ghana
went independent in 1957. Guinea 1958. Nigeria 1960. Tanzania 1961. Uganda 1962. Kenya 1963. And so on. The white flash points were South Africa and Rhodesia. If Hammond was capitalizing on native son demands stolen relics be returned, he may be an African entrepreneur. How's your yellow fever?"
'Two years to go."
"My gut tells me you better start popping malaria pills."
SHADES
University of British Columbia
The History office told DeClercq Professor Mbhele was at the Museum of Anthropology, so from the Buchanan Tower he crossed Northwest Marine Drive to venture out onto the cliffs above Tower Beach, where he entered the huge 'Ksan doors of the MOA. Inside, instead of flashing his badge, he paid the $6.00 admission, then walked down the sloped Ramp through the Cross-Roads to the Great Hall, the Kwagiutl carving to his right a human house-post holding a human head from Xumtaspi Village on Hope Island.
The Great Hall filled with totem poles was a spectacular gallery inspired by the post and beam dwellings of B.Cs First Nations. Fifty-foot-high walls of glass admitted ever-changing natural light. Backlit in front of the glass doors to the Haida House complex outside stood the Oweekeno Pole from Katit Village at Rivers Inlet, the nine-foot beak of Hokhokw, the Cannibal Bird, jutting above the doors like an arch. On a platform to the right sat two large potlatch feast dishes: one carved to represent Sisiutl, the double-headed serpent; the other Tsonoqua, the Wild Woman of the Woods. Beyond the dugout canoe with high projecting bow and stern to the left was a mammoth totem cut into four sections, carved before 1860 and removed in 1957 from Tanoo Village in
the Queen Charlotte Islands. The Cormorant on piece two was being sketched by a man wearing khaki, with a tight Afro and mustache goatee framing his face. Near-ing him. DeClercq noticed his dark skin was blotched with white.
"Dr. Mbhele?"
"Yes?" A thick South African voice.
"Pm Chief Superintendent DeClercq of the Mounted Police." He produced his regimental badge. "Last Friday Alex Hunt came to see you. I need to know what the two of you discussed."
"How is she? I heard on the news."
"Battered and broken. But shell pull through."
"Anything to help," said the African. "The subject we explored was the Anglo-Zulu War last century. I was told she hoped to find a trophy box from Rorke's Drift, and when she described it, I told her Td seen a photo of the box in The Times ."
"This photo?" said DeClercq, holding up the microform copy from UBC Library.
"Yes," Mbhele replied.
"Like yourself. Doctor, Fm a historian. Military strategy at Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift I know. What I lack is knowledge about Zulu death rituals practiced in the war. Like umnyama"
"Does this concern the policeman disemboweled last month?"
"Yes, and the body slashed in the mortuary."
"How do those crimes relate to us?"
"Us?" said DeClercq.
"I'm Zulu, Chief Superintendent."
The Mountie passed him the photocopy of the trophy box. "The print's too small to read, but several sheets of handwriting are visible tucked inside. The newspaper article with the picture says the notes pertain to the 'witchcraft bones' displayed, how they were seized from a 'Zulu witch doctor' killed at Rorke's Drift by Lance-Sergeant Rex Craven VC, and how the 'bone diviner used the fetishes to conjure evil spirits.' "
Mbhele snorted. "Bigots," he said. "I'm sorry if I hurt your sensibilities."
"Lm French Canadian, Doctor. The British thrashed
us, too. Nothing you say about them will hurt my sensibilities."
"Are you Catholic?"
"Once upon a time."
'Then you know all about Communion? Practiced also by the Anglican Church? Of which the Queen is Defender of the Faith?"
DeClercq nodded.
"The museum in which we're talking is built on the ancestral lands of the Musqueam Nation. The Indians who lived here were pagans to British invaders because they communed with the spirit world. The totem I'm sketching is a fine example. It once stood outside the front of a dwelling called 'Plenty of Tliman Hides in This House,' and stories behind the crests were owned by a family of the Haida Raven Clan. From bottom to top, now from left to right, the carvings are: Bear, Cormorant, Eagle, and three Watchmen. The Watchmen sat atop the totem to warn of approaching danger."
"I bet they screamed bloody murder when the first British ship arrived."
The African indicated the second of the four totem pieces. DeClercq studied the cracked and unpainted gray pole. "Note how the Cormorant appears partly human. The bird's beak with human eyes, the bird's feathered wings with human hands. This totem suggests communion through transformation. Is the bird becoming human or the human becoming bird? Or is it that by communing they make up One World?"
"The point?" said DeClercq.
"The point is what the British couldn't understand they banned. So totem-raising potlatches were outlawed in 1885. Six years after Rorke's Drift and the nonsense in Craven's notes. Communing with shades has nothing to do with conjuring evil spirits."
"I'm listening," said DeClercq.
"Whites failed to see that in Africa a human being is a whole entity, not divided into body and soul, but made up of body and soul— umzimba and idlozi —with no clear division between the two. We do not say, 'Here is the body and there is the shade,' because the shade is the man, not a part of him. For us, what separates life from death is almost nonexistent, like what separates the
fetus from the newborn child, so our dead remain as real as elder living relatives. They are 'living dead* to us, so the importance of the shades in everyday Zulu life cannot be overestimated. The shades appear to survivors in dreams, visions, omens, or through the medium of a diviner."
Mbhele fingered the bones in the trophy box photo. "Inyanga yamathambo. Bone diviner," he said.
"The shades choose those they wish to divine their will. One chosen to be a diviner enters into the state of ukufiikamela, during which time the shades brood over him, bringing forth something else like a hen does when brooding over eggs. Excess brooding by the shades is to be avoided, for that brings about ukuhhmya: psychotic insanity. To be a diviner is to be the servant of the shades.
'The most common word for a diviner is inyanga. An inyanga yezinthi divines with sticks. An inyanga yama-thambo divines with bones. The term isanusi refers to a male diviner who has the ability to smell out evil and witchcraft. Though this kind of diviner is rare today, last century they were the diviners of the king. To be accused by isanusi of witchcraft or sorcery meant death by impalement, since they were izinyanga zokufa: death specialists. To smell out evildoers, they divined with ten knucklebones, five from a female left hand and five from a male right. Such bones are called izikhombi —or pointers—because like fingers they point at what the shades see."
"So the bones in the photo were taken from a death diviner?"
"Yes, they are powerful relics indeed. Ten is the complete life: imphilo ephelele/'
"How are the bones used?"
'The realm of the shades is opposite to the realm of the living. Light reverses with dark, left reverses with right. Because we're black, shades are white. When King Shaka first saw whites, he thought he saw shades. The left hand is the evil one, yet it divines, so bones are thrown out like dice wi
th the left hand, then each position is noted by pointing with the left forefinger. If the bones point in every direction, imphilo —health—is ev-
erywhere. But when they point in a certain way, evil is fingered.''
4% So how does umnyama fit in?"
"We distinguish three sources of power. Power from the Lord-of-the-Sky. Power from the shades: the lineage of the clan. And power from medicines. Christians think God is the source of good and Satan the source of evil, but we think both good and evil originate with the Lord above. Evil is everywhere, and sometimes it's channeled through witchcraft. One way to guard against evil is by divining insight from the shades. Another way is zila: cleansing rituals.
"Days before Isandlwana, King Cetshwayo's army was summoned to Ulundi. A ceremony was held to cleanse the nation in preparation for battle. On the second day of the ritual, war doctors treated a wild black bull with medicines, then had it killed and cut into strips that were tossed among our warriors. The doctors led them in groups of three down to the banks of a stream to vomit into a deep, narrow hole. Ukuphalaza —vomiting—casts out evil, so a sample was taken to the king and added to the inkhata, a grass coil bound in python skin that embodied the unity of the nation. The pit was buried to keep evil out of the hands of the British.
"Both Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift were fought at the worst time. The night of January 22nd/23rd was the new moon, an inauspicious time for war as the malicious and all-pervading evil influence of blackness— umnyama —is unleashed. If uncleansed, not only might a killing pollute the killer with blackness, but so much combined evil might bring misfortune to the outcome. Ripping the abdomen of the dead is a cleansing zila, for if a body bloats from undissipated umnyama, the killer who didn't cleanse will bloat, too."
"Is divining communing?"
Mbhele shook his head. "We use ritual slaughter to commune with the shades. If there's been a killing, the shades have been approached. Shades manifest themselves sometime between the invocation— ukubonga — during the slaughter, and later when choice organs— isiko —from the body are burned. We commune by ukuhlabela amadlozi: 'slaughter for the shades.' "
"Powerful stuff," said DeClercq.
Mbhele shrugged. 'The kosher meat Jews eat comes from shehitah ritual slaughter. In Holy Communion, you Catholics and the Anglicans drink wine with This is my blood/ and eat bread with This is my body/ Does that not sound like imizimu to you? In my eyes, the British commune as ritual cannibals."
The Zulu puffed himself up in a fair imitation of Queen Victoria, then wagged his finger at the communing Cormorant. "What arrogant hypocrites."
'Thank you, Doctor. You've been most helpful. I'll leave you to your work.''
"May I ask a question?"
"Certainly."
"Do you think the killer you hunt is a Zulu?"
"No," said DeClercq. "Do you know the Greek myth about Pandora's box? Ignoring taboo and blind to consequence, she opened it and released all the evils of the human race. Only Hope remained at the bottom of the box."
"Shades aren't evil."
"Not to the right mind. But neither was a Beatles' song about a playground slide till 'Helter Skelter' was played to Charles Manson. The signs of the zodiac spoke to the Zodiac Killer. And so did his neighbor's dog to the Son of Sam. Whatever shades this killer released, I suspect they brooded him insane."
EVIL EYE
North Vancouver
The pull of the trophy box was too strong for Evil Eye to resist. An African voice inside urged the psycho to lift the lid. Overcome by irresistible impulse, Evil Eye opened the Rorke's Drift box.
Outside, moonlight shone around the Lions Den, the log cabin perched high on Grouse Mountain at the end of a logging road. The windowless room at the heart of
the cabin was bronzed by the flickering oil lamp that cast Evil Eye's shadow like a black ghost onto the Redcoat pictures spiked to the logs. All three tables in the pioneer hideaway were used tonight. Spread across the left table was a ship's blueprint on a poster announcing "E" Division Headquarters 'Red Serge Ball would be held aboard the Good Luck City this March. Tubes of plastic explosives stolen from RCMP Bomb Squad seizures weighed down both sheets. Piled on the right table were research books: Zulu: Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift: 22nd-23rd January 1879; The Story of the Victoria Cross; Zulu Thought-Patterns and Symbolism ... Before this table sat the only chair.
The table between was draped with Ted Craven's Red Serge. On his tunic sat Rex Craven's trophy box. Inside were the notes the lance-sergeant wrote after defending Rorke's Drift, detailing the battle, how he stabbed the Induna, how the witch doctor used the "pointers" in the snakeskin pouch to divine from shades, and why Africans feared umnyama. That night in Dora's kitchen before she died, rooting through the box she brought down from the attic, the twin had found the notes tucked beneath the red-and-black velvet halves displaying trophies in this box.
The night Evil Eye first heard the voice.
This voice urging the psycho to throw the knucklebones.
This voice backed by African drums pounding within the psycho's mind while silence filled the juju room in the Lions Den.
Zombielike, Evil Eye emptied the knucklebones from the snakeskin. Carved on each bone was a hypnotic evil eye that glared at Evil Eye. The black ghost lamplight cast across the log wall moved rhythmically to the call of the drums as screams brought the Redcoat pictures to life.
The psycho stared at Lady Butler's "The Defense of Rorke's Drift." The viewpoint was from the front of the hospital looking toward the storehouse. The air as dark as gunsmoke was filled with sparks and smudge from the burning thatch. Lieutenant Chard, at center, drev; Bromhead's attention to a gap in the defenses. Behind them, Corporal Schiess leapt onto the rampart, hand
cupped to his mouth to shout. Private Hitch, arm hurt, carried ammo packets to the thin red line holding the barricade along the left. There, Lance-Sergeant Rex Craven lunged with his bayonet into the sea of brandished shields and contorted black faces dashing wave after wave upon the whites, dimly glimpsed as they were squeezed out of the frame by the steadfast stand against the savage mass of Darkest Africa.
"One more picture like this," Lady Butler's spouse warned her after she was commissioned to paint by Queen Victoria, "and you will drive me mad."
A warning unheeded by Evil Eye.
Transfixed, the psycho watched the battle ebb and flow until a carpet of dead and dying Africans sprawled right up to the Redcoats' boots.
Evil Eye tossed the knucklebones across the table like dice.
Inyanga Yamathambo.
Bone Diviner.
In the picture, Chard and Bromhead shared a bottle of beer. The other Redcoats drank a tot of rum. Slowly, a ghost came into view among the whites, unseen by all except Evil Eye. The screams that came from the picture were deafening, a symphony of agony emitted by spectral images too vague to discern, but through the hazy forms of which wandered Black Ghost. The shade was an old man with a grizzled beard. His ''kilt'' was of twisted civet and monkey fur. Cow tail festoons circled his neck and limbs. His stuffed otter-skin headband was adorned with feathers. Through his chest was a lunger wound, and stolen from about his neck was the snake-skin in Evil Eye's hand.
Again the psycho threw the izikhombi "pointers" to divine the shade's will.
"Isiko," commanded Black Ghost.
The isiko was to be a Redcoat's heart.
NEW RECRUIT
West Vancouver Friday, January 21, 1994
Robert DeClercq was in the kitchen cooking up a feast, wearing the apron and chef's hat Katt had sewed him for Christmas, listening to CBC Radio analyze the upcoming South African election, unaware killers behind the news would soon stalk one of his men to the ends of the earth.
"... when results are compiled after the April twenty -sixth vote, the last white-minority stronghold in Africa will be gone. Barring an unforeseen tragedy, the next South African president will be Nelson Mandela, undisputed patriarch of black liberation. Dom
inated by Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) and the National Party of F. W. de Klerk, the election campaign that began this month has been marred by violence. South Africa in its present form will die with the vote. Parliament — which now has separate houses for whites, Indians and mixed bloods, but not for blacks — will transform to a single national all-race legislature. Gone will be the racist laws of colonialism. Gone will be the tribal homelands of apartheid. Including KwaZulu. . . ."
The specialty of the house at Chez DeClercq was cannelloni. His secret was the delicate balance between his savory meat filling with fresh oregano only and his— shhhhhh! —divine heart-clogging double-cream sauce. Dinner under control in the oven, he uncorked a bottle of wine, a cheeky little Chardonnay with just a hint of wood. Heretic that he was, Robert felt California vineyards had surpassed the overpriced French, and now, thank Bacchus, South African wines would be politically correct.
"... promising to correct the 'racially distorted' economy, Mandela's African National Congress plans to give a third of the nation's farmland to blacks. Blacks were
dispossessed in 1913 when 87 percent of all land was reserved for whites. The ANC may also nationalize some industries. Though expropriation isn't mentioned, the manifesto clearly plans to give blacks a share of what is now owned by whites. Mandela accuses de Klerk — with whom he shared last year's Nobel Peace Prize — of whitewashing death squads in the police and a secret 'third force' in Government Security dedicated to sabotaging the transition to democracy and black majority rule. ..."
The front door opened.
"We're here," Katt called. A twitching nose poked around the jamb of the kitchen door. "Cardiac arrest. My favorite meal/'
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