CHAPTER 22

Now I saw how our pilgrims, climbing ever higher, came suddenly upon a party of police manhandling a captive by the roadside. The prisoner was a plump, elderly tramp in handcuffs who must have been hiding out in the countryside for some time because he was very dirty and even more thickly bearded than Blanchaille and Kipsel. He was very frightened and kept crying that he was a diplomat of the highest standing and entitled to immunity according to all known protocols. The police, while not dealing with him harshly, bore him relentlessly towards a waiting police car. Despite the dirt, the beard, the matted, filthy hair, the travellers knew him immediately.

Blanchaille asked permission to speak to the prisoner and the Swiss police turned out to be perfectly amiable despite their appearance, for they wore rather a menacing grey uniform and carried large pistols in their belts. Perhaps it wasn’t too surprising that Kipsel shrank back when one considered his dealings with policemen but I saw that it was the prisoner himself who most disturbed him, sending him scuttling for cover. Later, he was to claim that the need to relieve himself had carried him behind some large roadside boulders, but I think we know better. The wretched fugitive in the hands of the Swiss police was none other than Adolph Bubé.

Here perhaps it is fitting for me to pay tribute to the humanity and innate democratic sensibility of these Swiss officers who must have been hard put to distinguish between the large tramp who approached them and the hysterical hobo they had taken into custody. Perhaps they were influenced by their long experience in administering the Red Cross, as well as the admirable ideals enshrined in the Geneva Convention for the treatment of prisoners of war. In any event, the officer in charge granted Blanchaille’s request for a few words in private with the prisoner and he and his men withdrew to their vehicles and occupied themselves by polishing windscreens and clearing the roadside verges of unsightly weeds and performing various other useful activities.

I saw in my dream an astonishing sight. The ex-priest and the former President cloistered at the side of the road in the attitude of a father-confessor and penitent, while Kipsel hid from sight and the Swiss police tidied up the landscape. In hoarse whispers Bubé made his confession while Blanchaille listened gravely, nodding at times and comforting the old man when grief overcame him. An odd couple, to be sure, but both men were experiencing the painful dislocation of reality which had pitched them onto this Swiss mountain and so felt a curious kinship and Blanchaille listened with every sympathy, stirring only to offer his handkerchief when the tears became a flood and once intervening to restrain the old man when he attempted to dash his head against a rock. And on another occasion, he drew something in the sand with his finger and the old man beat his breast and called on God to forgive him.

When at length they finished I saw Blanchaille lead the prisoner over to the police. And as he turned I saw, as did Kipsel, now bold enough to peer over the boulders, a sign on his back which read A. BUBI.

As the police car disappeared down the mountain road Blanchaille returned to Kipsel and told him the amazing saga of that unlikely renegade, former President Adolph Gerhardus Bubé.

‘He’s in serious trouble. He has committed the gravest offence this country recognises –’

‘Wait, don’t tell me,’ said Kipsel raising his hand. ‘He’s broken financial regulations.’

Blanchaille nodded. ‘Yes, but it’s worse than that –’

‘It’s something to do with the missing millions, isn’t it? The money Ferreira was looking for, the discrepancies in the books? The money he sent here?’

Blanchaille had to smile at his friend’s naïvety. ‘Heavens, Ronnie, that’s no crime! Not here. It’s widely expected that the heads of various regimes should squirrel away large sums in Swiss accounts against a rainy day, the sudden coup that will pitch them into exile, or just for insurance. Hell, no, the Swiss don’t get offended about that. They consider it quite natural that foreign regimes should screw their people, empty the banks, siphon off the aid cheques into secret accounts in Geneva and Zurich. African regimes especially. And to them Bubé is just another African. No, what the Swiss have set their faces firmly against is anybody diddling the Swiss.’

Kipsel blew harshly between his teeth. ‘Wowee!’

‘Precisely,’ said Blanchaille, ‘though “Wowee!” hardly covers the complexities involved. It has to do with gold sales. We might have guessed that. You remember Himmelfarber telling us about the switch from the London gold market to Zurich in what he called the gilded days? Well Bubé was largely responsible for the move. And the Swiss bullion dealers were impressed. Some of his best friends were bullion dealers and they were very grateful to get our gold. Some of them were very grateful before they got our gold and showed their gratitude. As we say back home, they “thanked” the Minister.

‘But when gold sales returned to the London market the love went out of Bubé’s relationship with the dealers. It did no good to explain that it was the Swiss Government’s fault for imposing the sales tax, thereby forcing the dealers to show their volumes of sales and upsetting our other friends, the Russians. As far as the dealers were concerned, one moment they had all the gold and the next moment they didn’t. They insist Bubé gave them to believe that South African gold was here in Switzerland to stay. They feel aggrieved. And behind the dealers are the banks. Because of course they lent the money to the dealers. And as that pleasant young police officer from the Commercial Division of the Swiss police told me back there – in Switzerland when the banks speak the cantons tremble. The banks are very bitter. After all, they argue – who was it who arranged loans and credits to the Regime when no one else would touch them?’

‘Then the stories about the President are true?’ Kipsel asked. ‘He has money stashed away?’

‘Quite a lot. Perhaps as much as twenty million. Perhaps more. Bubé himself isn’t sure.’

‘That’s a fortune!’

‘That what I said. Bubé became pretty peevish. “You don’t plan for a government-in-exile on peanuts,” he said. “It’s not like arranging a skiing trip.” It’s this money that is the subject of the dispute. The bullion dealers claim that it was amassed using their contributions, their commissions, so they’re laying claim to it. Meanwhile the Regime, having got wind of it, is also after the money. They say it belongs to them having been improperly acquired. Bubé says he’s sick to death of this nonsense. He says that there have long been plans to establish a government-in-exile should the Regime fall. It was, as Himmelfarber told us, just one of the options. Various South American countries have been selected, as suitable where of course there are communities of the many descendants of those Boer exiles who originally fled to South America after the Boer War. Bubé referred to this money as a contingency fund. A hedge against the day when, like it or not, the Regime may have to transfer to Paraguay or Bolivia. What’s more he says that everybody in the inner ring of the Cabinet has known of this fund for years, approved of it, encouraged it. Yet when he arrived in Switzerland he found the Regime was denouncing him for fraud. They were demanding his extradition – with all the money. And the Swiss bullion dealers are demanding that what they call “earlier undertakings” must be honoured and the banks are talking menacingly of this insult to the soul of the nation; this cancer in the body of the Helvetian State – this is dangerous stuff because the banks are to Switzerland what I suppose the Roman Curia is to the Vatican, director and guardians of the faith . . . Bubé’s alleged crime is not only that he has injured Swiss banks, but by turning up in person on Swiss soil he has added insult to injury. Not only are they determined to get their money back, but they want to make an example of him. I expect he will be paraded in the market squares of all the towns between here and Geneva.’

Kipsel understood. ‘Hence the notice.’

‘Right.’

‘I’ve got little sympathy for him,’ Kipsel commented. ‘But I wonder how firm their evidence is when they can’t even spell his name.’

‘It’s very common in the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland to find names ending in “i” – Matti, Jutti and so on. That young policeman’s name was Mitti. They’ve spelt it the way they heard it – BUBI.’

‘How come you know so much about the Swiss arrangements, Blanchie?’

‘Well, I was incarcerated for some time with a wild Swiss priest back at home. His name was Wüli. There’s a case in point. Wüli had often been arrested in Switzerland and he was something of an expert on the subject.’

‘What was he doing in South Africa?’

‘Much the same sort of thing. Getting arrested. He had an overwhelming desire to expose his genitals to unsuspecting civilians. This simply didn’t cut him out for parish work. So the Church confined him to one of those gulags in the mountains. But that didn’t stop old Wüli. He was as fit as could be and would saunter off, up hill and down dale, like a bloody mountain goat in search of some sympathetic soul to whom he could make his personal revelations. Wüli warned me about the horror and detestation with which economic crimes were regarded in Switzerland. Each nation has its love, Wüli told me: the Regime dreams of naked black women; the English are a nation of child molesters; the Swiss have exchanged their soul for financial security, they worship the franc and hold sacred the bank account.’

‘And Bubé has abased the sacred rites?’

‘It’s worse than that. The account was found to be empty, it’s tantamount to religious blasphemy. He’s in deep trouble.’

‘All of it – gone? But Blanchie – where? How?’

‘Bubé was very cagey about that. He kept trying to defend himself. Said he had no option. He was a victim. The Swiss would wring him out and hand him back to the Regime who’d spent so much time washing their hands of him they had to wear gloves. They were going to blame him for their own decisions, crucify him for saving his country. I put it to him straight. You’ve transferred the money to the other fund, I said. He was ready for this. He looked almost triumphant. There was a flash of the old Bubé, the truculent jeerer of the political platform, scourge of the press, whirlwind diplomat, baby creator – “How could I?” he asked. “There is no other fund.” What about the Kruger fund, I asked. He laughed. “You don’t believe that old story, do you? There were no millions, there is no fund.”’

‘Clever,’ said Kipsel.

‘The President’s vanishing trick. Where are the missing millions? Now you see them, now you don’t. Like Kruger, like Bubé. Clever, and inevitable,’ said Blanchaille. ‘The old man may suffer in the short term, because the Swiss are convinced he’s got the money stashed away. But they won’t find it since the other fund doesn’t exist. And that’s official. The Regime denies the story of the Kruger millions. The Swiss deny the existence of a Kruger asylum here. Therefore it’s not possible for Bubé’s treasure to have joined it. After a while the Swiss will convince themselves that the money Bubé owes them never existed. They never bribed Bubé and he never welshed on his promises to them. The banks will absorb their losses stoically and save face. The Regime will appreciate the value of this. If the money does not exist, nor the secret accounts, then neither does the fraud or the defection of the President, nor the plan for a government-in-exile.’

‘Yes,’ said Kipsel, savouring the beauty of it, ‘and I won’t be surprised if the Regime starts threatening anyone who tells these stories of the missing Bubé’s missing millions. People will get into trouble for telling stories.’

‘The chances are,’ said Blanchaille, ‘that Bubé will be completely cleared, his name will be incised on all the war monuments and the attacks upon him cited as further evidence of the Total Onslaught against our country. The missing presidential millions have their uses.’

Kipsel nodded emphatically. ‘What would we do without them?’

They sat by the roadside and gazed down at the lake far below. A tiny white steamer moved in a wide arc across the still blue water, it followed a great circle, creeping round like the second hand of a watch. Running down the sides of the lake the vineyards seen from this height stretched out with a green and metalled regularity.

After some while I heard Kipsel ask: ‘Blanchie, what were you drawing in the sand when you were talking to Bubé?’

In reply, Blanchaille drew in the dust the letters ASK 3. ‘When I was in London, before Van Vuuren was killed, we met Father Lynch. He had been following us. Don’t ask me how. We talked about death. His and ours and Ferreira’s. Having explained to us why the price of shares fell after Tony’s murder we asked if he knew who’d killed him. He said he didn’t. But he said something interesting. What if the letters scrawled on the wall did not stand for the Afrika Straf Kaffir Brigade, or the Azanian Strike Kommando No. 3? What if those letters had not been written by his killers, or even by someone wanting everyone to think they’d been written by his killers? What if they’d been written by Ferreira himself? I remember his words, “If you can read the writing on the wall you may be close to the killer.” Back there, when we saw the police with Bubé, something suddenly occurred to me. Look at the letters again – ASK 3. Now imagine someone writing them in a hurry, someone in a state of shock, in pain, someone dying. Maybe he would write clearly. Look at the number 3 – and remember that the people who saw it said they “thought” it looked like a 3. But say it wasn’t. Say the dying man had been trying to write not 3 but B.’

‘All right, say they were,’ said Kipsel. ‘All it does is to make the message even more mysterious. You can’t make sense of B. At least ASK 3 can be made to fit the initials of two known organisations both of which were capable of murdering a Government official who had discovered something nasty about them.’

‘Exactly,’ said Blanchaille triumphantly. ‘Those letters can be made to fit. Your words, Ronnie! And they were made to fit. They made possible a theory to explain Ferreira’s death. So we grabbed it. But we were being too clever by half. We were forgetting the first rule in African politics, the principle which dominates the way we are.’

‘Which is?’ Kipsel asked, amused.

‘That what begins as tragedy turns into a farce at a blink. That in all Government activities you must suspect a cock-up. We forgot that rule. Why should the letters on the wall stand for anything? Why shouldn’t they mean exactly what they say?’

Kipsel jumped up and began to turn around in excited circles banging his foot on the ground as if to try and anchor himself, as if he might spin too fast and fly off the mountain. ‘Blanchie! Of course!’

Blanchaille leaned forward and completed the message in the sand. ASK BUBÉ, the message read.

Kipsel stopped spinning and sat down. The little steamer now circled the lake like a racing car. He closed his eyes. ‘And so you did just that. You asked Bubé?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, don’t hang on to it – tell me, who killed Ferreira?’

‘I wish I could make this something you’d like. Something you could respect. I apologise in advance for what I have to say. Entirely typical. In a way I prefer the earlier theory of the political organisations. It’s more elegant, more serious. And it makes the killing seem more important. Something to look up to. Hell, we need something to look up to.’

‘Blanchie, please!’

‘His killer was a small-time English thug named Tony “the Pug” Sidelsky, from Limehouse.’

‘You’re pulling my leg. From Limehouse, England?’

‘I’m perfectly serious.’

‘Then why are you smiling?’

‘I can’t help it. According to Bubé, Sidelsky drove to Ferreira’s house on the appointed night knowing what he had to do. It was supposed to be professional, clean and quick. But it wasn’t. Sidelsky, it seems, was none too bright. For a start he behaved as if he were going to knock off an old-age pensioner in Clapham. He didn’t seem to realise that in South Africa houses are barred, wired, and fortified against night attack, that some of them even have searchlights. Now Ferreira didn’t have all that security. He didn’t even have a dog, which was most unusual and lucky for Sidelsky. But Ferreira was no idiot and naturally he was armed. Sidelsky found himself unable to enter the house without breaking a window. Ferreira was waiting for him. I don’t know what Sidelsky expected. Perhaps he expected Tony to put up his hands and get shot. Instead he got hit himself a couple of times before he got Ferreira.’

Kipsel turned on him a look of intense suffering. ‘But you still haven’t told me – why get an Englishman to kill him?’

‘It’s really not so surprising,’ Blanchaille said. ‘Not when you think about it. English killers have been used for one job or another for many years in South Africa. It’s almost traditional. Do you remember the shooting of the racehorse, Golden Reef? That was done by that bookie fellow from Ealing. Who was it again? Sandy Nobbs. He had been secretly commissioned, for reasons I don’t remember, by the manager of the Tote. They caught him, remember? And then there was the killing of the fairy mining-magnate, what was his name?’

‘Cecil Finkelstein.’

‘That’s right, Finkelstein. He was gunned down one night when he opened his front door. You remember the story?’

‘Yes, I remember the story,’ Kipsel said. There was immense weariness in his voice. And contempt. ‘Years later some English guy in Parkhurst prison confessed to Finkelstein’s murder after he got religion. Of course I remember the old story. It’s the story of imported labour. It’s the story of our country. Lack of muscle power in some areas, lack of skilled technicians in others. So you import them, engineers, opera singers, assassins. It’s always the same – the butler did it, or the cook, or the gardener. Anybody but ourselves.’

‘I said you wouldn’t like it, Ronnie. I’m just telling you what I know.’

‘Who ordered the killing? Bubé?’

‘He swears not. He says that this was a Bureaucratic decision, as he puts it. He says the order came directly from Terblanche.’

‘– who may not exist.’

‘Correct. Bubé’s story is strengthened by the fact that men from the Bureau were the first to arrive on the scene after the murder. I believe they probably expected to find Ferreira neatly dispatched and the place turned over and robbed so as to make it look like some sort of violent burglary. But what did they find instead? They find Ferreira dead, or damn nearly, and Sidelsky dying on the carpet. You can imagine the problem this gave them. I believe, at least Bubé says, they came close to panicking. You see it meant they first had to dispose of the killer and then return to the house and pretend to discover the body of the dead accountant. It was a very hairy business. Bubé’s story had the ring of truth to it. You should have heard the way he sounded off about the Bureau. He says that the Bureau chose Sidelsky because he was broke and unemployed in England and they got a real bonehead for their pains. False economy. He says the money they saved on the contract then got eaten up by the burial costs of the dead Sidelsky and they couldn’t even claim on his return ticket because they’d booked him Apex, or something like that. Cost-cutting costs money, Bubé told me, showing a flash of the old financial brain that made him the big wheel he was. He was absolutely scathing!’

‘For Christ’s sake, you can’t swallow that! Bubé controls the Bureau. He is or was the President and the Bureau is his army.’

‘In a manner of speaking that’s right – but to say that is to say very little. What exactly is the Bureau? We like to think of it as the Secret Police, run by the mysterious Terblanche – who probably doesn’t exist. Well, I’ve got news for you, Ronnie. Not only does Terblanche not exist, but neither does the Bureau. Not as a single entity; some super-secret unit. The Bureau is simply a term, a useful fiction which we use to describe a whole range of options – the police; the Hand of the Virgin; the Ring; the Papal Nuncio; the New Men; the New Order; the Old Guard; the Straf Kaffir Brigade; the Azanian Strike Kommando; the Department of Communications; the Bureau is all of them and none of them. It’s Bubé and Kuiker and Yssel and the entire establishment which controls our view of reality. It exists so that we have something to fear. But more importantly, it exists so we have someone to blame. It is that force which the Regime as much as its enemies needs to believe in. It gives clarity and purpose to what is otherwise a long, ugly, dirty grab at power. We need the Bureau, we love the Bureau. We would be lost without it. You ask if the Bureau killed Ferreira? The answer you want is, yes. All right, the Bureau killed him, they paid the incompetent Englishman who pulled the trigger. But Ferreira stumbled on the truth and every new discovery was a nail in his coffin.

‘Ferreira took three hammer blows to his faith. Firstly he believed in books, in fact, in figures. One day he was taking a routine look through the books. He began by checking the budget figures of the various departments of the Regime and in those figures he found discrepancies. Consider what this did to him. His whole life depended upon a single premise. The Regime might be mad, it might be stupid, it might be cruel – but it was sincere. It was honest. Tony believed that utterly. Well, the books told another story.

‘To begin with he found that some of the monies listed in departmental spending had actually been channelled elsewhere, they appeared to him to have gone to Minister Gus Kuiker. It disturbed him. He went to Sidleman, the Government Accountant, and reported his discovery. Sidleman hit the roof. He was another Government man. He didn’t understand why the official figures did not reflect the truth. Apparently he asked Ferreira if he was suggesting that elected officials were setting up secret funds of public money. Ferreira replied that he wasn’t suggesting anything of the sort, but he wanted to know why the figures didn’t add up. Sidleman went to the President who promised a full investigation. In the meantime he told Sidleman to call off Ferreira and to stop his enquiries. But that was impossible. He had to follow where the figures led. There was no stopping Ferreira. Everywhere he looked he uncovered further mysteries. Not only did he find, as he went through the files of the various Government departments, that there was money leaving the country for unexplained reasons, there were also funds reaching Government coffers which he couldn’t account for. The figures led him abroad. To South America, Bermuda, France. He was shown houses on the Italian Riviera, farmhouses in the South of France and learnt they belonged to Gus Kuiker and Trudy Yssel. The Department of Communications was waging a foreign war against secret funds. He travelled on, to Rome, Washington and then Switzerland. Everywhere he went he heard the most astonishing stories. He heard of wild nights in Montevideo, week-long sex parties in Las Vegas, of private jets for American politicians and free holidays for British editors. He learnt about dummy companies set up in Bermuda and Panama which were used to buy up or buy off political commentators; he found deals as bizarre as the plan to arrange a tour of Japan by our rugby players in exchange for a tour of the casino nightclubs by Japanese sumo wrestlers and for the tour to be extensively covered by a Taiwanese news agency which would circulate the story as evidence of our racial tolerance; in Switzerland he found companies set up to translate South African currency into American dollars, apparently an expensive business, and he found that this accounted for some of the millions he had detected draining out of our foreign reserves; in Switzerland too he came across disturbing rumours of deals between important men of the Regime and the whole raft of currency manipulators, he learnt of promises not kept, of secret deals, secret accounts, gold sales and Russian contacts. Perhaps he unearthed the true story of Popov. By the time he got to London he was shattered. He got in touch with Zandrotti. Perhaps he needed to talk to a friend. He got drunk, he probably told Roberto more than he’d intended. Of course Zandrotti got it in one. Ferreira still didn’t realise the full implications of his discoveries but Zandrotti did. I think with that wild, anarchic mind of his he probably got it in a flash, saw the horrible black farce it was. Ferreira was overwhelmed by the tragedy. But Zandrotti saw the joke.’

‘And Zandrotti went home – to find out for himself?’ Kipsel asked. ‘He couldn’t believe it.’

Blanchaille looked surprised. ‘Oh no, he went home because he refused to believe it. I remember how he was in Balthazar Buildings after he’d been caught by the police. Zandrotti was broken, he’d lived his whole life in the belief that the Regime was genuinely, thoroughly, consistently and impressively, let’s face it, evil. He grew up in that belief, he’d suffered for it, he’d gone to jail for it, he’d lived in exile for it. It was, when you think about it, a very high expectation. He had a worthwhile enemy. You can imagine what it did to him when Ferreira told him he was dealing with a bunch of crooks. He hadn’t been a hero. He’d been a fool. He was not going to have that. My guess is that he booked his flight home and then saw Magdalena.’

‘Who shopped him, of course,’ Kipsel snapped.

Blanchaille understood the anger of his friend; how the business of Magdalena’s betrayal still hurt.

‘My feeling – guess – is that was just what he wanted. Heaven knows what came pouring out between bursts of the litany in the bar where Ferreira told Zandrotti his story. Some clue, perhaps, which gave Magdalena’s double game away. And Zandrotti used her.’

‘It makes a change,’ said Kipsel.

‘Ferreira believed in figures. He also believed in the integrity of the Regime. Mad it might be, but honest. Negative, but sincere. Narrow, but forthright. The Regime had set its face against blacks, Communists, Jews, Catholics, against compromise, liberalisation, democracy. This might be narrow, foolish even, but it was a question of principles. And he could admire people with principles, who would die for those principles. As for himself, well somebody had to do the sums, as he liked to say. He had kept the faith. Now he found the Regime dealing with the Russians through Popov and Himmelfarber –’

‘And Himmelfarber’s nephew, left in Moscow on deposit,’ Kipsel reminded him gloomily. ‘Blanchie, this gets blacker.’

‘And Himmelfarber was supposed to be an enemy. But gold as we know is more important than principles. The Regime had dealt with Moscow when they moved bullion dealings from London to Zurich. In Switzerland he’d heard rumours that some big man in the Regime had cleaned up on the move. Then he discovered money going to the Israelis! Now the orthodox teaching was that at least half of the Regime was of the unshakable opinion that Hitler got a bad press and was really a sensitive, patriotic house painter at heart who became Chancellor and was looking for nothing more than sweetness and light and that any stories to the contrary were products of commy, pinko Jews, who wished to destroy the white man’s way of life, his religious beliefs, and to sleep with his daughters – and yet here was the Government supporting whole teams of Israelis and concealing them in the countryside. Israelis who wore baseball caps the wrong way round and disturbed the peace of the countryside, cost a fortune to police and protect and then desecrated the Calvinist Sabbath by drinking and whoring in sleepy country towns. Most important of all, he’d been taught that the President was the father of his country and its stay and protection in times of trouble, that he would lead the nation in the flight to the beaches when, and if, by some horrible catastrophe, the savages prevailed and the last white tribe in Africa faced extinction. Then, with his back to the sea, the President would hand round the poison to the kids and begin shooting the women before the enemy troops arrived. That’s what he believed, and then blow me down, he goes out and finds that the old fox has been salting money away for years in a Swiss account against just such a contingency, against that rainy day which might carry him off to Bolivia or Paraguay.’

‘Then he goes back to his books and finds he isn’t looking at figures, he’s reading a horror novel,’ Kipsel broke in. ‘He finds not one financial nightmare but three or four. There are the funds creamed off the various Government departments and sent abroad secretly for Kuiker and Yssel’s Department of Communications to fight its propaganda war. There is the money Bubé has been collecting in his secret accounts against a rainy day.’

‘And there are the funds entering the country which presumably baffle the hell out of him until he interviews the brokers Kranz, Lundquist and Skellum. And his last and most cherished belief collapses. He finds out about the Manus Virginis with their strategic charity, how the Ring collaborates with them in tactical investments in the future of the Regime.’

Kipsel sighed. ‘Poor Tony. Finding that the Church was in it too will have hurt more than anything.’

‘Yes, but not for the reasons you think. What crucified Ferriera when he discovered the links between the Regime, the Ring and the Hand, with the Nuncio Agnelli acting as flyhalf, was that the Church really was powerful after all. Tony had never accepted Lynch’s theories about the structure of power. He rejected the Church as played-out, ineffectual, unimportant. And he was wrong. Everywhere he looked he found a policy of outright deception. There was the Church going around the country issuing statements about embracing its black brethren in Christ. There was Bishop Blashford publicly deploring the shipment of human populations to the transit camps and relegation of entire tribes to desolate “homelands”, and defying the Regime to arrest him. There were the charitable bodies shipping in dried milk and penicillin and designing new churches in the beehive style and attacking the Regime for being in league with the devil and preaching that the programme of separate freedom for ethnic groups was a crime against humanity, an economic nonsense and a sin against the Holy Spirit. While this was going on, here was the Regime whose followers took an oath of loyalty to Calvin before they slept and believed the Pope feasted on baby meat and sucked the marrow from the bones of orphans, meeting with certain Italian Societies, and here were its loyal followers in that most secret of societies, the Ring, those ultra-Calvinists, sitting round a table with a bunch of genuine opera-loving flesh and blood holy Romans, fresh from the Vatican, representing the Manus Virginis and discussing share portfolios. One by one, every belief he held had been destroyed. Lynch had been right. And if Lynch had been right about the deceptions, he was right about all the other things too – including the missing Kruger millions, right about the house on the hill. It was in this despairing state that he phoned me.’

Kipsel was very pale. ‘I didn’t know he phoned you.’

‘Just before he died. I was one of the last people to speak to him.’

‘What did he say?’

‘That I should get out. That he had found the City of God, or Gold. The line was bad. He was slightly hysterical, said he was planning a trip himself. He sent me money. Next thing I knew he was dead.’

‘And here you are?’

‘And here we are.’

Kipsel swore bitterly, then scrambled to his feet and picked up his stick and rucksack. ‘Let’s get on. I don’t want to know any more. Tony “the Pug” Sidelsky! The whole thing’s a horrid cheap little pantomime. Do you think it’s much further?’

‘I hope not, I hope not,’ said Blanchaille fervently. ‘I’ve had about as much as I can take. All my prayers are that God preserve me from any more of my itinerant, wandering, bemused, addle-brained countrymen, from policemen, rugby players, patriots, accountants, priests and presidents.’

‘Amen,’ said Kipsel.