McQuade was desperate now to get the show on the road. By seven o’clock the next morning they had checked out of the hotel to go and find Schloss Namib. The world was beautiful in the morning light, as only Africa can be beautiful, the yellow-grey trees still, the yellow grass soft in the early sun – but it all looked like dust and ashes to McQuade.
The bushland on both sides of the road was fenced with barbed wire. From time to time there were farm gates, dirt tracks leading off into the vastness, but they glimpsed no faraway homesteads, no sign of life. About fifty kilometres from Outjo, they saw the gate.
McQuade slowed. It was an ordinary farm entrance, differing from the others only in that the supporting pillars were stout columns of rock. There was a plaque on it saying: ‘Geen Ingang, Eintritt Verboten, No Entry.’ A chain locked the gate. There was a hillock of iron-brown rock fifty metres beyond, with smoke from a cooking fire rising up, but they could not see the guardhouse. A dirt road disappeared into the yellow-grey bush beyond, into a jumble of rising hills. Telephone poles followed the road. They passed the gate. Sarah looked back. ‘Yes, I just glimpsed the guardhouse. Stone. Thatch roof.’
‘You can’t see anything on those hills? Any buildings?’
‘No.’
McQuade was looking for a dividing fence, indicating the end of Muller’s land.
Ten kilometres later they saw it. ‘It’s a big spread.’
Almost immediately they saw another gate. It was a large, whitewashed archway, adorned with mounted cattle horns. A wrought-iron sign read, ‘Mopani Guest Farm’. A track led off, disappearing into the hills.
McQuade pulled up opposite the entrance.
‘Guest farm, huh? Next door to Muller’s land? Right, this is where we spend tonight.’ He swung the wheel towards the gate.
They ground up the track into the hard scrub hills. But for their engine, the world was completely silent. The track wound over the hills, then suddenly, at the top of a rise, there was an open gate. They drove through, past neat, empty cowsheds and outbuildings. Ahead was a burst of colour, bougainvillaea and trees shrouding a thatched house, which had three cars outside it. A row of round, thatched rondavels led off into the trees.
They walked down the side of the main house, and came into a mature garden, with lawns and a pretty swimming pool. The main house had a long verandah under thatch, with dining tables. Two couples were having breakfast. There was a magnificent view over a vast valley, with a range of mountains on the horizon, mauve and hazy. A white woman came out onto the verandah.
‘Bitte, mein Herr?’
‘Can we have a room please?’
The manager brought the guest-registration book to the table as they were finishing breakfast. He was a dour middle-aged German, with pale blue eyes. ‘For how long will you be staying?’ He had a slow German accent.
‘We don’t know yet.’ McQuade signed the register as Mr and Mrs Peterson from Australia. The manager prepared to leave, but McQuade wanted to get him talking so he could ask about Schloss Namib. ‘What do you think of this sudden independence business?’
The German sighed. ‘Ja, ja, ja …’ He said it as if he had warned them all before. ‘We never thought it would happen but at last South Africa is listening to the world. The war has got too expensive, too many of her boys are dying up there, and now it is an unpopular war. For me, I do not care as long as I can run my business in peace but I doubt it.’
‘But,’ Sarah said, ‘the new government is still going to need tourists, for foreign exchange?’
‘Ja, ja, ja,’ the manager said, ‘and so does Cuba need tourists, and so does Russia, but how many go there, and who runs the hotels? The people who know how, or the nice SWAPO government? And how many people will want to come to Namibia when they cannot drive safely any more, and the Cubans are pushing us off the streets of Windhoek? Tourists like to feel safe, you know, on their holidays.’
‘So you don’t believe the Cubans will go home after the South Africans pull out?’
The manager sighed. ‘Ja, ja, ja – and nein, nein, nein. Of course not. Some of them Fidel Castro will bring home, of course, because the South Africans will insist, but they can always come back once Namibia is independent, nein, and of course, they will come back again to help the communist Angolans fight UNITA and then they will invite themselves into Namibia because the next place for the clever Fidel Castro to liberate is South Africa. Anyway he has too many soldiers and no jobs for them, so he must depend on Russia, nein, and we all know what Russia wants, nein?’ He shook his head. ‘Ja, ja, ja …’
It made McQuade feel feverish again. ‘Well, we’re just tourists and we’re into game-viewing. Have you got much game on your farm which we can go and look at?’
‘Ja, we have some species of buck and warthog and sometimes elephant and even some lion. There is a water-hole, I will give you a map.’ He went to the end of the verandah, into an office. He returned with a hand-drawn sketch.
‘Thank you,’ McQuade said. ‘And tell me, I believe there’s a beautiful castle somewhere around here?’
Sarah kicked him under the table. The manager said, ‘Ja, Schloss Namib. About ten kilometres that way.’ He pointed east.
‘Is it a real castle, with towers and all?’
‘Ja, but in the German style of a fort for the schutztruppe in the old days, like the one at Namatoni in Etosha.’ He turned and took a framed photograph off the wall. ‘This is Namatoni, now converted into accommodation for tourists.’
The photograph showed the white, oblong fort where McQuade and Sarah spent the night two months ago. The manager said, ‘Schloss Namib is the same but a bit bigger and inside the courtyard he has beautiful palms and gardens.’
‘Fascinating.’ McQuade studied the photograph. ‘He must be an interesting man?’
‘Very nice.’ The manager shrugged. ‘I don’t know him well. Sometimes he comes here for dinner. He was here last week to celebrate his wedding anniversary.’
A black waiter appeared and said something in German.
‘Excuse me,’ the German said. He turned and left.
Sarah whispered, ‘You did it again …’
McQuade was staring at her. Then he softly banged the table. ‘I’ve got it!’
‘What?’
‘Herr Strauss is definitely Heinrich Muller!’ He grabbed their room keys and stood up. ‘Let’s go.’
He hurried back to the Landrover, unlocked the toolbox and grabbed all his notes. They hurried to their rondavel.
It was airy, the thatch bound to raw beams, and had a magnificent view of the valley. McQuade excitedly spread out his notes on Heinrich Muller on the double bed. Then he smacked them triumphantly.
‘Yes!’ He turned to her. ‘Herr Strauss – this Mr Heinrich Strauss at Schloss Namib – married his wife in January 1949, in Windhoek! But the manager has just told us that he celebrated his wedding anniversary here last week! Early August! Why?’ He jabbed his notes. ‘Because Heinrich Muller married his wife in Germany on the second of August 1938! So what happened? At the end of the war Muller escapes from Germany, leaving his wife behind. After he’s settled down here as Herr Strauss, he sends for her, and for the sake of preserving his new identity he remarries her! In January 1949 in Windhoek. But the date they celebrate as their real wedding anniversary is August!’
‘God!’ Sarah was staring at him. ‘We’ve proved it!’
McQuade punched his palm.
‘Right! First we follow this map over this guest farm and see what we can see of Muller’s land. Then I’m going over the fence to case the joint while you go back into Outjo to see what you can sniff out.’