Chapter 37

February 2020

Masilela lifted his foot off the pedal and allowed the Audi to glide up to Gate 10 of the Bryntirion Estate, a gate he had passed through times beyond remembering in the older days. He applied languorously the counter-surveillance tricks of the trade, tired of them all, but given that he was not supposed to be here at all, nothing seemed to matter now, not with a president dead. He turned his head in time to see the tenacious cream Ballade slow momentarily and pass the turnoff from Dumbarton into Nassau Road. When he turned his head again, the black iron gates had opened, no blue-clothed policeman at his window, no request for an ID, no call to the ministerial house he was visiting – just an open gate and men in black military gear with unknown insignia on their shirts waving him through with what, to him, looked like knowing nods. He passed through, with one final glance in the mirror, but the gates had closed with no one else behind.

He followed the long curve of the road as it veered to the left, passed the ancient trees through which peeked, as if in apology for the intrusion, the whitewashed walls and red-tiled roofs of the ministerial homes. He took the wind right around until the turn into The Rotunda Circle. Across the circle stood majestic and old Mahlamba Ndlopfu. He wondered what happens to a presidential residence with a president recently dead. Was it locked up until the successor was elected? Where did the family, the comrades, the colleagues go to hold vigil until the interment? Here, in this ghost house, or in his family home in some pockmarked street in Soweto?

He turned off the circle into the driveway of Sandile Ndaba’s ministerial residence, more squat and spread than the others, with a garden that seemed boundaryless. No security at the gate. No housekeeper at the door. Sandile himself let him in, spatula in hand, white apron over a maroon tracksuit, bedroom slippers on his feet.

‘Ai, Comrade Vladimir, caution to the wind. Bad, bad times. Come in, I’m making breakfast. You’ll join? Fried eggs. Sausage. Coffee. Come in. You’ve got something for me? Later. Let’s eat.’

‘Morning, Minister. Yes, I have. Something. Not good. Zimb’izindaba. Okay for the breakfast.’

‘Okay then. Let the bad wait. Go out onto the patio. I’ll bring breakfast there. I’m home alone.’

Masilela, with black folder tucked under his arm, followed the direction of the pointing hand to the oak-and-glass doors to the patio beyond, with its red-tiled floor, wood furniture and corrugated perspex overhang. He sat at the table, the dark folder to one side. He watched the hadedas swoop, settle and peck, their calls slicing the morning silence, the unusual quietness of the estate – no sound of cars on tarmac, no approaching or receding blue-light sirens, no distant laughter of the children of the estate; only the keening of the birds and the other quiet, gentler sounds of humanlessness.

Ndaba came out with two plates with eggs, sausage, white bread and grilled tomato. He placed them on the table, went back into the house and returned with a tray with cutlery, napkins, mugs and coffee. They ate, adding new, subdued sounds to the morning.

Masilela kept his eyes down to the plate, lifting his head only to sip at the coffee. When he did, he saw Sandile’s eyes on him.

At last, the final scrape of fork on plate. Masilela dabbed his mouth with a napkin. ‘So, Comrade Minister of Intelligence, who killed Moloi?’

Sandile lifted his coffee mug. ‘We all know, Vladimir, don’t we? The late MEC for Education in Mpumalanga killed the president.’

‘Yes, yes ... But really? Who?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Who killed the late MEC?’

Sandile stood up. ‘The great RC, that’s who.’

‘The great RC?’

Sandile placed his napkin on his lap. ‘Regime Change, comrade. Regime Change – RC. I’ll show you. Wait here.’

Masilela turned back to the garden. The hadedas were gone. He pushed his plate away, drew the black folder closer. Sandile returned with an A4 brown envelope, and handed it over. ‘Here. Read this.’

Masilela took out the document, then immediately put it down and covered it with the envelope. ‘This is marked Top Secret. I no longer have such rights.’

Sandile made a noise that sounded like a groan, or perhaps a gasp or a giggle. ‘Rights, Vladimir? Rights? You’ve been running a secret investigation for me that breaks all the rules of “rights”.’ Ndaba’s arms extended wide to either side of him in an exaggerated mime of quotation marks. ‘Read the bloody thing! I got it from my dear DG, Mthembu, yesterday. The Service’s official report on the assassination of our president.’

‘Okay, Sandile. All rules of right to know waived! Perhaps, all rules in abeyance. A president is dead ...’ Masilela read, his right hand rhythmically stroking his shaved scalp. Sandile kept his eyes on him, rolling his head slightly as Masilela turned the pages. At last Masilela turned the last page, placed the document back in its envelope and pushed it across the table, pulling his hand back as if scalded.

‘So? The Americans did it? Regime change? So the MEC was a CIA agent, was he? And I suppose it was a Marine sniper who shot the MEC outside parliament?’

Sandile laughed, then stopped himself. ‘Well, none of that is in there.’

‘Exactly! This is all speculation.’ He tapped at the envelope. ‘Of course the Americans don’t like us. They never have. We were terrorists in the old days. In the new days we were friends with Castro and Gaddafi, with Iran and Iraq and Palestine and China. And, sure, it is theoretically possible that they’d like to change our government, but ...’ Masilela poured more coffee. It was cold.

‘But what, Vladimir?’

‘But there’s no intelligence in there.’ He pointed at the envelope. ‘How do we know the MEC was an American agent? When was he recruited? By whom? And why kill the president? There are other ways to effect regime change. And who shot the MEC? Why? How? There’s no intelligence. It’s what I call “pampering intelligence”.’

‘Pampering intelligence?’

‘Yes. Intelligence that pampers to the biases, the predilections of the client. We have a gut distrust of the Americans, of the West, the former colonial powers, so we are happy to have their evil confirmed.’

‘So you don’t believe it was the Americans?’

‘I didn’t say that. I’m saying that that bloody report doesn’t contain anything to confirm or even strongly suggest it. There’s no intelligence in it – not in the sense of our trade or even the more generic meaning.’ Masilela paused, pulled the black folder closer again. ‘I have my own theories.’

Sandile seemed not to hear. ‘And what hard intelligence would you like to see in this report.’ He, too, tapped the envelope.

Masilela opened the folder. ‘Well, for one, I’d like to know what school the MEC went to in Mpumalanga and when?’

‘Huh? School? Why?’

Masilela took a folded A3 sheet of paper out of the file. He unfolded it in front of Ndaba. On it was replicated Whitehead’s diagrams with the squares and arrows and circles and labels. He explained about the Mandela list, the old Green House files, who was alive and who was dead, who was active and who harmless. He traced the arrows with his fingers, explaining all, although he appeared mechanical, somewhere else. Ndaba listened and followed the finger. Occasionally he sighed, sometimes clicked his tongue. The hadedas started up again, unnoticed in the inner silence.

After a pause a few seconds longer than Masilela’s usual rhythm, Ndaba spoke. ‘So, that’s it? These are the possible izimpimpi? Good. Well done. Is that it?’

Masilela stood up, pushed his chair back, the scrape on the tiled floor loud and resonant. ‘No, chief, that’s not all.’ He pushed the folder over. ‘I have to go now. It’s not safe. Nothing is safe any more. In there ...’ He pointed at the folder. ‘In there is a narrative report. You won’t like it. You won’t like it at all.’

Masilela stood up and left. Outside Gate 10, as he turned back into Dumbarton Road, the cream Ballade was back, closer now.