Kruger's Alp

‘For Christ’s sake, you can’t swallow that! Bubé controls the Bureau. He is or was the President and the Bureau is his army.’

‘In a ma

‘Ferreira took three hammer blows to his faith. Firstly he believed in books, in fact, in figures. One day he was taking a routine look through the books. He began by checking the budget figures of the various departments of the Regime and in those figures he found discrepancies. Consider what this did to him. His whole life depended upon a single premise. The Regime might be mad, it might be stupid, it might be cruel — but it was sincere. It was honest. Tony believed that utterly. Well, the books told another story.

‘To begin with he found that some of the monies listed in departmental spending had actually been cha

‘And Zandrotti went home — to find out for himself?’ Kipsel asked. ‘He couldn’t believe it.’

Blanchaille looked surprised. ‘Oh no, he went home because he refused to believe it. I remember how he was in Balthazar Buildings after he’d been caught by the police. Zandrotti was broken, he’d lived his whole life in the belief that the Regime was genuinely, thoroughly, consistently and impressively, let’s face it, evil. He grew up in that belief, he’d suffered for it, he’d gone to jail for it, he’d lived in exile for it. It was, when you think about it, a very high expectation. He had a worthwhile enemy. You can imagine what it did to him when Ferreira told him he was dealing with a bunch of crooks. He hadn’t been a hero. He’d been a fool. He was not going to have that. My guess is that he booked his flight home and then saw Magdalena.’

‘Who shopped him, of course,’ Kipsel snapped.

Blanchaille understood the anger of his friend; how the business of Magdalena’s betrayal still hurt.

‘My feeling — guess — is that was just what he wanted. Heaven knows what came pouring out between bursts of the litany in the bar where Ferreira told Zandrotti his story. Some clue, perhaps, which gave Magdalena’s double game away. And Zandrotti used her.’

‘It makes a change,’ said Kipsel.

‘Ferreira believed in figures. He also believed in the integrity of the Regime. Mad it might be, but honest. Negative, but sincere. Narrow, but forthright. The Regime had set its face against blacks, Communists, Jews, Catholics, against compromise, liberalisation, democracy. This might be narrow, foolish even, but it was a question of principles. And he could admire people with principles, who would die for those principles. As for himself, well somebody had to do the sums, as he liked to say. He had kept the faith. Now he found the Regime dealing with the Russians through Popov and Himmelfarber —’

‘And Himmelfarber’s nephew, left in Moscow on deposit,’ Kipsel reminded him gloomily. ‘Blanchie, this gets blacker.’

‘And Himmelfarber was supposed to be an enemy. But gold as we know is more important than principles. The Regime had dealt with Moscow when they moved bullion dealings from London to Zurich. In Switzerland he’d heard rumours that some big man in the Regime had cleaned up on the move. Then he discovered money going to the Israelis! Now the orthodox teaching was that at least half of the Regime was of the unshakable opinion that Hitler got a bad press and was really a sensitive, patriotic house painter at heart who became Chancellor and was looking for nothing more than sweetness and light and that any stories to the contrary were products of commy, pinko Jews, who wished to destroy the white man’s way of life, his religious beliefs, and to sleep with his daughters — and yet here was the Government supporting whole teams of Israelis and concealing them in the countryside. Israelis who wore baseball caps the wrong way round and disturbed the peace of the countryside, cost a fortune to police and protect and then desecrated the Calvinist Sabbath by drinking and whoring in sleepy country towns. Most important of all, he’d been taught that the President was the father of his country and its stay and protection in times of trouble, that he would lead the nation in the flight to the beaches when, and if, by some horrible catastrophe, the savages prevailed and the last white tribe in Africa faced extinction. Then, with his back to the sea, the President would hand round the poison to the kids and begin shooting the women before the enemy troops arrived. That’s what he believed, and then blow me down, he goes out and finds that the old fox has been salting money away for years in a Swiss account against just such a contingency, against that rainy day which might carry him off to Bolivia or Paraguay.’