They were at the airport at eight o’clock. He collected the package of tapes from the South African Airways freight department. It was almost ten o’clock when they got back to the cottage.
That night was feverish with frustration. They had already studied the pile of photographs which Johan had given him, and had seen nobody who looked like Heinrich Muller. Now they started on the videos.
They began with the video-films made in Namibia. For almost three hours they watched people arriving at the ceremonial sites, getting out of cars, filing past the camera, standing around talking. McQuade and Sarah’s eyes darted, desperately searching the parade of faces, their hearts leaping and then sinking again. They saw several people who possibly could have fitted the description of Heinrich Muller, but on replaying the scenes they decided they were wrong. It was after two o’clock in the morning when they began the cassette which McQuade had made. He groaned.
It was so obviously the work of an amateur. The film shook and in his anxiety to cover every male, he had moved too quickly from one to the other, getting poor angles, not waiting long enough, or waiting too long for a head to turn. Nor had he managed to film every male face: around the memorial were people he had failed to catch in the car park. Moreover, although he’d thought he had a good field of vision from the van, he’d had too little light and wisps of the hedge got in the way. He stopped the tape with disgust, and turned to Oosthuizen’s cassettes, filmed from inside the Jewish mausoleum.
This was infinitely better. The focus was perfect, the light was right, and the camera did not shake.
It panned slowly and steadily from the extreme left of the gathering. It stopped briefly on every male face. As he had instructed, if a man was looking down or away, Oosthuizen had waited until he got him clearly. Slowly the camera coursed to the extreme right, and McQuade’s heart sank. Nobody looked like Heinrich Muller. The camera panned slowly back again. There were a good number of faces in the rear which were obscured by people in the front.
‘Get those guys at the back!’
He sighed. Watching the same faces for the second time. And yet, several of them could have looked like Heinrich Muller. But what did Heinrich Muller look like now? His photograph was forty years old.
This was so hit and miss …
Now the wreath-laying was beginning, and his hopes rose a bit. People were craning their necks, and those in the rear were more visible. For an instant McQuade thought he saw a likely face.
‘Back! Go back!’
McQuade sat with bated breath as the cameraman began to pan back again. Spaces were being made by people stepping out with their wreaths. More craning of necks. McQuade’s hopes rose as the camera returned to the area where he had glimpsed the face, and his pulse tripped as the face reappeared. Then, the same instant, the man raised his hand to his cheek.
McQuade got up with a curse. He hit the Rewind button, then hit the Play button again. Then he cried, ‘There!’ And the hand-covered face slid by.
He snapped the machine to stop. Then rewound, then hit Play again. The face came into view again. ‘Freeze!’ he cried, and hit the Stop button. He looked at the picture, and groaned.
The picture was jagged, grainy, flickering. Sarah said: ‘Videos always do that on frame-hold.’
‘Oh God.’ He hit Play again and the face slid past. He turned to her. ‘What do you think?’
She shook her head. ‘It was so brief.’
Suddenly the perspective changed. Now the cameraman was filming from outside, in the rear graveyard. McQuade leant forward earnestly, then muttered, ‘This angle is no better …’
They grimly watched the ceremony to the end; then Der Gute Kamerad rose up. McQuade wanted to switch the damn machine off.
The song finally came to its end, and suddenly the scene changed entirely. The camera was filming an empty gateway. ‘Now, he’s back inside the van,’ McQuade said.
They watched. McQuade felt his nerves stretching. Then the first persons began to appear on the screen.
‘Excellent! He’s got the focus perfect!’
These were excellent pictures. The sun was in the ideal position, and the people were walking straight towards the camera. McQuade waited, pent, the photograph of Heinrich Muller in his hand.
Through the gate they slowly came, in twos and threes, talking. ‘This is more like it …’ They were coming in bigger groups now. Men talking. Women. The little girls. ‘Forty-three,’ McQuade counted ‘… forty-five, fifty … fifty-four …’ He breathed, ‘Please God … Sixty-five, sixty-eight, seventy-one …’ And his heart began to sink again. The odds against him were widening every moment. Please God he’s here …
At eighty-five McQuade’s hopes began to go into a nosedive. There had only been about a hundred people at the ceremony. Eighty-eight, ninety …
At ninety-three McQuade gave a shout: ‘There he is!’
They stared excitedly at the man walking towards them on the screen. He was the right height, about five foot seven, had iron-white hair, and a military bearing. He was talking earnestly to one of the men who had laid a wreath; he listened to the reply, and looked straight at the camera as he did so. On the other side of him walked a statuesque blonde woman and a young man. He was tall, heavy, strong, with sunglasses. McQuade’s heart was pounding.
‘That’s him!’ He bounded at the machine, hit the Stop button, and turned to Sarah excitedly, ‘Don’t you think so?’
Her fists were clenched on her knees. ‘God, I think it is! And that looked like a bodyguard …’
‘Exactly what you’d expect! And the line of the face – the square chin! The nose—’
‘But the hair? That was thick hair.’
‘It could be a wig!’ He snatched up the photograph of Muller. ‘Yes! The eyebrows. The thin mouth. And the chin …’
‘Play it again.’
Joyfully, McQuade hit the Rewind button.
The man appeared on the screen again. ‘Hullo-oh …’ McQuade said maliciously.
They watched him, making frantic mental notes.
The man walked off the screen again.
McQuade punched his palm joyfully. ‘Okay Herr Muller! Now, which car did you go to from here?’ He shot up a finger. ‘The show isn’t over yet, madam! Because meanwhile, back in his van, what was James McQuade, our real hero, doing?’
He snapped the Eject button with a flourish and picked up the cassette he had made from his van as the people emerged from the gate into the car park. He rammed it into the machine.
And his handiwork surpassed his wildest dreams.
Not only was the camera almost steady this time, but when his man came through the gate with the statuesque blonde it stayed trained on him all the way. McQuade sat on the edge of his chair, praying that he hadn’t swung his camera off him. The trio walked towards a car, their backs now turned to the camera. McQuade prayed out loud, ‘Don’t move the camera! Which car did he go to?’
And the camera moved.
It swung back to the cemetery gate, causing McQuade to clutch his head. ‘Oh Lord.’ His camera religiously followed the new arrivals into the car park. Into the avenue between the cars. They too turned their backs, and the camera began to move from them, then suddenly they all turned and faced the camera again because somebody came into the frame, calling them. And for ten seconds McQuade’s camera held them, and in the background was Herr Muller and his companions at their car. ‘Oh yes! See that?! It’s a white car.’
Sarah whispered, ‘It looks like a Nissan.’
‘Stay,’ McQuade prayed, ‘Stay on that car …’
They saw the bodyguard go to the driver’s door, then the camera swung away again. ‘No!’ McQuade cried.
The camera dutifully swung back to the cemetery gates, and McQuade held his head.
The camera painstakingly followed the last people through the gates, taking an eternity. McQuade whispered: ‘Please God! …’
And maybe God had helped him, for the people he had been filming stopped, and there, in the background, the white car reversed out, and slowly swung its tail towards the camera. Slowly the tail turned, as the people in the foreground began to move off-screen. Then the camera began turning away and McQuade clutched his head and cried ‘Oh please no!’ And the camera stopped.
The camera stopped because a man in the foreground had turned again, and in the background the rear of the white car swung out, large as life, right towards the camera. And there was the number plate, in the middle of the television screen. McQuade gave a whoop:
‘There!’
The car moved off the screen and McQuade jumped up joyfully: ‘I’ve done it!’
Sarah cried, ‘What was that number? Play it again!’
McQuade snapped the Eject button and snatched out the cassette.
‘I’ve got the man and the car!’
Later, lying in his arms, she squeezed him and said quietly.
‘I don’t mind you refusing to tell me that car’s number. But please don’t make me feel you don’t trust me.’
He began, ‘It’s only because—’
‘I understand. What I don’t know I can’t be forced to divulge. But please, please take me with you from now on …’