The White Lioness

by Henning Mankell

  If he had not stopped by the newspaper stand, he would have been arrested at passport control. But during those very minutes he took choosing and paying for his newspapers, the passport officers changed shifts. One of the new ones went to the rest room. The other, a girl named Kerstin Anderson, happened to have arrived for work at Arlanda very late. There was something wrong with her car, and she turned up at the last moment. She was conscientious and ambitious and would normally have been early enough to read through all the notices that had arrived that day with lists of people to look out for, as well as the lists still current from previous days. As it was, she had no time to do so, and Sikosi Tsiki went through passport control with his Swedish passport and smiling face, no problem. The door closed behind him just as Kerstin Anderson’s colleague came back from the rest room.

  “Is there anything special to look out for this evening?” asked Kerstin Anderson.

  “A black South African,” replied her colleague.

  She remembered the African who had just gone through. But he was Swedish. It was ten o’clock before the supervising officer came to check that all was in order.

  “Don’t forget that African,” he said. “We have no idea what he’s called, or what passport he’ll be traveling on.”

  Kerstin Anderson could feel a sudden tightening of her stomach.

  “He was a South African, surely?” she said to her colleague.

  “Presumably,” said the supervisor. “But that needn’t indicate what nationality he’ll claim when he leaves Sweden.”

  She told him immediately what had happened a few hours earlier. After some hectic activity, they established that the man with the Swedish passport had taken a British Airways flight to London at seven o’clock.

  The airplane had taken off on time. It had already landed in London, and the passengers had been through customs. Sikosi Tsiki had used his time in London to tear up his Swedish passport and flush it down a toilet. From now on he was a Zambian citizen, Richard Motombwane. Since he was in transit, he had not been through passport control with either his Swedish or his Zambian passport. Moreover, he had two separate tickets. As he had no check-in baggage, the girl at the desk in Sweden had only seen his ticket to London. At the transit desk in Heathrow he showed his other ticket, the one to Lusaka. He had flushed away the first ticket together with the remains of his Swedish passport.

  At half past eleven the Zambia Airways DC-10 Nkowazi took off for Lusaka. Tsiki arrived there at half past six on Saturday morning. He took a cab into town and paid for a South African Airways ticket for the afternoon flight to Johannesburg. It had been booked some time ago. This time he used his own name. He returned to Lusaka Airport, checked in, and had lunch in the departure hall restaurant. He boarded at three, and shortly before five his plane landed at Jan Smuts Airport outside Johannesburg. He was met by Malan, who drove him straight to Hammanskraal. He showed Sikosi Tsiki the deposit receipt for the half-million rand constituting the next to last part of the payout. Then he left him on his own, saying he would be back the next day. Meanwhile, Tsiki was not to leave the house and walled-in yard. When Sikosi Tsiki was alone, he took a bath. He was tired, but contented. The journey had passed without any problems. The only thing worrying him was what had happened to Konovalenko. On the other hand, he was not especially curious about the fact that he would soon know who he was being paid so much to shoot. Could any individual person be worth so much money, he asked himself. But he did not bother to answer. Before midnight struck he had settled down between cool sheets and fallen asleep.

  On the morning of Saturday, May 23, two things happened more or less simultaneously. Jan Kleyn was set free in Johannesburg. Nevertheless, Scheepers informed him he could expect to be called in for further questioning.

  He stood by a window, watching Jan Kleyn and his lawyer, Kritzinger, making their way to their cars. Scheepers had asked for him to be watched around the clock. He took it for granted Jan Kleyn was expecting that, but thought it would at least force him to be passive.

  He had not managed to extract any information at all from Jan Kleyn to clarify the circumstances surrounding the Committee. On the other hand, Scheepers now felt certain the real scene of the intended assassination was to be Durban on July 3, and not Cape Town on June 12. Every time he had come back to the notebook Jan Kleyn displayed signs of nervousness, and Scheepers thought it was impossible for anybody to fake reactions such as sweating and shaking hands.

  He yawned. He would be glad when it was all over. At the same time he could see the chances of Wervey being pleased about his efforts had now increased.

  He suddenly thought about the white lioness lying by the river in the moonlight.

  He would soon have time to visit her again.

  At about the same time as Jan Kleyn was being released in the southern hemisphere, Kurt Wallander was back at his desk in the Ystad police station. He had received the congratulations and good wishes of those colleagues who were at work early that Saturday morning. He smiled his lopsided smile and mumbled something inaudible in response. When he got to his office he closed the door behind him and took the telephone off the hook. His whole body felt like he had been raving drunk the night before, even though he had not touched a drop of alcohol. He had feelings of remorse. His hands were shaking. He was also sweating. It took him nearly ten minutes to gather sufficient strength to call the Kalmar police station. Blomstrand answered the phone, and passed on the disappointing news that the African they were looking for had probably slipped out of the country the night before, at Arlanda.

  “How is that possible?” asked Wallander indignantly.

  “Carelessness and bad luck,” said Blomstrand, explaining what had happened.

  “Why the hell do we bother?” asked Wallander when Blomstrand had finished.

  Wallander ended the conversation, but left the receiver off the hook. He opened the window and stood listening to a bird singing in a tree outside. It was going to be a hot day. It would soon be June 1. The whole month of May had passed by without him really noticing that the trees were now in leaf, flowers were starting to grow, and the scents of early summer were in the air.

  He went back to his desk. There was something he could not postpone until the following week. He fed a sheet of paper into his typewriter, took down his English dictionary, and started slowly to write a brief report for his unknown colleagues in South Africa. He put down what he knew about the planned assassination and described in detail what had happened to Victor Mabasha. When he got to the end of Victor Mabasha’s life, he inserted another sheet of paper into the typewriter. He continued typing for an hour, and finished with the most important information: that a man by the name of Sikosi Tsiki was Mabasha’s replacement. Unfortunately he had managed to slip out of Sweden. It could be assumed he was on his way back to South Africa. He said who he was, found the telex number to the Swedish section of Interpol, and invited them to get back to him if they needed any more information. He gave the secretary instructions to send it urgently to South Africa that same day.

  Then he went home. He crossed the threshold again for the first time since the explosion.

  He felt like a stranger in his own apartment. The furniture that had been damaged by the smoke was stacked in a heap, covered by a plastic sheet. He pulled out a chair, and sat down.

  The atmosphere was stifling.

  He wondered how he was going to get over everything that had happened.

  About then his telex message arrived in Stockholm. A stand-in not fully familiar with procedures was instructed to send the message to South Africa. Because of technical problems and careless checking, page two of Wallander’s report was never sent. And so the South African police were informed that night, May 23, that a gunman by the name of Victor Mabasha was on his way to South Africa. The police in the Johannesburg section of Interpol were puzzled by this strange message. It was unsigned, and ended very abruptly. Nevertheless, they had been requested by Inspector Borstlap t
o send all telex messages from Sweden to his office immediately. As the telex arrived in Johannesburg late on Saturday evening, Borstlap did not receive it until the following Monday. He contacted Scheepers right away.

  They now had confirmation of what was in the letter signed by the secretive Steve.

  The man they were looking for was called Victor Mabasha.

  Scheepers also thought the telex was strangely abrupt and was concerned that it was unsigned. But since it was merely a confirmation of something he already knew about, he let the matter rest.

  From now on all resources were concentrated on the hunt for Victor Mabasha. Every border post was put on standby. They were ready.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The day he was released by Georg Scheepers, Jan Kleyn called Franz Malan from his house in Pretoria. He was convinced his telephones were tapped. But he had another line nobody knew about, apart from the BOSS special intelligence officers in charge of security-sensitive communications centers throughout South Africa. There were several telephone lines that did not exist officially.

  Franz Malan was surprised. He did not know Jan Kleyn had just been released. As there was every reason to suspect Malan’s telephone was also tapped, Kleyn used an agreed code word to prevent Malan from saying anything that should not be mentioned on the telephone. The whole thing was camouflaged as a wrong number. Jan Kleyn asked for Horst, then apologized and rung off. Franz Malan looked up his special code list to check the meaning. Two hours after the call, he was to make contact from a specified public phone booth to another.

  Jan Kleyn was extremely eager to find out immediately what had been happening while he was under arrest. Franz Malan must also be clear that he would continue to take main responsibility. Jan Kleyn did not doubt his own ability to shake off shadows. Even so it was too risky for him to make personal contact with Franz Malan or to visit Hammanskraal, where Sikosi Tsiki was presumably already in residence, or would soon arrive.

  When Jan Kleyn drove out through his gate, it did not take him many minutes to locate the car tailing him. He knew there was also another car in front, but he did not worry about that for the moment. They would naturally be curious when he stopped to make a call from a public phone booth. It would be reported. But they would never find out what was said.

  Jan Kleyn was surprised that Sikosi Tsiki had arrived already. He also wondered why there was no word from Konovalenko. In their master plan was an agreement to inform Konovalenko that Sikosi Tsiki had actually arrived. That check should be no later than three hours after the assumed arrival time. Jan Kleyn gave Franz Malan some brief instructions. They also agreed to call from two other specified phone booths the following day. Jan Kleyn tried to discern whether Franz Malan seemed worried at all on the telephone. But he could hear nothing apart from Malan’s usual slightly nervous way of expressing himself.

  When the call was over he went to have lunch at one of the most expensive restaurants in Pretoria. He was pleased at the thought of the horrified reaction when his shadow handed his expense report to Scheepers. He could see the man at a table at the other end of the dining room. Jan Kleyn had already decided that Scheepers was unworthy of continuing to live in a South Africa that, within a year or so, would be well organized and faithful to its old ideals, created and then defended forever by a close community of Boers.

  But there were moments when Jan Kleyn was hit by the awful thought that the whole business was doomed. There was no turning back. The Boers had lost, their old territory would be governed by blacks who would no longer allow the whites to live their privileged lives. It was a sort of negative vision he had difficulty in fending off. But he soon recovered his self-control. It was just a brief moment of weakness, he told himself. I’ve allowed myself to be influenced by the constantly negative approach South Africans of British origin have toward us boere. They know the real soul of the country is to be found in us. We are the people chosen by God and history, not them, and so they cherish this unholy envy they cannot shake off.

  He paid for his meal, smiled as he passed the table where his shadow was sitting, a small, overweight man sweating profusely, and then drove home. He could see in the rearview mirror that he had a new shadow. When he had put his car away in the garage, he continued his methodical analysis of who could possibly have betrayed him and provided Scheepers with information.

  He poured himself a little glass of port and sat down in the living room. He drew the drapes and switched off all the lights apart from a discreet lamp illuminating a painting. He always thought best in a dimly lit room.

  The days he had spent with Scheepers had made him hate the current regime more than ever. He could not get away from the feeling that it was humiliating for him, a superior, trusted, and loyal civil servant in the intelligence service, to be arrested under suspicion of subversive activities. What he was doing was the exact opposite of that. If it were not for what he and the Committee were doing in secret, the risk of national collapse would be real rather than imaginary. As he sat sipping his port, he became even more convinced that Nelson Mandela must die. He no longer regarded it as an assassination, but an execution in accordance with the unwritten constitution he represented.

  There was another worrisome element that added to his irritation. It was clear to him from the moment his trusted security guard on the president’s personal staff called him that somebody must have supplied Scheepers with information that should really have been impossible for him to obtain. Someone close to Jan Kleyn had quite frankly betrayed him. He had to find out who it was, and quickly. What made him even more worried was that Franz Malan could not be completely excluded. Neither he nor any other member of the Committee. Apart from these men there could possibly be two, or at most three, of his colleagues in BOSS who could have decided, for some unknown reason, to sell him down the river.

  He sat in the darkness thinking about each of these men in turn, dredging his memory for clues; but he found none.

  He worked from a mixture of intuition, facts, and elimination. He asked himself who had anything to gain by exposing him, who disliked him so much that revenge could be worth the risk of being found out. He reduced the group of possibilities from sixteen to eight. Then he started all over again, and every time there were fewer and fewer possible candidates left.

  In the end, there was nobody. His question remained unanswered.

  That was when he thought for the first time it might be Miranda. Only when there was no other possible culprit was he forced to accept that she too was a possibility. The very thought worried him. It was forbidden, impossible. Nevertheless, the suspicion was there, and he had no choice but to confront her with it. He assumed the suspicion was unjustified. As he was certain she could not lie to him without him noticing, it would be resolved the moment he spoke to her. He must shake off his shadows within the next few days and visit her and Matilda in Bezuidenhout. The answer was to be found among the people on the list he had just worked through. The problem was that he still had not found an answer. He put both his thoughts and his papers on one side, and devoted himself instead to his coin collection. Observing the beauty of the various coins and imagining their value always gave him a feeling of calm. He picked up an old, shiny, gold coin. It was an early Kruger rand, and had the same kind of timeless durability as the Afrikaner traditions. He held it up against the desk lamp and saw it had acquired a small, almost invisible stain. He took out his carefully folded polishing cloth and rubbed the golden surface carefully until the coin started to shine once again.

  Three days later, late on Wednesday afternoon, he visited Miranda and Matilda in Bezuidenhout. As he did not want his shadows to follow him even as far as Johannesburg, he had decided to lose them while he was still in central Pretoria. A few simple maneuvers were sufficient to shake off Scheepers’s men. Even though he had got rid of the shadows, he kept a close eye on the rearview mirror on the freeway to Johannesburg. He also did a few circuits of the business center in Johannesburg
, just to make certain he was not mistaken. Only when he was sure did he turn into the streets that would take him to Bezuidenhout. It was very unusual for him to visit them in the middle of the week, and in addition, he had not given advance notice. It would be a surprise for them. Just before he got there, he stopped at a grocer’s and bought food for a communal dinner. It was about half past five by the time he turned into the street where the house was situated.

  At first he thought his eyes were deceiving him.

  Then he saw the man who just came out onto the sidewalk had emerged from Miranda’s and Matilda’s gate.

  A black man.

  He stopped by the curb and watched the man walking towards him, but on the other side of the road. He lowered the sun visor on each side of the windshield so that he could not be seen. Then he observed him.

  He suddenly recognized him. It was a man he had been keeping under observation for a long time. Although they had never managed to prove it, BOSS had no doubt he belonged to a group in the most radical faction of the ANC that was thought to be behind a number of bomb attacks on stores and restaurants. He used the aliases of Martin, Steve, or Richard.

  Jan Kleyn watched the man walk past, then disappear.

  He froze. His mind was in turmoil, and it took some time to recover. But there was no getting away from it: the suspicions he had refused to take seriously were now real. When he eliminated one after the other of his suspects and ended up with none at all, he had been on the right track. The only other possibility was Miranda. It was both true and inconceivable at the same time. For a brief moment he was overcome by sorrow. Then he turned ice-cold. The temperature inside him fell as his fury grew, or so it seemed. In the twinkling of an eye, love turned to hate. It was aimed at Miranda, not Matilda: he regarded her as innocent, another victim of her mother’s treachery. He gripped the wheel tightly. He controlled his urge to drive up to the house, beat down the door, and look Miranda in the eye for the last time. He would not approach the house until he was completely calm. Uncontrolled anger was a sign of weakness. That was something he had no desire to display in front of Miranda or her daughter.