Vultures in the Wind

by Peter Rimmer

  “I am only here to ensure that the men and women who gave me money to invest when I ran this business receive their just reward. I am back in the industry to sell Security Lion to a company that the auditors and I will judge capable of running our vast investments. It will not be a company from outside the borders of the Republic of South Africa. I also wish to report that the run on the shares of this company was carefully orchestrated by two of this company’s competitors, selling Security Lion shares short after the chairman died in Angola. All is fair in legitimate business practice. I myself would not have set out to destroy a competitor in this way, but they did nothing wrong, hoping no doubt to buy us up at a cheap price at the bottom of the panic. Well, now they can compete properly and in an orderly fashion.

  “The increase in the value of my trust will benefit the poor of this country in a way I have yet to implement. When the two companies were so busily selling us short, I was buying, and, if they want to cover their positions, as they must, it will be a costly affair. Some of their own shareholders may have something to say about that, but then, gambling and playing around always has its price. After this conference, I will become caretaker chief executive of this company, looking for a safe home for its assets, to allow those assets to grow without speculation and unnecessary risk. To sum up, gentlemen, this has been a cleverly orchestrated storm that I have now returned to its teacup. I will now be happy to answer any questions about the present, and none about the past other than as it relates to my earlier days with this company.”

  “Did you paint Bernard Strover’s canvases?”

  “No comment.”

  “Why did you run away in the first place?”

  “No comment,” repeated Matt, icily.

  “Did you have anything to do with Mister Munroe being refused an entry permit into this country to attend this press conference?”

  “No, I did not, but I would like to hear more about that after the shareholders’ meeting, if the questioner would kindly visit me in my office.”

  “Who is the father of the coloured boy living in your house? Alternatively, who was the mother?”

  “There is no secrecy about Sipho’s surname. He and my son are to attend Maritz Brothers college junior school together. I am his guardian, not his father. I have stewardship, which will come to an end when this country buries the policy of apartheid and lets the exiles return and the political prisoners out of prison.”

  “Is the boy’s father Luke Mbeki?”

  “Yes.” replied Matt.

  “Does Mister Mbeki know his son is in Johannesburg?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, he does.”

  “How do you communicate with a wanted terrorist?”

  “That is my business.”

  “Is it not also the business of the security police?”

  “Gentlemen, I am not a politician and never intend to be one,” insisted Matt, rather warily. “Sipho’s father has been my lifelong friend. What we do for each other is done for the sake of friendship.

  “Now, please, questions about Security Lion. I want you gentlemen to be satisfied that there are no skeletons in this company’s cupboard. I want to put all this nonsense about an insolvent company in the garbage can where it belongs. The Bernard Strover story is a tiny fraction of a small percentage of our investments. One day I will personally catch up with the man. Then we shall see. I don’t like crooks any more than you do.”

  The meeting that took place in another part of Johannesburg shortly after the press conference was certain that, if Matthew Gray was allowed to take up his appointment as chief executive officer of Security Lion, there was a good chance that the people in the room, all Afrikaans speakers, would lose their jobs and even find criminal negligence actions brought against the two directors who had instigated the short-selling of Security Lion shares. Their scheme had worked perfectly until this man had appeared out of nowhere with a war chest they estimated at close to three hundred million rand, the amount they were able to calculate after finding out the initial stock exchange investment after Gray’s abortive ‘give every black a free lunch’. With the rise in Security Lion shares, they were up against a man with four hundred million to spend. There was a strong, pervasive smell of fear in the room. Big houses, expensive wives, private schools and large cars were all at stake, all threatened by Matthew Gray.

  “The man’s a communist,” said one of the directors in Afrikaans, a man who had lost most of his confidence in the panic; in his estimation, anyone who opposed the Afrikaner establishment was a communist, and part and parcel of the total onslaught that was threatening the country.”

  “Can you prove that?” asked one of the younger members of the emergency meeting, in hope rather than out of any desire to challenge the assertion.

  “Of course; Luke Mbeki’s a communist and Gray admits to bringing up his son and having that bloody terrorist as a friend. Speaks for itself.”

  “Then we must get him arrested under the Suppression of Communism Act,” declared the youth. “Ninety days’ detention without trial and the minister can extend the ninety days for as long as he likes. Better than house arrest. Much better. I have a friend in the bureau of state security who could have this bloody communist arrested just like that, man. Take him out, if you like. Then you will see the shares of Security Lion go down, man. They’ll go down, you can be bloody sure of that. Get Gray arrested and the shares will mark down twenty percent the same day, take my word for it. A few more rumours in the market about Strover pinching money and it will cost us nothing to cover our positions.”

  Everyone in the room had stopped talking to look at the young man who was throwing them a lifeline. The look of the chosen few, those in command of their lives, slowly began to return as they straightened up. It was the look of power. The panic evaporated.

  “Then get the bloody bastard arrested; only I never knew anything, here. Not a bloody thing. You’re clever, man, I tell you.” The director was again very pleased with himself. “Anyway, Gray was a bloody Englishman, kaffir-lover. Had it coming.”

  He picked up the phone on the table and phoned his broker. “Dump Security Lion shares, man. Sell them short. Don’t argue, man. You do your job, see, and I do mine. We’re going to make a killing.”

  Theo Blaze was screaming down the telephone to her lawyer to sue Matthew Gray for libel, defamation, anything to defend the honour of her daughter.

  “I don’t care about the blood tests. Sue him. How dare he tell those terrible lies about my daughter? And tell the newspapers anyone who prints such lies, we’ll go for them too. Sue the bastards. Who the hell do they think they are, anyway?”

  “They ‘are’, mother. Your English!”

  “Shut up. You just shut up. You got us in this mess.” She turned back to the phone. “Sue, you hear? Sue!” Then she slammed the receiver down and glared at her daughter.

  For many years, Frikkie Swart had needed certain financial institutions to move the money he plundered from the government secret fund overseas and into the names and bank accounts of companies whose shares were owned by foreign banks on behalf of the nominee; namely Frikkie Swart. To prevent money from leaving a country in which no one had any confidence, residents of South Africa were not allowed to invest overseas. To encourage foreign investors, a separate currency had been established which enabled foreign buyers to purchase South African shares at a considerable discount. Hence a man in New York would pay sixty rand for a de Beers share, and a man in Johannesburg one hundred rand to hold exactly the same investment. The buying and selling of the shares was done by arbitrage brokers who by law made South African shareholders buy in commercial rands and overseas buyers in financial rands at the discount price.

  A man wishing to move his money into a hard currency would, if he were allowed, happily pay one hundred rand for a de Beers share and sell it in New York for sixty rand, converted into American dollars. The opportunity for someone to pay sixty rand for a de Beers share in New York
and sell for one hundred rand in Johannesburg, inflate an invoice for an export from New York and pay for it with the one hundred rand de Beers share was obvious to a simple-minded crook and, unless every financial transaction was policed to source by the Reserve Bank of South Africa, impossible to stop. Money had been leaking out of South Africa in this way for years, adding to the misery of low commodity prices and full-scale trade and financial sanctions called for by the ANC. The phenomenal profit in that type of arbitrage made insider traders in America look petty.

  When Frikkie Swart listened to his friend asking for a favour, the idea of locking up a man he was sure had once slept with his wife was not only appealing but patriotic. And Matt had been a friend of Hector’s. Frikkie needed little further reason to arrest Matt as a threat to the security of the state and, when Matt returned to Archie’s house after talking to the reporter about Ben Munroe’s lack of an entry visa, he was arrested in the driveway and removed from the property without even Lorna knowing what had happened.

  People periodically vanished and any questions were answered with a wall of denials. The security police were experts at arresting people in the dark without leaving a trace. For Lorna, Matt just did not come home. For Sunny, he had just left his office to go home. Somewhere in between, Matthew Gray had disappeared off the face of the earth.

  When Sunny returned home, having finished the pile of work, they both thought Matt had been with the other.

  “I sent him home to you and the kids,” said Sunny. “I was reading back correspondence.”

  “Better call the police,” said Lorna.

  “Matt trod on a lot of toes today,” Sunny informed her, looking apprehensive. “He accused unnamed insurance companies of deliberately trying to crash Security Lion and he told the public Tilda was a whore. He admitted Luke was a good friend. I’ll get a torch. It was raining today. What happened to Matt’s car, Archie’s car? I’ve been driving one from the company pool. Matt knew the risks; when we were back in the office on the twenty-first floor, he handed me a document,” Sunny handed Lorna the sheet of paper, which she read and went cold all over. The words came leaping out of the paper.

  “Seeing as of today I, Matthew Gray, have retaken control of Security Lion Holdings in accordance with the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders of the same day, should I be unable to perform my duties through illness, death or incarceration, I give to Miss Poppy (Sunny) Tupper my full of power of attorney to run the company until I am able to resume my duties or she is able to sell the company to a safe and stable haven that will give all our policyholders their full rights and benefits. Held by my attorneys is a full set of suggestions as to how Miss Tupper may best achieve these goals, but she is free to exercise full control as she may see fit according to the circumstances.” The brief document was witnessed and countersigned by a commissioner of oaths.

  Together they walked out down the long driveway, with Sunny shining the torch on the ground.

  “Those are my tyre marks,” said Sunny, pointing the torch just inside the entrance gate where gum and wattle trees shielded the driveway from the public road. “Those belong to Archie’s Mercedes. You can see where the Benz has been turned round by driving on to the lawn and nearly getting bogged down. There were footprints but someone has carefully scuffed them over.”

  “My God; he’s been kidnapped!” gasped Lorna.

  “Yes, and my guess is by the police. Under the emergency laws of this country, they can do what they like. Just being a friend of an ANC official is enough for them. Matt knew what he was doing, the risks he was taking Lorna. That is why he gave me his power of attorney. Typical. He was always worried about other people and never himself. Did he ever tell you about going into the Congo to look for his friends? He doesn’t want one of those policyholders to accuse him of running out on them. He feels responsible. Don’t call the police, Lorna. They’ve got him, for sure.”

  “Better I go to the British embassy,” said Charles, who had followed them silently down the driveway to find out what was going on. Sunny shone the torch in his face as he spoke. The sardonic expression had gone and the jaw that was often a little slack had firmed up, twisting slightly, the soft blue eyes searching hard from beneath the un-kept, sandy hair. It was the look one of his ancestors might have given just before sweeping down on the English to drive them back over Hadrian’s Wall. For a brief second, Sunny was frightened of the man.

  The interrogation room was on the fourth floor of the John Vorster Square police station, and the window was open. Warrant Officer Higgins of the South African police, ex-Rhodesia and Malaya, was doing what he enjoyed most: extracting information from communists.

  The man strapped to the chair was naked; the neat little clamps were attached to his testicles and the wires ran to the small box next to where Warrant Officer Higgins sat on the corner of the desk. Outwardly, Matt looked the way he had when they brought him in, but the shocks had torn at the inside of his manhood and his body feared the terrible onslaught of pain more than anything else it had endured in its life. Matt was very close to the end of his tether, and the only two things in his life at this moment were the box and the open window.

  “Who helped you cache the arms in the cave beyond Third Beach?” Matt had no idea what the man was talking about and could think of nothing to say, anything to say, to stop the volts of electricity that would shake his body, leaping up from his testicles. He had long stopped being able to think beyond the box and the open window. Higgins had seen the deterioration and turned down the voltage as, if the man was going to die, it would need to be by his own volition, leaping through the open window.

  Watching the rich hippie with a young wife go through excruciating pain made up for being forced out of Malaya and Rhodesia, and was Higgins’ personal revenge on the communists who were destroying his world and would do it again if the likes of the SAP did not stop them. Blacks, he sometimes felt sorry for. They had been coerced into communism. The brains were the Matthew Grays who were dedicated to enslaving the world in a George Orwell horror society where everyone would be ruled by the party from Moscow.

  “You commie bastard,” he spat, turning off the power. “Who sends your letters to Mbeki?” Again the voltage. “What were you really doing in Port St Johns?” Again the voltage. “Why did your company give money to the communists?” Again the voltage. “Why do you bring up a little black bastard?” Again the voltage.

  “Take the ropes off, sergeant. Liberal sods like this bastard are better dead… Go on, you bleeding liberal. Get on with it. Go jump and land on your head, you miserable bastard.” Increasing the voltage, he put in a quick surge, but though Matt wanted to run for the freedom of the window his body was unable to move.

  “This silly sod’s too old. Take him downstairs. I’ll try again tomorrow… Have a nice day, Mister bloody Gray.”

  “Nothing we can do, your Lordship. He’s not even British. Your cousin he may be, but he’s a South African. How can you be sure he’s in police custody? This country’s very violent, you know, your Lordship. Ransom, that kind of thing. Not like Scotland. Why don’t you go to the police?”

  “No wonder we British lost our empire. We deserved it… Good day, sir.”

  “There’s no reason to be rude. Just because you’re an earl, you can’t come in here throwing your weight around. Britain’s not the same any more, you know.” The assistant British Consul for Johannesburg was now on his high horse, standing on his dignity.

  “Your fly’s undone, old chap,” said Charles, and left the man looking down between his legs. “Cheap shot, Farquhar,” he said outside. “Cheap shot. Now what the hell do I do? There has to be someone with influence. Even in a police state… So much for winning the Boer War.”

  While Matt was regaining consciousness in a cell that was better designed for a dog, Charles had fixed the end of his shooting stick into a crack in the pavement outside the British Consul and was thinking through what he would do next. The flow of pe
destrians opened up around him as he sat comfortably while racking his brains. He stood up abruptly, snatched up his shooting stick, banged the end at the concrete pavement and announced to passers-by he was going home.

  As he strode towards the ticket office of British Airways, a mud-splattered car drove past him, going down Sauer Street in the opposite direction, out towards the northern suburbs.

  Lucky had driven non-stop for twenty-seven hours after taking Sunny’s phone call at Aldo’s safari camp in the Zambezi Valley. The first of Matt’s instructions to Sunny was to phone Lucky and tell him he was probably in police custody. Aldo Calucci’s phone number had been neatly printed next to the request.

  Close to the car and its impatient driver, who had first driven into the centre of Johannesburg to make one visit in person, the glass tower of the Diagonal Street building of the stock exchange was seeing a sharp drop in Security Lion shares. It was being said that Gray had vanished for the second time, the situation being too bad for him to salvage, and that Bernard Strover had done a lot more damage to the company than Gray had admitted at the press conference.

  Every stockbroker holding Security Lion shares for his clients was trying to get through to the new CEO at Security Lion without any success, and Sunny was bringing in both firms of auditors to make a press statement that she hoped would limit the damage. She had personally driven to Pretoria and shown the registrar of insurance her power of attorney, while he had sat rigid in his seat, horrified by the possibilities that sprang to his mind with the word ‘incarceration’.

  “I’ll speak to the state president,” he said, after a brief silence. “I’ll do what I can.”