Blanchaille began to understand. He knew the rumours, the unmentionable stories.
Van Vuuren’s blue eyes widened. ‘Go on, Blanchie, take a guess.’
‘A bomb! The bastards are building a bomb. Now the question is — are we working on a large dirty weapons system, or small, relatively clean devices? Neutron bombs, say? Or field launching systems. Yes, tactical battlefield weapons. Or both? That would give flexibility. Large bombs against hostile forces on our borders, or on the capital of an enemy, or on the capitals of states supporting that enemy. Then the smaller, cleaner, weapons for specific jobs, say the 155 millimeter cannon, capable of lobbing nuclear shells. But what’s the gas for? This Helium 3?’
‘It’s used to make Tritium. That’s a form of hydrogen used in thermo-nuclear weapons.’
‘What a lot you know about this sort of thing,’ Blanchaille said.
‘I remember hearing about it first years ago from Kipsel, Silberstein and Zandrotti and the others in their bomb-making days. No, I did not interrogate them, that affair was before my appointment to Interrogation, or Twenty Questions, as they call it here. But I read the report of Kipsel’s confessions. Even though all they were planning to demolish were a few pylons, Kipsel was never one to do anything by halves. He got Silberstein to swot up on everything from fireworks to weapons in the megaton range.’
Blanchaille nodded. ‘Lawyers read.’
Van Vuuren looked cagey. ‘They were young. They confused yearning with faith. They really believed the revolution had started. Zandrotti was convinced.’ Again the odd look, almost embarrassment. ‘Poor old Zandrotti.’
‘We were all young and we all believed. What else could we do?’
‘Sure, sure.’ Van Vuuren regarded him steadily. ‘From what I’ve told you, then, you conclude that we’re building a bomb, or rather the Taiwanese are building us a bomb designed by the Israelis who are selling it to us wholesale?’
‘Seems like it.’
‘You know of course that the Regime deny that we possess any nuclear weapons — and when mysterious explosions occurred in the southern hemisphere the Regime rejected American claims that we were testing nuclear weapons. They said it was atmospheric disturbance, or the American instruments were faulty. Then they said a meteorite landed in the Namib Desert. So what do we surmise from that?’
‘That they were lying.’
Van Vuuren’s blue eyes widened still further. ‘Certainly not. We agree that there was no explosion. From there we go on to state categorically that we have no nuclear weapons.’
Now it was Blanchaille’s turn to stare. ‘But you said —’
‘No. I didn’t.’
‘But I heard you.’
‘You couldn’t have done. This conversation never took place.’ Van Vuuren took a photograph from a desk drawer and fanned himself with it absently. ‘What is the official policy towards the Russians, Blanchie?’
‘The Russians are our enemies. They are after our gold, our diamonds, our minerals, our strategic positions, our sea-lanes. We do not talk to the Russians, have never talked to them, will never talk to them.’
‘Excellent answer. Now have a look at this.’ Van Vuuren handed him a small black and white photograph, rather grainy and blurred, as if taken from a distance. In the foreground two men were walking together, behind them a busy street with trams. ‘Paradeplatz in Zurich where the banks sell gold like hot rolls in a baker’s window. Do you recognise the men?’
Blanchaille studied the grainy photograph. The two men were deep in conversation. The older man wore a black Homburg. The other looked younger, was bare-headed, fair-haired.
‘Never seen either before.’
‘The man on the left in the hat is a Russian. The official, accredited roving representative of the Bank of Foreign Trade in Moscow, on secondment to the Wozchod Handelsbank in Zurich. The other man is Bennie Craddock, an executive of Consolidated Holdings and the nephew of its Chairman, Curtis Christian Himmelfarber. Here is another photograph of Craddock, this time in Moscow. Notice anything?’
The photograph showed Craddock standing in a snowy Red Square surrounded by what appeared to be curious bystanders.
‘Yes,’ said Blanchaille, ‘he seems to be crying.’
‘Odd, isn’t it? Why go all the way to Moscow for a cry? It’s as odd as the spy Popov’s behaviour when he was arrested outside this very building. He was reported to be very, very angry. It puzzled me. That he was upset I can understand, even anguished, but angry? No, I can’t make sense of that. And I can’t clear up the mystery by asking anyone. What strikes me about this investigation is that there are more and more mysteries and fewer and fewer people to question. I’ve had the urge, increasingly hard to resist, to call off the whole damn investigation and start praying. It starts with Ferreira. Somebody has been telling stories about Ferreira. He dies. Shares fall on the Exchange. People disappear leaving behind only the stories we go on telling about them. Craddock has not been seen since the photograph was taken. And his uncle, Himmelfarber, is abroad. So many people are overseas. Have you noticed? Minister Gus Kuiker and his Secretary of Communications are out of the country. The President is said to be travelling overseas for medical treatment. Even you will soon be gone.’
‘You could ask Popov yourself, you’ve got him here. “Why the rage Nikita?” you could say.’
‘I heard why — from Himmelfarber. Popov’s gone. He was spirited away by the Bureau and now he, like it, may or may not exist. You see how isolated I am, Blanchie? Even those who assigned me to investigate the murder of Tony Ferreira have gone. I had no shortage of instructions. First to put me on the case was the President himself. It’s his prerogative when he wears his other hat as Minister of Police so I went to it with a will. President Bubé implied that Minister Kuiker might have had some involvement. As I knew that Gus Kuiker is a rising star in the Regime, tipped to succeed Bubé one day, or even replace him, I put this down to professional jealousy. After all Kuiker took over Bubé’s baby platform. The President went around the country encouraging white women voters to breed; but Kuiker took positive steps to reduce the opposition birth-rate and he used science. He made it his aim to reduce the non-white breeding potential by one half and he got the boffins involved. All Bubé did was to encourage white women to have more babies. Whereas Kuiker hit the enemy where he lived — in the womb. He got the reputation of a modern whizz-kid. Bubé never forgave him. But Kuiker didn’t care.’
Of course Kuiker did not care. Augustus Carel Kuiker, Minister for Parallel Equilibriums, Ethnic Autonomy and Cultural Communication, cared only for success. Kuiker with the thick, ridged, almost stepped hairstyle, a rugged jaw and heavy, surprisingly sensuous lips. He looked like a rather thuggish Charles Laughton. Blanchaille recalled Kuiker’s speeches, how he tirelessly stomped the country reeling off figures. The total population was already over twenty-seven million, it could rise to thirty-eight million or more by the year 2000. The number of whites was dropping. Zero population growth might be all very well for the rest of the world but for the Europeans of the southern sub-continent it was suicide. The percentage, now about sixteen, would fall to eleven after the turn of the millennium. The Government, he announced, might have to introduce a programme. It would not shrink from introducing a programme. This programme might well involve penalising certain groups if they had too many children as well as offering sterilisation and abortion on demand. He felt sure that many black people would welcome abortion on demand, and even, he hinted with that famous frown wrinkling across his forehead, also by command. He was not afraid to speak plainly, if non-whites were not able to limit their own fertility, then the Government might have to step in to find a way to help them do it. This was not a threat but a promise. The Regime might also have to remind white women where their duty lay. Requests were not enough (this was a clear jibe at Bubé). Despite countless fertility crusades, tax incentives for larger families among whites, the ratio of black people to white people in the country was still five or six to one, and rising. The Government looked with new hope to the extraordinary advances in embryology and fertility drugs, much of which was due to the pioneering work of the brilliant young doctor, Wim Wonderluk. There were those who were clearly breeding for victory, who planned to bury the Boer. Well the Government would not stand by idly and see this happen. If offers of television sets and free operations did not work, then other measures must be taken. Soon rumours reached the capital that vasectomy platoons were stalking the countryside, that officials in Landrovers were rounding up herds of young black matrons and giving them the single shot, three-monthly contraceptive jabs. There were stories of secret radiation trucks known as scan vans, far superior to the old Nagasaki ambulances Bubé had sponsored, raiding the townships and tribal villages and the officials in these vans were armed with demographic studies and at the first sign of a birth bulge would visit those potential centres of population growth after dark and give them a burst of radiation, enough, the theory was, to impair fertility. A kind of human crop-spraying technique. People said it couldn’t be true until they remembered that anything you could think about could very easily be true. Kuiker was as forthright in his address to white women, ‘our breeders of the future’ he called them and he talked of introductory programmes of fertility drugs for all who wanted or needed them. Teams of researchers were working with selected females of child-bearing age on Government sponsored programmes to increase the white birth-rate without excluding the possibility, difficult though it might be, of obligatory implantation of fertilised ova in the selfish white wombs of women who had put golf and pleasure before their duty to the country. Pregnancy was good for the nation. He compared it with the military training which all young men had to undergo and pointed out that nine months’ service was not too much to ask of a woman. Gus Kuiker was clearly going places. He caught the public eye. He didn’t look to the past, he looked to the future which could be won if allied to technology. ‘Breed or bleed’ had been his rallying cry and he asked the eminent embryologist, Professor Wim Wonderluk, to prepare a working document encompassing his plans for the new future. Yes, Blanchaille knew all about Kuiker. Knew more than enough to be going on with.