The Harbinger

by Mark Graham

  “If I nearly betrayed myself and you before, that’s my business. I have to live with it. Don’t ask me to disgrace myself again. And how would you know if I had an arrangement to call the minister?”

  “I know,” he whispered. He touched her hair, her cheeks, he kissed her lips. Then he withdrew and wrestled a cigarette from his jacket. “You can’t help me, Delaney. Not by your presence.”

  “Nigel, what the hell is going on? You know, you haven’t told me one damn thing, really.” The proprietor’s head popped up, and Delaney lowered her voice. “This thing with the guns. And the strikes. And now the mines. Where does it go from here? You say the minister of justice is behind it all. He says you’re a cold-blooded murderer, and a federal warrant is issued for your arrest. Why?”

  “Because he’s scared. And when a man like Cecil Leistner tastes fear, he becomes dangerous. Dangerous enough to ruin your life, Delaney. And I won’t let that happen.” Mansell took Delaney’s face in his hands. “In one hour you’ll place your call. It will be traced, so tell him exactly where you are. Tell him, as far as you know, I’m on my way to Cape Town. Leistner’s only real enemies are there, so he might just believe it. But don’t mention the tape. If he knows what I know, he’ll call off the whole operation.”

  Delaney stared anxiously into Mansell’s pale eyes. She took his hand. “Nigel. . . .”

  “Shh. Don’t say it. We’ll get through this.”

  In Cradock, a hundred-and-twenty-kilometer drive northeast from Jansenville over an oiled truck route, Mansell stopped at a phone booth across from an empty farmer’s market. He dialed Joshua’s home phone in Port Elizabeth.

  The bearer of good tidings, Joshua said, “When I got back from the Karoo I did some checking on that Sea Lanes bus sleeve, remember? From Anthony Mabasu’s locker? The handwriting on the back? Captain Terreblanche’s.”

  “Oliver. Bloody hell.”

  “And I showed a photograph of Terreblanche to Lea Goduka, Ian Elgin’s locker-room sweetheart? Remember the guy who plowed into her car the night Elgin died? Positive I. D.”

  “I don’t get it. How did he get in so deep?” The rumors, Mansell thought. Maybe they weren’t rumors after all. Maybe the bastards found out and that’s how they got to him. A sudden wind sent chills down his spine, and he asked, “Any progress on the de Villiers thing, Joshua?”

  “It seems that Wolffe’s principal witness, the dock inspector who said he saw you and de Villiers together the night of his death? It seems he might’ve had his arm twisted a little. A matter of job security, if you get my drift. I convinced him there were greater powers in the world than our demented Major Wolfe. If you get my drift.”

  “Charmer.”

  “There’s more,” Joshua said. “We found the place where Steven de Villiers was first assaulted. A vacant sixth-floor office in the customs house. Chas du Toits found a series of muddy boot prints. Size 13-E. In the alley behind the building we found another print, same boot, same size. And a tire tread. The tread is a match for the rental that was used to haul the body to the burial site near Sheldon.”

  “So the killer changed into my shoes there at the river.”

  “Chas found a heel mark from the boot next to where the car was parked. The district prosecutor thinks it might be enough.” “Give Chas my congratulations.”

  “He’ll be thrilled, I’m sure. You know Chas,” Joshua replied. “But, we’re not out of the woods yet.”

  “I knew there had to be a darker side.”

  “Yeah, well, we painted you into a corner with this arms thing by failing to file any kind of a report, even a contingency statement. Leistner’s filed a second warrant. This one’s a conspiracy charge involving the illegal importation of weapons into the country. Some bullshit like that. But this time their witness is legit. The port systems manager, Von Tonder. Remember him? He’s saying you pretty much insisted the crates from ARVA II slide through customs without proper inspection.” Joshua paused, and in the silence that followed he could well imagine the look on Mansell’s face. He added, “Yeah, and what’s worse is this: Delaney’s name is on the same charge.”

  Mansell stared out into barren city streets. A semi roared past. A police car cruised among the boarded-up stalls of the farmer’s market.

  “Joshua,” he said in time, “I need two favors. Delaney’s at an inn in Jansenville. Don’t ask me to explain. It was a mistake. She’ll be picked up before the night’s out. Do what you can for her, will you? And your report on the de Villiers murder. I need you to file it, in full, with NIS headquarters in Pretoria. Personal attention to Becker himself. It’s got to be on his desk by nine tomorrow morning. And make a note of my impending visit. Can you do that?”

  “Consider it done,” Joshua replied.

  Mansell dialed the Angora Inn in Jansenville. The phone in Delaney’s room was busy. He dialed again three minutes later, and the operator answered. She informed him that the number was temporarily out of service.

  ****

  At midnight, in a rare television speech that would be flashed around the world throughout the coming day, the South African prime minister announced the formalization of an unrestricted, nationwide state of emergency, to be effective at once.

  By way of explanation, the prime minister cited increased anti-government, anti-apartheid rioting, a state of widespread civil unrest, and a marked escalation of violence. The state of emergency, he announced, would empower police to make arrests without warrants, impose strict curfews, seize property unilaterally, and limit press coverage in areas of unrest. Furthermore, persons detained for the inciting of anti-apartheid demonstrations would now face an automatic five-year banning order upon their release. Riot police would henceforth be armed exclusively with live ammunition, and township quarantines would be enforced through the issuance of new “Residence Passes.”

  While the state of emergency would have no formal boundaries as to its implementation, the prime minister cited Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town as areas of particular concern.

  Following the announcement, Minister of Justice Cecil Leistner ordered all commando units and Security Branch personnel stationed in the East Rand, with emphasis on the mining corridor surrounding the East Fields Mining Corporation and its neighbors, to new assignments west of Johannesburg near the black townships of Soweto and Duduza.

  ****

  The motel door shook.

  “Open it, Mrs. Blackford.” It was more of a hiss than a shout.

  Delaney swung her feet off the bed. She stood up and seized her walking stick. The door shook again, the handle rattled, and it opened. Major Hymie Wolffe stepped inside. The gray-and-blue uniform hugged his squat body. Wire-rimmed glasses punctuated layered jowls. Wet ruby lips parted in a thin smile.

  He removed black gloves, closing in on her. “Good evening.” “It was,” she answered, holding her ground.

  Wolffe laughed through his nose; pale cheeks reddened. “Mansell. Where is he, missy?”

  “Gathering roses. I think he smelled you coming.”

  The fleshy part of Wolffe’s hand crashed into Delaney’s cheek, driving her onto the bed. “Something tells me you’ll remember your manners once we get you to Port Elizabeth, missy.”

  ****

  Principal truck routes led Nigel Mansell from Cradock to the mountain resort city of Bethlehem on the banks of the Liebenbergs Vlei River north of Lesotho. He stopped, filled the car with gasoline, and drank black coffee.

  He set out again without rest, momentum being his sole ally.

  Dawn arrived, painting iridescent purples across acres of coniferous forests. Rain cried silver drops that within weeks would touch the trees with snow. Mansell drove in a vacuum of cigarettes and caffeine and saw none of it. What he did see was a drugged-out policeman sitting on his back porch with a telephone in his lap, the survivor of six errant gunshots. What he heard was a single ring and an unfamiliar voice telling him about the warrant for his arrest and urging h
im to get the hell out of his own house. And what he remembered was that the voice he’d heard that night was the same voice on the tape he now carried in his jacket pocket. And now he couldn’t help wondering: how many other warnings and clues had there been along the way?

  Mansell entered Pretoria at 10:05 Monday morning without encountering a single roadblock, a positive side effect of the state of emergency, though he was unaware of it at that moment. He parked in an underground lot on Vermeulen Street and found a donut shop one block away overlooking the Apies River. He ordered hot tea and an apple turnover, sat in a corner booth with a view, and opened his briefcase on the table.

  Numbly, he extracted paper and pen. Chain-smoking, he began with his personal file on the murder of Ian Elgin, consolidating it to a single sheet of paper and correlating the murder with that of Sylvia Mabasu and, eventually, that of Fredrik Steiner.

  Then Mansell constructed a timetable showing each connection between the union leader and the minister of justice. He began with their initial meeting in Durban, in April of 1975, following the harbor strikes there. Subsequent to that, Leistner influenced Elgin’s transfer to Johannesburg and the promotions that followed. The next year, 1976, Leistner appointed Elgin to his staff with the Agency on Policy and Security Development. Three years later, Leistner nominated Elgin for the Wiehahn Commission. In 1981, Leistner recommended Elgin for his positions with the Federation of Mineworkers Union. In 1986, his letters of reference secured Elgin’s position as board consultant to the Affiliated Union. And finally, the minister’s personal involvement—uncommon pressure from above, Mansell called it—in the Elgin-Mabasu murder investigation.

  Following that, Mansell chronicled the gun-smuggling operation, beginning with ARVA’s first appearance in Port Elizabeth six years ago and ending with the arrival of the last shipment at East Fields five days ago.

  The events leading Mansell to Cyprian Jurgen came next. Mansell included the taped conversation in which Jurgen confirmed the minister’s lease agreement for the East Fields property, and a recounting of his own visit to the mine site, including photos.

  Mansell noted Merry’s infiltration into the mine, the taped message, and his death. He wrote the message out in full. Inexplicably, he omitted the warning that followed and left the cassette in his jacket pocket.

  And finally, he documented the search into Cecil Leistner’s background: the computer room in Somerset-East, the townspeople of Pampoenpoort (here making a special note to validate old Doc Bailey’s handwriting on the questionable dental chart), and the Korean veteran in Carnarvon, Jaap Schwedler.

  Then, a barrow of half-smoked cigarettes having accumulated in the ashtray like fallen soldiers, Mansell reread his mosaic of speculation and fact. As court-worthy evidence you could forget it. But then, Mansell thought, no one’s on trial. Yet.

  ****

  Outside, fifty kilometers from Pretoria, a cold rain obscured the flashing neon sign that read, THE WITBANK MOTOR INN–VACANCIES.

  Inside, beneath the hazy overhead light in room 215, Jan Koster unlocked a slender attaché case. Years ago, the hand-stitched leather case had been a gift from his wife. Tomorrow, he hoped the contents inside might be a gift to her.

  Koster extracted, from among dozens of documents, four passports, collaborating visas, and a packet of travel papers. These, Koster knew, represented the bare skeleton of a fictitious family and its fictitious history so totally supported by legitimacy as to be born again.

  The names on the passports were Martin Robert Montana, age forty-two, Christina Marie, age thirty-nine, and their daughters, Gabriela Marie, age twelve, and Olivia Lee, age ten. The photographs on the passports belonged to Jan Koster, his wife, Julia, and their own daughters, Tonya and Hannah.

  To understand the roots of this masquerade, one had to journey back in time to a January in 1976, when the real Martin Montana was a debt-ridden dairy farmer and the owner of a fledgling trucking firm on the outskirts of Lisbon, Portugal.

  Two months before, on November 11, 1975, the Portuguese government had granted its last colonial province, the African nation of Angola, its independence. But independence had not come easily. Years of revolutionary war and months of civil war had devastated Angola. Two-thirds of the country’s white populace, most being of Portuguese descent, had fled. The exodus sent Angola’s economy tumbling. Stagnation and starvation were rampant.

  By January of 1976, a Soviet-backed faction called the MPLA controlled the country, but victory did not solve the problems. The country’s new leader, Dr. Agostinho Neto, sent out an urgent plea inviting the Portuguese to return to Africa. As an inducement, all emigrants would be allowed to retain both their Portuguese citizenship and their passports until such time as they themselves saw fit to do otherwise.

  It was a generous offer.

  The Montanas, weary of Lisbon’s military tyranny and Europe’s most depressed economy, accepted Neto’s offer. On March 16, 1976, they emigrated. They settled in Luanda, the coastal capital dying a slow death. Yet Martin Montana recognized the essential problem at once. The soil along the coast was nearly infertile, the climate dry and stingy. One hundred and twenty kilometers inland, the lowlands ended in a series of abrupt escarpments, and the highlands that lay beyond were fertile and generous. Luanda had always been dependent on the highlands for food, but with the exodus of the white man, transportation of cattle, fruit, grain, and vegetables had ceased.

  The MPLA offered Martin Montana a 50 percent working interest in a trucking firm with five idle tractor trailers. Montana opened his first route between the capital and the highland city of Malange.

  Eight years later, he owned fourteen trucks and ran three different routes. He bought out his government partners. A long-awaited vacation to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe was planned. The children, six and four at the time, were old enough to travel, and the train seemed the ideal means. The Benguela Line, a British-built rail system connecting the coast with the African interior and a survivor of years of war, had been reopened to passenger service three months before.

  On May 1, 1984, the Montanas departed.

  But 1984 was a deceptive time in Angola, peace a mirage. The MPLA was still locked in a fierce guerrilla war with Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA forces and two thousand mercenaries. A sabotaged trestle bridge sent the train in which the Montanas were traveling plunging into a gorge a hundred meters deep. All four perished.

  One might call it an odd case of synchronicity that caused Jan Koster to be in Angola that same May. He had come to meet with a mercenary soldier named Colonel Rolf Lamouline. He had come with the intent of recruiting Lamouline for the project at East Fields. As it happened, it was the colonel’s squadron that first happened upon the tragic train crash.

  Instinct and training drew Jan Koster to read the fatality list. The family of four from Luanda lit a spark he could not ignore. The ages and descriptions were too similar. Koster checked back. Spawned by the MPLA’s generous offer in 1976, the Montanas had not yet abandoned their Portuguese passports.

  Thus Jan Koster brought the four back to life again.

  With Lamouline’s assistance, the Montanas were listed among the survivors. After their vacation in Victoria Falls, it seemed the family continued on to South Africa. Pretoria caught their fancy. Their extended vacation became a sabbatical. Letters were exchanged with friends and business associates in Luanda.

  Then, through a friend, one deeply indebted to Koster and at that time stationed in the Soviet embassy in Lisbon, unseen hands withdrew copies of four birth certificates from the Social Affairs Office. Postal applications were sent to the Central State House in Lisbon for new passports. A checklist was duly processed. The applications were automatically granted.

  Koster received the new passports and birth certificates in August of the same year. Methodically, he pumped life into the Montanas. Drivers’ licenses were applied for, bank accounts opened, credit cards issued. Koster purchased and sold a car so the computers at Motor Vehicle
would show the Montanas’ name. He wrote a contract on a new home in Sunnyside.

  He negotiated the sale of Martin Montana’s trucking business to a European conglomerate in exchange for stock options. These options he exercised over the years. The proceeds were deposited with the First Industrial Bank of South Africa. Over time, the funds were transferred, at Martin Montana’s request, to Citicorp in New York City, and transferred again to government certificates of accrual and Treasury bonds. Property was purchased, in Christina Montana’s name, along the coast of Maine.

  Then, six months ago, Martin Montana applied for an extended travel permit to Zimbabwe and the United States. The Ministry of Travel and Tourism granted the permit ten weeks later.

  Now Jan Koster rechecked the date of departure.

  He closed the attaché case, locked the motel door behind him, and drove two kilometers to the Witbank Municipal Airport.

  Four years ago, Koster, using his Martin Montana identification, had responded to a Witbank classified ad for an eight-seat Cessna 164. It was a used 1979 model, but the engine had been rebuilt and the price was satisfactory, and Koster made his first payment that day. He rented docking and shed space at the Witbank airport. Over the next year he earned his pilot’s license. For the last three years, he had used the Cessna to commute between cities where buying a ticket in a major airport might have aroused curiosity.

  Today, Koster filed a flight plan for the following afternoon.

  The tower manager knew Koster well by this time, and he raised an eyebrow at the plan. “A bit of an odd one for yourself, eh Mr. Montana? Weather being what it is up there this time of year.”

  Koster curbed his annoyance. “Vacation. A vacation begins where the people leave off. What better place than the mountains?”

  The tower manager booked the Cessna into the Members Only hangar to be gassed up, tuned, and lubricated. The overhaul, he promised, would be completed by noon the following day.