Does it Hurt to Die (9 page)

It was no surprise to Van der Walt that he acted this way. During the many months of intensive briefing, weapons training and hand-to-hand fighting
, Galela constantly and successfully fought for control from his white trainers. White officers were given authority to Kaffirise him, break his strength and see whether he returned to being a subservient Kaffir. In one hand-to-hand fighting session that Van der Walt had taken, he watched while Mannais, one of the strongest white officers, took Galela right to the edge, finally stabbing him in the leg to gain ascendancy. There was no sound after the stabbing. Galela did not flinch. He ignored the blood seeping on to his trouser leg and continued fighting.

At the end of the exercise, Galela refused any treatment and returned to the special compound created for them on the perimeter of the enclosed airfield. When he returned to exercises the following day, Van der Walt noticed during the ten kilometre run that Galela ran with a slight limp. The stab had not been superficial, and he thought about the mental toughness required. A week later Mannais was killed in a car-jacking as he entered Johannesburg on weekend leave. It was the only time he had seen Galela smile. From then the legend of Galela was born.

Van der Walt switched to Xhosa. Galela turned his eyes and locked on to him, the pistol butt raised above the fingers. He held that position for what seemed to Van der Walt at least thirty seconds. It was Galela’s way of indicating to all in the room that it was he who was in control, whether spoken to in Afrikaans or Xhosa. It would happen when Galela determined it would happen, not when some white Afrikaner wanted it to happen. Van der Walt suddenly had the feeling that Galela was going to defy them and that there was something going on here that he was not privy to. He saw the muscles tensing under Galela’s chin. Van der Walt reached for his pistol as he carefully watched Galela for further movement. The quickness of his movement was primal. The butt swung through an arc and smashed into the remaining fingers. There was a scream from below the window sill, and the fingers disappeared followed by a muffled thud as the prisoner landed in Galela’s cemetery.

Van der Walt, who by now had drawn his pistol, ordered the two white officers to take Galela to the holding pen on the first floor.

‘Make sure there are no other prisoners in there,’ said Van der Walt as he replaced his pistol and strode out to meet with the Black Watch committee. Galela had to be eliminated. They no longer controlled him.

The Black Watch committee was assembled around a long table; there were three visitors that Van der Walt had not seen previously. Strydom greeted him and introduced him to the visitors: two from MOSSAD and one from the Taiwanese National Security Bureau. Strydom explained that they had requested permission to attend the meeting, given the possible threat to their national securities with the disappearance of the Martyn Stein folder and its ruinous potential for the three governments.

Van der Walt’s summary was concise: the objective, he felt, had been achieved, and the wider public were convinced that it was not possible to negotiate with a population group that had such a violent intent. He saw Strydom nod in agreement. He reported that four of the five terrorists had been eliminated. The fifth had escaped, but they were close to doing away with him, too.

He reported that he had informed de Villiers of their, the bureau
’s, involvement, not only in the terrorist attack but also in Martyn Stein’s death, as instructed. He believed that it had had the required effect and that once he was out of hospital his actions might reveal its location, realising that if he did not his life was in danger. He had searched de Villiers’ research laboratory and office and found some information related to identifying population groups through DNA sequences. The research appeared to be related to the different racial groups, and de Villiers had denied not only that but also that there was any further research. A search of his office and laboratories had suggested otherwise, but he had found no further information. He had not found the Stein folder, and de Villiers continued to deny any knowledge of it.

The Israelis and the Taiwanese looked at Strydom as Van der Walt finished. There was a prolonged silence, before Strydom spoke
. ‘De Villiers was the last contact with Martyn Stein. The probability is that he has the folder, as Stein had the folder when he left this building. No chances can therefore be taken.’

Strydom looked at Van der Walt
. ‘Observe him when he comes out of hospital; take the necessary steps to ensure that no threat remains to our national security or to our friends.’

Van der Walt nodded to indicate that he fully understood what was meant.

‘You have a plan, I take it?’ said Strydom.

‘
It will be taken care of,’ replied Van der Walt, thinking the problem of eliminating Galela could be combined with this instruction.

Ever since Van der Walt had left his hospital bed Jannie knew that he had been given a message. They clearly wanted him to know that BOSS had orchestrated both the attack on the church and killed Martyn Stein. He could understand them wanting him to know that they had killed a colleague, as that might intimidate him into giving up the folder that Stein had secretly given him; and they clearly believed he had or knew of its whereabouts. Letting him know that they had orchestrated the terrorist attack was more difficult to work out. Did they think that he was so compromised that he could share this with no one because of the personal and professional consequences? Or were they just so certain of being able to influence white destiny and control in South Africa and this was just an instance of being answerable to no one but themselves. Of one thing, he was certain: they were underlining again the ruthlessness of BOSS and their ability to deal with anyone whom they considered a threat. From the tone of the conversation, he understood that he was now a threat and expendable.

After four days in hospital, Jannie had had enough. He had removed his own urinary catheter on the first day and now disconnected his intravenous line. He knew that he had to escape and start formulating a strategy that would protect not only himself but also his family. He phoned Renata to ask her to come and pick him up and then started packing his things. As he took the lift down into the lobby, he was conscious that he was being observed. One of Van der Walt’s men he assumed.

Renata had said that she would be about an hour before she finished her clinic. He took one of the large comfortable chairs in the lobby and sat down to think about how he had reached a point now where his life was threatened. He remembered, after the original approach from Van der Walt, that it all seemed a bit like a boy’s adventure—an adventure within which he got to contribute to the preservation of the Afrikaner culture and history and in return would be able to create a liver transplant and research programme that could be the best in the southern hemisphere. In the beginning, the demands were not too arduous and there were liberal sums of money supplied for his involvement in BOSS. He even struck up a relationship of sorts with Van der Walt. He could remember clearly Van der Walt telling him he was one of five children, with two brothers and two sisters. His oldest brother ran the family farm in consultation with his father, who, in time-honoured tradition, did not retire.

‘My life is my plaas,’ Van der Walt said his father would often say, in broken English, about their family farm.

From Van der Walt’s description, the farms that surrounded his were similar in certain aspects to Jannie’s father
’s. However, they mostly grew wheat and raised animals, which provided meat and milk for the families, without any of the vineyards that he was used to and had grown up with. On Sundays or after church, Van der Walt had told him how four or five families would gather at one of the farms for a braai. The women would bring food, and the men steak or boerewors, the traditional Afrikaner sausage. Then everyone would stand around while the cooking was done, talking about politics and rugby. They talked about the blacks and coloureds, but usually only to describe some offence that they had committed or stupid act that reinforced the extant Afrikaner prejudices. The white children were allowed to play with the coloured and black children, until they were teenagers, when they had to join the fully segregated adults. Mostly, this meant a chance for the young children to play hide and seek in the barn and mealie fields. As they grew older, they progressed to catch and kill snakes. It was all very familiar to Jannie and something that he could identify with, realising that tradition was missing from his current liberal academic world.

When Van der Walt told him the story of when he turned thirteen, it was again very familiar to Jannie. Van der Walt recalled how his older brother had said that his father wanted to talk to him, and thinking that he must have done something that had offended the family, prepared his defence. He, like Jannie, had had many beatings from his father. While Jannie had felt this was due to a cruel streak in his father, Van der Walt understood his father’s behaviour was to prevent them growing up frightened of the blacks. His brothers had told him it was a toughening process and that it was a father’s duty to ensure that his son was ready to protect both the farm and his country.

As he continued to tell the story, it became even more recognisable to Jannie. It was almost as if through their past shared experiences a bond had developed. While Jannie’s initiation into Afrikaner manhood had been performed by a cousin, he remembered it was remarkably similar to the process that Van der Walt described to him when he was thirteen. He could remember it in great detail and wondered whether Van der Walt’s endorsement of their common identity had been a strategy to get him to commit irrevocably to the bureau. Van der Walt had been so precise with his recollection that for Jannie it was a case of déjà vu.

Jannie had erased these memories since he had left the farm. The more he listened to Van der Walt the more he realised they had a shared identity. Perhaps, Jannie remembered thinking, there was a way of preserving some of the values that were part of his parents’ generation
, after all, and it was what they had fought so hard for. It was only when Van der Walt continued his story that some of the misgivings from his past started to surface, misgivings that worried him at the time. He remembered that when Van der Walt had described the Afrikaner plan, Jannie put those misgivings down to the difference in where they had been brought up.

‘
There is a plan,’ Van der Walt’s father had told him. ‘We’ll control this country. God has ordained this plan. We’ll infiltrate all levels of government, place our people in areas where decisions are made and will continue to control South Africa. The Afrikaner will live in a Christian state where only Afrikaans is spoken; all other religions will be banned. Afrikaans will be the official language in our schools; and English will be used only in communicating with other countries.’ His father looked at him to ensure that he understood the significance of his introduction into Afrikaner adulthood.

The speech over, Van der Walt said his father got up and the Dominee and his brothers all shook his hand.

‘Welcome to the Afrikaner brotherhood,’ they said in unison.

‘
You need to show you’re not afraid of the Kaffirs or the English,’ said Christof, one of Van der Walt’s brothers. ‘If the Kaffirs think they can get away with anything, they will destroy all that our families have worked for. You must not show any weakness. If they do not obey you, then treat them as you would a wild dog. Animals understand only one thing: physical punishment. Sometimes that might be force, other times you might have to obstruct their food and water. When their children become hungry, they obey. The Afrikaner Resistance Movement will protect our heritage.’

Jannie had not experienced that part of the induction. He thought it was most probably because the Afrikaner Resistance Movement that Van der Walt had referred to was really a phenomenon centred on the Free State—the most conservative state in South Africa. There had been talk of making it completely white, with blacks only allowed to work but not reside.

There were many other aspects of their lives that he had initially talked about with Van der Walt in which they seemed to share some common ground. They had both done national service for two years, although Van der Walt had then made the army his career. Jannie had served as a doctor and had been to Angola with the South African Army, as had Van der Walt. Gradually, his earlier misgivings receded, and Jannie felt he was doing something to ensure his parents’ heritage survived. He also felt he was less of a deserter of the national cause by being at a leading white liberal university and hospital that was so critical of the government.

The expansion of the liver transplant unit and research had demanded more money, which, initially, Van der Walt looked after without question. Jannie’s commitment seemed disproportional to the amount of money that was available for his research, but he always rationalised that it was his growing status that was valuable to the government. In the early days, he was able to develop the research programme into liver transplants. Most of the research involved families and identical twins, looking at gene expression. More recently, as the technique of polymerase chain reaction had become available, he focused on DNA sequencing within genes. It was a technique that he had first become aware of in a paper in the
Journal of Molecular Biology
in the nineteen seventies. The purpose of the research was to understand, to a greater degree, the mechanisms of rejection if they hoped to be more successful with their antirejection drugs.

As part of that research, he had found the need to use a method that relied on cycles of repeated heating and cooling of protein which caused DNA melting. When used with an enzyme, the process then enabled him to identify specific DNA sequences within genes, allowing further study into the rejection of organs. He followed the development of the technique in the literature and could see the enormous potential not only for studying rejection in transplants but also as a way of creating genetic fingerprints, diagnosing hereditary diseases and even probably determining paternity. He needed a thermal cycling machine to further his research, and when he found one in Germany, Van der Walt had effortlessly secured funds, despite it costing two-and-a-half million rand.

To Jannie, there did not seem to be any real quid pro quo, and, in addition, he had been able to instigate and direct his own research, with irregular updates to the bureau. The first real request to do something for BOSS was after Van der Walt had assured him the money was available for the thermal cycler. Van der Walt had asked him to deliver a package to a contact in Jerusalem en route to Germany. The package was to be given specifically to a man who would identify himself at Ben Gurion airport when they landed. Jannie had thought little of the task. The day he was due to fly Van der Walt had met him at the airport in Johannesburg and given him a leather overnight bag to take on the plane, inside which was a package the size of a shoebox. Jannie would have to verify the identity of the person he had had described to him and then hand over the package. Jannie had followed Van der Walt’s instructions and was met by someone who identified himself as a MOSSAD agent. He had taken the package out of the bag and left Jannie with the leather overnight bag.

On the flight to Germany, Jannie decided to store his medical documents in the bag. Putting his folders in first, he noticed a label that had fallen off the package and was sitting on the bottom of the bag. He looked at it more closely and saw that it was the universal sign warning of radioactivity. Alarmed, since he knew that international law forbade the transportation on private airlines of weapons or chemicals that were potentially harmful to other passengers, he also wondered why it had not gone on a commercial flight. He needed to ask Van der Walt what it was that he had been transporting, although he doubted even then whether he would have been told the truth. Obviously, it related in some way to either the weapons programme or the nuclear cooperation between the two countries. Perhaps it was better if he did not know, he thought. By the time he arrived in Germany, the thermal cycler and the medical conference became his focus, and the package he had carried seemed to be less relevant.

When he returned to Cape Town and was able to put the thermal cycler to use, he started to make some significant discoveries. As with many discoveries, it was quite by accident that he had found a gene on chromosome ten that had a specific DNA sequence; when it went through the analyser several showed that there was a different gene sequence for whites, coloureds and blacks. It was just by chance that he had left it overnight in a medium with the polymerase enzyme, and in the morning noticed not only a different pigmentation for each of the sequences but also that when they re-analysed the DNA, it also appeared to have deteriorated overnight. It was almost as if the protein had prematurely aged.

Jannie realised it was clearly a DNA sequence that determined skin colour, and the polymerase not only distinguished the sequence but also had an ageing effect. Knowing the DNA sequence and the formula of the polymerase enzyme created the possibility of raising antibodies against it meant that drugs could be attached and delivered via a bacterium to target that DNA sequence in coloured and black populations. It was a hugely exciting discovery, but immediately Jannie was very conscious that it potentially had ramifications that are more significant. Identifying people of colour through their specific DNA sequence would allow that sequence to be targeted with drugs or toxins. In the wrong hands, it could cause serious harm. Uncertain of the consequences, he had sworn his staff to secrecy; this part of the research should be protected and kept secret until he could be confident that it would not be misused.

He had hidden, as well as encoded, the research that could be misappropriated. There were no more demands from Van der Walt after the package transport, and so Jannie started to feel more comfortable with the developing relationship. It was after their first successful transplant and the attendant publicity when he was called to his first meeting in Johannesburg by Van der Walt and when he realised more may be required. He was told that there was to be a gathering of the best scientific brains in the country, all of whom would be considering ways in which they could help, through their professions, to preserve the Afrikaner identity.

When he arrived in Johannesburg, he encountered top academics and science professionals from all over South Africa. Initially, there was much scientific discussion and agreement to research funding, which all seemed relatively convivial. A few months after that, he was called to a special meeting with a Jacob Strydom, who, he was to learn, was the head of BOSS. Strydom was very unlike Van der Walt, although, as with Van der Walt, he was to learn they had shared a common background in the army. Strydom, though, was not very tall for someone who had been an SAS major, and he now had wispy hair, receding from the front, which made him look older and more harmless. He wore small round glasses that sat on a short fat nose, with a tightly clipped small moustache beneath. The rather nondescript appearance belied a sharp mind, as Jannie slowly discovered.