Old Lovers Don't Die
Old Lovers Don't Die
Christian de Villiers [2]
Paul G Anderson
Australia, South Africa (2015)
de Villiers is hoping this trip will be slightly less action packed.
But he is not only here to help; he is longing to learn more about his
deceased father and travels to the village where his father once worked
as a doctor, hoping to find some answers.
Rwandan village on the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo,
Christian is faced with danger, disease and deceit when he becomes
embroiled in the doings of the violent Congolese warlords.
ex-lover Isabella becomes involved, the race is on to keep each other
alive. He goes in search of answers, but will he like what he finds?
About the Author
Paul Anderson lives in Adelaide, South Australia. He is a surgeon who specialises in upper gastrointestinal and hepatobiliary surgery. Born in Rotorua, New Zealand, his tertiary education began at Waikato University before he went on to further studies in Scotland, California, and South Africa where he completed both a Ph.D. and a medical degree before becoming a surgeon. The passion for writing has latently manifested, thanks to the encouragement and direction of many friends.
Paul G. Anderson
Old Lovers Don't Die
Copyright © Paul G. Anderson (2015)
The right of Paul G. Anderson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781784555313
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2015)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LB
Does It Hurt To Die
, Medical Mystery Thriller by Paul Anderson, 2nd Edition available online
www.doesithurttodie.com.au
If you see the stable-door setting open wide;
If you see a tired horse lying down inside;
If your mother mends a coat cut about and tore;
If the lining's wet and warm -- don't you ask no more!
With any writing, there are many contributions. They are all extremely valuable, each in a unique way adding to the vibrancy of the story and hopefully the pleasure of reading. Pre-eminent on the ladder of gratefulness, is the family that supports you. They are biased, but there are days when you need and love their bias. Their belief in your writing and its value to others as entertainment is an invaluable spur when the creative well has only a few lonely drops in the bottom.
Gabrielle, a more wonderful sister you could not have, and my favourite son, Jordan. Independently both are of inestimable value. Gabrielle’s unswerving and consistent enthusiasm astounds me. Jordan has read so many books that it embarrasses his father; but in having done so, he provides invaluable analysis and critique. Peter, your reaction to the first novel,
Does It Hurt to Die,
was the greatest encouragement, which provided momentum for this sequel. Richard, for the ongoing reminder two of the important things in life are, fishing, and green tea. Moreover, that you ignore them at your peril. Vanessa, thank you for your analysis and encouragement of this manuscript as it surfed the rough waves of its beginning.
There are many others, far too many to name, who in a world enamoured with critique, run contrary to the herd and encourage. If I named them all I might run the risk of offending some, who might inevitably leave out.
A terrorist attack on a church in Cape Town in 1989 kills twenty people. Jannie de Villiers, a well-known liver transplant surgeon, narrowly avoids death, but is seriously wounded. The uproar over the killings by a radical black group hides the more sinister involvement of the apartheid government. Two weeks later, while recovering at home, Jannie de Villiers is murdered. With too many inexplicable circumstances surrounding her husband’s death, Renata takes her four year old son Christian to live in Australia.
As Christian grows up, he becomes more and more interested in what his father might have been involved, in South Africa. He repeatedly researches the death of his father on the Internet, trying to find the reasons he might have been killed. There is little to satiate his curiosity until one day he discovers a blog site set up by an old anti-apartheid activist. The blog site claims that his father worked for the Bureau of State Security in the old apartheid government, which was implicated in atrocities against black and coloured population groups. Initially, Christian is devastated by the discovery, as the little that he had been able to read up to that point had all been positive about his father. He then becomes convinced that there is a mistake, and wants to return to South Africa to find out more about his father's work.
His mother, Renata, is initially opposed to Christian returning to South Africa, fearing that some of those who might have been involved in her husband’s death may threaten her son. Christian pleads with his mother and returns to Cape Town shortly after his eighteenth birthday. Unbeknown to him, his return to South Africa is monitored by the National Intelligence Agency and a white underground Afrikaner supremacist organisation. They both have knowledge of Christian’s father's genetic research on racial profiling and believe that he also had a folder containing highly sensitive material on chemical and germ warfare. Both organisations consider that Christian may have information which will help them find his father’s folder with its racial research and highly embarrassing links to international governments.
Christian, when he arrives back in Cape Town, finds changes under the new post-Mandela South Africa; however, vestiges of the past are everywhere. While legal separation is no longer constitutionally enshrined, years of separation and brutality live on in attitudes, undermining trust and harmonious living. Friends of his father help Christian build a picture of what it was like for his father growing up in apartheid Africa. As he meets more and more people associated with his father, he begins to understand his father’s involvement with the previous government, and he realises that he is being watched by someone or by some unknown organisation.
Christian’s search for the truth about his father is then further complicated when he meets Isabella, the beautiful daughter of his father’s theatre scrub nurse. He falls in love with Isabella but is shattered when she turns out to be his half-sister. After much anguish and soul-searching, they determine to complete the journey of discovery together. Christian discovers his father’s research in an old folder buried in the garden of their house in Wynberg, after one of his father’s old friends delivers a cryptic note. Included in the folder is evidence of the apartheid South African government’s involvement in germ and chemical warfare programmes and the development of nuclear arms. Christian shares the contents of the folder with Isabella and it becomes increasingly apparent to them both that their father was heavily involved in and a trusted member of the apartheid government's President’s Council. A council so secret, they discover that it was answerable only to the Minister of Defence and the Prime Minister. The primary aim of the Council was to be able to use any means possible to preserve the white government in perpetuity.
Within the folder are also details of the apartheid government’s involvement in the development of nuclear weapons with Israel, and germ and chemical warfare programs with nations who were openly opposed to apartheid. They soon realise that the information has never been released, and understand that it has the potential to embarrass many governments who covertly supported the apartheid government. In a section which has his father's name at the top of it, Christian and Isabella find encrypted genetic research on racial groups, which his father had discovered during his research into the rejection of liver transplants. Christian recognises that the encryption has a code not dissimilar to code that he noticed on the back of a photograph of his mother and himself in Adelaide. He suggests to Isabella that if he can get his mother to find that code and send it to him, they may be able to decipher his father's research.
Once it is known that the folder has been discovered, the National Intelligence Agency and a secret white Afrikaner supremacist group pursue Christian and Isabella openly. Christian and Isabella are taken hostage by the white supremacist group who demand the key to the genetic research, which they now know that Christian's mother Renata has. Held in an underground mine, Christian and Isabella have to persuade Renata to send the code to unlock their father’s research, knowing that it may be used by the white supremacists to eliminate thousands in the black population in the pursuit of a new white homeland. Once the code is supplied may mean their deaths.
Saved from the white supremacists, Christian and Isabella find their relationship frustrated by the distance between them. They, with great reluctance and heartbreak, return to their respective countries Australia and South Africa.