Ghosts of the Past

by Tony Park

  Claire did wonder if Walters would come after her one day, but one thing about living in a remote corner of a German colony was that she figured she would have advance notice if a lion-scarred British officer came snooping about trying to find her. Thanks to her first husband she had a network of contacts at the port of Lüderitz, and she and Peter were well known throughout the government and military upper echelons due to the fact that most of the horses they bred ended up serving the war effort. If Walters did make his way to South West Africa she would hear of it, and he would not leave the colony alive.

  Peter had no idea of the true size of her fortune nor about her largest cache of gold, which she’d had to abandon at Lüderitz when she had nearly been caught smuggling the crates of ingots into German South West Africa four years earlier. The precise location of that dumped treasure was known only to her and for now, at least, she was sure the gold was still safely hidden.

  Peter had loved the intrigue that she had fed him, and Claire was happy with the story too, because it painted her not as a criminal but as a canny profiteer who had taken no more than was her due. Peter was a young doctor who had come to the colony with little more than the clothes he wore due to a series of foolish investments, and he half joked that if he returned to Berlin there was a jealous husband of a high-born lady who had threatened to kill him. Finding a woman of means who, if she was immodest enough to admit it, looked good on his arm, was a godsend to Peter.

  However, Claire was lonely now in her marriage. Peter’s infidelities were one reason and her own decision not to have children – something else the colonial authorities no doubt secretly whispered about – left her with little in life other than her horses to truly care for.

  ‘Sometimes I think our horses are your babies,’ Peter said, breaking into her thoughts and, like many a husband, reading them.

  ‘I’m going to ride home and bathe,’ she said.

  He squeezed her hand. ‘You always seem to be riding off somewhere, but at least this time it’s home.’

  She detected the note of sadness in his voice, as if he were telling himself that he couldn’t be blamed for straying if she kept up her roving ways.

  The truth was that despite them owning three farms, she felt unsettled. As terrible as they had often been, she missed the days of the war in South Africa, where she’d had free rein over her life. She had thought that land, something her Fenian father had been denied and her first husband had been unable to provide, would give her a sense of freedom and belonging at the same time, but it had not been so. Running one farm was hard work, even with a good supply of gold buried here and there, but managing three along with their attendant staff and their families during a time of war presented a never-ending litany of chores, scares and tiring conundrums.

  But it was not just her business that was to blame for her lack of time with Peter. This new war with the Nama was escalating and Peter, as a doctor, was called on so often in his role as a Landespolizei officer that he was employed almost fulltime by the army. Peter had always had his medical practice, now in Keetmanshoop, and while he liked the idea of being a farmer, she had always done the lion’s share of the work managing their properties. Even so, his military service had added to her list of duties. She couldn’t be everywhere at once and it was hardly surprising that the Nama had been able to make off with so many of their cattle, not to mention some of her gold that the rebels had stumbled upon in the stables.

  Claire didn’t feel afraid, riding the desert landscape alone or with Jonas, her Nama labour manager for company on longer expeditions; Jakob Morengo of the Nama had made it plain in his statements and deeds that they did not target German women and children. Claire was becoming increasingly worried, however, that the same code of chivalry was not being followed by the Germans when it came to dealing with the rebels.

  Jonas had told her that when the kraals of Morengo and others had been raided, by Schutztruppen in search of fighters, their huts were being burned and the women and children rounded up and taken away. It was a chilling echo of the so-called ‘scorched earth’ policy that the British had employed to defeat the Boers in South Africa. In some instances, Jonas said, innocent Nama people had been killed on the spot.

  Claire mounted her favourite mare, Roisin – a good Irish name – and cantered down the main street of Keetmanshoop and out into the arid emptiness. She gave the horse its head and tried to push the worries from her mind. It didn’t work – she kept seeing the women and children in the concentration camps that the British had set up to house the Boer families; she smelled the filth again and saw the tiny graves.

  She feared the Germans had learned from their neighbours across the border how to fight a guerrilla war – starve the rebels of support by rounding up those closest to them.

  At the same time Claire felt the theft of her cattle as a personal affront. She had been careful to ensure that the Nama who worked on her farms were well looked after, with decent housing, fair pay and plentiful rations. She knew some farmers were not as caring, nor as lenient; Claire would refer cases of theft or other criminal behaviour to the local head man, but too many of her neighbours boasted of making use of the law that allowed them to discipline recalcitrant workers with their fists or a sjambok, the rawhide whip. She’d made a name for herself as a softie and a snob for walking out of drinks or dinners at the Schützenhaus when the men started laughing or boasting about such things.

  And she was unsettled for another reason. There was talk among the soldiers – Peter had relayed it to her – of an Australian who traded cattle and horses with Jakob Morengo and the other Nama. It was no secret that some of the English-speaking farmers across the border in the Cape Colony were sympathetic to the Nama cause, or perhaps just anti-Germany, as most Brits seemed predisposed to be. On her brief visit across the border she had asked the barman in the Upington Hotel for information on this mysterious Australian, but not even she had been able to wheedle a name out of the man. It was probably a case of one criminal protecting another, although she could hardly be critical of that sort of behaviour.

  When Claire arrived home, Sylvia, her cook and maid, appeared in the hallway, apron on and the smell of chicken roasting in the wood-fired oven wafting from the kitchen. They exchanged pleasantries and Claire asked for a bath to be drawn.

  As Claire undressed she found herself thinking of Blake. Many Australians, she told herself, had probably stayed on in South Africa to work the goldmines, perhaps even to trade in horses, and she had no reason to believe Blake would still be in Africa, let alone so close to where she now lived. All the same, the memory of their lovemaking under the stars came back to her.

  Sylvia departed and Claire lowered herself into the bath, the heat of the water almost a match for her thoughts. If by chance he was on the continent of Africa, then why had he not contacted her? She was certain she had not been Blake’s first woman, but had she been wrong to sense that there was something different about that time between them? Perhaps it was just the tumult of war, the shared risk, that had made it seem so vivid, so exciting, so . . . important. As enjoyable as her liaisons with Nathaniel had been, she had been half acting, manipulating him while telling herself she cared for him. But Blake had rescued her, had risked his life for her.

  She closed her eyes, trying to surrender to the soothing steam, but her mind kept turning. Why did he not even try to find me to collect his share of the gold? A week ago she had been busy unearthing one of the old ammunition boxes of gold when the Nama cattle raiders had been spotted approaching the farm. While the rebel commanders had decreed that no white women be attacked, she was not going to put herself at risk by trying to take on a dozen or so men who had ridden hard and fast into the farm. On hearing of the force’s imminent arrival she had taken Sylvia and Jonas – lest the rebels take it into their minds to shoot him as a sellout – away in the carriage. Claire had only had time to loosely scuff some dirt ove
r her hidey-hole in the stable and the horsemen had obviously noticed her shoddy work and exhumed the ammunition box full of Paul Kruger’s gold bars.

  Ever since, she had been worried that more rebels might come to the farm, this time not looking for livestock, but for more of her buried treasure.

  ‘Schatzi?’ Peter’s voice boomed through the high-ceilinged farmhouse, echoing off the wooden floors. ‘Sylvia, you are dismissed. We will be fine for the rest of the evening.’

  The door of the bathroom flew open and he grinned down at her, a bottle of champagne in one hand and two crystal flutes in the other. He set down the glasses on her dressing table and opened the bottle.

  ‘I couldn’t stay at the bar, thinking of you in the bathtub!’ He poured for them and handed her a glass. ‘Cheers, as the English say.’

  Claire lay her head back on the edge of the bath, closed her eyes and took a sip. Bliss. She forced her worries from her mind. Peter was good fun, and a tiny part of her wished he had been faithful to her so that she could have learned to love him properly, and forget about Blake.

  For now, though, the feeling of him tipping a jug of warm water through her hair, then working in and lathering the soap while she sipped champagne, would do.

  Chapter 33

  Upington, South Africa, the present day

  After breakfast at Libby’s guesthouse Nick used his phone’s GPS to find the Kalahari Mall, where he stocked up on provisions for his road trip and bought a paper map of Namibia and a road atlas of Southern Africa at the Bargain Books shop.

  Electronic devices were good for getting from point A to point B, but useless for situational awareness. He wanted to take a soldier’s – or perhaps a rebel commander’s – look at the distances he would have to cover in the next few days, and where everything was in relation to everything else.

  He had his second cup of coffee for the day at the Mugg & Bean in the mall while he studied his map. The first thing that hit him was the vastness of the distances that Blake had travelled in the course of his business in this part of Africa. The area that Steinaecker’s Horse had covered had, at first, seemed large to him, but in comparison to the wide empty lands of the Northern Cape and Namibia it was like comparing a suburban backyard to an outback cattle station.

  The map showed him that Jakob Morengo and his rebels had roamed over hundreds of kilometres. The Karas Mountains – there were in fact two ranges, the main one, and a Klein, or small, Karasberge as it was called on the map – seemed huge in area. It was easy to see how Morengo, with his local knowledge, could have hidden from the Germans for so long in this empty corner of a largely uninhabited colony.

  Nick’s phone rang and he saw that it was Pippa Chapman.

  ‘Lili’s in Royal Prince Alfred Hospital,’ Pippa said.

  Nick’s stomach flipped. ‘God, no, is she –’

  ‘She’s OK. She was mugged, in her house. She wasn’t answering her phone so I went to her home in Newtown. Her flatmates filled me in the whole ordeal.’

  ‘But she’s all right?’

  ‘She was knocked unconscious. The doctors are keeping her an extra day for observation because she was still a bit woozy. I’ve called her parents in Germany – they’re apoplectic, as you can imagine.’

  ‘But Lili’s OK?’

  ‘Again, yes, Nick, but the doctors want to make sure. She’s quite shaken up. She had her backpack stolen; the cops interviewed her. Lili told me to tell you that she’s sorry for not listening to you.’

  ‘Any other message?’

  ‘Yes. I’m getting to that. She said to tell you that she’s sorry but they got all your documents. What have you two been up to, Nick?’ Pippa took an audible breath. ‘Are you involved in something criminal?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, if whatever you and Lili were doing has got her hurt then I think you need to take a good long look at yourself.’

  ‘Thanks, Pippa, I really do appreciate you checking up on Lili. I’ll take it from here. Bye.’ He ended the call. He didn’t need his ex-boss to tell him that he needed to take stock of his life.

  He tried Lili’s number again, but it went through to voicemail. He left a message telling her to call him, day or night, and to just let the phone ring and hang up and he would call her straight back.

  He looked at the map and the atlas, opened to the page that showed Upington and the Northern Cape. Further north across the border in Namibia was Keetmanshoop, where Claire Martin had fetched up as a wealthy landowner married to a doctor. It was a big jump from spying for the Germans, and running guns to the Afrikaners. And, of course, she spoke of her ‘fortune’ and another cache of gold hidden near Lüderitz somewhere on the coast.

  Gold.

  For as long as man had mined and smelted it they had also stolen and killed for the stuff. He thought of the guy on the flight to Skukuza telling him about the legend of Kruger’s gold and his own check of the internet, in Cape Town, about the ongoing interest, even to this day, in reported findings of the Boer republic president’s missing treasure. What he needed now was more information about Scott Dillon and how he might link to all this, before he confronted the man in person.

  He typed ‘Scott Dillon’ into his phone’s internet browser. The first few pages all related to real-estate sales so Nick searched under ‘News’ instead. Again, most of the stories were pieces speculating about the South African and international real-estate markets, though a few from business publications pointed to the falling share price of Dillon’s company. It appeared he had overextended in golf estate developments, which seemed to be going out of style. Nick found another two entries that looked interesting.

  Real-estate mogul’s fire sale to pay off ex, was a gossipy piece from the Sunday Times. Nick opened it.

  Scott Dillon’s no stranger to auctions, but yesterday it was some property of a different kind going under the hammer in an auction of some of the real-estate titan’s most valued personal items. On the auctioneer’s block were rare pieces of memorabilia once owned by President Paul Kruger, including items of clothing, a desk, and a diary. Sources close to Dillon say the one-hundred-million-rand divorce settlement ordered by a judge when Dillon split from wife of fifteen years Joanne has cleaned out Dillon Real Estate’s cashbox.

  Bingo, Nick thought. So, Dillon was into collecting Kruger-era memorabilia, including the former president’s personal papers. Also, it was more speculation about his financial state, reportedly parlous. Here was a man who could certainly use some gold.

  The other piece that was interesting was from an online edition of House & Home from a few years earlier, in happier times for Scott and Joanne. A picture showed him sitting in a lounge with her on the arm, draped over him, in a sumptuous living room. It was a profile piece about the celebrity couple’s home and their lifestyle. Nick scrolled down the page.

  ‘Scott’s a mad keen collector of South African history, especially around the Anglo-Boer War,’ Joanne says, gesturing to a huge bookcase and a number of ‘very valuable’ objects and records . . .

  Nick checked his watch. He needed to get moving.

  Leaving town, the trappings of the twenty-first century fell away rapidly. Even flying along at a hundred and twenty kilometres per hour he started to feel the isolation of the landscape. Away from the Orange River the vegetation became stunted and mean, the ground rocky and thirsty. He was no farmer but he imagined farms needed to be huge here, as in the Australian outback, to support a viable herd.

  From what he knew from Susan’s research into the death of Blake and his own checking of the map, the Australian had been killed much further north of Upington, closer to the border between modern-day Klein Menasse on the Namibian side and Rietfontein on the South African side. He recalled her saying that the patrol that had ridden out to check on Blake, and subsequently executed him, had left from Klipdam, on the German side.


  Nick crossed countries instead at Ariamsvlei, which was closer to Upington, with the Karas Mountains on the other side, where the ‘Black Napoleon’ had waged his guerrilla campaign.

  He thought of Lili as he drove; he felt terrible that she had been hurt as a result of her involvement with him, but relieved that she seemed to be fine. Anger began to bubble inside him and he gripped the steering wheel hard. He still didn’t know who was targeting him and the people in his life who had been touched by the story of Claire Martin and Cyril Blake, but it had become personal now. Nick had never been one to pick a fight, always avoiding bar-room punch-ups and conflict of all kinds. Now he wanted to find out who was responsible for this series of burglaries and assaults – perhaps even a murder – and exact some form of revenge.

  The Karas Mountains popped up out of the surrounding flat, stony country as though God had plonked them there as an afterthought. In the distance they appeared a hazy blue-grey. Nick saw on his map that a detour from the main B3 road onto a side road, the D203, would take him through part of the mountain range.

  He left the tar, and the gravel road took him on a winding trail that followed the course of dry riverbeds between flat-topped mesas that appeared red up close. The mountains, if they could be called that, did not seem particularly high, but this struck even his non-military mind as perfect ambush country.

  Nick could picture canny rebels, intimately acquainted with the land, scaling these rocky cliffs and raining down fire on German horsemen forced to take the easy way through the valleys. Apart from the odd sheep farmer’s hut there was no real sign of life in these barren hills. The little vegetation was clustered along the parched watercourses. In the summer, when the seasonal rain came, perhaps they flowed, but now, when Nick stopped to stretch his legs by a sandy riverbed, there was no sign of moisture.

  It would have been a good place to fight a war, Nick mused, with few civilians hardy or foolish enough to scratch out an existence here, but from the last papers Anja had translated it seemed Jakob Morengo had brought his Nama people, women and children, and their precious livestock to these very same desolate hills.