Ghosts of the Past

by Tony Park

  ‘Wow,’ Nick said. ‘I wonder what they say.’

  ‘Me too, and it’s been on my to-do list to get them translated, but I’d filed that chore away in my head for when I started researching the family’s involvement in the war.’

  ‘Do you think I could . . . ?’

  ‘Nephew, if you want to help your little old aunty and get those letters or whatever they are translated, I would be eternally grateful.’

  Nick picked up the first page from the pile of papers. The writing was in German, but there was a date at the top that clearly read ‘1915’. No doubt that was why his grandmother had assumed the papers came from the First World War, but that still didn’t tally with Blake dying in a German colony in Africa in 1906.

  ‘I’ve got just the person in mind,’ Nick said. ‘Lili, a German intern at my work – well, where I used to work as of yesterday.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Sheila said. ‘And it’s great to have you on the team. Let’s have another drink to celebrate.’

  *

  On Monday morning Nick showered, shaved and dressed for work. When he had first been told he was being made redundant he had almost told Pippa that he wouldn’t bother coming into work the following week, and that she could just give him his payout and he would be off.

  After seeing Sheila, he had brought his anger under control. When he thought about it rationally he realised he had not been happy working at Pippa’s PR company for some time. He wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted to do, work-wise, but he realised now that this could be the chance he needed to make a change. While his options and opportunities were not boundless, he reckoned he could find a job elsewhere without too much effort. He would need to put out feelers and have a look online, but his time with Susan and his aunt had given him something else to concentrate on in the interim.

  When he arrived at work, early, he used the copier/scanner to make two copies and scan a PDF of the papers his aunt had given him, then found a pre-paid postage satchel in the stationery cupboard, put the originals in the bag and placed it in the outbox to be sent back to Sheila.

  When the intern, Lili, arrived, he went to her desk and asked her if she would be interested in translating some papers for him.

  Lili had cast a glance at Pippa in her office and lowered her eyes. ‘It might not be appropriate,’ she had said in her formal style of English, ‘for me to do such a task during working hours, Nick, though you have helped me and I feel sorry for you.’

  He had to laugh at her characteristic bluntness. ‘Thanks. How about I take you to lunch, Lili, and we talk about it then?’

  Again, she looked around her, as if fearing Pippa might overhear. ‘You know I am only allowed forty-five minutes.’

  He winked. ‘I’ll make it worth your while. I’m happy to pay you to help me with this, Lili.’

  The intern brightened. ‘Oh, well, that is another matter.’

  At twelve thirty precisely Nick and Lili, who had been carefully watching the office clock, left work and headed to the historic Greenwood Hotel, across the road from North Sydney railway station. Other office workers were taking tables for lunch.

  ‘You know they call this place the drycleaners,’ Nick said as they walked in.

  ‘Why?’ Lili asked.

  ‘Because it’s where all the suits hang out.’

  She didn’t seem to get the joke and he didn’t want to waste time explaining. Seating themselves at a table in the open-air courtyard, they scanned the menu and decided on their meals, Nick assuring Lili that lunch would be his shout. Nick took the folder containing the German papers from his bag and laid it down on the table. ‘While I go and order the food, could you have a look at these for me, please?’

  ‘OK.’

  By the time he got back, Lili was studying the handwritten sheets intently.

  ‘Anything interesting?’ he asked.

  Lili read a few more lines then looked up. ‘I think so. This is like some kind of memoir or maybe even a novel. But he says he doesn’t want it published. It’s very interesting – I want to read more.’

  He nodded. ‘My aunt said my grandmother thought they might have been letters from a German soldier to a family member, during the First World War.’

  Lili shook her head, still skimming through the first few pages. ‘No, Nick, this is not a letter, it reads more like a story or a history of some kind. The place names are in German South West Africa, which is now Namibia. I have been there with my parents as a child, on safari.’

  ‘Yes!’

  Lili looked up and smiled. ‘You are excited, Nick?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘That is good,’ she said, ‘I have not seen you happy since I arrived at the company.’

  He grimaced. Was his dissatisfaction with work that obvious? No wonder he’d been the first one Pippa fired. ‘What else does it say, Lili?’

  ‘This covering page is a note from the author. You see the date, 1915?’

  Nick nodded. ‘Yes, my aunt and I both noticed that and that’s why my grandmother thought it dated from the First World War.’

  ‘The author says he is writing this manuscript in 1915, but it is about events that happened in 1906. There must be pages missing, or they are out of order, because the story seems to then begin in the middle somewhere.’

  ‘Please, read some for me, now, if you can,’ Nick pleaded.

  ‘OK.’ Lili took a sip of her water and her eyes shifted left to right. ‘This man, Blake, seems to have been knocked out. When Blake regained consciousness he found himself locked in a cell . . .’

  Chapter 10

  South Africa, 1902

  Blake wished he was dead. The pain and nausea hit him like a horse kick as he tried to sit. He rolled to one side and vomited.

  The walls were whitewashed stone. The floor of the cell, now stained, was made of cattle dung and water, a local building concoction which set like shiny concrete. Weak shafts of light penetrated the gloom from a tiny barred window set high up on the wall. His bed was a stone slab with a straw mattress. The room smelled of stale piss and, now, fresh vomit.

  He looked down at his feet. The laces from his boots were gone, as were his tunic, belt and braces – anything he could hang himself with, Blake thought.

  The steel door to the cell creaked open and a Scottish corporal, a guard, filled the doorway. ‘Wake up! You’ve got a visitor.’

  Blake blinked. It hurt. The guard stepped aside and Bert Hughes walked in, also minus his tunic, belt and braces.

  ‘You’ve got ten minutes, no more,’ the guard said, then closed and locked the door.

  Bert stood in front of him. ‘Jesus, you look terrible.’

  ‘I feel worse,’ Blake said. ‘Are you locked up as well?’

  Bert nodded. ‘Yeah, I’m in the shit too. Walters came to me with a deal.’

  Blake gingerly touched the wound on his head. ‘What sort of deal? He’s a murderer, Bert.’

  ‘Yeah, right. He says he doesn’t want you testifying against him. He wants us to help him get the Yankee woman. Walters says she’s a crook and she’s sitting on a stash of money she and some Boers robbed from a payroll wagon a couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘I didn’t hear anything about that, at least not in our area,’ Blake said. ‘Why should I believe anything that bastard says? He’s a crook, Bert.’

  ‘Yeah, well, he says the caper was hushed up. Makes sense, right? Typical army stuff-up. Anyway, Walters says his knackers are on the line as he was the officer in charge of the convoy and he needs to get the money back to save his neck. He says if we get the woman to tell us where she and the American colonel hid the money, that he’ll cut us in on a finder’s fee. He says he’ll tell the major he was wrong about you killing the American in cold blood.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him, Bert. You know that.’

  ‘Y
eah, but Walters will help us if we help him. He says he’ll put in a good word for you and you’ll be out of here by this afternoon.’

  ‘Bullshit. He set me up, that’s why I’m here. I don’t trust him. Tell the guards I want a lawyer, preferably an Aussie. Where’s the woman?’

  ‘They took her to one of the camps for the Boer women and children – the one near here,’ Bert said.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Blake said, shaking his head again, ‘people die in those places.’

  ‘What do you say, Sarge? Will you do what Walters wants? If not we’re both finished.’

  Blake shook his head. ‘Fuck him. He’s scared and he knows I’m safe in here. As soon as they give me a defending officer I’ll tell the law what really happened.’

  Bert sighed. ‘You won’t think about it, Sarge? Walters says there’s a lot of money to be found and even if he gives most of it back we’ll all still do well. He’ll just say the Boers spent some of it.’

  Blake looked him in the eye, then shook his head, slowly. He glanced down at Bert’s boots.

  ‘Corporal?’ Bert called. ‘I need to get out of here!’

  Bert stood and turned so his back was to Blake, and Blake saw how Bert slowly moved his right hand in front of him, just as he heard the key go into the lock.

  Laces, Blake thought. Bert still had his in his boots. He wasn’t really a prisoner.

  Blake jumped up off the bed and wrapped his left arm around Bert’s neck while reaching for the other man’s right arm.

  Bert grabbed Blake’s arm with his free hand and then Blake saw what he feared, a narrow-bladed knife half drawn from the pocket of Bert’s trousers. Bert kicked back at him, but Blake pulled him to the ground and increased pressure on Bert’s neck. Bert had to use his two hands to try and free himself from the choking hold. Blake reached under him for the knife and he got his fingertips on the hilt, but Bert twisted and bucked under him and as Blake drew the weapon it slipped from his grip and skittered across the cell floor.

  At that moment the door swung open and the Scottish guard stood there with a pistol raised. ‘Put him down, Blake!’

  Blake heaved a groggy Bert, who had nearly lost consciousness, upright, using him as a shield. Bert regained consciousness and staggered forward into the corporal, who fired a shot, perhaps accidentally. Bert’s body muffled the shot, which went into him. Blake scooped up the knife from the floor and, with the handle wrapped in his hand, punched the shocked guard square in the face.

  The corporal fell backwards, burdened by Bert’s weight, and his head hit the floor in the corridor with a thud. Blake paused over both of them. He rolled Bert off the jailer. His fellow Australian was dead, shot clean through the heart, and the corporal was out cold.

  Blake thought quickly. Walters had sent Bert to kill him and the guard had brought him to his cell with the laces still in Bert’s boots. That meant the corporal was at least partly complicit. Blake had Bert’s blood on his hands now and it would be his word against Walters’. He’d be charged not just with the killing of the Boer officer, but also with the death of an Australian soldier and the assault of the Scottish corporal. He didn’t like the odds.

  Blake snatched a ring of keys from the corporal’s belt and made his way down the corridor. He came to a room with the word ‘armoury’ above a steel door and after three attempts found the correct key. Inside he found his Mauser pistol, his rifle, his tunic and belt and his bootlaces. He quickly put the tunic on, then found his matches in his pocket. He returned to his cell and set fire to his stinking straw mattress. The fire would not spread out of the cell and the corporal was on the floor in the corridor, so he’d have clean air beneath the rising smoke.

  Blake strode back down the corridor and walked outside. He could see now that the building was an old police station. Behind it was a British tented camp. The perimeter was barbed wire interspersed with sandbag and corrugated tin strong points. He saw his horse, Bluey, tethered to a supply wagon and went and untied him. ‘Miss me, boy?’

  He put his foot in the saddle, mounted the stallion and headed for the gate. A sentry in a kilt looked up at him.

  ‘There’s a fire in that building, Private!’ Blake snapped. ‘Sound the alarm immediately! I’m off to fetch the medical officer.’

  ‘But, Sergeant . . .’

  ‘Now, man! Do as I say.’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant.’

  Blake dug his heels into Bluey’s flank and galloped away. A bell started ringing behind him.

  As he rode he thought about the chain of events that had led to him being locked up and then escaping custody. The raid had obviously been about more than capturing a Boer colonel and the story about the missing payroll wagon didn’t ring true. The American must have had information, however, that Walters was prepared to torture out of him. Blake could understand a bit of unauthorised persuasion if there was a good military reason for it, but you didn’t get any information out of a dead man.

  The raid on the trading post was less than a day’s ride from the nearest base, so there was no good reason for Walters to kill the American. Blake wondered now if Walters had ever really intended to bring the American in alive. You didn’t cut off a man’s ear if you were planning on handing him over to the provost marshal later in the day.

  The war had already turned dirty, but Walters had taken it to a new low.

  Blake knew virtually nothing about the man. Walters had arrived at Steinaecker’s Sabie Bridge camp a few days earlier and the word was that he was an intelligence officer from Kitchener’s personal staff. The next day Blake and Bert Hughes had been ordered to front up for a special mission. Blake’s troop commander had explained that Captain Walters wanted the two best shots and horsemen Steinaecker’s Horse had to offer.

  Blake thought about the situation; he had a British captain who was after an American colonel working for the Boers, who travelled without a bodyguard, let alone the battalion he supposedly commanded. The captain was after information so important he was prepared to torture and kill for it and he had corrupted Bert in the process, offering him enough to kill Blake if he did not go along with Walters’ revised plan.

  There was some truth in what Bert had relayed to him from the captain. This caper, Blake reckoned, was about money, a helluva lot of money judging by the things the captain had done.

  Blake had found himself in a dirty fight against an enemy who was clever, connected and ruthless. He was now a wanted man and he needed to find a way to prove his innocence – or Walters’ guilt. First, he needed to know more about the dead colonel. He also needed to find the other piece in this confusing puzzle – the woman.

  Chapter 11

  Condor Flight DE2294, Munich to Windhoek, Namibia, the present day

  Anja turned away from the couple next to her and switched on her reading light on the Boeing 767-300. She knew she should try to sleep on the flight, but the copied reports from Claire Martin were once more claiming all her attention.

  Anja had fended off more questions from her mother as she’d packed.

  She would miss her mother – in time. For now she sipped her white wine and opened the ring folder into which she had neatly arranged the photocopies of the historic espionage reports. She was a little sad as she leafed through to the last one she had read, knowing they would soon run out, quite possibly before Claire Martin ever returned to German South West Africa. Anja told herself that even if the reports did not provide any useable information directly related to her theory on the origin of the desert horses, they were more interesting and entertaining than any novel she could have picked up at the airport bookstore.

  She found her place and began to read.

  The major who had saved me from Captain Walters later handed me over to a more junior officer, a lieutenant. I told this man my cover story, that I was an American civilian. It did me no good.

  The eastern Trans
vaal, South Africa, 1902

  ‘On the wagon, Miss,’ the lieutenant said, checking his clipboard. ‘Martin, Miss C. You’re being transported to an internment camp.’

  ‘You have no right,’ Claire persisted, hands on her hips. She tossed a loose strand of hair from her face with a flick of her head and stood her ground. Inside, she was quaking. She knew from what had happened to her friend Wilma that for many women the only way out of one of these camps was in a cheap wooden box.

  ‘Please get into the wagon or the guards shall be forced to manhandle you aboard,’ the young officer said.

  ‘Don’t you dare touch me,’ Claire hissed at the two guards, who leered at her from the shade cast by the wagon.

  She still wore her pale buckskin trousers, leather riding boots and blue work shirt. The top button had come loose and, try as she might to keep the shirt together, a flash of pale skin showed whenever she had to use both her hands. As she hoisted herself up into the wagon she caught one of the guards staring at her cleavage. She mouthed a silent obscenity at the guard who, suddenly red-faced, turned away.

  One of the guards sat in the back of the wagon opposite her, a Lee Enfield between his knees. The other soldier sat up the front next to the driver. With a crack of his whip the wagon lurched forward.

  The lieutenant forced a tight smile and waved. Claire spat out the back of the wagon, past the guard, who shook his head in disgust.

  Claire was angry, mostly at herself. There had been no chance of breaking out of the cell block where she had spent the night. After being brought in she’d been questioned for an hour by Major Appleton. From outside the guardroom, where the interrogation took place, she had heard the raised voice of Captain Walters. He was the one she was really scared of. Judging by his simple questions, Major Appleton seemed to have no inkling of her mission or the business with Nathaniel.