Legacy of War Page 21

  ‘That is how I feel about Centaine Courtney and her bastard son Shasa,’ De La Rey said, his voice constricted by the intensity of his feelings.

  ‘Quite so . . . and thus, as I told you, we have interests in common. So I am here today to register that interest with you and to assure you that there will be a time when I call on you again. That we will win this war is not in doubt. The Führer has planned a summer campaign that will destroy the Communists and leave the Reich with an eastern border that stretches from Leningrad in the north, past Moscow, to the oilfields of the Caucasus in the south. With Russia neutralised, and the Americans fully occupied in the Pacific, the British will be forced to sue for peace and we will dictate the terms.’

  ‘I yearn for that day . . .’

  ‘It will not be long in coming, that I can promise you. And when it does, then I will have the time to pursue my, ah . . . personal interests, while you will be free to return to a South Africa that is no longer part of any British Empire. At that point I will come to you and offer you the chance to work with me to destroy the Courtneys – and not just them. There is another enemy, much closer to my own home. He has betrayed our family. He must be punished too.’

  A smile crossed Manfred De La Rey’s face.

  ‘You can count on me, von Meerbach. You have my word on it.’

  ‘Good man, I felt sure that you would not let me down.’

  ‘You know that I have the technical skills required for acts of reconnaissance, espionage, kidnap and assassination?’

  ‘Of course . . . You are a trained radio operator, pilot and parachutist, an expert in small arms and explosives, a crack shot with rifle or pistol, deadly in all forms of unarmed combat and can send and decipher messages in code. Have I left anything out?’

  ‘I have a Master’s degree in Law, but I don’t think we’ll be needing that.’

  Von Meerbach gave an appreciative grunt. ‘Then we are agreed,’ he said. ‘When the war is won, I will return here and we will start a private war of our own. Excuse me one moment . . .’

  He walked to a sideboard and returned carrying a bottle of cognac and two glasses, which he placed on the side table. He poured a generous measure into each glass and passed one to De La Rey.

  ‘Please stand,’ von Meerbach said. ‘I wish to propose a toast . . . To the Courtneys! May they lose all that they possess. May they die at our hands and be crushed beneath our feet. And may the pain they have brought us be repaid a thousand-fold.’

  ‘The destruction of the Courtneys,’ De La Rey replied.

  They downed their drinks in one and replaced the glasses on the table.

  Von Meerbach clicked his heels, flung out his right arm and cried, ‘Heil Hitler!’

  ‘Heil Hitler!’ De La Rey responded with equal enthusiasm.

  ‘Thank you,’ said von Meerbach as he showed De La Rey to the door. ‘That was most satisfactory.’

  ‘I’ve heard that name, Manfred De La Rey, before,’ Saffron said. ‘It must have been one of the times I was in South Africa, staying with my cousins. I don’t think they liked him much, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Well, that could be a good thing for us,’ Joshua replied. ‘I’m sure your family would want to help you anyway. But if they don’t like De La Rey, that could be the icing on the cake.’

  ‘How so?’ Gerhard asked.

  ‘Well, let me tell you what happened after the war, when your brother got to Lisbon.’

  A year had passed since Konrad von Meerbach had climbed aboard the futuristic jet plane that had provided his escape from the dying Reich, and a great deal had changed. He was now called Bruno Heizmann and his wife Francesca went by the name of Magda. The Heizmanns led a comfortable enough existence, thanks to the wealth that they had taken with them on their respective flights from Germany. They were able to rent a charming villa in the seaside village of Cascais, a few kilometres west of Lisbon, with a housekeeper, maid and handyman-cum-gardener to look after them. It was not a bad life. Unless, of course, one was accustomed to having power.

  Von Meerbach had once been able to have a man executed, tortured or sent to the Russian Front with a flick of his fingers. Now he was just another ordinary man, and his unaccustomed impotence was driving him mad with frustration.

  When he had come to Lisbon in ’42, the Nazi empire was at its zenith. He had treated Portuguese government ministers with lofty condescension. He had walked into the casino at Estoril, with his gold Nazi Party badge pinned to the lapel of his dinner jacket, and everyone had stepped aside to let him pass. The waitresses had fought for his patronage. The croupiers had granted him respect worthy of royalty.

  No one reacted that way to Bruno Heizmann.

  When he had taken private meetings with government officials who knew of his true identity, the humiliations visited upon him were even worse. When the Reich was riding high, the Portuguese needed and feared him. Now that it was in ruins, he needed them to keep him safe from Allied prosecutors, looking for more famous names to parade at their damned Nuremberg trials. A man so accustomed to throwing his weight around and gloating at others’ misfortune found himself pleading to men who now gloated over him.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of this pathetic backwater,’ he raged at Francesca one night. ‘I’ll go mad if we have to stay here another day longer.’

  ‘It’s not all bad,’ she replied, trying to calm him. ‘We lead a good life, and we should be thankful for being alive at all. The Führer, Himmler, Bormann, Heydrich – all of them are dead. Goering, Hess and Speer are on trial for their lives, along with half the High Command.’

  ‘That’s their lookout. They should have had the good sense to see which way the wind was blowing and make their preparations accordingly.’

  ‘But where would we go, my darling? After all, wherever we went, we would still have to live as we do now.’

  Von Meerbach did not reply. He knew Francesca was right, and in due course he would punish her for that. But in the days that followed, he set his mind to the problem. He happened to be sitting in a café he frequented, by the marina, when the solution came to him.

  The café owner kept a selection of foreign newspapers. He knew they attracted the many prosperous citizens of other European nations, who had swapped their cold, war-ravaged homelands for Portugal, where the sun was warm and property, servants and wine were cheap. Von Meerbach had started taking a daily coffee and pastry there so that he could catch up with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. More recently, however, he had taken to reading The Times.

  It pleased him to learn how the poverty-stricken British were beset by austerity and rationing while their great empire collapsed before their eyes. It was only a matter of time before Gandhi won independence for India. They were the supposed winners of the war, yet they could barely have suffered more had they lost.

  On this occasion, the Times’s attention had shifted to South Africa. It seemed that there was a real prospect of the National Party taking control of the nation’s parliament at the next election. This would, the writer noted, mean victory for the Afrikaner element of the white population, over those who considered themselves to be British. The descendants of the Boers were about to overturn their Anglo-Saxon masters. Furthermore, he added, the policy of apartheid – or separation of the black and white races – that the Nationalists advocated, had disturbing echoes of the Nazis’ racial programme. Many of the most prominent Nationalists had supported Hitler during the war and even been interned as dangers to the state. Soon they might be running the very country that had once imprisoned them.

  It struck von Meerbach that he knew just such an Afrikaner: Manfred De La Rey. And from what he remembered of De La Rey’s files, he had possessed close links to senior figures in the Nationalist movement.

  The man is a sporting hero, von Meerbach thought as he swilled the dregs of coffee around his cup. Idiot voters love that sort of thing. And he’s not stupid. He wouldn’t have got that law degree if he
was. If I back him, so that he has the means to buy his way into power, he will become my creature. And then there will be a place on earth where I will have real protection. A place where I can actually live again.

  He explained his idea to Francesca when he got home.

  ‘I’ll write to Heidi De La Rey,’ she said. ‘We’ve both been meaning to get together.’

  ‘I had no idea you were in contact with that woman,’ von Meerbach said.

  ‘Well, of course I am. We knew each other in Berlin.’

  ‘When she was Bolt’s tart?’

  ‘What was Heidi to do? Her husband was in another country. She had a child to look after. She found a man who could help her. When he was no longer able to do that, she got out while she could, just as we did. Anyway, she’s here now and it’s only natural for us to keep in touch, being in the same country.’

  ‘It’s not her I’m interested in. It’s her husband,’ von Meerbach said.

  ‘I know, my darling,’ Francesca replied, in the sweetly patronising voice wives reserve for patiently explaining the obvious to a wilfully obtuse husband. ‘But if she tells him to come to dinner with us, he’s hardly going to say no.’

  Von Meerbach exhaled crossly. He was irritated enough that women seemed to possess a private intelligence network exclusive to their species. It made matters worse that the meeting was more likely to happen if the men were ordered to attend by their wives than if he had tried to set it up directly.

  Even so, he would have the opportunity to sit down with Manfred De La Rey and put his offer to him directly. That was the main thing.

  The women, in due course, agreed on a date for dinner at the von Meerbachs’ villa. Francesca pulled out all the stops. She bought new silver cutlery and ordered vases of fresh flowers that lit up the reception rooms with their brilliant colours and filled the air with their scent. She hired a caterer to provide the food, ordered a new gown from her dressmaker and took herself off for a full day of beauty treatments and hair styling.

  ‘I don’t think De La Rey is the kind of man who gives a damn what a woman looks like,’ von Meerbach said.

  ‘I’m not doing any of this for you men,’ Francesca replied. ‘It’s Heidi I need to impress.’

  Von Meerbach was not a man to beat about the bush. Before dinner, as Heidi and Francesca reminisced about the good old days in Berlin, he came straight to the point.

  ‘I think we can help one another,’ he told De La Rey. ‘I need protection. You may soon be in a position to provide it. Very well, then, I will give you a nice sum of money, and all you have to do is make sure I’m safe in your country.’

  De La Rey burst out laughing. ‘I don’t need your money, man! I’ve got plenty of my own. I may have left South Africa in a hurry, but I didn’t leave it poor.’

  ‘Then why did you look so down-at-heel the last time we met?’

  De La Rey grinned and there was something approaching a twinkle in those feline eyes.

  ‘I was not exactly persona grata with your people,’ he said. ‘How do you think they would have reacted if the man who had let them down was living like a king in the sunshine, while they were stuck in Berlin, being bombed to hell and back?’

  It sickened von Meerbach to admit it, but he was dealing with a different man from the one he had first met a decade earlier. De La Rey’s shabby suit had given way to sober but elegant clothes, befitting a man who was a devout Calvinist and also prosperous. He wore grey lightweight wool trousers and a black sports jacket, cut to emphasise the width of his shoulders and slenderness of his belly and waist. His plain white shirt was made of fine cotton and was open enough to reveal the top of his tanned chest and a hint of tawny hair.

  His wife Heidi was an equally impressive specimen. A close-fitting silk dress in a bold floral print showed off a tall, hourglass figure that, von Meerbach was certain, would look as magnificently female without a stitch of clothing to support it. Yet for all her femininity, there was nothing yielding or vulnerable about this woman. Her smile revealed perfect white teeth. But her eyes were as cold and hard as the gemstones about which her man had been boasting.

  ‘When we go back to Africa, Heidi’s going to live like a queen,’ De La Rey boasted. ‘Isn’t that right, mein Schatz?’

  ‘So, you have cash. But it’s one thing paying for a wife, it’s quite another paying for power. What about your party, the Nationalists?’ he asked. ‘Do they have money? I mean, big money?’

  De La Rey did not answer at once. He was giving the question serious consideration.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘They do not. And they have a general election to fight in two years’ time.’

  ‘Suppose you arrived back in South Africa with cash for that campaign, money provided by me. That would make you a very popular man in the party, a man of great influence.’

  ‘Uh-uh . . .’ De La Rey nodded in acknowledgement.

  ‘In that case,’ said von Meerbach, ‘I believe we have a deal. And now that we have agreed that, there is one other thing to discuss.’

  ‘The Courtney family?’

  ‘Yes, them, but also my brother.’

  ‘Even now, after all this time, when so much has changed, you have not forgotten your grievances, eh?’

  ‘Have you forgotten yours?’

  De La Rey smiled. ‘No, man, I have not.’

  ‘Then we understand one another on this matter, too.’

  Joshua Solomons finished his story. Their coffee cups were empty. A handful of cigarette stubs lay in the ashtray that sat on the table in front of Joshua’s chair.

  ‘Are you sure Konrad went to South Africa?’ Saffron asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Joshua replied. ‘And we’re certain he’s still there . . .’ He gave a grimace of embarrassment. ‘Except when he’s in Kenya . . . Anyway, we haven’t found him yet.’

  ‘I thought you knew he was living under the name of Heizmann,’ said Gerhard.

  ‘In Portugal, yes. But we have checked out a great many people called Heizmann in South Africa and none of them fit the descriptions of Konrad and Francesca von Meerbach. I would have been here a lot sooner if they had. We have to assume that they have new identities.’

  Gerhard nodded. ‘That would make sense. There was a special unit at Sachsenhausen when I got there. The SS had rounded up Jews with particular skills – artists, engravers, even criminal forgers – to produce false banknotes and documents. Those guys were brilliant. They turned out perfect passports in their sleep. Konrad could have any number of false identities.’

  ‘Maybe it’s time we used my connections in South Africa,’ Saffron said. ‘Let’s pay my cousins a visit. I know Centaine’s dying to meet you, darling. And Shasa was a fighter pilot, so you two would have lots to talk about.’

  ‘Be careful in South Africa,’ Joshua said. ‘Your enemy has friends in high places there. So be discreet.’

  ‘Point taken.’

  ‘And speaking of identities, do you remember that ID you told me about, the one you used to get into Occupied Europe?’

  ‘Marlize Marais?’

  ‘That’s the one. Do you still have any of her papers?’

  ‘I think I do. No one at SOE asked me for the passport back, because it wasn’t one of theirs to begin with. Shasa got it for me. And I certainly had it with me when I got out of Belgium. It’s probably in a trunk somewhere. Do you want me to dig it up?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’ Gerhard asked. ‘I mean, for my brother.’

  ‘Well, my bosses have come to the same conclusion as you and my father did. They want Konrad von Meerbach to be located, captured and brought back to Israel to be tried for his crimes against our people. Will you want to participate in that operation?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Saffron.

  ‘I assumed so. That is why I want as much as you have on Marlize Marais. When the time comes, you will have to approach this like an SOE operation, with total security and false identitie
s. I take it a full legend was created for this Marais woman – birth certificate, school records and so on.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then why create another one? Marlize Marais brought you luck once. Let’s hope she brings us all good fortune.’

  The sound of twin Rolls-Royce Merlin engines echoed around the hills of the Lusima Estate, both mellifluous and powerful, like the purring of a lion god.

  ‘There,’ said Gerhard, pointing his finger at a dot in the clear, late afternoon sky. ‘That’s your cousin Shasa’s Mosquito.’

  Saffron raised the binoculars. ‘Got it,’ she said. ‘I hope the landing strip’s long enough.’

  ‘It should be. I had it lengthened specially.’

  Saffron needed to speak to Shasa and his mother Centaine about the hunt for Konrad von Meerbach. Shasa was a member of the South African parliament. Centaine had limitless financial resources. Their help would be invaluable.

  Ten years earlier, Shasa had worked with Saffron to use South Africa as a route into Occupied Europe, and he had taken great pleasure in the friendship she had formed with his wife Tara. Saffron had no doubt that he would be willing to help her again, likewise Centaine, who had also shown her nothing but kindness.

  Her initial instinct had been to pay a visit to Weltevreden, the beautiful estate on the outskirts of Cape Town that Centaine had bought and remodelled, before handing it over to Shasa and Tara. Joshua, however, had been adamant that she could not go to South Africa until they launched the mission to capture von Meerbach.