Gold Page 6

  ‘Nor is there reason not to see each other.’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘I’m glad you came.’

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘I wasn’t really angry, about Paul. It’s best he knows. If we’re ever going to sort ourselves out at all, it will be by being honest.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He experienced a sudden sensation of claustrophobia and wondered if she were aware of his discomfort. ‘There are some things I’ve got to do,’ he said.

  She frowned, recognising the attempt to get away. ‘Of course.’

  She went with him to the door and once more offered her cheek. He kissed her, as lightly as before. At the car he turned and said, ‘Perhaps I could call you sometime?’

  Hannah hesitated and then said, ‘Yes, why don’t you?’

  Collington turned the car back on to the looped drive, pressing the control for the hood to come up. Christ, what a bloody hypocrite! James Collington, the man of integrity and fair dealing. Yet with a woman he loved he cheated and lied through cowardice. And he still loved her, he decided. He forced himself to concede that one of the underlying reasons for going there that afternoon, perhaps the reason, had been to discover if the feeling were still there. It had taken him only a few minutes to realise it was. Which solved nothing, he thought miserably. Because he knew that if he had been in London, with Ann, he would have felt the same for her. So why couldn’t he have done what any other man would have attempted in his favoured circumstances? He had homes in both capitals, thousands of miles apart. So why couldn’t he have remained with Hannah in South Africa and Ann in London? Because he couldn’t sustain the deceit, he realised. He could lie and run, but he couldn’t maintain the artifice all the time. Perhaps that was some sort of integrity, he attempted to reassure himself. But it was convoluted.

  He began to enter the city, able to pick out the SAGOMI skyscraper block at the top of which was the penthouse into which he had moved from Parkstown. The building brought him back to that afternoon’s meeting and the clash with Metzinger.

  Was it as dramatic as he was attempting to make it? The English control had been weakened, unquestionably. And he doubted if he could find a way to restore it. But just weakened: not lost. And neither would it be, providing he was careful and avoided a repetition of the mistake that he had made over Simpson’s holdings.

  The storm broke in a sudden flurry of rain and hail, with the lightning twitching over the hills. Collington coasted the car carefully into the underground car park, grateful for the shelter. He took the basement lift to the first floor, then transferred to the separate elevator linking him directly to the penthouse.

  Daniel was waiting in the hallway. Collington gave the houseboy his briefcase and ordered a gin, then walked into the main room. The curtains were still undrawn. The storm was worse than usual, huge black clouds squatting on the hills and parts of the city itself, concealing them completely. As high as he was, Collington could see the water funnelling along the streets below, temporarily flooding the drains. He stayed there, watching the fury of the weather exhaust itself and then lessen, until the rain stopped completely, the curtain of clouds gradually lifting. He heard the clock chime seven behind him. Seven o’clock: an evening before him, with no plans to fill it. Should he have invited Hannah to dinner? He didn’t think she had expected it. He wasn’t sure it would have been a good idea, anyway.

  Collington cupped both hands around his glass, staring unseeingly into it. He was held by a feeling he had rarely known before and its strangeness worried him. He frowned, trying to identify it, automatically thinking of his encounter with Hannah. And then he recognised that it had nothing to do with her. It was the company – and his place in it. There was a division now, responsible for investigating and recommending and then completing take-overs. And country and area managing directors, who dealt with the officials and politicians in whatever part of the world they were established. Even the final decisions came to him with suggestions and then several alternatives, everything minuted and stereotyped, so that all he had to do was to read his lines, like an actor.

  There wasn’t enough for him to do any more. And he was bored.

  The solution had come suddenly to Ann, and the more she thought of it the more obvious it seemed. Irritatingly so, because she could have done it before Metzinger’s call and so refused to give the details of Collington’s conversation from Pretoria. But it wasn’t too late. She didn’t love Peter, any more than she believed he loved her. They had drifted into the relationship, through loneliness she supposed, and maintained it because it was convenient and because they were used to each other. That was why there had never been any thought of having the baby. If she had believed for a moment that there had been a possibility of their marrying, she wouldn’t have gone to the clinic where the doctor had presented his bill before the operation and the nurses’ unspoken criticism hardened when she’d listed her religion as Catholic.

  All she had to do was end it. End it and then tell James all about it during his next trip to London: explain it was something that had begun before they got together and which she had stupidly allowed to continue. Despite his upbringing, Collington was one of the most complete and sophisticated men she had ever known. He’d understand readily enough, once she explained.

  Ann stirred, checking the time; she wanted everything to be ready when Peter arrived. She prepared the table and opened the wine and stopped at the entrance to the kitchen, knowing there was nothing that needed to be made ready there. It was to be a simple meal, everything cold except for the steaks. Now that she’d finally made the decision she wanted to announce it properly, sensibly, not jumping up and down from the table every few minutes, like some embarrassed schoolgirl.

  He was late, Ann realised. Which was unusual, because he had a thing about time. He would have telephoned if there had been a delay at the office. So it was probably the traffic. It was bad, sometimes, coming out of the City. Ann lighted a cigarette and decided she didn’t want it, so she stubbed it out again. She began worrying her lip between her teeth, which she always did when she was uncertain, gazing around for some activity. The ice was melting. She hurried some into a glass, before the gin – a mistake, because she couldn’t properly judge how much she put into the glass. She added a little more, filled it with tonic and then sat waiting, forward on the edge of her chair. It was right to end it with Peter: they both knew it was an aimless, drifting affair, something that would have to finish one day. He’d be more affected than her, Ann knew. And not just because she had another involvement and he didn’t, at least not as far as she suspected. She had always dominated and Peter had always been happy to follow. Another reason for breaking off; it was wrong for anyone to be as dependent upon a woman as Peter was. One day he’d probably realise she’d been kinder, by being cruel. Ann put her glass down, annoyed at the attempted reassurance. She wasn’t thinking of being kinder to Peter. She was thinking of herself. Of being in a hopeless situation and trying something, anything, to get out of it. And she would get out of it. She’d get out of it and she’d warn James and then help him screw Metzinger.

  She was not a tart. It might seem so, from those flat, unemotional reports and those blurred pictures, which made it appear she was always hurrying in and out of houses and apartments, but the truth was far different. The affair with Jenkins had been like hundreds of others, something that had developed between an attractive, charismatic employer and a personal assistant who spent more time with him than his wife. It had been fun and neither of them had taken it seriously, and when it had ended they had remained friends. She’d never been a danger to Jenkins’ marriage and she knew she wasn’t to James’s. He and Hannah had been apart before their involvement, and arguing about a separation for even longer. Not a tart, she decided again.

  She was at the drinks table, refilling her glass, when she heard someone at the door. She turned and at once felt a sweep of compassion for the man standing there. Peter Brading was a
thin, haphazard man upon whom clothes always appeared to sit awkwardly, so that his shirt collar seemed too large and his jacket to be retreating from his shoulders. He dropped his briefcase heavily, and sighed, with matching effect.

  ‘Drink?’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘A big one.’

  ‘Bad day?’

  ‘Bloody awful.’

  He came further into the room, accepting the tumbler and going to the chair in which she had recently been sitting. He sat slump-shouldered, staring down into the glass. ‘Lost three clients today,’ he announced, like a small boy confessing a wrongdoing.

  ‘Three!’

  He looked up at her surprise. ‘It’s a record,’ he confirmed bitterly. ‘The firm’s never had three withdrawals in a single day.’

  ‘All yours?’ Ann asked gently.

  Brading nodded again. ‘They complained of consistent losses over the last two years. And they were right: I hadn’t recommended one good portfolio.’

  ‘What’s going to happen?’

  Brading shrugged. ‘There’s a directors’ meeting next week.’

  ‘Serious?’

  ‘They could ask for my resignation, I suppose.’

  ‘Will they?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Ann looked beyond him to the carefully arranged table and the open wine and then into the kitchen, where the steaks lay in readiness before the grill. It couldn’t be tonight, she realised. When then? With the resignation meeting a week away, the timing wasn’t going to improve. Christ, she thought, what a stupid, hopeless, bloody awful mess.

  Chapter Seven

  It was during the British war against the Zulus, when they fought as allies, that the Afrikaners developed the protective device of assembling their wagons in a circle or laager. Ironically, during the first Boer war against the British which followed within four years, and then again during the second at the turn of the century, it became an established defensive position and it remains the mental attitude of a country confronting ostracism and embargoes from its policy of separate development, between black and white. In practical terms, they have improved on covered wagons. The laager is now formed by the Department ofNational Security from Pretoria’s Skinner Street and so important is its function considered that its Director is frequently accorded a seat in Cabinet discussion.

  It was a responsibility of which Louis Knoetze was very aware. Which was why his response was immediate when the Dutch intelligence service contacted him after the Ilyushin crash; their request for consultation extended beyond a mysterious gold cargo.

  Until the overthrow of the Shah, South Africa obtained ninety per cent of its oil from Iran. One of the first acts of the Ayatollah Khomeini was to join the other Middle East oil producers and forbid open sales to Pretoria. Surprisingly for a country to which many Afrikaners can trace family links, Holland supported the blockade more strongly than any other in the west, only just stopping short of formal legislation. The fervency of the Dutch feeling created a paradox, because it was in Holland that Knoetze established his nominee companies to make secret purchases of spot oil contracts from the huge Europort depot at Rotterdam, to make up the shortfall created by the Iranian stoppage.

  Knoetze flew to Zurich for his meeting with the Dutch intelligence man. Hans van der Welk was a bespectacled, balding Dutchman who walked with a limp inflicted by Gestapo torture in 1943 when they had unsuccessfully tried to make him disclose the Jewish escape route through the Netherlands. The gold provided him with the opportunity for which he had been looking for months, ever since his service had ascertained that the South African companies were buying oil, although not the extent of the operation. He knew from the strength of opposition to South Africa within his country that if the surreptitious purchasing were to become public, the embarrassment would be sufficient to bring down the government.

  They met over lunch at the Baur au Lac, with Van der Welk insisting upon the role of host because he considered himself in the stronger position and therefore wanted to appear generous, in everything. Knoetze was a pragmatic man, so he accepted his inferior role without irritation or offence, letting the other intelligence chief take the lead. Van der Welk dealt out his information with the care of an expert card player, producing the photographs of what was proveably South African gold but refusing any information about its discovery until Knoetze disclosed his oil purchasing arrangements. Knoetze had flown to Switzerland prepared. He appeared to attempt a token argument, in an effort to gain some bargaining position, and then finally produced despatch and shipment dockets. Van der Welk took his time, comparing them against material of his own. Finally, deciding they were genuine, which was a mistake because they were not, he volunteered the details of the Ilyushin crash and the size of the gold shipment. It was an indication of Knoetze’s professionalism that he controlled his bewilderment at the revelation, intent for the moment on safeguarding his uninterrupted oil supplies.

  ‘We want it to stop,’ said Van der Welk.

  ‘We don’t,’ said Knoetze.

  The opposition surprised the Dutchman, who imagined he retained control. Seizing the other man’s hesitation, Knoetze said, ‘I will guarantee that any commercial activity within your country will remain discreet.’

  Van der Welk shook his head. ‘I couldn’t accept that.’

  ‘That’s unfortunate,’ said Knoetze.

  ‘But unavoidable,’ countered Van der Welk.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of South Africa,’ said Knoetze.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘After your country’s support of the manic regime in Iran, it would be embarrassing if what we are discussing today were to become public knowledge.’

  ‘It’s precisely for that reason that I’ve arranged this meeting,’ said Van der Welk patiently. ‘And why it has to stop.’

  ‘If our activities had to be curtailed, I would try, of course, to prevent any disclosure of what’s been happening,’ said Knoetze gently. ‘But I couldn’t give any guarantee. Not the sort of guarantee I could offer if everything were to continue undisturbed.’

  Van der Welk’s face tightened as he realised how he had been outplayed. ‘Full disclosure would cause a political upheaval in my country,’ he accepted.

  ‘Unfortunate, as I said,’ remained Knoetze. He waited, anticipating Van der Welk’s move.

  ‘I imagine the discovery of South African gold on a Soviet airliner would cause some surprise,’ said the Dutchman, trying to fight back.

  ‘But only surprise,’ qualified Knoetze. ‘My government wouldn’t be affected. The fact that it occurred on Dutch soil would be an unfortunate coincidence, coupled with the publicity about the oil purchase.’

  ‘This meeting began with the offer of co-operation,’ said Van der Welk.

  ‘Which I appreciate,’ said Knoetze.

  That’s difficult to accept.’

  ‘We each have to do everything we can, for our respective countries,’ said Knoetze, content with the victory.

  Van der Welk rose stiffly from the table, gesturing with the documents that Knoetze had supplied about the South African nominee companies. ‘These will be watched,’ he said, recognising the weakness of his counter attack. ‘At the slightest legal infringement, no matter how small, I shall move against them.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Knoetze, letting the man have the point. He rose, offering his hand. Van der Welk considered it and then turned, walking abruptly away from the table. Knoetze watched him go, unoffended, even amused that in the end he had been left to pay the bill.

  Knoetze was a complete professional. Even before he left the hotel he had relegated the resolved oil difficulty and was concentrating upon the gold cargo. The oil had been straightforward and easy, but the gold was not. And because of the necessary handling of the Dutch security chief, he’d closed the door on any help from Holland. Which meant it had to come from South Africa. In any other country, the investigation might have taken weeks or even months. But Knoet
ze decided there might be a short cut through the Broederbond.

  The Broederbond is the most secure laager of all, a tightly controlled, absolutely secret society of 12,000 leading Afrikaners who have moulded it to become the framework of white South African society. Formed originally to oppose the English attempts to anglicise the Afrikaner population after their defeat in the second Boer war, it is composed of self-contained, separate cells answerable to a controlling council and for over half a century has resisted every official attempt at disbandment. Now it is inviolate. So powerful is the Broederbond that it is synonymous with the ruling Nationalist Party. Nearly every government minister and almost every MP belongs to it. So, too, do the leaders of its armed forces, its university professors and its leading industrialists. Louis Knoetze was a Broeder and proud of it. Not as proud as Marius Metzinger, of course, but then very few people were as fervent an Afrikaner as he was.

  Before his departure from Switzerland, Knoetze made contact with Metzinger through his office in Pretoria, not wanting there to be any delay in a meeting when he returned.

  Although they were Broeders and should have come together as friends, Louis Knoetze found it difficult to regard Metzinger as such, although Metzinger seemed sincere in the friendship he offered. But it hadn’t always been the case, Knoetze remembered. Metzinger was from an established family, with a tradition of pride and wealth. And he had showed it, as a social reminder, during their encounters years before in the Pretoria cell of the Broederbond. At that time Knoetze had been a farm labourer’s son, a lowly constable, and Metzinger had maintained the gulf until Knoetze had started to progress through the security service and his ability had become recognised. Knoetze had little doubt that Metzinger had forgotten that early reserve. But he hadn’t. And never would. In some ways, it was fortunate; it removed any embarrassment at using the man, as he intended.

  Knoetze had never before visited Metzinger’s farm, even though he was acceptable now as the country’s security chief, and he undertook the tour with interest, staring with contempt at the pictures of Lord Kitchener, haltered in a Sam Browne and stiff in official uniform and polished boots, disembarking at Cape Town to take his part in the Boer war. And then with even greater hostility at the picture of Lord Milner, the worst enemy, a governor who had refused to consider the Dutch immigrants as anything other than upstart insurgents who should be crushed without mercy.