That night when Kuiker got into bed he said, ‘There’s no persuading them. They’re mad. I tried to explain this is the end of the road. This is where we turn and fight. But they seriously believe in some promised land. We’ll have to finish with them.’
‘Let me try,’ said Trudy Yssel.
Early next morning she fetched the prisoners from the cellar. Blanchaille and Kipsel were unshaven and smelt badly and after days without food they were weak on their feet. But Trudy smiled at them as if she were taking them on a picnic. Before the first visitors arrived at Uncle Paul’s House she wanted to take them on a little tour, she said. She wore a spotted blue dress with pearl ear-rings and was unnaturally cheerful, relaxed and chatted to them as if she might have been any houseproud wife showing off her establishment and not the mistress of a hunted Government minister with a price on his head and she the disgraced and vilified civil servant accused of spiriting away thousands upon thousands of public money.
‘Don’t you think, Father Blanchaille, that the tour is nowadays the chief way we now have of communicating information to busy people? We have a tour of the game reserve to learn about animals. We tour the townships to show our black people living in peace. We tour the operational areas of our border wars to discover how well we are doing. Talking of war, do you know I have toured forward areas where it felt as if the war had been turned off for the day, like a tap, or a radio broadcast, or a light. You expected when you got back to your tent at night to find a small note on your pillow saying —“The conflict has been suspended during your visit by the kind agreement of the forces concerned”, but of course you knew that wasn’t so when you heard of American senators caught in the bombing raid, or a group of nuns from one of the aid organisations like “Catholics Against Cuba”, had been ripped to pieces by shrapnel. Follow me, gentlemen. Don’t hang back.’
The place was kept spotless, a gleaming polished purity, it seemed to them that Mevrou Fritz must have caught the Swiss passion for cleanliness. It smelt of elbow grease, it smelt of floor wax. It was heavy, dark, depressing and virtually empty. Their footsteps echoed on the smooth boards. ‘Of course none of the furniture remained when the old man died. It was sold off. The house now comes under the Department of Works and they’ve replaced what they can with copies, or pieces of the period. But it’s still pretty bad. A bit of a tomb really. When the old man died his body was taken back to South Africa, again on a Dutch warship, and given a hero’s burial. That was the end of his association with Switzerland. There was no money left here, the furniture was sold off, the house given up and any talk of the missing millions was simply a myth. And it remained, as General Smuts said, merely something “to spook the minds of great British statesmen”. The time has come to stop talking of these dreams. We must wake up. We’ve been woken up, the Minister and I. We’re considering our position. When we’re ready we will move.’
‘I think you’re on the run,’ said Blanchaille.
‘You’re in hiding,’ said Kipsel. ‘We read the papers.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Trudy pleasantly. ‘This house is Government property. As Government people we’re entitled to stay here.’
‘You said you were getting ready. For what?’ Blanchaille asked.
‘Our President is expected shortly. Once he arrives we’ll be in a position to put certain thoughts to our Government at home. We plan to hold talks with our Government.’
‘What makes you think they’ll talk to you?’
She smiled again. ‘We would rather talk to them than to the world press.’
‘Blackmail,’ said Blanchaille.
‘We won’t be blamed for having done our duty. When we’ve cleared our name we shall return in triumph.’
‘And until then?’ Kipsel asked.
‘We will wait here. In the Kruger House. You believe in the sad story of a rest home for the refugees the Old President set up. You should be the first to understand the use we put this place to. Uncle Paul would have understood.’
‘You don’t understand what has happened back home,’ Kipsel said. ‘They’ve dispensed with you. When Ferreira found the figures, publicised them and died, he blew the matter wide open. The Regime stepped away from its anointed Minister and his favourite. First they covered for you. But now they’re joining the crowds calling for your blood. You should be going where we’re going.’
‘There is no place where you’re going,’ said Trudy. She led them into a small bedroom. ‘This is Uncle Paul’s death room. Here is the actual death bed. Well no, not the actual death bed, but a replica.’
They saw the dark wood of the bedstead. The sturdy head board, the starkly simple bulk of the bed with its white linen counterpane. On a small bedside table stood a vase of pink carnations. Thick green drapes in the window and fuzzy white net curtains strained the sunlight to a weak, pallid wash. A huge old-fashioned radiator stood in the corner and a large carved chair stood very prominently by the bedside. The seat and back of the chair were decorated in bold floral patterns and surmounted by crossed muzzle-loaders. This was a recurring emblem throughout the house, the Boerish equivalent of the fleur-de-lis. Other popular symbols about the house were powder horns, ox wagons and lions. Lions had always been associated with Uncle Paul. Hadn’t he wrestled one to death before his thirteenth birthday? Or outrun one? And had he not been known as the Lion of the North? Or was it of the South? Blanchaille couldn’t remember. All presidents had been identified with larger powerful beasts, or weapons. President Bubé had been known as Buffalo, or more colloquially as ‘Buffels Bubé’, while the young and thrusting Wim Vollenhoven, ‘Bomber’ Jan Vollenhoven as they called him, the Vice-President, continued the old tradition.
Trudy sat on the bed. Blanchaille was struck by the ease with which she committed this sacrilege. Here indeed was one of the new people. He pushed open the french windows and stepped on to the veranda where the flag gave its leathery rattle.
‘Our belief, our brief, our mission was straightforward. In this matter of putting across our country’s position we should attack. Fuck sitting on our arses any longer. Get out there and sell the bastards our bag of goodies. Don’t try and win through to the big men overseas, spot the young ones in advance, pick them when they begin to come up the tree, and gamble. Don’t expect the foreign newspapers to print nice stories about you, the only reason they like producing stories about you is because you’re so horrible. So don’t wait for them to tell your story, buy a space and tell it yourself. If possible buy the fucking newspaper, radio station, investors’ bulletin, whatever. If that won’t do then buy the owners lunch, dinner, drinks as often as possible, have them around to your place for confidential chats. If governments are against you, fly their MPs over, show them the game reserves, the war zones, the beer halls, peace in the townships. Play golf with them. Did you know we were the ones who got Bubé to play golf with the newspaper owners? We made him take lessons, even though he moaned like hell at the time. Well, today, they’re saying back home that we stole the money for the golf clubs. They say it was Government money. Well of course it was bloody Government money! Where else would it come from? And what’s more the Government knew it was Government money, because that was the deal. I said to them, I spoke to half the damn cabinet, that half of it which matters: Kuiker, the President himself, Vollenhoven and of course General Greaterman, the Defence Minister. I said to them, look, I want permission to go ahead on a propaganda offensive. O.K. they said. Wait, I said, till I finish. It’s going to cost a bomb. If I need to send an editor away with his mistress to Madeira, then I’ll do it. If I have to bribe a newspaper editor, then I need the funds immediately. No questions asked. If I need to hire an executive jet to fly a party of journalists into the country via Caracas or Palm Springs or anywhere else on the globe, then I want the wherewithal to do it — without anybody raising an eyebrow. Bubé was there and he wanted to know how much this campaign would cost. I gave it to him straight. Millions, I said. He took it on the chin. I should start as soon as possible and the funds would be forthcoming. So I went ahead, and I stress this, with full official backing. And I’ve done so from that day to this. They all knew. President Bubé knew. Vollenhoven knew. Greaterman knew. And approved. The money was raised from various departments so as not to cause too great a dent in individual budgets. So much from Defence, so much from Security, so much from Tourism, everybody had to cough up their share and the money was then transferred to Switzerland and passed through various Swiss banks. And let me here say a word for the Swiss banks which have been bloody unfairly slandered. We have a great debt of gratitude to the Swiss banks. They have raised loans for us when nobody else would and we were damned hard up for foreign capital. They’ve safeguarded difficult deposits, overseen delicate payments and observed the strictest confidentiality in sensitive matters such as the volume of gold sales. To suggest that we bribe certain Swiss banks to hold secret funds is a gross lie. And a nonsense. They did it for nothing. Well, for a small holding percentage. And even there we get a discount from them. No, I won’t hear a word said against the Swiss banks. Where would South Africa be today without them?’