Treasonous

by David Hickson

  “Why not go straight to him?”

  “You and me know each other. Fehrson wouldn’t be here buying me drinks, would he?” He waved at the barman again.

  “If you thought I would jump to Fehrson’s defence you’re in for a disappointment. Publish your story for all I care.”

  “It’s like a ship though isn’t it?” Johansson’s voice dropped abruptly to a threatening whisper. “All hands go down with the captain.”

  “Go ahead and publish it,” I said, and finished my mineral water to indicate that the conversation was over. “I jumped that ship a long time ago.”

  “Who said anything about publishing?” said Johansson as the barman delivered another drink. We sat in silence and his cold eyes laughed at me as the realisation of what we were doing here dawned on me. I said nothing as we waited for the barman to retreat, and Johansson switched to an all-business voice.

  “You’re sitting there with your ears flapping like a damn elephant but you’re not hearing me,” he said. “I don’t want to publish anything. When you find the mother of all gold veins, do you tell the world? Not me, buddy. I just want a few of the filings that fall to the factory floor.”

  “You want to blackmail Fehrson?”

  “Not Fehrson, he’s just the nerve-ending. It’s the whole damn system behind him that’s at stake. Fehrson’s just our way in. He knows how some guy without an education and nothing to offer but a lot of scar tissue is about to become the most powerful man in the country. Fehrson’s the keeper of the secrets, isn’t he?” He scanned the bar as if the mention of that word might cause some of the sad early morning imbibers to cast off their soiled overcoats and reveal their hidden recording devices.

  “And you’ve discovered one of his secrets?”

  Johansson raised an offensively delicate white hand. “If you want to play the innocent,” he said, “that’s okay by me. But your man Fehrson is in up to his eyeballs.”

  “Fehrson is not in anything,” I said. “Not up to any part of his anatomy. He’s long overdue for retirement and is just hanging in there because his pension won’t cover more than a couple of loaves of bread each month. There’s no covering up of secrets. And certainly no big haul.”

  Johansson smiled with the joy of having made me angry.

  “I’m here to help you, Gabriel. Don’t you see that?”

  “By telling me dirty secrets about the president-elect’s past?”

  Johansson took the toothpick out and smiled to show me what a splendid joke he thought that was.

  “Your life has fallen apart, Gabriel. I’ve done my research. The Brit army don’t want you anymore. What happened there? You kill too many people? Kill the wrong people? They wouldn’t let me see your files, you know that? And then your girl up and left. You haven’t made one of your little videos for months.”

  “Nevertheless,” I said. “I’m not interested in your blackmail schemes.”

  “Just ask Fehrson about Lindiwe Dlomo. That’s all you need to do.”

  “Where are you getting this bullshit? Did you dream it up?”

  “Fuck you,” said Johansson, and he tilted his chair back onto its hind legs to see how I would take that. When I didn’t respond he let the chair right itself, propelling him back to the table where his hand found his glass with practised ease, and he grinned widely as if to quell my offence.

  “No, no … that’s where I get it from: ‘fuck … you’. It’s a Xhosa clan name. You know the Xhosa tribe have clans? You wouldn’t understand – you’re a foreigner.”

  I didn’t bother pointing out that he was no less a foreigner. And I didn’t want to encourage him by discussing Xhosa clan names.

  “You talk to Fehrson,” he said magnanimously. “Tell him I’m not the vindictive sort. We can work something out.”

  “Talk to him yourself,” I said and stood up to leave.

  Johansson nodded as if he approved of that move on my part.

  “If you like,” he said. “But I thought that you might want to know where this was taken.” He placed a hand like a long-legged spider onto the buff folder, pushed it across the table towards me and swivelled it around so I could open it with ease. I didn’t open it. His eyes were gleaming with an extraordinary malice.

  He opened the folder, and despite myself, I glanced down.

  It was a photograph. What I’d heard Sandy call a ‘four by six’. A good quality matte colour print, taken with a telephoto lens. The subject in clear focus, and the background blurred. A professional job because at that range the depth of field would have been only a few inches.

  It was Sandy. Her dark hair was pulled back, and she was looking over her shoulder as if she was running from someone, or more likely because she was about to cross a road and was simply turning to look at oncoming traffic. Her face looked pale and drawn, lighter than the creamy toffee of my memory, as if she was stressed or unwell. Her face had the look I remembered, of vulnerable misery. Her large eyes were liquid, as if she might be about to burst into tears, and her lips compressed for fear that they would spill everything she had bottled up inside. But this was an illusion. There was a strength within her that was at odds with the fragility of her face. The impression that she was miserable was a conspiracy of her physical features, and the moment she smiled it vanished. But in this photograph there was no smile, and the tension in her face was all too clear.

  I sat down. Johansson had been talking, and now he repeated himself.

  “It’s recent,” he said and reached out a thin finger with knobbly joints to point at the foot of the photograph. A date was burned into the image. Two weeks ago.

  “Dates can be faked,” I said.

  “Sure they can,” he admitted and shrugged like a man who wouldn’t be bothered to do something so foolish. “My buddy took that picture. There are more where that came from.” He closed the folder and pulled it back across the table. I was still looking at it, transfixed. I raised my eyes to his. There was a glint of triumph there. He smiled, revealing a row of even and very white teeth. Were they false, or was he simply a good example of the standard of Swedish dentistry? They were out of place in his battered face.

  “My buddy was on a job. Human trafficking. Nasty business.”

  “I’m not interested in what happened to Sandy. I’ve moved on.”

  “Words, that’s all those are, Gabriel. Meaningless words. I’m thinking you want to know how your girl ended up there. Voluntary or involuntary? Is she waiting for you to save her?” He showed me his teeth again. “Tell you what. Give me an address, and when you’ve spoken with your old boss, I’ll send these over.”

  He pushed the folder back across the table and produced a pen.

  “I’m not interested in your holiday snaps,” I said, but my voice didn’t come out quite as strongly as I intended.

  “We make this a win-win,” he said in a friendly tone and handed me the pen.

  I wrote an address – not my own address because I have learned to be circumspect about these things.

  “Dlomo. Lindiwe,” he said. “Remember the name. Then phone me.”

  “I am not peddling your shit to Fehrson.” I said more firmly.

  Johansson allowed the smile to drop off his face like someone had cut the strings. He reached for another toothpick and peeled it. “Forty-eight hours enough?” he said.

  I stood up, considered a parting shot, decided against it, and instead turned to leave.

  “Ask the barman for another, will you? When you’re paying.”

  I ignored him and strode away.

  “Forty-eight hours,” he called after me.

  But he didn’t get to see those forty-eight hours through. Johansson was pulled out of the Atlantic Ocean a mere thirty-six hours later. The thing that bothered me as I left his chilled body in the morgue and walked away like a man without a conscience was whether he had ended up in the ocean because of me.

  Two

  Four hours after I had left Johansson to finish his d
rink and think his greedy thoughts, I arrived at the Warehouse. Thirty-two hours before they would pull his body from the sea.

  “Hail, the conquering hero,” said Khanyisile. “Or should I welcome back the prodigal son?”

  “There isn’t a lot I’ve conquered recently, Khanyi, so don’t think flattery will get you anywhere. It’ll just make me bitter.”

  “It never took much,” she said with a laugh that sounded like a row of bells on a chilly morning.

  Khanyisile was a Zulu from the north, as she reminded anyone who made the mistake of thinking she came from the sleepy Cape. Her people were warriors, and she demonstrated her ancestral tendencies in a fierce ambition. She had started at the Department with a secretarial qualification and a mediocre typing speed, and had lost no time in dusting off a piece of legislation that provided for educational funding for staff members. In five years she had armed herself with two university degrees, and leap-frogged everyone else so that by the time I had joined the team she had become Fehrson’s right-hand woman. And, it was rumoured, the highest-paid person on the ninth floor. So strong was her ambition that envious colleagues claimed she dedicated all of her free time to her betterment and had not enjoyed a single social engagement since swearing to the Official Secrets Act. Such self-control baffled the many men and occasional woman who found that her Masai-warrior body, tightly plaited hair, and perfectly symmetrical features inspired in them a curiosity to discover what might lie beneath her dramatic sense of office dress. Today she was wearing a demure two piece in blue suede. It stretched in all the right places and looked as if some buttons had popped.

  “Father was so surprised you called, he asked me to check that we’d paid all your expenses,” said Khanyi as the lift hauled us with great effort towards the ninth floor. ‘Father’ because Fehrson had started his military career as an army chaplain.

  “And you found that you hadn’t?” I said.

  Khanyi handed me a tight-lipped smile. “All approved expenses were paid,” she said primly.

  “I just need a quiet word with Fehrson alone. I won’t bring up the unpaid expenses.”

  “We will be alone,” said Khanyi, demonstrating the strength of her position in the Department.

  The lift jerked abruptly to a stop, as if noticing too late that we’d reached the ninth floor. Fehrson’s small Department of State Security occupied a handful of rooms on the upper floors of the Warehouse. A relic of the eighteenth century, the building was an opulent trader’s warehouse on Greenmarket Square in the centre of Cape Town. A new face had been put onto it in a moment of Baroque optimism many years ago, but behind that ornate front was the same old crumbly building with wrought-iron staircases, creaky wooden floors, and rooms that could have accommodated giants if it hadn’t been for the doorways that were made for midgets. There were ten rambling storeys, and to this day I’m convinced there are some rooms that haven’t been opened for over a century, so labyrinthine is the design of it. The old building provided premises for the sort of things that burly security guards discourage one from looking into too closely. Here Fehrson had spun his web, appropriately distant from any official state offices, and had trapped his handful of employees with the efficient assistance of Khanyi.

  I had worked with the Department for less than a year, employed initially because Fehrson wanted me to bring my military experience to bear upon the work that they were doing. But my experience had proved too extreme for him. Too much of the less salubrious aspects of military life, the fuel of nightmares that wake you up in the small hours of the morning. Fehrson had smiled bravely in the face of this realisation, and had told me many times he didn’t like the word ‘breakdown’, because many retired soldiers had issues that they needed to resolve. And the fact I’d been discharged – who cares whether it was honourable? – and that I had spent time working through these issues with various psychologists did not mean that I was in any way ‘broken’.

  ‘Father’ Fehrson arrived at the small chrome and glass meeting room that Khanyi had organised for our little talk looking like an English gentleman called in from a pheasant shooting weekend. A tweed jacket with understated tie, corduroy trousers, and shoes that were smart enough for the cocktails, yet would handle the muddy fields. It was an inappropriate image because Fehrson was an Afrikaner of German descent, without a drop of English blood in him. But it was an image he fostered, having astutely surmised that an Englishman in the South African security service was more likely to survive the turbulent transition of the country from pariah state to rainbow nation than would an Afrikaner. Whether that accounted for his persistence in the service after so many years, I wasn’t sure. He was certainly one of very few old hands who still roamed the corridors of secret power.

  He stood at the door and opened both arms as if he was inviting a large audience to share in his wonderment.

  “Look at you,” he said, and took another moment to do just that. Then to Khanyi, “Didn’t I tell you he’d be back?”

  “You did, Father,” she said demurely, a kitten in the presence of her master.

  “Press that button, Khanyisile,” he said as he greeted me with a handshake that felt more like a judo grip, my hand grasped in both of his, and he studied my face for damage. “We’ll get some coffee.”

  Khanyi pressed the button on the intercom box on the table. It squawked in response.

  “Ask her for the real stuff,” said Fehrson. “It’s not every day we get to welcome back one of our own.”

  The box didn’t seem to like the idea of the real stuff, and Fehrson sighed as it expressed that dislike in a high-pitched stream of squawks. He relinquished my hand, and we took our places at the table, with Fehrson and Khanyi facing me, their backs to the window so that the light was in my eyes and it could become an interrogation in a moment if things went that way.

  The light turned Fehrson’s neatly combed white hair into a halo, although a few sections tried to break away from the rest and turn him into a crazy old man, which is pretty much what he was, being a good five years past retirement. But the moment anyone made the mistake of thinking that Fehrson was a doddery old man, his clear blue eyes would flash and he would give a glimpse of the qualities that had earned him his original nickname, ‘Fearsome’.

  “Secrets?” said Fehrson incredulously after I’d presented the first part of my pitch. I’d been careful to avoid any details, and had only gently hinted at a vague suspicion, but Fehrson was too sharp to miss the main thrust of the thing. “Your friend is suggesting that someone from our department is covering up dark secrets about the new leader?” His incredulity turned into indignation. “That’s preposterous.”

  “Which is what I told him,” I said. “He’s not my friend, I met him for the first time this morning.”

  “But he does the same …” Fehrson searched for a word that might describe the lowly work I’d been engaged in since leaving the Department. “The same sort of … would you call it journalism?” he suggested as if that was a dirty word.

  “He writes for a disreputable newspaper. Not really the same thing.”

  “The Sun?” asked Khanyi.

  “The Sun. Yes,” I said. There didn’t seem much point in denying it, and although it wasn’t the only disreputable newspaper in the Cape, it was the worst one. “I thought I should let you know these rumours are circulating, just in case you’d like to do anything about them.”

  “Do anything?” said Fehrson, the note of incredulity still ringing strong. “What would you expect me to do? Laugh about it? Or were you thinking of something more action oriented?”

  I honestly hadn’t any idea what I expected them to do about it. I had left the Fireman’s Arms in a fuming rage, determined to forget the unpleasant encounter with Johansson as quickly as I could. But a couple of hours staring blankly at my computer screen, a few listless phone calls to people who were not interested in discussing their experiences in the Angolan war, several cups of coffee, and then a determined walk through
the blustery rain of an early autumn afternoon for a late lunch at Giovanni’s, had done nothing to remove the image of Sandy’s face from my mind. I had struggled back through the wind and damp leaves to my apartment and wondered what harm there would be in picking up the phone and calling the Department. But that was about as far as my planning had gone.

  I didn’t think Johansson would tell me where that photograph had been taken, no matter what I did. He was that kind of person. But sitting here talking to Fehrson seemed like a better thing to do than stare at a computer screen until my forehead started bleeding.

  Khanyi and Fehrson were looking at me as if expecting me to say something. I realised my mind had wandered.

  “Or is it supposed to be just a blanket ‘sins of the past’ kind of secret?” asked Fehrson.

  “There was a name mentioned,” I said. “He implied it had something to do with a woman.”

  “Doesn’t it always,” said Khanyi with a dose of bitterness.

  “Well, let’s have it then,” said Fehrson, pretending to gird himself up for a bombshell. “What dalliance is coming back to haunt our new leader?”

  I searched my mind for the name that Johansson had thrown at me. I hadn’t stopped to have him write it down and felt foolish for having rushed out without at least clarifying some details. Then it came back in a rush. “Lindiwe. That was it. Lindiwe someone or other.”

  Fehrson didn’t react. His face remained still as if he had not heard what I’d said, but I could have sworn his eyes did something. It was as if the pupils suddenly dilated. I’d been paying attention when they taught us that the pupils dilate when you get a sudden shock. I’d even seen it firsthand in the field. But this was not an interrogation, and I wasn’t looking for it, so I dismissed it as a figment of my imagination. At that moment the door opened, and Belinda waddled in with a tray of coffee. Fehrson looked away and focused on the coffee and the six dry biscuits she had arranged symmetrically around the plate to make it seem as if it was full.