The Harbinger

by Mark Graham

  As they approached the inner city, Mansell found himself trapped among cubicle high-rise apartments, thirty-story office buildings, smart shops with expensive prices, and the roar of jackhammers, construction crews, and cars.

  On Commissioner Avenue bumper-to-bumper traffic encapsulated them. The taxi escaped onto Loveday Street, where a rear-end collision brought traffic to a standstill. Accepting the obvious, Mansell paid his fare and joined what remained of the lunch-hour crowd.

  Instantly, the winter chill of the Transvaal struck him. His breath turned to shafts of steam as it left his lungs. Coal smoke burned his eyes. Hunching his shoulders against a gusting wind, Mansell buried his hands in his jacket pockets and walked three blocks west to the public library on President Street.

  Inside, the ninety-five-year-old building contained three museums, two galleries, and one of the most complete collections of books in the world. He consulted the directory. The business department was located on the fourth floor.

  A staff worker directed Mansell to a caged area housing government documents, library reference books, and the business guides he was seeking. Two services in Jo’burg provided subscribers and members with information about public companies in the Transvaal. The first was called the Nationwide Exchange Telegraph, NET, and the other was Moody’s Industrial Manual.

  Impressed by their size, Mansell selected the most recent edition of Moody’s. He hauled the thick volume to an empty table. Under “e” Moody’s listed sixteen companies whose corporate names began with the word East. No East Fields.

  That, Mansell thought, suggested three possibilities. One, East Fields wasn’t a public corporation at all. Two, the mine was no longer in business—though that hypothesis failed to explain the two natives arrested in Springs. And three, East Fields was a masterful fabrication designed solely as a false front for smuggling guns.

  Undaunted, Mansell tried a back issue, the 1985 edition. Again, no East Fields. Stymied, he hailed the staff worker and explained his problem.

  “A service like Moody’s or NET lists active companies only,” the staffer told him. “A defunct company doesn’t earn revenues. It doesn’t pay income taxes. Now, they may be starting up a new business, in which case they’re probably a subsidiary of a larger company. Or they may be reentering the business. Unlikely, but that would explain the new employees.”

  It would, Mansell thought and, working on that premise, he selected editions from 1975, 1965, and 1955. He drew a blank with the first two. Deflation gave way to resignation. Still, he thumbed through the ‘55 edition, and there it was. East Fields Mining Corporation, an incorporated gold mine located in Brakpan County. A footnote indicated that 1955 represented the company’s first year of operation.

  Mansell spent another five minutes learning that Moody’s listed the company for only three years. A bust, he thought. An expensive bust for someone.

  He departed the public library with intentions of finding out who that someone was.

  ****

  Three blocks away on Harrison Street, a man dressed in a topcoat and homburg entered the stately lobby of the First Industrial Bank of Johannesburg. He went directly to the elevators. The brokerage offices of Stobbs and Brimblecombe were located on the sixteenth floor. He was five minutes early, and thus, by Afrikaner standards, punctual. He was admitted at once to the office of a Mr. M. H. du Buisson, the firm’s senior vice-president and the man’s personal account executive.

  “Mr. Montana,” du Buisson said. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, sir. Please sit down.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The transfer papers are all in order.” Du Buisson spread two forms in front of his client and offered him a fountain pen. The first document authorized the transfer of R50,000 from the joint account of Martin and Christina Montana to a similar account at Citicorp in New York. The second form authorized the transfer of R32,000 from the First Industrial Investment Trust to the same New York bank. Instructions would be forwarded with the transferrals requesting that the funds be placed immediately into government certificates of accrual and treasury bonds. The transactions represented the third, and final, such transfer over the course of the last twenty-four months.

  The client signed both documents. He passed du Buisson a waiver with Christina Montana’s signature acknowledging the joint account transfer. He stood up. The two men shook hands.

  “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Montana,” said the broker.

  “Thank you. You’ve treated me well,” he said. “I won’t forget it.”

  A taxi was waiting at the curb for the man when he emerged from the bank five minutes later. He jumped into the backseat. “Pretoria, please. The Union Building.”

  ****

  A city bus delivered Mansell to a restored colonial building on Van Brandis Avenue. Out front sycamores and jacarandas formed a graceful arch above a circular fountain. Marble steps led past a colonnaded entry to the Provincial Courthouse.

  Mosaic tiles and a high arching ceiling highlighted the foyer. Footsteps echoed with a percussive hollowness. Mansell rode the elevator to the basement, where the vaults of Companies House, a public-domain facility giving the ordinary citizen rights to a public company’s complete documentation, were located. At the front desk, he filled out a card with the East Fields information. He presented the card to the archivist, paying his statutory fee in cash.

  The archivist returned with a thin file. Mansell found a seat and started reading. In 1955, the year East Fields incorporated, they filed a prospectus with the Securities Board of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. They contracted with the brokerage house of Clare, May, and Seymour to present a public offering of ten million shares of common stock, priced at R3 a share. The initial offering sold 200,000 shares. A second offering at R1.50 a share netted 125,000, and a final offering in 1957 at R.75 sold an additional 195,000.

  The total amounted to a mere fraction of the three million shares listed as outstanding. All, Mansell thought, surely forgotten in deed boxes and safety deposits across the land. Five board members accounted for the remaining 2,480,000 shares outstanding. Mansell surveyed the list, noting that three of the five now lived far from Johannesburg, one in Sussex in England. Each owned 100,000 shares.

  A fourth director, the company’s treasurer and secretary, was a member of an old established law firm, whose offices at 235 Jeppe Street in Johannesburg were given as East Fields’s company address.

  The fifth was Cyprian Alfred Jurgen; total holdings of two million shares. His positions included chairman of the board and president of operations. Last known address: 49 St. Mark Street, Houghton Estates, Johannesburg.

  Mansell closed the file. Houghton Estates rang a bell. One of Jo’burg’s wealthier suburbs, if he remembered correctly. He felt confident. People didn’t move away from a neighborhood like Houghton. And tomorrow morning, he thought, with luck, Mr. Cyprian Jurgen will be entertaining an unexpected guest.

  Mansell checked into an antiquated, thriving hotel on Hanover Street called The Joubert. That afternoon, he toured the Johannesburg Art Gallery in Joubert Park. When he returned, he placed a phone call to Mrs. Ian Elgin.

  Mrs. Elgin was in the middle of preparing dinner, and not eager to talk about her husband’s demise. Mansell explained in oblique terms about the internal security matter that had arisen because of the arms, and a deep-seated concern about the safety of several high-ranking government officials. As part of the investigation, they were searching deeper into Elgin’s past, and could she remember when Ian and the minister of justice had first met?

  “I suggest you ask the minister, if it’s his life you’re so worried about,” she replied.

  “The minister is in France at the moment, Mrs. Elgin. And I might add that the person we’re seeking is almost certainly responsible for your husband’s death.”

  “Meaning I should be grateful, correct?” She punctuated the words with a sarcastic chuckle. “My dear Ian and Minister Leistner
met in Durban, Inspector, in 1975 during the harbor strikes my husband was so proud of. Cecil saved Ian’s neck from the chopping block, didn’t you know? He also managed to get Ian transferred here, which, I suppose, sealed their friendship, and—”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Elgin, I appreciate it.”

  ****

  “I assign a simple task,” Cecil Leistner said, “to the most powerful bunch of hooligans in Africa, and they bring me excuses.”

  The conference room reeked of smoke and discarded cold cuts. But for now, it was quiet. The commissioner and his staff had departed. Oliver Neff sat opposite Leistner in a leather-bound club chair, absorbing his employer’s fury.

  “Minister, Fredrik Steiner was dead days before anyone even knew he existed. Your own Security Branch included.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better? I’ve got fifty headhunters looking for the guy who offed Steiner, and this small-town constable from Port Elizabeth, Mansell, keeps beating them to the punch at every turn.”

  It had come to Leistner’s attention that Delaney Blackford had been seen in the inspector’s company on at least one social occasion, and he wondered now if that bit of gossip was contributing to his consternation. The phone call from Jo’burg earlier this morning should have squelched any such sophistry, but it hadn’t.

  The minister of justice sucked on the tip of his pipe, staving off a feeling he knew to be far more acute than simple irritation.

  “Oliver, if there’s a connection between Fredrik Steiner’s death and those ANC bastards we arrested last week in Springs, we’d damn well better find—”

  At that moment, Jan Koster appeared at the door, and the minister paused in midsentence. What in the name of God, Leistner wondered, is he doing here?

  “My apologies, Minister. I was told your meeting had ended,” Koster said. “Shall I—?”

  “Come in now that you’re in,” Leistner said. He pushed away from the table and stood up. Oliver Neff bowed his head and excused himself without looking at the newcomer.

  “I’m surprised by your visit, Jan Koster,” Leistner said as they climbed the stairs to the second floor. “Has something happened? It was my understanding that Christopher Zuma arrived today. Am I wrong?”

  “He arrives tonight, Minister. And I’ll be there when he does, but my own department also requires a certain amount of attention here, if only for appearance’s sake. And there’s news that you should know about. I’ve heard from Van der Merve.”

  Leistner responded to the announcement with narrowed eyes, and Koster said, “Andrew Van der Merve, Minister. From ARVA

  “Yes, how foolish,” said the minister. “Nothing quite so annoying as a nasty dose of preoccupation, is there?”

  “Which leads me to wonder, Cecil, if it’s wise to be pushing your Security people quite so hard right now. Those ANC bastards, as I overheard you calling them, were carrying permits for our mine, if you recall. True, the evidence has been taken care of, but the people in Springs know, and so do the people at the Labor Bureau. It’s not just our secret. All it would take is one of your overachievers to start asking the wrong questions.”

  They entered Leistner’s office, and Koster asked, “What have you heard from Port Elizabeth? Anything?”

  “I’ve heard there’s a killer on the loose out there, that’s what I’ve heard,” Leistner replied. “And the winds have a suspicious smell to them.”

  “I agree,” was all Koster said. “And we don’t need a can of worms we can’t handle right now, do we?”

  Leistner grunted. He retreated to his desk and shed his suit coat. “Very well. I’ll call the dogs off. Now tell me about Van der Merve.”

  ****

  By train, the route from Port Elizabeth to Bloemfontein measured 692 kilometers, another 410 to Jo’burg. Their schedule included nine additional stops along the way. If all went according to schedule, train number 407 would arrive in Johannesburg Wednesday morning at 8:12.

  Delaney reported to the chief engineer, a leathery Afrikaner captain named T. L. Smit, at eleven. The “hogger,” a nickname often endured by chief engineers, assigned her a closet-sized cabin adjacent to his own in the train’s employee car.

  With an overnight bag across her shoulder, a briefcase in one hand and walking stick in the other, Delaney informed Captain Smit of her plans to keep a rigid file on computerized signaling and crew performance. The latter elicited a stern glare, but it confirmed Delaney’s authenticity.

  For the next thirty minutes, she introduced herself to the crew, asking perfunctory questions in order to update each member’s union file.

  Like every railroad, the South African system employed men known as watchdogs. The watchdog’s primary function was to rid his particular train of any excess baggage that might attach itself before or after the train left the station. This excess baggage assumed many labels in many different parts of the world, but in the train business, every name translated into the same thing, a bum looking for a free ride.

  Like those of every railroad, the watchdogs of the South African railways were generally burly, rugged, and truculent.

  The watchdog on train number 407 was Boy Sixpence. Boy was thirty-one-years old, as tall as a phone booth and nearly as wide. His father was Zulu. But his mother being of a lesser tribe called the Shangaan, Boy entered the world a bastard. The doctor who delivered Boy into the world announced his arrival by saying, “It’s a boy and a half, and his mama done died in the process. I’ll take a sixpence and a bottle for my trouble. Thank you and good-bye.” Thus the name.

  There were worse things than being raised an orphan among the Shangaan, but not many. At the ripe age of nine, Boy dug coal seven days a week. Every cent of his wages went into the tribe’s coffer. At sixteen, he went to work for the railroad, shoveling coal into hungry locomotives.

  Things changed.

  When a thief armed with a butcher knife tried to rob Boy of his first week’s paycheck, he bludgeoned the man with a single punch to the face and a knee to the groin. The docile Shangaans decided Boy was old enough to keep his own pay from then on. They expelled him from the tribe. Boy moved to New Brighton. He built a house with chicken wire, barrel staves, and sheet metal.

  The railroad promoted him to watchdog. He proved reliable and effective. Boy never used his fists. Most times the pikers jumped train when they saw him coming. Otherwise, Boy threw them off when the train slowed for a sharp bend or a steep grade.

  Five minutes before departure, Boy Sixpence was inspecting the train one last time. A man dressed in blue jeans, a sailor’s shirt, and a windbreaker, and holding an army duffle bag at his side, approached him with a friendly wave. Boy’s guileless expression never changed. The man hailed him in Afrikaans first, English second. Boy understood neither and both, bits and pieces. He didn’t even bother to shake his head.

  The man reached into his back pocket and pulled out a fistful of rand notes. This, Boy understood. The railroad paid Boy R125 a month, plus food and a boxcar to sleep in while he worked. He watched the man count out two hundred rand’s worth of the bills.

  Silently, the man pointed to a sealed boxcar. Then he said, “Johannesburg.”

  Casually, the way he did everything, Boy surveyed the train yard. He stuck his hand out. The man passed him the money. Boy cracked the boxcar door, and Andrew Van der Merve clambered aboard.

  Boy finished his rounds minutes later, and with a nod of his head, gave Captain Smit the go-ahead. Ten minutes later, as the carillon of bells in the Campanile celebrated the arrival of noon, eighty-two train cars, laden with automobiles from General Motors, rubber goods from Firestone, wool from Cape Angora goats, citrus from Kirkwood, steel from Japan, and oil from Saudi Arabia, cleared the Port Elizabeth city limits.

  Standing on a platform outside the employees’ cab, Delaney counted backward from the caboose until she came to the East Fields boxcar. She watched it sway in unison with the other cars until the features of its exterior were etched in her brain.r />
  Later, she walked from the sleeping compartment to the locomotive, where she climbed a steel ladder into a cozy, modern control booth. The chief engineer and the fireman were hunched over a geographical chart. Columns of smoke lingered above them.

  They both looked up in surprise.

  “Gentlemen,” she said.

  “Ma’am,” said the fireman. “Do we cut the mustard so far?” “A model of efficiency,” she replied.

  “Have a cigar, Mrs. Blackford,” Smit said curtly.

  “After dinner, perhaps.”

  The fireman threw back his head, laughing. The hogger grunted.

  Delaney cracked a window and leaned out. They were fifty kilometers from the coast now. The train steamed over a suspension bridge spanning the Sundays River. North lay the Suurberg, the Sour Mountains. Climbing, they swept through the Addo bush, a hardy land of drought-toughened shrubs and stunted, bent trees.

  The broken mountains of the Olifantskop loomed ahead. Valleys fed by itinerant rivers grew in richness. Wisps of coal smoke ascended from beehive-shaped huts, and thatched-roof rondavels hid beneath the bows of cottonwoods and acacia. Cattle pens and harvested mealie patches surrounded native kraals. Sheep grazed in fields of stubby grass. Delaney fancied a sense of peace foreign to the shantytowns of New Brighton and Zwide, and she wondered if it was real or imaginary.

  She made short notes concerning the signaling systems at Middleton, Cookhouse, and Eastport. And finally, a steep, rocky gorge that paralleled the Great Fish River and cut through the mountains of the Winterberge and the Bankberg led to their first stop, the bustling rail center of Cradock.

  It was 5:18, early evening of the fifteenth day of July.

  ****

  The helicopter circled the mine slowly and then set down upon an improvised helipad next to the control tower. Within minutes, rumors were running in wild streaks throughout East Fields. He had arrived.