The Harbinger

by Mark Graham

  Chapter 10

  The dark Impala was nowhere to be seen. Mansell took the back alley to Third Street and walked briskly to the corner. The shingle outside the single-story office read, LLOYD FOSTER CHESNEYÓATTORNEY-AT-LAW.

  Mr. Chesney had just arrived. Mansell presented his official police identification to the receptionist, referred vaguely to his position with the South African Police, and asked for a few minutes with the lawyer. The secretary buzzed Mr. Chesney on the intercom, and Mansell was ushered into a comfortable office. The lawyer wore a gray suit, wire-rimmed glasses, and a genuine smile.

  “I’ve come as an envoy from the Office of Internal Affairs in Pretoria, Mr. Chesney,” Mansell said. The lawyer’s eyes widened, fulfilling the chief inspector’s expectations, and he added, “No, no. No problems here, sir. We’re simply conducting an official review of several cabinet members. Minister Leistner in this case. Historical background, personal profiles, that type of thing, you know. Strictly confidential, however. It seems that the recent media rage for government witch-hunting has hit several of the larger Afrikaner tabloids, and they’re uncovering a few more skeletons than is comfortable. If you understand my meaning. May I ask a few questions of you?”

  “Please sit down, Inspector.” With a wave of his hand, Chesney guided Mansell to a chair. “Ask away.”

  “You weren’t practicing law in 1951, were you, Mr. Chesney?”

  “What? Why no, I was only twenty-one years old in 1951. Law school was still a year away.”

  “Of course. And who would the attorney of record have been in Pampoenpoort then, would you know?”

  Chesney chuckled. “Why, my very own Uncle Jason.” “Still alive?”

  “And kicking. Yes, indeed.”

  “Anna Kathleen and Peter Leistner, the minister’s parents, died December thirty-first, 1950. Would your uncle have been the chief executor of their will, by chance?”

  “Let’s find out,” Chesney answered. He picked up the telephone and asked the switchboard operator to dial a local number. The conversation lasted sixty seconds. Then Chesney excused himself. He disappeared into the outer office. He returned shortly, carrying a sealed file and a tray of tea and sweet rolls.

  “If you don’t mind,” he said, serving for them both, “we’ll wait for Uncle Jason.”

  Not five minutes later, Jason Chesney shuffled through the door complaining about the wind and the dust. He was bald and bespectacled, with the profile of a vulture. He supported himself with a cane, but his eyes glowed like slow-burning butane and his handshake was firm. He shooed his nephew away from the desk and sat down.

  Mansell reiterated his purpose, and the elder said, “Peter Leistner, yes. A quiet, hardworking farmer. His wife baked the best rhubarb pie in the province. Now his boy’s some power packer back in the Transvaal. Huh. Leaves me all aquiver. Sure it does.”

  Lloyd Chesney opened the file. He spread papers out in front of his uncle, saying, “Not much to show for it.”

  “Enough,” said the elder, adjusting his specs. “I took care of the will, all right, but the minister, if I recall, was away when his folks died. Korea or something.”

  “A car accident, wasn’t it?” asked Mansell.

  “Out on the county highway. On their way home from a hoopla of some kind or another, celebrating the new year and their newfound son, I suspect,” said Jason Chesney. “No one’s real sure what happened, except that they went off the highway at a fair clip. No skid marks, nothing. Just a ball of flames and a scrap heap in the middle of a wheat field.”

  “Terrible thing,” said Mansell slowly. “And the bequests from the will?”

  “It was your standard last will and testament. In two parts, if I recall. Upon Peter’s death everything transferred to Anna. In the case of both parties dying, it all went to the minister,” answered the uncle, reading, grunting. “There were some small cash gifts to employees and the like, all that hogwash. Let’s see. A player piano to Anna’s friend Julia Littner. A gold locket and a silver set to the old schoolmistress, Sheena Goosen, and a hunting rifle to Peter’s godchild, a friend of Lloyd’s here in fact, named Jaap Schwedler.”

  “All of which was destroyed in the fire,” added the nephew. “Fire?”

  “A flash fire the night after the parents died. Destroyed the old schoolhouse Peter’s father had built in 1892, and the house Peter himself built thirty-five years later as an attachment. Two lives and sixty years of history snuffed out in two heinous nights of disaster.”

  The words echoed in Mansell’s brain. Fire, he thought, the claw with no arm. He grappled with a cigarette, inhaling until his lungs ached.

  “What about personal effects from the house? Strongboxes, photo cases, safes. Things of that nature,” he asked. “And from the school. Personal records, filing cabinets, medical charts from the nurse’s office. Surely something survived.”

  The two lawyers looked at each other woefully. The elder requested water, and his nephew fetched a tall glass. In time, Jason Chesney said, “Inspector, I remember that fire like a ten-year-old remembers the fireworks on Independence Day. Pete musta stored lamp fuel or kerosene somewhere in the house. There were explosions and heat something fierce. A bona fide conflagration, sir. And Pete and Anna didn’t store things in safes or strongboxes. No, everything that could burn, did.”

  “I see. And Minister Leistner disposed of the property when he returned for the funeral?” asked Mansell.

  “He never returned,” answered Uncle Jason, coughing. “Ah hell, would you? He’s a bigwig now. Pampoenpoort’s a forgotten memory. There was land, of course. Farm equipment and a fine herd of sheep, if I recall. Enough to start fresh on for sure. But I received a letter from young Cecil from an army convalescence center in, hm, near the Cape somewhere. Sell what we could, he said. Send him anything that was left after expenses. Thank you very much. But you probably know all that.”

  “They didn’t tell me much, I’m afraid,” Mansell said, shaking his head. “Was Jaap Schwedler a friend of the minister’s?”

  “Indeed,” said the nephew. “They signed on for Korea together. Part of the Number Two Squadron. Shot down in the same raid.”

  “Did Schwedler come back?”

  “Shell-shocked some say. Others say brainwashed. Jaap lives on his son’s ranch near Carnarvon.”

  “And the other two recipients of record? Julia Littner and the schoolmistress? What about them?”

  Lloyd Chesney fielded the question as his uncle slipped into a reverie of days gone by. He said, “Mrs. Littner moved away soon after the funeral. To Bloemfontein. We heard she died of cancer ten years ago. Miss Goosen, bless her heart, still lives here in Pampoenpoort. In Logan, actually, on the edge of town. She’s near deaf, but sharp enough.”

  The nephew scribbled addresses for both Sheena Goosen and Jaap Schwedler on a card. Mansell stood up. He shook hands with both Chesneys, asking again that a certain confidentiality be placed on his visit.

  “Ah. And one last question, Mr. Chesney, if I may be permitted?” Mansell turned his attention to the elder attorney. “Where did most of the folks here in town go for their dental work back in the forties, do you recall?”

  Jason Chesney’s eyes narrowed, benignly studying the inspector. “Recall? Huh. Old Bailey the Butcher we call him. Still at it. Still damn good, too, but don’t tell him I said that. I’ll deny every word.”

  A dentist, much like a lawyer or a barber in a town of this size, held a virtual monopoly on his trade. But unlike some monopolies, a profit margin couldn’t be guaranteed. Oh, payment for services rendered could usually be counted on, and sometimes it was even in cash.

  In Pampoenpoort, the dentist and the barber happened to be one and the same, Dr. Dominic Bailey. Doc Bailey was a shoestring type with a shock of slick gray hair, a Vincent Price moustache, and a rubicund complexion.

  The doctor was sitting bolt upright in an old-fashioned barber’s chair studying X rays with a magnifying glass when Mansell entered t
he shop. Bailey reacted to Mansell’s identification and explanation with much the same alacrity as had the younger Chesney.

  “Shall we retreat into my inner sanctum, Inspector?”

  Doc Bailey breezed from the barber shop to the dentist’s office like the Shadow on the prowl. Mansell wondered if the sobriquet “the Butcher” alluded to Bailey’s dental practice or his salon expertise.

  The facilities and equipment were of a vintage fifteen years past, but spotless and gleaming. Beyond the dentist chair and the drills, and past a curtain-covered doorway, was Bailey’s office. A rolltop desk dwarfed all else except for a bank of wooden filing cabinets that lined the back wall.

  “How’s this for memory,” said the Butcher, striking a Shakespearean pose before the files. “Pete Leistner had a lower bridge, root-canal work topside, and gum problems. Anna had perfect teeth. Never a cavity, but I did remove four wisdom teeth one winter. And the kid? Well, now. He needed braces for an overbite, but they couldn’t afford it. He had a chipped cuspid lower left. We pulled two soft molars on the bottom to allow the wisdom teeth some room to come in proper, and . . . Oh, hell’s bells, let’s check me out.”

  The files were labeled “Active,” “Inactive,” and “Inactive—Backdated.” The dentist used a skeleton key to trip the lock on the cabinet labeled “Inactive—Backdated 1945-1955.” Bailey tugged at the drawer, but it wouldn’t budge. Mansell lent a hand, and eventually, the outdated tracking yielded, creaking in protest. Manila folders and yellowing paper overflowed from the drawer.

  Doc Bailey thumbed from file to file, mumbling. “Aha,” he exclaimed in time, removing three folders. “Leistner P. L., Leistner A. K., Leistner C. A.

  Mansell leaned across the desk as the dentist picked over Peter Leistner’s records. “Did I tell you. The bridge. The root canal. I was proud of that work.” He turned to the mother’s file. “Not bad. Well, I forgot about the gold cap. Not a single cavity, though. Terrible patient.”

  They both laughed. Bailey opened Cecil Leistner’s folder, and his joviality toppled.

  “I can’t understand it,” he said, staring at the chart and two X rays.

  “What is it?”

  “I must’ve been thinking of someone else’s mouth. There’s no overbite, and all four wisdom teeth have been pulled.” He pointed disconcertedly at one of the X rays. “There’s a chipped tooth all right, but it’s a lateral, not a cuspid. And look at this.”

  Mansell followed the dentist’s finger to a jagged edge along the upper jawbone. “It’s a screw implant,” said Bailey. “Developed by a French dentist named Chercheve in the forties. The part of the implant that went into the jaw was essentially a helix-type screw. A square shaft extended outside the gum line and an artificial tooth was attached to that.”

  “Clever.”

  “Clever yes, except the screw didn’t allow the bone to grow back, and there was generally not enough bone left to support the screw.” “So?”

  “So I’ve never performed a screw implant, Inspector. I don’t know a dentist in the country who used implants at all until after 1950. The first implants used here, as far as I know, were called vent plants. That wasn’t until ‘52 or ‘53. This file dates to 1949, when Cecil left for the air force.”

  “Is this your handwriting, Doctor?”

  “Yes. Yes it is.”

  “The minister must have traveled abroad at some point.”

  “Inspector, with all due respect, Pete Leistner could hardly afford a train ticket to Beaufort-West, much less plane fare to Europe,” countered Doc Bailey. “You see, I’ve been blessed with this memory. I can remember the haircuts I gave back in 1945.”

  “Well,” said Mansell in a placating voice, “there must be some explanation. I’d like to take these files with me if I could, Doctor. Just to update our records. Double-check a couple of facts. To be returned very shortly. You have my word on that. . . . And a favor, if I might, sir. This discrepancy in the minister’s record. Until I check it out with him, could we keep this whole matter sort of hush-hush? Just you and me? I’m sure Minister Leistner would take it as a personal favor.”

  Nigel Mansell climbed into the Audi. He sat behind the wheel, gripping it, staring down the windblown street, wrestling with his imagination and hurling commands at his logic.

  The last flight from Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth departed Jan Smuts International at 1:15 A. M. Sergeant Angus Linder sat in the first-class seat next to Delaney. He slept, snoring, while she worried. With stops in Bloemfontein and Grahamstown, they arrived at H. F. Verwoerd Airport at 5:25 in the morning.

  A Security Branch officer met them on the concourse. Delaney took one half-dosage of a sleeping pill in the car, while the officer drove and Linder slurped hot tea. She took the other half with water in her own bathroom and fell into a deep sleep by six. The Security officer parked out front by the curb, while Linder reconnoitered the alley out back. They drank more tea and ate day-old donuts until replacements arrived at ten.

  Delaney awoke with a dull headache at 1:20 in the afternoon. She washed three aspirin down with apple juice. A cold shower set her mind in motion: Nigel Mansell, Cecil Leistner, Steven de Villiers, the pending arbitration with the Harbour Association.

  Acting on impulse, she picked up the telephone in her bedroom and began to dial. Not so fast, she thought, replacing the receiver. She wrapped herself in a full-length robe, returned to the bathroom, and peeked through the Levolors to the front yard. The car was there. Nothing covert. A man, dressed in tweed and smoking, circled the car. He surveyed the street. He glanced toward the back of the house and exchanged nods with an unseen partner. Delaney stepped away from the window. And they’ll be listening in on my phone, too, she thought. Lousy bastards.

  In the kitchen, Delaney brewed Costa Rican coffee. She dressed while drinking the first cup. From the kitchen cupboard she took an empty measuring cup, walked purposely out the front door, and crossed the lawn to her next-door neighbor’s. Sally Claybourne answered the door, holding her three-month-old daughter.

  “Sal, hi. I’m in the middle of a corn-bread recipe, and I ran out of flour.” Delaney held out the empty cup, and Sally snatched it away, smiling. They went inside the house. “Listen, I’m having some trouble with my phone, too. Can I make a quick call while I’m here?”

  “Girl, of course you can. Use the phone in my room. I’ll get your flour.”

  Delaney dialed the message return at the Clavers’ house, hoping to hear from Mansell. There were no messages. She took a deep breath, composing herself, and then dialed again; the answering machine. “This is John Clavers. We’re not in. . . . Please leave a message at the sound of the tone, and we’ll be sure to get back to you. Thanks.”

  “Nigel Mansell,” Delaney said following the beep. “I’m back. Need to see you. Need to talk. I . . . It’s . . . Nigel, it’s been a long time since I’ve made love to a man. Please call. Soon. Don’t use my home phone. Delaney.”

  She hung up, hating herself for being so forward, wondering why she had been. Hating herself more because she knew the truth of the matter, wanting him and despising him in the same breath.

  Ignoring the sentry at the curb, Delaney returned to her own house with a cup of flour. She dialed the phone number Cecil Leistner had given her. A woman’s voice; another answering machine. Delaney said, “No contact as of two P.M. Friday. Will be in touch again tonight. Mrs. Blackford.”

  A knot tightened in her chest. She stared down at the phone, frantic about the missing film, picturing the body of a man she hadn’t even liked in a grave on the banks of a river she’d never seen.

  After drinking another cup of coffee and eating banana yogurt, Delaney placed a scheduled call to the office of Daniel Masi Hunter in Durban. The Affiliated Union potentate took the call himself, and Delaney detected a note of urgency in his voice.

  “We meet tonight at Huron’s place. Confidential. Seven o’clock,” he said. Percy Huron was the acting president of the United Dock Work
ers and an adviser to the Affiliated board.

  “Who is ‘we’?” Delaney asked.

  “Just the three of us.”

  “The arbitration schedule. Should I bring it?”

  “Never mind that. Our plans have changed,” said Hunter. And the connection was broken.

  ****

  Fifty meters belowground, directly beneath an abandoned storage shed of Homestake Mining, Inc., Target Three, Jan Koster heard the creaking sound of the dilapidated transport elevator as it descended. With a jolt, it came to a halt. A line foreman pushed aside the screen and stepped out. The foreman wore a pale green jump suit and a hard hat with the gold Homestake insignia on the front. He’d been employed by the huge mine now for thirteen months.

  “It doesn’t sound worth a shit,” Koster said, gesturing toward the elevator.

  “We’ll lube and oil it,” the foreman replied. “The engine’s been overhauled and the cables reinforced. Come the twenty-second, she’ll hold a hundred men, easy. Armed men. I’ll get things started at exactly eleven-forty, no problem; but don’t forget that my shift ends at midnight, and they’ll be sending somebody around, sure as hell.”

  “We’ll make it,” Koster assured him. He ran the calculations through his head for the hundredth time. The initial strike team consisted of fifteen hundred men. From this point, it would take ten minutes to transfer the heavy artillery up to the storage shed and another ten to fifteen for the team. It was too long, but there was nothing they could do.

  Twenty minutes later, in a tiny office attached to the command center, he expressed another concern to Colonel Rolf Lamouline and to Christopher Zuma, the black leader whose impact at East Fields had amazed even Koster.

  “Gentlemen, I see us with a small problem. Too many cooks in a kitchen built for a single chef. Too much dead weight.” Koster made a point of directing his comments at both men. These two, he thought, understand one another. “Our European engineers have served their purpose, I think. It remains a matter of whether our military operations can survive without the aid of our Cuban advisers at this point. Colonel?”