The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden

CHAPTER 5

On an anonymous letter, peace on earth and a hungry scorpion

Engineer Westhuizen’s servant relapsed into the distant hope that a general societal change would come to her rescue. But it wasn’t easy for her to predict the chances of anything that might give her a future at all, whatever the quality of that future might be.

The books in the library of the research facility gave her some context, of course, but most of what was on the shelves was ten or more years old. Among other things, Nombeko had skimmed through a two-hundred-page document from 1924 in which a London professor considered himself to have proved that there would never be another war, thanks to a combination of the League of Nations and the spread of the increasingly popular jazz.

It was easier to keep track of what was going on within the fences and walls of the facility. Unfortunately the latest reports said that the engineer’s clever colleagues had solved the autocatalytic issue and others besides, and they were now ready for a test detonation. A successful test would bring the whole project far too close to completion for Nombeko’s comfort, because she wanted to keep living for a while longer.

The only thing she could do there and then was try to slow their progress down a bit. Preferably in such a way that the government in Pretoria would not start to suspect that Westhuizen was as useless as he was. Perhaps it would be enough to put a temporary stop to the drilling that had just begun in the Kalahari Desert.

Even though things had gone as they had with the antifreeze, Nombeko once again turned to the Chinese girls for help. She asked if she could send a letter through them, via the girls’ mother. How did that all work, by the way? Wasn’t outgoing post checked at all?

Yes, of course it was. There was a white on the guard staff who did nothing but go through everything that wasn’t being sent to an addressee who already had security clearance. At the least suspicion he would open the outgoing post. And he would interrogate the sender, no exceptions.

This would, of course, have been an insurmountable problem if the director of security hadn’t held a briefing a few years ago with those responsible for the post. Once he had told the Chinese girls in great detail about the security measures in place, adding that such measures were necessary because not a single person could be trusted, he excused himself to go to the bathroom. Whereupon the Chinese girls proved him right: as soon as they were alone in the room, they skipped around his desk, fed the correct paper into the typewriter, and added another addressee with security clearance to the 114 that already existed.

‘Your mother,’ said Nombeko.

The girls smiled and nodded. To be on the safe side, they had given their mother a nice title before her name. Cheng Lian looked suspicious. Professor Cheng Lian inspired confidence. The logic of racism was no more complicated than that.

Nombeko thought that a Chinese name ought to have caused someone to react, even with the title of professor, but taking risks and getting away with them seemed once and for all to be part of the girls’ nature – aside from the reason they were as locked up as she was. And the name had already been working for several years, so it ought to work for one more day. So did this mean that Nombeko could send a letter in a letter to Professor Cheng Lian, and the girls’ mother would forward it?

‘Absolutely,’ said the girls, showing no curiosity about whom Nombeko wanted to send a message to.

To:

President James Earl Carter Jr

The White House, Washington

Hello, Mr President. You might be interested to know that South Africa, under leadership of a regularly intoxicated ass, is planning to detonate one atomic bomb of approximately three megatons within the next three months. This will take place in early 1978 in the Kalahari Desert, more specifically, at these exact coordinates: 26°44′26″S, 22°11′32″E. Afterwards, the plan is for South Africa to equip itself with five more of the same type, to use as it sees fit.

Sincerely,

Wearing rubber gloves, Nombeko closed the envelope, addressed it and added ‘Death to America!’ in one corner. Then she put it all in another envelope that was expedited the very next day to a professor in Johannesburg who had security clearance and a Chinese-sounding name.

The White House in Washington was constructed by black slaves imported from Nombeko’s Africa. It was a majestic building from the start, and it was even more impressive 177 years later. The building contained 132 rooms, 35 bathrooms, 6 levels, a bowling alley and a cinema. And an awful lot of staff, who between them received more than thirty-three thousand pieces of post per month.

Each one was X-rayed, subjected to the sensitive noses of specially trained dogs, and visually inspected before they went to each individual recipient.

Nombeko’s letter made it through both X-ray and dogs, but when a sleepy yet observant inspector saw ‘Death to America’ on an envelope addressed to the president himself, the alarm was sounded. Twelve hours later, the letter had been flown to Langley, Virginia, where it was shown to CIA director Stansfield M. Turner. The debriefing agent described the envelope and informed him that the fingerprints on it were limited in extent and placed in such a way that they were unlikely to lead to anything more than various postal workers; that the letter had not caused the radiation sensors to react; that the postmark appeared to be authentic; that it had been sent from postal zone nine in Johannesburg, South Africa, eight days earlier; and that a computer analysis indicated that the text had been formed from words cut out of the book Peace on Earth, which had been written by a British professor who first argued that the combination of the League of Nations and jazz would bring good fortune to the world and then, in 1939, took his own life.

‘Jazz is supposed to bring peace on earth?’ was the CIA director’s first comment.

‘Like I said, sir, he took his own life,’ the agent answered.

The CIA director thanked the agent and was left alone with the letter. Three phone calls and twenty minutes later, it was clear that the contents of the letter were in complete agreement with the information he had, embarrassingly enough, received from the Soviets three weeks earlier but had not believed at the time. The only difference was the exact coordinates in the anonymous letter. All in all, the information appeared to be extremely credible. Now there were two main thoughts in the CIA director’s head:

Who the hell had sent the letter?

Time to contact the president. The letter had been addressed to him, after all.

Stansfield M. Turner was not popular at the agency because he was trying to exchange as many of his colleagues as possible for computers. And it was one of them – not a person – that had been able to trace the cut-out words to the book Peace on Earth.

‘Jazz is supposed to bring peace on earth?’ said President Carter to his old schoolmate Turner when they met the next day in the Oval Office.

‘He took his own life a few years later, Mr President,’ said the director of the CIA.

President Carter – who loved jazz – still couldn’t let the thought go. What if the poor professor had been right? And then the Beatles and the Rolling Stones showed up and ruined everything?

The director of the CIA said that the Beatles could be blamed for a lot of things, but not for starting the Vietnam War. And then he said that he was sceptical of the theory, because if the Beatles and Rolling Stones hadn’t already destroyed peace on earth, there was always the Sex Pistols.

‘The Sex Pistols?’ the president wondered.

‘“God Save the Queen”, you remember?’ the CIA director quoted.

‘Oh, I see,’ said the president.

Now to the question at hand. Were the idiots in South Africa about to detonate an atomic bomb? And was this work being led by an ass?

‘I don’t know about the ass part, sir. We have indications that the work is being supervised by an Engineer Westhuizen, who graduated with top grades from one of South Africa’s best universities. He must have been handpicked.’

But there were many indications that the rest of the information was correct. The KGB had, of course, already been so kind as to tip them off about what was going on. And now this letter, formulated in such a way that the CIA director was prepared to bet his life that the KGB wasn’t behind it this time. Plus, the CIA’s own satellite images showed activity in the desert exactly where the mystery sender said it would be.

‘But why this “Death to America” on the envelope?’ said President Carter.

‘It meant that the letter landed on my desk immediately, and I think that was the point. The letter writer seems to have great insight into how security around the president works. That makes us even more curious about who he is. Cleverly executed, in any case.’

The president hemmed and hawed. He had trouble seeing what was so clever about ‘Death to America’. Or, for that matter, the assertion that Elizabeth II was of any race other than the human one.

But he thanked his old friend and asked his secretary to call up Prime Minister Vorster in Pretoria. President Carter was directly responsible for 32,000 nuclear missiles that pointed in a number of directions. Brezhnev in Moscow was in a similar situation. The world did not need another six weapons of the same magnitude. Someone was going to get a talking-to!

Vorster was furious. The president of the United States, that peanut farmer and Baptist, had had the nerve to call and claim that preparations were under way for a weapons test in the Kalahari Desert. Furthermore, he had recited the coordinates of the exact location of the test site. The accusation was completely baseless and incredibly, terribly insulting! In a rage, Vorster slammed down the phone in Jimmy Carter’s ear, but he had enough sense not to go any further. Instead he called Pelindaba right away to order Engineer Westhuizen to test his weapons somewhere else.

‘But where?’ said Engineer Westhuizen while his cleaning woman swabbed the floor around his feet.

‘Anywhere but the Kalahari,’ said Prime Minister Vorster.

‘That will delay us by several months, maybe a year or more,’ said the engineer.

‘Just do as I say, dammit.’

The engineer’s servant let him spend two whole years thinking about where the weapons test could be done, now that the Kalahari Desert was no longer available. The best idea Westhuizen had was to shoot the thing off in one of the many homelands, but not even he thought this sounded good enough.

Nombeko sensed that the engineer’s share value was on its way to a new low, and that it would soon be time to drive his price up again. But then something lucky happened – an external factor that gave the engineer, and by extension his cleaning woman, another six months of respite.

It turned out that Prime Minister B. J. Vorster was tired of being met with complaints and ingratitude in nearly every context in his own country. So with a little help, he magically made seventy-five million rand disappear from the country’s coffers, and he started the newspaper The Citizen. Unlike most citizens, this one had a uniquely, completely positive attitude towards the South African government and its ability to keep a tight rein on the natives and the rest of the world.

Unfortunately enough, an extra-treacherous citizen happened to let this come to the attention of the general public. Around the same time, the goddamn world conscience referred to a successful military operation in Angola as the slaughter of six hundred civilians – and thus it was time for Vorster to go.

Oh, fuck it, he thought one last time, and left the world of politics in 1979. All that was left to do was to go home to Cape Town and sit on the terrace of his luxury home with a whisky in his hand and a view of Robben Island where that terrorist Mandela was sitting.

Mandela was supposed to be the one who rotted away, not me, Vorster thought as he rotted away.

His successor as prime minister, P. W. Botha, was called Die Groot Krokodil – the big crocodile – and he had scared the engineer out of his wits in their very first phone call. Nombeko realized that the weapons test couldn’t wait any longer. So she brought it up one late afternoon when the engineer was still able to speak.

‘Um, Engineer…’ she said as she reached for the ashtray on his desk.

‘What is it now?’ said the engineer.

‘Well, I was just thinking…’ Nombeko began, without being interrupted. ‘I was just thinking that if all of South Africa is too crowded, except for the Kalahari Desert, why couldn’t the bomb be detonated at sea?’

South Africa was surrounded by practically endless amounts of sea in three directions. Nombeko had long been of the opinion that the best choice for a test site should have been obvious to a child, now that the desert was no longer an option. Sure enough, the childlike Westhuizen lit up. For one second. Then he realized that the intelligence service had warned him not to collaborate with the navy under any circumstances. There had been a detailed investigation after President Carter in the United States had obviously been informed of the planned test in the Kalahari, and it had singled out Vice Admiral Johan Charl Walters as the prime suspect. Admiral Walters had visited Pelindaba just three weeks before Carter’s phone call, and he had gained a clear picture of the project. He had also been alone in Engineer Westhuizen’s office for at least seven minutes while the engineer was stuck in heavy traffic one morning (the engineer had edited this last bit during the interrogation, because he had spent a little too much time at the bar where he always drank breakfast). The leading theory was that Walters had become pouty and tattled to the United States once it became clear to him that he would not be allowed to arm his submarines with nuclear warheads.

‘I don’t trust the navy,’ the engineer mumbled to his cleaning woman.

‘So get the Israelis to help,’ said Nombeko.

At that moment, the phone rang.

‘Yes, Mr Prime Minister… Of course I’m aware of the importance of… Yes, Mr Prime Minister… No, Mr Prime Minister… I don’t quite agree with that, if you’ll excuse me, Mr Prime Minister. Here on my desk is a detailed plan to carry out a test in the Indian Ocean, along with the Israelis. Within three months, Mr Prime Minister. Thank you, Mr Prime Minister, you are far too kind. Thanks again. Well, goodbye then.’

Engineer Westhuizen hung up and tossed back the whole glass of brandy he had just poured. And then he said to Nombeko:

‘Don’t just stand there. Get me the two Israelis.’

Sure enough, the test was carried out with the help of Israel. Engineer Westhuizen aimed a kind thought in the direction of former Prime Minister-slash-former-Nazi Vorster for his genius in establishing cooperation with Jerusalem. Israel’s on-site representatives were two pompous Mossad agents. Unfortunately, the engineer would come to meet with them more often than was necessary, and he never learned to tolerate that superior smile, the one that said, ‘How could you be so fucking stupid as to buy a clay goose that was hardly dry and believe it to be two thousand years old?’

When suspected traitor Vice Admiral Walters was kept out of the loop, America couldn’t keep up. Ha! Sure, the detonation was registered by an American Vela satellite, but it was a bit too late by then.

New Prime Minister P. W. Botha was so delighted by the results of the weapons test that he came to visit the research facility and brought three bottles of sparkling wine from Constantia. Then he threw a cheers-and-thanks party in Engineer Westhuizen’s office, along with the engineer, two Israeli Mossad agents, and a local darky to do the actual serving. Prime Minister Botha would never allow himself to call the darky a darky; his position demanded otherwise. But there was no rule against thinking what one thought.

In any case, she served what she was supposed to and otherwise made sure to blend into the white wallpaper as best she could.

‘Here’s to you, Engineer,’ Prime Minister Botha said, raising his glass. ‘Here’s to you!’

Engineer Westhuizen looked fittingly embarrassed about being a hero, and he discreetly asked for a refill from whatshername while the prime minister had a friendly conversation with the Mossad agents.

But then, in an instant, the relatively pleasant situation became rather the opposite. The prime minister turned to Westhuizen again and said, ‘By the way, what is your opinion on the tritium problem?’

Prime Minister P. W. Botha’s background was not entirely different from that of his predecessor. It was possible that the country’s new leader was a bit cleverer, because he had given up Nazism once he saw the direction it was heading, and started referring to his convictions as ‘Christian Nationalism’ instead. So he had avoided internment when the Allies got a foothold in the war, and he was able to start a political career without a waiting period.

Botha and his Reform Church knew that the Truth could be read in the Bible, if one only read very carefully. After all, the Tower of Babel – man’s attempt to build his way to Heaven – came up in Genesis. God found this attempt presumptuous; he became indignant and scattered the people all over the world and created language confusion as punishment.

Different people, different languages. It was God’s intention to keep people separate. It was a green light from on high to divide people up according to colour.

The big crocodile also felt that it was God’s help that let him climb in his career. Soon he was the minister of defence in his predecessor Vorster’s cabinet. From this position, he commanded air raids on the terrorists who were hiding in Angola, the incident that the stupid rest of the world called a slaughter of innocents. ‘We have photographic evidence!’ said the world. ‘It’s what you can’t see that’s important,’ said the crocodile, but the only person he convinced with this was his mother.

Anyway, Engineer Westhuizen’s current problem was that P. W. Botha’s father had been the commanding officer in the Second Boer War and that Botha himself had military strategies and issues in his blood. Therefore he also had some knowledge of all that technical stuff for which Engineer Westhuizen was the nuclear weapons programme’s top representative. Botha had no reason to suspect that the engineer was the fraud he was. He had asked his question out of conversational curiosity.

Engineer Westhuizen hadn’t spoken for ten seconds, and the situation was about to become awkward for him – and downright dangerous for Nombeko, who thought that if the idiot didn’t answer the world’s simplest question soon, he would be toast. She was tired of having to save him time and again, but all the same she fished the plain brown spare bottle of Klipdrift from her pocket, stepped up to the engineer, and said she had noticed that Mr Westhuizen was having trouble with his asthma again.

‘Here, take a big gulp and you’ll soon regain the ability to talk so that you can tell Mr Prime Minister that the short half-life of tritium isn’t a problem because it is unrelated to the bomb’s explosive effect.’