Legacy of War Read online

  He opened the rear passenger door. Ndiri was sprawled across the back seat, his fingers frantically scrabbling at the handle of the opposite door.

  ‘Chief Ndiri,’ Kabaya said. ‘Look at me.’

  His voice was so commanding that Ndiri, praying that there might be hope of mercy, sat up.

  Kabaya shot Ndiri four times, rapid fire at point-blank range, punching a fist-sized hole in his chest and killing him instantly. His body slumped back onto the seats, his blood spreading in a rich crimson stain across his beloved creamy upholstery.

  Kabaya turned to the chauffeur and said, ‘You have a wife and three children.’

  The chauffeur nodded.

  ‘Think of them now . . . You saw nothing. You can’t remember what happened. Here, this will help you with the police.’

  Kabaya whipped his pistol across the chauffeur’s face, then hit him again, harder. The chauffeur slumped forward in his seat, barely conscious, with his head in his hands. Blood was seeping between his fingers.

  Kabaya walked away. As he passed Mathu’s body, he paused, looked back at the car and saw that the chauffeur was still hunched over, oblivious to anything but his own pain.

  ‘Get up,’ he said.

  Mathu got to his feet, untouched. He dusted himself down and walked with Kabaya to the taxi. Gitiri was already behind the wheel with the engine running. They were on the move again within a few seconds.

  ‘You did well,’ Kabaya told Mathu. ‘All your information was accurate. You did as you were ordered today. Lucky I’m a bad shot at close range.’ He smiled.

  ‘I took the oath,’ Mathu replied. ‘What else could I do?’

  Wangari heard the news of her father’s assassination on the radio news. The realisation that he was dead was bad enough. But the fact that he was gone before they had had the chance to be reconciled deepened the wound still further. Wangari called her family home from the clinic, only to be told that her mother would not speak to her. She and Benjamin had no car, but she took a bus out to the suburb where her family lived and walked a mile from the nearest stop to their house.

  She was turned away at the gates. One of the staff, whom Wangari had known since she was a little girl, and who was in tears herself, both because her master was dead and because she could not bear to see the pain on Wangari’s face, informed her that, ‘Your mother has given orders that you are not to be admitted . . . Forgive me, Miss Wangari, I am so, so sorry. But I also have to tell you, you will not be welcome at the funeral.’

  The combination of grief and humiliation overwhelmed Wangari. The agony was replaced by a sort of semi-conscious daze. When she finally arrived back at the clinic, she was hardly conscious of how she had got there. In desperation, she called the estate house at Lusima.

  ‘You poor thing,’ said Harriet Courtney. ‘You have my deepest condolences. And, please, don’t take your mother’s behaviour to heart. I’m sure she’s in shock. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’ll come back to you in time, I know she will.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Wangari, though she didn’t for a moment believe it. Her mother was not the kind of woman to change her mind about anything. Then she said, ‘Can you get a message to Saffron, please? I’d really love to see her.’

  ‘I know she’d feel just the same. She’ll be devastated when she hears about this. But I’m afraid she’s not here. She and Gerhard left this morning. They’re on their way to South Africa.’

  ‘God in Heaven! Now I know how the Führer felt, those last days in the bunker!’ shouted Konrad von Meerbach as he paced across the living room, again and again, heedless of the panoramic views of the Indian Ocean revealed by the wall of glass to his side. ‘My enemies are everywhere! My friends have deserted me – friends I trusted and rewarded, yet they repay me with nothing but scorn!’

  He had been like this since he returned from his meeting with Manfred De La Rey, five days earlier. The following day he announced he would not be going into work. Francesca had to call his secretary and explain that her husband had come down with a bad case of food poisoning, while Konrad howled at his enemies, real and imagined.

  Along with the ranting came wild schemes to make their property even more impregnable. Konrad decided he would replace their fence with solid walls, three metres high and topped with razor wire. He planned to install invisible tripwires, formed by beams of infrared light that would set off alarms if intruders crossed into their property. He dreamed of packs of killer dogs that would sniff out and savage anyone who dared to approach them.

  Francesca did not suggest there could be flaws in any of these ideas. Konrad did not take well to criticism. She gently reminded him what De La Rey had said. There was little chance of them being found. They had done as much as they could to protect themselves without drawing attention. The best thing to do was to carry on with their lives as normally as possible.

  Konrad had screamed at Francesca for joining the ranks of traitors. She offered herself up to play ‘our little game’, knowing that she would pay the price for displeasing him, but hoping it might help him let off steam. Yet though Francesca endured punishments worse than any he had ever inflicted on her, Konrad awoke the next morning as bad-tempered as ever.

  Now here he was again, restless and resentful, pacing and shouting, while she was bruised and battered, hardly able to move for all her aches and pains.

  Francesca cracked. She walked across the living room and stood in her husband’s path.

  ‘Enough!’ she screamed. ‘I’m sick of this! You are nothing like the Führer! He was a greater man than you could ever be! And he really was surrounded by enemies. The Red Army were in Berlin. The only safe place was the bunker. But where are your enemies? Show me!’ She swept an arm across the expanse of the windows. ‘Can you see any enemies?’

  Von Meerbach had stopped in his tracks when Francesca started shouting at him. He took three paces towards her. She did not flinch. He had slapped her across the face so many times that she had lost her fear.

  But this time he did not slap her.

  He clenched his right fist and punched her with all his strength, smashing her in the side of her face.

  It felt as if a bomb had gone off inside her head. Her eyes saw flickering dots and flashes of light. Her ears were ringing. There was so much pain from so many places as she fell to the floor, barely conscious, dizzy, nauseous, unable to move or speak.

  Francesca had no idea how long it took for her to push herself onto her elbows and look around. Her mouth was filled with blood. She spat it out and saw a tooth lying there, a flash of white amid the crimson mess on the cold marble floor.

  She ran her tongue across her lips, feeling the swelling and tasting more blood from a surface cut, then felt around the inside of her mouth. Another of her teeth was loose. She raised a hand to her jaw and pressed it gently. The pain caused by the slightest touch was enough to tell her the bone was broken.

  Konrad was looking down on her. She could tell that he knew he had gone too far. What he had done could never be undone, let alone forgiven.

  ‘You coward,’ she mumbled. ‘You stinking, rotten, gutless coward.’

  He stepped closer to her, near enough to kick her defenceless body.

  ‘Go on then,’ Francesca said. ‘I can’t stop you.’

  Konrad glared at her. He turned away and stalked towards the windows, his back to her.

  Now he looks at the view, she thought. If it stops him having to look at me.

  She crawled to the nearest bathroom. She locked the door. In time she would gather the strength to stand up straight enough to look in the mirror and see what he had done to her.

  Until then she would lie on the cold, unforgiving marble and wonder what had happened to her life to lead her to a fate as miserable as this.

  From the moment they walked up to the check-in desk at the Nairobi Aerodrome, Saffron and Gerhard became Marlize and Herman. They spoke to one another in German and continued to do so in the depa
rture lounge, on the flight via Johannesburg to Cape Town and through the customs and immigration process. Even when they first saw Joshua, they stayed in character. Only once they were in his car taking them into the city did they revert to their true identities and speak English again.

  ‘I have a nice surprise for you, Gerhard,’ Joshua said. ‘I know how much you enjoy speed, what with being a pilot. And my father was telling me the other day how you still have the Mercedes sports car you drove as a young man.’

  ‘He still drives it just as fast, too,’ said Saffron.

  ‘Then you’ll appreciate the car I have procured for your use tonight.’

  Joshua drove them to the modest hotel where Mr and Mrs Doll were booked in for the night. They checked in, took their luggage to their room and then went outside to meet Joshua. He drove them to one of Manny Ishmael’s many properties, which the Israelis were using as their base and safe house.

  Gerhard spotted the Jaguar as soon as they pulled up outside the safe house.

  ‘Is that the one?’ he asked as they stepped onto the pavement.

  Joshua grinned. ‘She’s yours for the night.’

  Gerhard ran his hands over the bodywork as he looked the car up and down. Had Saffron not been long used to her man’s passion for machines that went fast, she might have been jealous.

  ‘I have no interest in automobiles,’ said Joshua. ‘But this one’s owner asked me to inform you that she – apparently his car is a female . . .’

  ‘Of course,’ Gerhard murmured.

  ‘She is a 1950 Jaguar XK120, with handmade bodywork and a . . . let me get this right . . . A dual overhead-cam 3.4 litre XK engine, originally developing 160 horsepower, but subsequently modified – by your brother’s garage, ironically – to more than 200 horsepower.’

  ‘Racing specifications,’ Gerhard nodded.

  ‘If you say so. You are also invited to observe the chrome-plated wire wheels and Pirelli Cinturato radial tyres. Apparently both are the latest innovations.’

  ‘They are. I’d like to meet the man who loaned you this. I think we’d get along.’

  ‘As long as you return his car in one piece, I’m sure you would. But he also asked me to say, if you crash it, you’ll have to buy him a new one.’

  Gerhard laughed. ‘I’d make the same demand if this was my car.’

  ‘If it’s so fast, don’t you chaps want it?’ Saffron asked Joshua.

  ‘Very much, but there are six of us and this car only has two seats. But don’t worry, our own vehicles are certainly not slow. In any case, if all goes well, we won’t be needing to drive anywhere.’

  ‘Why on earth not?’

  Joshua smiled. ‘Come inside, and all will be revealed.’

  This is like the old days, Saffron thought, as she joined the seven men clustered round the dining-room table. A map had been spread on the table, marked with an assortment of arrows and crosses to show salient points and lines of movement.

  Joshua stood at the head of the table. ‘Listen up,’ he said. ‘We’ll start with Konrad von Meerbach’s present location.

  ‘This map shows the city of Cape Town, and the Cape of Good Hope peninsula, to the south of the city. As you can see, it extends like a long, thin hook for about fifty kilometres from the city to its southernmost point at the Cape of Good Hope itself. To the west of the peninsula lie the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and to the east is False Bay, which is part of the Indian Ocean.’

  Joshua had found a stick of bamboo that was being used to support a plant in the safe house garden. He used it as a pointer.

  ‘Here,’ he said, stabbing at an X marked on the map, about a quarter of the way up the eastern, False Bay side of the peninsula, ‘is the property where Konrad and Francesca von Meerbach have lived for the past six or seven years.

  ‘As you can see, it sits on the coast, south of Simon’s Town. The property occupies a small parcel of land between the coast road and the seashore, with no other properties nearby. This provides von Meerbach with privacy, but it also means we can operate without fear of being overheard. It is worth noting that the coast road runs north-south for several kilometres in either direction without any turn-offs. Traffic on this stretch of road is not heavy, and virtually non-existent at night. Again, we are unlikely to be disturbed.

  ‘The property is approximately twenty metres above the level of the sea, with a sheer rock face down to the water. Steps lead down to a jetty, where von Meerbach keeps a fast motorboat. Clearly this boat is intended as a means of escape in case of emergency. Our first move, therefore, will be to secure the boat, cutting off that escape route.’

  Saffron knew that all the Israelis in the room must have heard this account before, several times. She also knew that Joshua would be going over it, yet again, even if she and Gerhard were not there. The briefing had to be ingrained so deep into the minds of the mission personnel that every detail was locked into their brains.

  Joshua continued. ‘A few of our friends from our embassy have come down from Pretoria to keep an eye on the property over the past three days. The von Meerbachs have not left the place. He’s not gone to work. She’s not gone out to do any shopping or visit friends. There’s no reason to believe they know we’re here. But something’s clearly not right.

  ‘But let them worry about that. We will concentrate on our mission. Our mother ship is taking up a position six kilometres offshore, outside the three-mile limit of South African waters. At 02.30 tomorrow morning, the ship’s cutter will be launched, with one crewman and two of our agents aboard. At approximately one kilometre from the shore, our men will disembark from the cutter and paddle towards the shore, using a small, collapsible kayak.

  ‘The moon is almost clear tonight. The weather forecast is good. There is only one jetty in the area. Our guys are confident that they can get to the jetty shortly before 03.00 and secure von Meerbach’s boat. When they reach the house they will send a radio signal to us. The only way from the house to the jetty is down a set of stone steps. If the von Meerbachs try to make for the boat, they will be completely exposed on those steps. However, I have ordered the men not to shoot to kill. We want von Meerbach alive.

  ‘Now to the land assault . . .’

  The other men had been paying attention before, but now their concentration noticeably increased.

  ‘We will work as two three-man teams, with Gerhard and Saffron as guides, observers and backup. To remind you, gentlemen, Saffron Courtney Meerbach has more than four years of wartime experience of commando and espionage operations. Anything we can do, she can do too.’

  ‘It’s all right, ma’am,’ one of Joshua’s men said. ‘We’ve had women in the Defence Force since the day the state of Israel was formed. And these women . . . ay-yay-yay!’

  Saffron joined in the laughter. Joshua continued.

  ‘We will approach the target property from the north and south. Two vehicles, three men in each, cutting von Meerbach’s escape route in either direction. I will come in from the north. Chaim –’ Joshua glanced up at the man standing to his right – ‘you bring your boys in from the south. Gerhard and Saffron, follow me. We will lay up a few hundred metres from our target and wait for the signal that the boys in the kayak have arrived safely before we move in.

  ‘Let’s assume we get to the property without incident . . .’

  Joshua reached for a cardboard tube from which he extracted a rolled-up sheet of blue-grey paper. He spread it across the map and held the corners down with coffee cups.

  ‘This is a copy of the master site-plan submitted to the planning authorities by Michel Schultz, alias Konrad von Meerbach. Note, there is one entrance from the road to the property, here . . .’ He tapped at the gate. ‘The fence and gate are constructed of steel supports holding steel wire mesh, topped with barbed wire. The gate is secured by means of a heavy chain, held by a padlock with a combination lock. We will cut the chain and enter through the gate.

  ‘Th
ere are three ways in and out of the house. A front door, here, a back door which opens into the garage, here, and through the sliding windows that form the wall of the living room, here. We remain as silent as possible until we get to the house. I will take the front door with my team. Chaim, you and your men go in the back. Saffron and Gerhard, you stay on the road. We’ll pick the locks if we can. But if the doors are bolted, we’ll have to smash our way in with our battering rams.’

  ‘Is the house alarmed?’ Gerhard asked.

  ‘Not that we know of. There’s no sign of an alarm in the plans, no box on the outside of the house.’

  ‘Hmm . . .’ Gerhard murmured. ‘My brother sees enemies everywhere. He’ll want to know if anyone gets into his house, and he’ll have a plan for when they do.’

  ‘Including another way out,’ Saffron said. ‘I’m bothered by that gate. It’s just . . . I don’t know . . . too obvious.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Joshua conceded. ‘But he can’t have planned for what we are going to throw at him. You are the only people outside Israel who know that this unit even exists.’

  ‘And we haven’t told anyone,’ said Saffron.

  ‘Then we will have the element of surprise. But we have to move fast.’ Joshua turned back to the contractors’ plan. ‘The master bedroom is on the first floor. We’ll converge on that as quickly as we can. Ideally, I want to take them in the bedroom. Failing that, we’ll flush them out and drive them towards the sea, where the boys at the boat will apprehend them.

  ‘In either scenario, we will extract the von Meerbachs by sea. We use their boat to get them and us to the mother ship. Once we cast off from shore, we fire a single red flare to indicate that we are on our way.’

  ‘And what do Gerhard and I do under these circumstances?’

  ‘When you see the flare, drive back here to the safe house and get some rest. In the morning, you will receive a telegram informing you that Herman’s elderly mother has died. You will therefore have no option but to cut short your holidays and return home. Place the keys to the Jaguar in an envelope, addressed to “Mr Ishmael”, and give that to the concierge. Then take a taxi to the airport and fly away.’