Kruger's Alp

‘What? All this time, Trevor, an agent for the Front?’

‘All this time. A special sort of policeman, just as Lynch predicted. I kept the faith, like I told you. In my own way. Then, a couple of days ago, soon after I had seen you in Balthazar Buildings I got a message from London. My job was over. I could come home. I took the plane. When I arrived at the airport there was another message waiting for me. I was to go to the Embassy. It seemed strange. The Embassy is one of those places I would have expected to avoid. But then I’m a soldier. I take orders. The Front says go and I go. Even so, I was surprised no one met me at Heathrow. I didn’t expect a band and streamers, but I thought someone might have shown up. So I came here, expecting someone familiar. But not a sign of anyone, until you came along. Don’t take this amiss, Blanchie, but you were hardly what I expected.’

‘Why do you say you’re bad news?’

‘Well, I should have been met, you see. Something’s very wrong.’

‘I was met.’

And Blanchaille told him about Magdalena, about their meeting at the airport, about her flat, omitting the details of her extraordinary attack on him, about the watchers outside the fishmonger’s.

‘Apple Two,’ said Van Vuuren and laughed. ‘Who do you think Apple One is?’

Van Vuuren was pale in the early morning light. Blanchaille was put in mind neither of the policeman he had been nor the priest he now resembled. Blanchaille could smell the fear on him. He was sweating though it was still cool in the dawn, breathing heavily, lifting his face, the nostrils flaring and sniffing deeply as if by the couple of inches this gave him he might find pure air easier to breathe. Blanchaille was reminded of a buffalo he’d once seen looking for water, plunging into a swamp and drinking and drinking until he moved in too far and could not pull himself out. Half-submerged, with his curved horns pointed above the water line, the beast struggled to free himself only to sink all the more securely into the mud until only the line of his back and the flashing horns were visible and the long wet muzzle with just the nostrils clear, sucking at the air, taking in a little water each time with a rivelled hiss. A little more water each time and the brown eyes blinked and bulged helplessly as the animal slipped deeper. It fought for each breath, a gurgling hiss of air and water passing into the nostrils. Then the buffalo gave a convulsive jerk, let its body sink and angled its head up in the air fighting the nostrils clear; he heard the clogged snuffle, more laboured, more lengthy, the watery intake and then, suddenly, nothing — just an ear and the horns and the silence. Why did Van Vuuren make him think of that?

‘Who sent for you?’

‘Kaiser himself.’

Blanchaille didn’t pursue the subject.

‘I can still remember my last Corpus Christi procession,’ said Van Vuuren. ‘I see us all gathered outside the railway station getting ready for the march to the Cathedral. The Children of Mary in blue cloaks and white veils; a platoon from the Society of St Vincent de Paul, male pillars of the Church in their grey fla