The White Lioness

Chapter Fourteen

Pieter van Heerden was depressed.

Feelings of uneasiness, of insidious fear, were nothing new to him. Moments of excitement and danger were a natural part of his work in the intelligence service. But it seemed he was more defenseless in the face of his unrest, now that he was in a hospital bed at Brenthurst Clinic, waiting to be operated on.

Brenthurst Clinic was a private hospital in the north Johannesburg suburb of Hillbrow. He could have chosen a much more expensive alternative, but Brenthurst suited him. It was famous for its high medical standards, the doctors’ skills were tried and tested, and the level of care was beyond reproach. On the other hand, the wards were not luxuriously appointed. On the contrary, the whole building was rather shabby. Van Heerden was well off without being rich. But he did not like ostentation. On vacation, he avoided staying at luxury hotels, which just made him feel surrounded by that special kind of emptiness white South Africans seemed to wallow in. That was why he preferred not to have his operation in a hospital that treated the best-placed white citizens in the country.

Van Heerden was in a room on the second floor. He could hear someone laughing outside in the corridor. Shortly afterwards a tea cart rattled past. He looked out the window. A solitary pigeon was sitting on the roof of a house. Behind it the sky was the dark shade of blue he was so fond of. The brief African dusk would soon be over. His uneasiness increased as darkness rapidly drew in.

It was Monday, May 4. The next day, at eight in the morning, Doctor Plitt and Doctor Berkowitsch would perform the straightforward surgery that would hopefully cure the urinary problems he had been having. He was not worried about the operation. The doctors he saw during the day convinced him the operation was not dangerous. He had no reason to doubt them. A few days later he would be discharged, and after another week or so he would have forgotten all about it.

There was something else bugging him. It was partly to do with his illness. He was thirty-six years old, but afflicted with a physical complaint normally restricted almost exclusively to men in their sixties. He wondered if he were already burned out, if he had aged so prematurely and so dramatically. Working for BOSS was certainly demanding; that had been clear to him for a long time. Being the president’s special secret messenger was another thing that increased the pressure he was always forced to live with. But he kept himself in good physical shape. He did not smoke, and he very seldom touched alcohol.

What made him uneasy, and was no doubt also an indirect cause of his illness, was the growing feeling that there was nothing he could do about the state his country was in.

Pieter van Heerden was an Afrikaner. He grew up in Kimberley, and had been surrounded since birth by all the Afrikaner traditions. His family’s neighbors were boere, as were his schoolmates and his teachers. His father had worked for de Beers, the Afrikaner-owned company that controlled the production of diamonds in South Africa and, indeed, the world as a whole. His mother had assumed the traditional role of Boer housewife, subservient to her husband and dedicated to the task of raising their children and teaching them a fundamentally religious view of the order of things. She devoted all her time and all her energy to Pieter and his four siblings. Until he was twenty and in his second year at Stellenbosch University near Cape Town, he had never questioned the life he led. The very fact that he managed to persuade his father to let him attend that reputedly radical university was his first great triumph on the way to achieving independence. As he did not think he possessed any special talents and cherished no startling future ambitions, he envisioned a future career as a civil servant. He was not tempted to follow in his father’s footsteps and devote his life to mining and the production of diamonds. He studied law and found it suited him, even if he did not distinguish himself at all.

The big change came when he was persuaded by a fellow student to visit a black township not far from Cape Town. In acknowledgement of the fact that times were changing, like it or not, some students were driven by curiosity to visit black suburbs. The radicalism claimed by the liberal students at Stellenbosch University had previously been no more than words. Now there was a change, and it was dramatic. For the first time they were forced to see things with their own eyes.

It was a shocking experience for van Heerden. He became aware of the wretched and humiliating circumstances in which the blacks lived. The contrast between the park-like neighborhoods where the whites lived and the black shanty towns was heartrending. He simply failed to understand how they could all be living in the same country. His visit to the black suburb sent his emotions into turmoil. He became introverted and withdrew from the company of his friends. Looking back long afterward, it seemed to him it was like unmasking a skillful fake. But this was not a painting on a wall with a false signature. The whole of his life so far had been a lie. Even his memories now seemed to him distorted and untrue. He had a black nanny as a child. One of his earliest and most secure childhood memories was the way she lifted him in her strong arms and clutched him to her breast. Now he could see she must have hated him. That meant it was not only the whites who were living in a false world. The same applied to the blacks who, in order to survive, were forced to conceal the hatred caused by the boundless injustice they constantly suffered. And this in a country that had belonged to them but had been stolen from them. The whole basis on which his life was built, with rights given by God, nature, and tradition, had proved to be a morass. His conception of the world, which he had never questioned, was founded on shameful injustice. And he discovered all this in the black township of Langa, situated as far away from exclusively white Cape Town as the architects of apartheid had considered appropriate.

This experience affected him more deeply than most of his friends. When he tried to discuss it, he realized that what had been a severe trauma for him was more like a sentimental experience for them. Whereas he thought he could see an impending apocalyptic catastrophe, his friends talked about organizing collections of castoff clothing.

He took his final examinations without having come to terms with his experience. On one occasion, when he went home to Kimberley during a vacation, his father had a fit of rage when his son told him about his visit to the black township. It dawned on him that his thoughts were like himself-increasingly homeless.

After graduation he was offered a position in the Department of Justice in Pretoria. He accepted without hesitation. He had proved his worth after a year, and one day was asked whether he might like to consider working for the intelligence service. By that time he had learned to live with his trauma, as he had been unable to find any way of solving it. His split was reflected in his personality. He could play the part of the right-thinking and convinced Afrikaner who did and said what was expected of him; but deep down, the feeling of impending catastrophe was getting stronger. One day the illusion would collapse, and the blacks would take merciless revenge. There was no one he could talk to, and he lived a solitary, increasingly isolated existence.

He soon saw his work for BOSS had many advantages. Not least was the insight he was able to get into the political process of which the general public only had a vague or incomplete conception.

When Frederick de Klerk became president and made his public declaration to the effect that Nelson Mandela would be released and the ANC no longer banned, it seemed to him there might yet be a possibility of averting the catastrophe. The shame over what had happened previously would never pass; but nevertheless, could there perhaps be a future for South Africa after all?

Pieter van Heerden had immediately started to worship President de Klerk. He could understand those who branded him a traitor, but he did not share their views. As far as he was concerned, de Klerk was a savior. When he was picked to be the president’s contact man, he felt something he recognized as pride. A mutual trust rapidly grew up between him and de Klerk. For the first time in his life van Heerden had the feeling he was doing something significant. By passing on to the president information which was sometimes not intended for his ears, van Heerden was helping those forces that wanted to create a new South Africa, free of racial oppression.

He thought about that as he lay in bed at the Brenthurst Clinic. Not until South Africa had been transformed, with Nelson Mandela as its first black president, would the uneasiness he always felt within him disappear.

The door opened and a black nurse entered. Her name was Marta.

“Dr. Plitt just called,” she said. “He’ll be here in about half an hour to give you a lumbar puncture.”

Van Heerden looked at her in surprise.

“Lumbar puncture?” he asked. “Now?”

“I think it’s odd as well,” said Marta. “But he was quite specific. I was to tell you to lie on your left side right away. Best to do as you’re told. The operation’s tomorrow morning. Dr. Plitt’s bound to know what he’s doing.”

Van Heerden nodded. He had every confidence in the young doctor. All the same, he couldn’t help thinking it was an odd time to do a lumbar puncture.

Marta helped him to lie as he was supposed to.

“Dr. Plitt said you were to lie absolutely still. You shouldn’t move at all.”

“I’m a well-behaved patient,” said van Heerden. “I do what the doctors tell me. I usually do what you tell me, too, don’t I?”

“We don’t have any problems with you,” said Marta. “I’ll see you tomorrow, after the operation. I’m off tonight.”

She went out, and van Heerden thought about the bus journey of an hour or more she had ahead of her. He did not know where she lived, but assumed it was Soweto.

He had almost fallen asleep when he heard the door open. It was dark in the room; only his bedside lamp was on. He could see the doctor’s reflection in the window pane as he entered the room.

“Good evening,” said van Heerden, without moving.

“Good evening, Pieter van Heerden,” he heard a voice reply.

It was not Dr. Plitt’s voice. But he recognized it. It took a few seconds before it dawned on him who was standing behind him. He turned over in a flash.

Jan Kleyn knew the doctors at Brenthurst Clinic very seldom wore white coats when visiting patients. He knew everything he needed to know about the hospital routines. It had been very easy to set up a situation where he could pretend to be a doctor. The doctors often traded shifts. They didn’t even need to work at the same hospital. Moreover, it was not unusual for doctors to visit their patients at odd times. That was especially true just before or after an operation. Once he had established when the nursing staff changed shifts, his plan was straightforward. He parked his car at the front of the hospital, walked through reception and showed the security guards an identity card issued by a transport firm often used by hospitals and laboratories.

“I’m here for an urgent blood sample,” he said. “A patient on ward two.”

“Do you know your way?” asked the guard.

“I’ve been there before,” replied Jan Kleyn, pressing the elevator button.

That was absolutely true, in fact. He had been to the hospital the previous day, carrying a bag of fruit. He pretended to be visiting a patient on ward two. He knew exactly how to get there.

The corridor was empty, and he went straight to the room he knew van Heerden was in. At the far end of the corridor a night nurse was busy reading case records. He moved quietly and opened the door carefully.

When van Heerden turned around in terror, Jan Kleyn already had the silenced pistol in his right hand.

In his left hand was a jackal skin.

Jan Kleyn sometimes liked to make his presence felt by introducing a touch of the macabre. In this case, moreover, the jackal skin would act as a decoy, diverting the detectives who would arrive later to investigate the murder. An intelligence officer shot in a hospital would cause quite a stir in the Johannesburg homicide department. They would try to establish a link between the murder and the work Pieter van Heerden was doing. His links with President de Klerk would make it all the more imperative to solve the murder. Jan Kleyn had therefore decided to point the police in a direction that was bound to lead nowhere. Black criminals sometimes amused themselves by introducing some ritual element or other into their crimes. That was especially true in cases of robbery with violence. They were not content with smearing blood on the walls. The perpetrator often left some kind of symbol by the victim’s side. A broken branch, or stones arranged in a certain pattern. Or an animal skin.

Kleyn had immediately thought of a jackal. As far as he was concerned, that was the role van Heerden had been playing: exploiting other people’s abilities, other people’s information, and passing them on in a way he should never have contemplated.

He observed van Heerden’s horrified expression.

“The operation’s been cancelled,” said Jan Kleyn in a hoarse voice.

Then he threw the jackal skin over van Heerden’s face and pumped three bullets into his head. A stain started to spread over the pillow. Kleyn put the pistol in his pocket and opened a drawer in the bedside table. He took van Heerden’s wallet, and left the room. He managed to get away as unobtrusively as he came. Afterwards, the guards would be unable to give any clear description of the man who had robbed and killed van Heerden.

Robbery with violence was how the police classified the attack, which was eventually written off. But President de Klerk was not convinced. As far as he was concerned, van Heerden’s death had been his last communique. There was no longer any doubt about it. The conspiracy was a fact.

Whoever was behind the plot meant business.