Ghosts of the Past

by Tony Park

  ‘What is it?’

  She saw it again, a blur, pale brown, like British khaki, well camouflaged against the already dry early winter leaves.

  ‘I need to check on Blake. Or perhaps you’d like to, if not to make sure he’s not lying in wait for you, then at least to put him out of his misery, one soldier to another.’

  ‘You Irish are all heart, aren’t you?’

  She kept her hands up, but looked to the other side of the wagon. There was another flash, on the opposite side of the track. It was a pincer movement, being executed with precision, stealth and a sense of urgency that would put the best soldiers on the veld to shame.

  ‘What are you looking at, girl?’ Walters moved to the back of the wagon and lowered his rifle in order to check under the tarpaulin that covered Blake.

  Claire saw her chance. She dropped her hands and flicked the reins on the rumps of the two horses and they jumped forward. At the same moment she ducked to one side.

  Walters fired, though because he was using only one hand his rifle bucked high and the bullet whistled over Claire’s head – had she still been sitting upright it would have gone through her back.

  As she neared a bend on the track Claire risked a look backwards.

  The first of the lionesses that she and Blake had seen on their ride into the cave was on Walters, who was screaming.

  Chapter 29

  Cape Town, South Africa, the present day

  Nick had a spectacular view of Table Mountain as the pilot of the SA Airlink Embraer banked the aircraft and lined up for his approach to Cape Town International Airport.

  Nick had managed to read Anja’s translation of Blake and Claire Martin’s story on the flight. It was clear, now, that Claire had found and stolen a tenth of Paul Kruger’s missing hoard of gold and if there was more information to come that pointed to where some of the treasure was hidden, then that explained the value of the manuscript.

  They landed and Nick made his way to the baggage carousel. While waiting he did a quick internet search and worked out that a ton of gold was worth more than sixty million US dollars in today’s money. Worth robbing, he thought. Next he typed in ‘Kruger’s Gold’ and found a barrage of hits. The internet listed plenty of stories about possible locations of the missing gold and failed attempts to locate it. There were claims of people finding evidence of the gold from as far apart as a dam near Pretoria to various spots hundreds of kilometres away in the Kruger Park, and the Bourke’s Luck Potholes in the escarpment overlooking the lowveld. His bag appeared and he put his phone away.

  Nick had got online at Skukuza Airport and booked a rental car. He took his luggage and made his way out of the terminal, hitching a ride on a golf buggy shuttle via a tunnel that led to the car companies.

  He needed to find Susan, but with the exception of her mobile phone number, which he had tried maybe twenty or thirty times, he knew next to nothing about the woman he thought he had fallen for.

  Nick had googled Susan, repeatedly, but found very little to go on. From his journalistic eye, it was as if she, or someone else, had scrubbed the internet clean of her presence. He knew that she had worked as a journalist on local newspapers back in the early 1990s, but this was before virtually everything written for newspapers ended up online.

  Susan had told him that she had worked for various public relations consultancies in recent years and he had confirmed that from a story online about an award she had received for a PR campaign for BMW motorcycles seven years earlier. Other than that there was no mention of her or the services she offered. She had, he recalled, said that most of her work was as a subcontractor to other companies, so that would explain why she was not listed in the staff profiles of other agencies.

  Susan had also said she was a freelance investigative reporter, but he could find no recent articles with her name on them. Perhaps her story on the push for reparations from the German government was going to be her big splash. However, when he googled ‘reparations from Germany for Namibia’ he came up with more than 130,000 results. This was not new news.

  Or maybe she was a liar.

  As he followed his satnav’s directions through heavily congested Cape Town traffic, he tried to recall all the conversations he’d had with Susan, about Cyril Blake and about Nick’s own friends, relatives and acquaintances.

  Her questioning, now that he thought about it, had all seemed like small talk, albeit detailed. He’d put the continual questioning down to her being a journalist, as well as someone getting to know another person they were supposedly attracted to.

  Susan had shown an interest in Sheila’s passion for genealogy and he had also told her Sheila’s full name and where she lived. Susan had wanted to know about Lili, too, and Nick had told her what he knew with no reservations.

  Nick had booked into the Vineyard Hotel, another of Susan’s recommendations, in the event that they ever got there together. There was no chance of that now.

  He just wished he could at least talk to her.

  He remembered their last conversation, which he had been playing over in his mind. She had mentioned the Vineyard. The barman there is a friend of mine and he’s the best, he’ll have a drink waiting for me when I get there and I’ll call you, she had said to him. Funny, Nick thought, what stayed in his mind. He had fallen for Susan but recalled nothing else about her family or friends other than the mention of the barman.

  Nick found the hotel and noticed as he pulled in that Table Mountain seemed to loom over the building from behind. A porter met him and unloaded his bags and a valet took his keys and rental car. The porter took him to his room, and as soon as the man was gone Nick made his way back through the lobby to the bar.

  Nick took a seat and ordered a beer.

  ‘Just arrived?’ asked the barman.

  ‘Yes, from Skukuza in the Kruger Park.’

  ‘On safari. Nice,’ said the young man.

  ‘Yeah, would have been nicer, except a friend of mine cancelled on me.’

  ‘Sorry to hear.’

  ‘Me too. I got stood up.’

  ‘That sucks, man,’ the bartender said as he took up a wineglass and began polishing it.

  ‘It does,’ Nick said. ‘The truth is, I’m worried about her. My friend was supposed to call me and tell me when she was getting on a flight from Cape Town to Skukuza, but all I got was a very short, sharp text, telling me she wasn’t coming and that basically our friendship was over.’

  ‘Weird.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nick said. ‘Actually, she told me she used to come to this hotel a lot.’ Nick took out his phone and opened the camera applications, scrolling through the images to the selfie he had taken of himself and Susan after their dance. He enlarged it, cropping himself out of the frame, before handing it over so that the bartender could see it more closely. ‘Do you recognise her, by any chance?’

  The barman’s eyes flashed with anger as he gave the picture a quick glance. He tossed the phone on the bar, towards Nick. ‘You people. Are you a reporter?’

  ‘Hey,’ Nick said, pocketing his phone, ‘I just wanted to know –’

  ‘You can’t leave her in peace, can you?’ the barman said, his fists clenched on the counter. ‘I don’t care if you’re staying here. You people will try anything.’

  ‘You know Susan?’ Nick said.

  ‘Yes. And I’ve already spoken to the police and some journalists. I sent them packing, because they weren’t guests. To you, I have to be civil.’

  ‘The police . . . ? Look . . .’ Nick looked at the barman’s name tag. ‘Zack?’

  The barman folded his arms. ‘Yes.’

  Nick took the phone out of his pocket and showed Zack the photo in its original form. ‘You can see better, in this picture, that Susan and I knew each other. I was supposed to hear from her a couple of days ago and she never called. I got a text messa
ge from her, basically breaking up with me. I don’t know what was going on between you two and I don’t really care, but –’

  ‘We were friends,’ Zack said, his shoulders sagging. ‘I’m gay.’

  Nick saw now that the anger was leaving Zack, or, rather, being swamped by another emotion. His lip was trembling and his eyes were red, glistening.

  ‘You knew her?’ Zack asked.

  ‘Yes, we met in Australia. All I’m trying to find out is where she is and if she’s OK. I’d really just like to have a talk with her and she’s not answering my calls. She said she loved the mojitos here . . .’

  Zack exhaled, lowered his head, then looked up again. A tear rolled down his cheek. ‘My God, you don’t know, do you?’

  Nick felt his stomach drop. ‘Know what?’

  ‘Susan’s dead.’

  Part 2

  Chapter 30

  Upington, South Africa, 1906, four years after the end of the Anglo-Boer War

  Blake was as far away from the rest of the world as he could be and still earn enough to be able to get a drink, a woman and a bath. And that was fine with him.

  A bell tolled in the small tower of the Dutch Reformed Church, the oldest and most substantial building in the haphazard scatter of rough mud-and-timber single-storey structures that lined the red Kalahari sand and rock strip that was known as Schroder Street.

  Blake led a mob of twenty horses, tethered nose to tail. The chains he used to hobble the animals each night were now draped around their necks and the metal links clinked with every step. The street was empty, all sensible humans and beasts hiding in the shade somewhere to escape the midday sun.

  The whitewashed church had been built by old Reverend Schröder some thirty years earlier. He’d supposedly come at the behest of the local Nama, to bring them education and religion. In Blake’s experience hard drink, disease and death came hot on the heels of missionaries.

  Blake ignored the pealing and rode on further to the second-grandest place in town, the Upington Hotel.

  The main thoroughfare was wide enough to turn a bullock cart, but that’s where its grandeur ended. A drunk sat on the ground, sleeping in the shade of a wagon, propped against one wheel. A donkey, another of Upington’s insensible residents, brayed as if to announce Blake’s arrival. This place, he mused, was the polar opposite of where he’d served in South Africa. Where the bushveld along the border of Portuguese East Africa had been thick, emerald green in summer and teeming with wild animals, Upington was in the middle of a desert. Its source of water, and the only reason the town existed, was the Orange River, which slithered slowly, like a fat puff adder, through the lifeless landscape. A fringe of green clung to the river’s banks but beyond that was a waterless nothingness.

  The proprietor of the hotel, Willem Erasmus, known as Rassie to all, stepped out into bright glare, a picture of incongruent finery in his bowler hat, clean white shirt and bow tie. ‘Meneer Prestwich, right on time.’

  Blake gave Rassie a crooked grin in reply to the standing joke – time meant nothing in the desert and Rassie had no more idea when Blake would be back in Upington than Blake did himself. ‘A drink, Rassie, for me and the horses.’

  ‘Some fine Irish whiskey?’

  Blake smiled and nodded, knowing there was nothing fine behind Rassie’s bar. The word ‘Irish’, though, was enough to make him think of Claire again. It happened less frequently these days, but still the occasional word or a glimpse of red hair would remind him how meeting her at that abandoned trading post had changed his life.

  When Blake had regained full consciousness in 1902 in the Portuguese hospital in Lourenço Marques the first thing he registered was a nurse addressing him by the wrong name.

  ‘You are Edward,’ she had said, smiling and speaking her accented English slowly and a little too loudly, as if she thought him simple. ‘Edward Lionel Prestwich. It says so on the papers that were with you when the lady brought you here.’

  The papers listed his unit as Steinaecker’s Horse and Blake was lucid enough to realise that Claire must have found him a new identity. But there was no sign of her.

  From the nurse he learned that he had been operated on by Dr Machado, a physician of some renown, and, though Blake had been close to death, the doctor had been able to save him. He had vague memories of Claire’s face, coming in and out of focus as he gained and lost consciousness. Blake’s other vivid memory from that time immediately after his surgery was of fire and smoke. He had thought it a nightmare, but the nurse told him there had been a fire in the hospital and Dr Machado had died, bravely trying to rescue a patient who had been left in a burning ward. Although she had managed to rescue his Broomhandle Mauser and Bluey, left in a stable near the hospital, Claire Martin herself had vanished, leaving no word of where she was going or how he might contact her.

  Penniless, Blake had recovered then worked a passage on a cargo ship from Lourenço Marques to Cape Town – he remembered Claire letting slip that the ship she would board from Portuguese East Africa would take her to the Cape. As well finding Claire he wanted to clear his name, but to do all that he needed wages. He had contacted a lawyer and learned that Captain Llewellyn Walters had narrowly survived a mauling by a lion on the day Blake had been shot at the cave. Walters had recovered and become, ironically for the war criminal he was, a colonel in the Cape Mounted Police. The lawyer wanted money to pursue the case, and so Blake had found work with an old comrade from Steinaecker’s Horse, who had returned to his family’s farm in the Cape at war’s end.

  When he had almost saved enough to pay the lawyer’s fees the man had had a change of heart, telling Blake he no longer believed he could prove Walters was a murderer and that Blake was innocent. Furthermore, the lawyer advised Blake in an urgent whisper to get out of Cape Town. Blake had never been one to run from a fight, but at the same time he’d been looking into a business venture. On the farm he was in charge of the horses and he had learned that there was good money to be made trading animals with the inhabitants of the neighbouring colony of German South West Africa. The local people, the Herero and the Nama, had risen up against their colonial masters in 1904 and war had broken out. Both the rebels and the German military, the Schutztruppe, needed horses, and the Cape Colony was teeming with the mounts of thousands of British and colonial soldiers who had sailed home without them.

  As Edward Prestwich the horse trader, Blake was now making a reasonable living and would have been lining the lawyer’s pockets if the man hadn’t been murdered in the course of a backstreet robbery near the Cape Town waterfront. While Blake still clung to hopes – albeit fading ones – of clearing his name and perhaps finding Claire, he found his new life suited him.

  More than the money, he was drawn to the vast emptiness of Africa. As harsh and unforgiving as the landscape was, the quietness helped still some of his memories of the war and dull the pain and bitterness he felt over the way Claire had used him.

  Blake had found, or rather lost, himself with his new name on a new border, this time close to the frontier with German South West Africa, a remote corner on the African continent where the chilly waters of the Atlantic pounded a treacherous shoreline backed by vast sandy deserts.

  War had followed Blake, or perhaps, he thought as he dismounted outside the Upington Hotel, it had been the other way around.

  Upington in the remote north of the British-ruled Cape Colony, near the border with the German territory, was a hub for the horse trade and, for those like Blake who thought it worth the risk, a nice sideline in cattle rustled by the rebels from German farms.

  ‘Dawie!’ Rassie called. In response, a Nama man dressed in patched cast-off clothes trotted around from the back of the hotel. The Nama’s homelands straddled this side of the border and the nearby German territory. Unlike the dark-skinned tribes Blake had encountered in the Transvaal, in the east of the country, Dawie’s people were of a
light brown complexion. The Nama had traditionally been nomadic pastoralists and most of them had converted to Christianity and adopted the Dutch settlers’ language and dress. ‘Take Kaptein Prestwich’s horses and tie them out the back. Fetch feed and water.’

  Blake waved hello to Dawie – the title ‘Kaptein’ he had used was the Nama’s term for a leader or a chief – and tied his own mount to the hitching post. He turned away as a burgher, one of the local farmers, rode past in a carriage pulled by two horses. The man didn’t exchange a greeting; everyone knew that Edward Prestwich had come to South Africa to fight the Boers, and while the war had been over for four years now, with the British victorious, it had not been forgotten everywhere.

  Blake took off his felt slouch hat and slapped it against his trousers, raising a mini dust cloud in the process. After he’d sluiced the dust from his throat he would soak his body, and maybe someone else’s, in a bath.

  ‘Come, try the new whiskey,’ Rassie said.

  Blake walked inside the hotel. It was fetid, smelling of booze and smoke, unwashed bodies, sin and sick, but it was an oasis compared to the thirstlands he’d trekked through the past week.

  ‘Will you be trading those horses for cattle, Eddie?’ Rassie set two scratched glasses on the wooden counter and poured for the two of them. There was no one else in the bar.

  ‘No. The Germans will be paying me handsomely for those fine mounts.’

  Rassie snorted. ‘Nags more like it, but if you do pick up some cattle remember old Rassie has many hungry customers to feed, eh? Maybe your friend the “Black Napoleon” has some nice fat beasts ready for the slaughter?’

  Blake raised a glass to the barman. Rassie was always fishing for information, but Blake had learned to play his cards close to his chest. He’d been arrested once before for allegedly trading in illegal cattle, and while the prosecution had not succeeded due to a witness not being able to make it to court, he was now more careful to keep his business to himself. The fact was that the horses were destined for the ‘Black Napoleon’, Kaptein Jakob Morengo, the leader of the Bondelswarts Nama clan in German South West Africa and sworn enemy of the Kaiser. The Germans had given Morengo his nickname due to his tactical prowess as the most successful guerrilla leader in the south of their colony.