The October Killings (5 page)

There was a new portent rising in Abigail's mind. “The ones who died, do you know how?”

“No,” Lourens said. “I never found that out.”

There was little left to say. She had nothing with which to reassure him. “I will try to find out about the other deaths. Leave me your number. I'll call you.”

6

Johanna sat down carefully on the chair to which Abigail had pointed. She was armed with notebook and pen. One of the younger woman's strengths was a well-developed ability to read situations. While she did not understand what was happening, she knew that it was serious and that this was no time for joking or even small talk. She waited for Abigail to begin.

“Write down this date: October 21, 1985. Have you got that?” Johanna was nodding, but Abigail repeated the date to make sure. “On that night a team of South African Defense Force soldiers entered Lesotho and raided an African National Congress house just outside Maseru. The soldiers killed twelve of the people in the house and brought the rest—six, I believe—back to South Africa. On the next night, October 22, we escaped from the police cells in Ficksburg.”

Johanna's eyes were open so wide that the whites were visible all round the irises. “You were there?”

“Yes, I was there. Now listen carefully. Someone at the army's headquarters must have some information about the old government's cross-border raids. I want the names of all the soldiers who entered the house that night.”

“They've probably all confessed and received amnesty.” The words came tumbling out of Johanna. “We can't touch them.”

“I said, listen carefully. I do not want to prosecute them, but I must have their names and I must have them today. You find them for me and you find them by lunchtime. Tell them the minister wants that list now.”

“The minister?” Johanna had been impressed, now she was stunned.

“The minister wants that list by lunchtime,” Abigail lied.

Johanna scurried back to her office and Abigail took the passage to the lifts. There she pressed the button for the top floor. She knew that if she was going to get the facts on whatever it was that had been happening and deal with it, she was going to need help.

The four corners of the top floor were occupied by the offices of the minister, the deputy minister, the director-general and the deputy director-general responsible for liaising with Special Operations. She walked purposefully down the passage to the last of these and entered his personal assistant's office without knocking.

The assistant was packing files into a broad black briefcase. “I need to see Mandla,” Abigail told her.

“I'll make you an appointment,” the assistant said.

“I need to see him now.”

“He's not here. He's already on his way to the airport.”

“Where's he going?”

“Parliament. Cape Town.” She was one of the few personal assistants in the department, Johanna included, who did not act as if they were the keepers of the keys. In a whisper she added, “Something big has come up. I don't know what it is. PAs don't get told the big things.”

*   *   *

Abigail had tried the offices of three other senior men and one deputy DG. Two of them had been out, the third was in a meeting with his staff and would not be free before lunch. The deputy DG listened politely, but had more important things to do than institute investigations into probably unfounded theories about apartheid soldiers being murdered.

It was almost three quarters of an hour before Abigail got back to her office. Johanna followed her in. She could barely contain herself. “They didn't want to give it to me,” she said. “They even said they didn't have it, but when I told them the minister was going to come over there himself if they didn't give it to me…”

“You told them that?”

“Yes. And I told them their jobs were on the line. I told them you said…”

“All right, Johanna. I'd better not hear any more of what you told them.”

“But they still refused me.”

By this time it was clear to Abigail that Johanna had the list, but she also knew that to keep Johanna in a state that was departmentally described as “motivated,” she would have to listen to the rest of her story. “Can we get to the point?”

“I spoke to a Major Msibi and he said he would not release it without the permission of his minister.”

Abigail looked at Johanna's sparkling eyes and sighed.

“But I found a Lieutenant Johnson in the same section and told him that the Minister of Justice was going to be very unhappy if he did not hand it over this morning. And you know what these civil service whites are like.”

“So you got it?”

“Ta-raa.” Johanna's fanfare was accompanied by her thrusting two faxed pages, taken from an obviously old document, at Abigail.

“Good girl,” Abigail said from the heart. “That's wonderful.” It really was wonderful, she thought. At the top of page one was the name of the operation and the date, October 21, 1985. Operation Good Neighbor, it had been called. This was followed by the actual address outside Maseru, Lesotho's little capital, that was going to be raided. They must have been very confident of their security, Abigail thought.

Below the address were two lists of names. The first one carried the word “Strategic” at the head of the column. It contained thirty-five names and their ranks and spilled over onto another page. The second list was headed “Strike” and was made up of just seven names. The name Lourens, L: Corporal, was among them. So was one of the other three that Leon had given her. This, then, was the list of those who had entered the house. But it was far fewer than the twenty or so of Leon's memory. At the bottom of the list there seemed to be an eighth name of which only the tops of the letters were visible. It seemed to Abigail that either the bottom of the original document had been torn off or some electronic spasm had erased the rest of the names. Still, there were enough for a start.

“I did well, didn't I?” Johanna was hopping up and down on the balls of her feet.

“You did brilliantly. But there's more I want from you.”

Abigail explained carefully what it was that she wanted and how the information could be obtained. Then she told Johanna that she would talk to the supervisor of the library to get their new girl to help. She would also try to get a typist from the pool to assist further.

“You want to know if they have died and what year?” Johanna looked puzzled.

“And the date each one died … most of all the date. That's the most important part.”

“This is so exciting…”

“Listen carefully,” Abigail said. She found that she was often using those words when talking to Johanna. “This happened twenty years ago, and these men would all have been between eighteen and forty-five or thereabouts. They will be between forty and sixty-five by now. Obviously the higher ranks will be older.”

“This is thrilling.”

“Just do it,” Abigail said. “Do it now, do it fast, and do it right.”

“Yes, sir,” Johanna said, clicking her heels together and fashioning a mock salute. “The twenty-second of October—that's the day of our conference.”

“I know.”

“Is that significant?” Johanna's voice was eager. She wanted it to be so.

“I don't think so. And, oh … go down to Human Resources—I think they arranged the presentation for Michael Bishop, and get his address and phone number.”

*   *   *

It was mid-afternoon before the deputy director-general discovered that Abigail was conscripting typists from other departments. He entered her office five minutes later. The look on his face suggested that now he had something on the minister's pretty favorite.

He was within five years of Abigail's age, but that had not stopped him from addressing her as “girlie” the first time he gave her an instruction. Abigail had replied that he was at liberty to call her either Abigail or Ms. Bukula, but nothing else. Since that day relations between them had been frosty at best.

The deputy director-general was physically a small man. He had a lean, fleshless head that made him look top-heavy. His tight African curls had been allowed to grow, spreading a few more centimeters all around and so adding to the effect. He stared at her with what was intended to be unsettling intensity.

“You have something to tell me, I believe.” The words came out in tight little syllables, a way of speaking that Abigail privately thought of as his pinched-arse mode.

Speaking to this man without permanently destroying her career prospects was always a special challenge to Abigail. At times like this it was still more difficult.

“Not that I'm aware of,” she said, keeping her voice flat and expressionless.

“I fail to see how you can be unaware that you are hijacking girls from all over the building to undertake some private project of which I know nothing.”

“I have authorization,” she said.

“From whom? It didn't come from me.”

“It came from Mandla Nyati.” Abigail lied well when she felt the cause was a good one.

This piece of information gave the deputy director-general reason to pause while considering the best course of action. Nyati was technically of the same rank, but anyone associated with Special Operations or the Asset Forfeiture Unit automatically rose a step or two in rank. “He's not your line manager,” he said carefully. “Instructions should come through your line manager.”

It was time to give the fish a little line, before reeling him in. “That's quite true” she said innocently. But she stopped there. That was enough line. Let him thrash around on the end of it. If he did not have the courage to countermand what seemed to be a Special Operations instruction, that really was his problem.

“Well,” he said. “I trust you have it in writing.” It was a desperate attempt to regain a little dignity.

“Oh, yes.”

He waited for Abigail to offer the written authorization, but she remained silent and motionless, looking back at him in the expressionless way that she hoped would have done justice to a good poker player.

“Well, where is it?” he asked.

“In my car.” One of her hands was partially covering a sheet of paper that lay face down on desk.

The deputy DG's eyes flickered toward the piece of paper. There was nothing in Abigail's posture to suggest that she might be thinking of showing it to him or of fetching the document she had told him was in her car. He waited only a moment longer before starting to rise. “I would appreciate a copy,” he said. The enemy was in full flight.

“Of course,” Abigail said, still without moving.

“And let's not forget the conference. It's only days away.”

“I won't.”

Before he had left she lowered her eyes to the papers on her desk. She did not look up as he went through the door. Small victories, she told herself—small victories can lead to big defeats, if I give him the opportunity.

*   *   *

Abigail looked at the copy of the fax that Johanna had left her, reading the names of those who had entered the house on that night twenty years before. Apart from Leon's name and the three he had given her, there was only one that she recognized. It was van Jaarsveld, M: Captain.

Marinus van Jaarsveld, the only one of the raiders to make the pages of the newspapers because he had been the only one to refuse the promise of amnesty that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had offered, was now in prison. She had been told that he occupied a cell on what had been death row in apartheid days. But he was not waiting for impending death.

She had only seen van Jaarsveld on that day near Maseru and again in court when a changing country had finally caught up with him. But, in his case, she had no desire to resume the acquaintanceship. While Leon had retreated from contact with any of his colleagues of that night, van Jaarsveld had stayed at the center of the security forces and may have kept in touch with some of the others.

He was in the care of the Department of Correctional Services and Abigail had a good contact there. She had met Fransina Wolmarans of their communications office a year before at a departmental management seminar. Abigail had a tendency toward unlikely friendships and Fransina, who had worked for the department under the apartheid government, was one such. Fransina's mixed race parentage had delayed her promotion under the old government, but she had been given more responsibility since then and her salary had since moved up a couple of notches. The absence of tertiary qualifications meant that her career had probably now reached its limit. The warm relationship between a well-educated black activist who was manifestly destined for big things and a lower-level bureaucrat who spoke Afrikaans at home had surprised many.

Abigail dialed her number. When Fransina answered Abigail told her what she wanted.

“It's easy to visit a prisoner, specially for someone like you,” Fransina said. “What's the prisoner's name?”

“Marinus van Jaarsveld.”

“The mad old supremacist?”

“I suppose that's him, yes.”

“I'm sorry, Abby, but I don't think you'll be allowed. Visits to C-Max are tough. Visits to people in C-Max who have been found guilty of political murders are still tougher. And visits to van Jaarsveld are the toughest of all.”

“Why so?”

“There seems to be some intelligence that his friends want to free him. And you know what he did. The government won't take any risks with him. I don't think they'll let you in.”

After she had hung up, she tried one other possibility in correctional services, then a few more in her own department. Those who had no real influence in the prisons told her so and those who may have had influence lost interest when she mentioned the name Marinus van Jaarsveld.

“Why, Abigail? Why do you want to speak to this dinosaur?” one had asked.