“Is there any reason why I should not pass sentence on your client now?”
“No, Your Excellency.”
“I thought not.” Oosthuisen studied van Blommenstein.
“Petrus van Blommenstein. I sentence you to six months confinement, loss of the rifle you carried, and a thousand-rand fine.”
Van Blommenstein flushed. but said nothing. The public prosecutor bobbed to his feet. “Your Excellency, the Volk would request a thirty-day stay of confinement.”
Oosthuisen glared at him sourly. “Denied. Put him in jail. The other two are remanded for trial. Court is closed.”
“Jan is a fair man,” van Zyl repeated. as soon as the judge left.
Gordimer looked at him. “I don't understand. What is going on?”
“They call it politics,” van Zyl replied.
Friday (1170)
SIMON BEETJE HUNG UP THE PHONE AND MADE ANOTHER CHECK mark on his list. He poured himself another cup of coffee. After trying a sip, he pulled a bottle of brandy out of his desk drawer and used it to spike the coffee.
His student assistant knocked on the door timidly and stuck his head inside. Beetje looked up. “What are you still doing here, Wim? You should have gone hours ago.”
“Your wife is here.”
Maria Beetje pushed past him, and Wim wisely left them.
“Hello, Maria.”
“I came to see if you have come to your senses.”
Beetje made a pretense of considering this. “Probably not. Would you like some coffee? I have some brandy to flavor it”
“What are you doing here, Simon?!”
“Calling up people. Hans Coldewe was right. Most elections don't mean a great deal, but this one is different.”
His wife burst into tears and began dabbing at her face. Simon stood up and tried to console her. She shook his arm off. “I mean it, Simon, if you don't stop this nonsense and come home, I am going to tum your things over to the clothing drive!”
“Hush! Hush. Please, don't shout” He nodded. '“That will do, I think. I won't have much of a weight allowance, and it would be a nuisance to try to store them.”
“You don't actually believe that you are going on this crack-brained expedition!”
He nodded again and looked at her directly for the first time. “I actually believe in something, which is a change.”
“I don't understand you!” She swung her fist and dropped it. “Why are you throwing away your career, your life? You're in love with her—that’s it, isn't it? You're in love with her, now!”
“Rikki? I should be, shouldn't I? She's young and pretty, and smart and dynamic, and she believes in something importanteverything that you were once. But I'm not in love with Rikki,
I'm not sure why. Probably it’s because she is not in love with me. Look, Maria, I'm sorry. Please don't cry. You know how I hate it when you cry.” He put his arm over her shoulder and stroked her hair timidly.
Pushing him away, she stormed out, slamming the door shut behind her.
Beetje sat down at his desk. Examining his coffee cup, he flipped its contents into the wastepaper can and refilled it with brandy. Then he took a long drink and began dialing the next number on his list.
Saturday (1170)
“MATTI SAID YOU WOULD BE BY, UNCLE HANS.” RIKKI Sanmartin bent over to pat the little dog Coldewe had brought.
When her aide began making motions, she glanced at her watch. “I have precisely seven minutes. Is this one of your dogs?”
“Her name is Dolly. I'm taking care of her for a few days,” Coldewe explained “She's one of the witnesses in the case against Denys and Kalle. Say hello, Dolly.”
Dolly barked enthusiastically.
“The case is giving both of us a terribly black eye, and it is set to go to trial only two days before the election.” Rikki grimaced. “And, of course, I expect the prosecution to drag its case
out until the day after the results are in.”
“You are getting distressingly cynical in your old age,” Coldewe observed. “Are things that bad?”
“They are not well. People from something calling itself the Women's Movement Against Militarism have begun attending my speeches to denounce the 'bloody-handed murderers' who fostered me. It has an impact, and I have to spend much of my effort on defense, which leaves me less time to attack Steen. Only a small number of people concern themselves seriously with politics, and to win, I must maintain my momentum. At best, the election would have been close. This might swing it back to Steen. And the violence is getting worse. Two more of our workers were forced from their vehicle and beaten this
morning outside of Lydenburg.”
“Are you frightened?”
Hendricka shook her head
“I didn't think so. 'It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because she is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity. The motto of all the mongoose family is “Run and find out”; and Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose.' “
“You read me that story when I was three, Uncle Hans.”
“Every child should be exposed to Kipling in her formative years. Although. come to think of it, Kipling wrote a few things about the Tweede Vryheidskrieg that probably wouldn't go over too well here.”
She made an effort to smile. “So, then, is this the war fought single-handedly through the bathrooms of the big bungalow against Nag, the great black cobra?”
“And his cobra wife, and all the little baby cobras. For everyone knows that a mongoose's business in life is to fight and eat snakes.”
Ignoring her aide, Sanmartin reached down to stroke the dog again. “With all of the modem military technology at your disposal. I can't think why you have dogs.”
“Apart from the fact that modem military hardware costs real money, the recon troopers find the puppies useful in all kinds of situations. I'll show you.” He pointed out the window. “See that
girl there?”
“Yes.”
Coldewe picked Dolly up, held her to the window, and pointed toward the girl. Then he pulled out a whistle, blew four short notes, and set her down. Dolly went out the door at a dead run, stopping at the girl's feet to fawn over her.
“Uncle Hans!” Sanmartin said in shrill disbelief. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves!”
Coldewe winked. “I suppose it does qualify as corruption of a minor.” He said to the aide, “Could you be a dear and fetch Dolly back?”
The young woman shook her head in resignation and went to retrieve the dog.
“You have obviously forgotten what day it is,” Coldewe volunteered, observing the aide's progress.
“What day is it?”
“Your twenty-first birthday. Happy birthday!”
“Thank you, Uncle Hans,” Sanmartin responded, puzzled.
“And for your birthday present, I've arranged to have the charges against Kekkonen and Goroimer quietly interred.”
Sanmartin's eyes went cold. “What have you been up to?”
“Last night, with a few hints and some excellent coaching from Resit Aksu, the Johannesburg screws went after our little friend. the surviving poacher, and he broke. This will never come out because we can't prove it and the other side will let the issue die, but the corpse went into the woods looking to get into a firefight I expect the people who sent him in had a better idea of what probably would happen than he did”
“Dear God,” Rikki Sanmartin said to herself.
Coldewe gave her a chaste birthday kiss. “Cheer up. Your birthday present cost like hell, but it was worth every cent”
She looked at him. “You mean?”
“Steen is not a fool. He's going to want to know how we knew, and he's going to assume that we have a source.” Coldewe shrugged. “On the positive side, you've been keeping him rather busy lately, and he only has a finite amount of time to figure out who the source is before election day. Of course, I really had
n't planned on tipping my hand like this, and it took Ssu several hours and quantities of statistics to convince me. And I now calculate that your seven minutes is almost up.”
“Thank you, Uncle Hans. Thank you very much.” She made an effort to smile. “Thas been the nicest birthday present I have had in a while.” She raised her eyebrows and used her hand to trace a circle around her head. “But don't I get one of those little party hats?”
Coldewe coughed. “Er.”
“Uncle Hans!” She looked up at him in shock. “You didn't!” Coldewe stared out the window. “Frost and damn! There's the truck with the cake now. I told them not to come early.” He turned to face her. “I hope you still like pink icing.”
Sunday (1171)
EATING QUICKLY, ANDRIES STEEN CAREFULLY READ THE DAILY summary his staff had prepared He laid it down. “Schreiner. Get in here.”
Knowing Steen's habits, the party's chief strategist was no farther than the outer office.
Steen slammed down the summary. “Tertius, we are half way to election day, and this reads like dung.”
“All of our projections envisioned the cowboy separatist parties running a presidential candidate to draw votes away from the Uniates,” Schreiner replied calmly.
“We paid them enough!”
“You cannot trust a cowboy.” Schreiner made a small joke of it, aware that he was the one man Andries Steen could not afford to fire. “They did not stay bought”
“We will deal with them properly when the time comes,” Steen said grimly. He wadded the summary up and flung it away. “De Ia Rey made a fool of himself talking to the newspa pers. He is an utter idiot!”
“Of course, he is. Fortunately, he is not an ambitious idiot,” Schreiner agreed, well aware of the dangers in having someone in De Ia Rey's position who could think for himself. “But he has a leak somewhere in his organization. He assigned Geldenhuys and Van der Merwe to find it”
“Have them fired if they do not.” Steen thought for a moment “What can we do to Coldewe?”
Schreiner shrugged. “Abram van Zyl wrote the compact with Vereshchagin, and he did not leave any holes. Your predecessor signed it, he got the Assembly to ratify it, and he got its key provisions enshrined in the constitution. The constitutional court hates you. Short of paying Coldewe's men the value of the equipment they captured or brought along with them, I do not see a way to tamper with them. The General Hendrik Pienaar alone is worth a billion rand, give or take a few hundred million.
Try explaining that to the voters. You can't trim his budget further and still campaign on the Imperial threat, and you can't appoint new officers--the last time we tried that, the poor man didn't last a week.” Seeing the humor in the situation, he com mented, “Most governments only dream of owning a frugal military.”
Steen ignored him. “We do not have control of our destiny,”he whispered.
“Forget Coldewe for now,” Schreiner advised. “Deal with your enemies one at a time. If you don't do something about this election, we won't have a destiny.”
Steen took a notepad and began writing notes to himself. “Get Telwyn in here. Tell him his last trick did not work, and he had better think of a better one-no, I will tell him myself. Six months of scheming, and he has not even found a way to make Coldewe's soldiers stop playing those awful bagpipes.”
Monday (1171)
SCRIBBLING DESIGNS ON THE BACK OF A PAPER NAPKIN, KLAES DE LA REY, a surprisingly modest man for the leader of a para military organization, contented himself with the knowledge that he knew one thing that his squabbling district leaders in their silver berets did not--that each one of them hungered for his job. Although none of them obeyed De Ia Rey, none of them dared to disobey him too openly.
As for their interminable arguments over small parts of strategy, De Ia Rey, the direct descendant of several heros of the Second War of Independence, knew that it was all monkey talk to impress each other and Telwyn Zalm, President Steen's spy.
The Silvershirt movement was undergoing changes. Despite pressure from Zalm, De Ia Rey had permitted members of the organization to resign even as recruitment was stepped up. Those sickened by the violence were leaving. Others, who lusted for it, were being drawn in and outfitted.
As for the intimidation campaign, De Ia Rey could feel it tottering. Members were being arrested and charged. even in districts where the authorities were conscious of their racial identity, and many of the witnesses refused to be cowed. While the organization could easily afford to pay fines, even a few jail sentences might wreck it entirely. No one dared to voice the principal objection, which was the Nationalist party's cowardly refusal to allow itself to be publicly linked to the movement.
He calmly put his pen down and cleared his throat 'We are in agreement then? Volunteers on night patrols will wear hoods to conceal their identities. Are there objections?”
The cowboys still remembered an organization called the Klan, whose members wore hoods, but something had to be done and the party was in no position to contest cowboy districts in any case.
Nodding, De Ia Rey turned to the acting secretary, Hannes Van der Merwe, and asked him to read the next agenda item.
“Item: a telephone campaign to demonstrate to voters that Hendricka Sanmartin is racially and morally unfit to hold public office,” Van der Merwe announced in a clear voice. “Proposed by Vereeniging district.”
Observing the self-satisfied smile on Zalm's face, De Ia Rey had no doubt that the latter was a blatant untruth.
Rotund Anselm Wick spoke. “My people say that this should be party work. As it is, they complain that the movement is bleeding itself, running party errands.” Eccentric and bloody minded, Wick ran his Karoo district with more genuine democracy than most of the others would have dared.
No one contradicted him. Seeing which way the current was running, Telwyn Zalm looked around the room and tossed two packets of hundred-rand notes on the table. “It is only for a week, and the men will be paid for their efforts. The ones who can't stomach the patrols can do this instead. The party is doing its part, but every shoulder must be put to the wheel if Suid Afrika is to achieve its destiny.”
He left unstated the fact that most of those present could look forward to the inside of a jail if the Sanmartin girl won.
De Ia Rey idly wondered how much of the money the ordinary Silvershirt volunteers would see. “I see that there are no further objections. I move and second the proposal, which carries. Hannes, please read the next agenda item.”
Tuesday (1171)
COLDEWE RAISED ONE EYELID WHEN ESKO POIKOLAINNEN ENTERED and saw the troubled expression on his senior communication sergeant’s face. “What’s up, Esko?”'
“Colonel Vereshchagin on the secure line, sir.”
Coldewe got up, filled the sink with water, and threw his face into it. When he fumbled for a towel, Poikolainnen handed him one and keyed Coldewe's terminal.
Anton Vereshchagin's face appeared “Good morning, Hans.”
“Morning.” Coldewe pushed his hair out of his eyes.
“Has Resit Aksu spoken to you about the whispering campaign?”
Coldewe's intelligence officer, Lieutenant Resit Aksu, was an urbane Turk from Antioch nicknamed “The Smiling Buddha.” He was, as everyone who knew him more than casually agreed, good at his profession.
“No. How long have I been out?” Coldewe looked at the time display on his wrist mount Poikolainnen pushed a mug of tea into his hand. “All I know so far is that the phone network lit up like a Christmas tree last night”
“Yes. It is a widespread, well-funded operation to convince vacillating voters that Rikki is an unchaste, wanton woman quite untrue and quite effective.”
Coldewe frowned. “Betje must want to kill someone.”
“It was a predictable ploy. Such a rumor is believable by someone who does not know Rikki. Many people, particularly women, are uncomfortable with the thought of electing a young
, unmarried woman to high office, and the rumors give this feeling an outlet Steen has already flatly denied knowledge of the campaign, limiting himself to the cautious observation that where there is smoke, there is very often fire.”
“Nobody with a gram of political sense is going to believe him, but a gram of political sense is not a prerequisite to vote.”
“Politics and lies sometimes appear to be inseparable.” Vereshchagin sipped his tea. “What kept you awake last night?”
“You'll see it in this morning's paper around page six. We had our first fatality last night, Reserve Corporal Nelson Bolaños, who had three children. Got his head cracked open with a steel pipe, and Eva Moore's people couldn't revive him. He used to be one of Orlov's kids. I put a hammock hook up for him,” Coldewe said with cold certainty.
Whoever inherited the hook with the plaque with Bolaños's name on it would light a candle for him on December sixth, the Finnish national day, when Finns mourn their war dead.
Vereshchagin appeared disturbed. “The Silvershirts have orders to intimidate, not kill.”
“I know what their orders are.” Coldewe's voice rose shrilly as his temper for once began to get the better of him. “At least let’s do something about the whispering.”
“Resit has an idea for a response.”
“I'll talk to Resit then and call you back.” Coldewe said, partially mollified. “Coldewe out”
As Vereshchagin's face disappeared from the screen, Coldewe noticed Major Danny Meagher leaning against the door frame.
“Ah, Hans. a good night’s sleep improves your otherwise negligible beauty.” Meagher handed Coldewe a document. “A courier just dropped this off. It’s an executive directive from the president’s office abolishing military tribunals.”
Coldewe skimmed the document, then read it through carefully. “Does this say what I think it says?”
“Probably.”
Coldewe shook the offending document. “'This obviously violates our compact. The constitutional court will kick this out in a heartbeat, so why bother sending it?”
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