‘Why have you got me here? I was heading out under my own steam. It would have been easier, cleaner.’ Blanchaille stood up knowing the policeman was not ready to release him.
‘Two reasons. Mine and Lynch’s. I wanted to make you take another look at things you thought you knew all about. I don’t want to be left alone with my mysteries. You’re going out. Fine. So maybe you’ll be able to use some of what I show you to get some answers out there in the outside world. That’s my reason. Lynch’s was more practical. He knew you’d never get out without my help.’
‘Why not? How many have gone already?’
Van Vuuren’s look was cold. ‘Not all those who disappeared have left the country. Getting out is not what it was. It has become a police matter. Things got difficult when Bubé and Kuiker issued instructions that disappearances were becoming too frequent and a close watch was to be kept on ports and airports.’
‘Then disappeared themselves.’
‘Yes, but the orders are still in force,’ Van Vuuren said.
Blanchaille sat down again. ‘O.K. What else do you want to tell me?’ he asked warily.
‘Turn around,’ Van Vuuren ordered, ‘and watch the screen.’
On a television monitor behind him there appeared a group of men sitting at a long table, six to a side, all wearing earphones.
‘A delegation from the Ring are meeting a delegation from an Italian secret society known as the Manus Virginis, the Hand of the Virgin. The Hand is some sort of expression of the Church Fiscal. This lot arrived in the country claiming to be a male voice choir and they all have names like Monteverdi and Gabrielli and Frescobaldi. The Hand appears very interested in investment. Each chapter or cell of the Hand is called a Finger and takes a different part of the world for its investment which is done through their own bank called the Banco Angelicus. On the other side of the table is the finance committee of the Ring. They read from left to right: Brother Hyslop — Chairman; Brother van Straaten — he’s their political commissar; Brother Wilhelm — Treasurer; Brother Maisels — transport arrangements. Don’t laugh. Getting here in style and doing it in secret is very important to them. Brother Snyman — catering and hospitality. Since the Brothers regard themselves as hosts they put themselves out for these meetings, they bring along wine, a good pâté, a selection of cheeses. Headphones are for simultaneous translation.’
‘But why are you monitoring the Ring? All the major figures in the Regime are members of the Ring, so why get you to spy on it?’
‘Because though all members of the Government are in the Ring, not all members of the Ring are in the Government.’
Blanchaille looked at the heavy men on both sides of the table with their earphones clamped around their heads like Alice-bands which had slipped, and thought how alike they looked with their big gold signet rings, hairy knuckles, gold tie-pins, three-piece suits, their burly assurance. Here were devoted Calvinist Afrikaners who spat on Catholics as a form of morning prayers, sitting down with a bunch of not only Catholics, but Roman wops! To talk about — what?
‘Money,’ said Van Vuuren. ‘Highly technical chat about investments, exchange controls, off-shore banks, letters of credit, brokers, money moving backwards and forwards. But how are such meetings arranged and, more importantly, why?’
‘Ferreira would have understood,’ said Blanchaille. ‘But I don’t. What is the connection?’
‘I think,’ said Van Vuuren, ‘that the connection isn’t as odd as it seems. The philosophical ideas behind the Ring are not too dissimilar to those practised by Pope Pius X. He fired off salvos at the way we live. He attacked the ideas about humans improving themselves. He pissed on perfectability. He lambasted modern science and slack-kneed liberal ideas. So does the Ring. They have more in common than we think. Perhaps we do too.’
Blanchaille stared at the men on the screen. ‘I still can’t believe what I’m seeing.’
The picture faded into blackness. ‘You haven’t seen anything,’ said Van Vuuren. ‘Now come along and look at what we have in the holding cells.’
CHAPTER 8
The holding cells were below ground, arranged in tiers rather in the manner of an underground parking garage, Van Vuuren explained in what to Blanchaille was an inappropriate and chilling comparison. And why ‘holding’ cells? Van Vuuren was also quick to counter the notion that this was intended to distinguish them from ‘hanging’ cells, or ‘jumping’ cells. The policeman seemed, surprisingly, to regard this suspicion as being in bad taste.