The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden (12 page)

Anyone who could keep eleven balls in the air like that also ought to be able to handle the ex-Nazi Botha, Deng thought, and he made sure to send the young man in question to Pretoria.

His task: to get the message to South Africa, between the lines, that collaborating on nuclear weapons with Taiwan was unacceptable, and to get the South Africans to understand who they were picking a fight with, should they choose to pick a fight.

* * *

P. W. Botha was not at all excited to receive the leader of a Chinese province; that was below his station. Furthermore, Botha’s station had just become even higher – the title of prime minister had been replaced by president. What would people think if he – the president! – were to welcome just any old Chinese like that? If he were to receive all of them, for a few seconds each, it would take him more than thirteen thousand years. Botha didn’t think he would live that long. In fact, despite his new title, he felt rather worn-out.

At the same time, he understood why China had chosen the tactic of sending over a minion. Beijing didn’t want to be accused of embracing the government in Pretoria. And vice versa, for that matter.

The question remained: what were they up to? Did it have something to do with Taiwan? That would be funny, because their collaboration with the Taiwanese had been over before it had led anywhere at all.

Oh well, perhaps Botha would go and meet that errand boy after all.

Why, I’m as curious as a child, he said to himself, smiling even though he really didn’t have anything to smile about.

To lessen this great breach of etiquette, a president meeting with a gofer, Botha got the idea of rigging a meeting and a dinner on the Chinese man’s level – and Botha himself would happen to stumble across it. Oh, are you here? May I sit down? Something like that.

So Botha called the director of the top secret nuclear weapons programme and ordered him to receive a Chinese guest who had requested a meeting with the president. He said that the engineer and the guest would go on safari together and then have a fancy, delicious meal in the evening. During the dinner, the engineer must make the Chinese man understand that one oughtn’t underestimate South African military engineering, without actually telling the nuclear truth straight out.

It was important for this message to make it through. They had to show strength without saying anything. It would just so happen that President Botha was in the vicinity, and a person has to eat, so he would be happy to keep the engineer and the Chinese man company.

‘If you don’t mind, of course, Engineer Westhuizen.’ The engineer’s head was spinning. So he was supposed to receive a guest the president didn’t want to meet. He would tell the guest the truth of the matter without saying anything, and in the middle of all this the president, who didn’t want to meet the guest, would show up to meet the guest.

The engineer realized he was getting into a situation in which one might make a fool of oneself. Other than that, he didn’t understand anything beyond that he must immediately invite the president to the dinner the president himself had just decided should take place.

‘Of course you’re welcome to come to the dinner, Mr President!’ said Engineer Westhuizen. ‘You really must be there! When is it, by the way? And where?’

This is how what started out as Deng Xiaoping’s concern in Beijing became a problem for Engineer Westhuizen in Pelindaba. The fact was, of course, that he knew absolutely nothing about the project he was directing. It isn’t easy to sit and chat and seem gifted when you’re rather the opposite. The solution would be to bring along whatshername as a servant and briefcase-carrier. Then she could discreetly feed the engineer clever facts about the project, carefully considered so that he didn’t say too much. Or too little.

That sort of consideration was something whatshername would manage splendidly. Just like everything else that cursed person set out to do.

* * *

The engineer’s cleaning woman received strict instructions before the Chinese safari and the following dinner, at which they would be joined by the president himself. To be on the safe side, Nombeko helped the engineer with the instructions so that they would turn out correctly.

She was to remain an arm’s length away from the engineer. Each time an opportunity presented itself, she would whisper conversationally appropriate wisdom in his ear. The rest of the time, she would keep quiet and act like the nonentity that she basically was.

Nombeko had been sentenced to seven years in service to the engineer nine years ago. When her sentence came to an end, she didn’t bother to remind him, since she’d decided it was better to be alive and imprisoned than dead and free.

But soon she would be outside the fences and the minefield; she would be miles from the guards and their new German shepherds. If she managed to break away from her chaperon, she would turn into one of South Africa’s most wanted. Police, intelligence agents, and the military would look for her everywhere. Except maybe in the National Library in Pretoria. And that was where she would go first of all.

If she managed to break away, that is.

The engineer had been kind enough to inform her that the chauffeur-slash-safari guide was carrying a rifle and he was instructed to shoot not only attacking lions but also fleeing cleaning ladies, should any appear. And as an extra precaution, the engineer made sure to carry a pistol in a holster. A Glock 17, nine by nineteen millimetres with seventeen bullets in the magazine. Not something you can take down an elephant or a rhinoceros with, but it would do for a 120-pound servant.

‘One hundred and fifteen, if you please,’ said Nombeko.

She considered waiting for a convenient moment to unlock the safe in the engineer’s office where he kept his pistol and empty it of the seventeen bullets, but she didn’t. She would be blamed if the drunk happened to discover it in time, and then her escape would be over before it had even begun.

Instead she decided not to be too eager, to wait for the right moment – but when it came, she would take off into the bush as fast as she could. Without taking a bullet in the back from either the chauffeur or the engineer. And preferably without encountering any of the animals that were the point of going on a safari.

So when would the right moment be? Not in the morning, when the chauffeur was on his toes and the engineer was still sober enough to manage to shoot something other than himself in the foot. Maybe right after the safari, just before the dinner, when Westhuizen was sufficiently blotto and nervous about the meeting with his president. And when the chauffeur was done being a guide after many hours on the job.

Yes, then the time would be right. She just had to recognize the moment and seize it when it came.

* * *

They were ready to start the safari. The Chinese official had brought along his own interpreter. It all began in the worst possible way when the interpreter was foolish enough to walk into the tall grass to take a leak. It was even more foolish to do this in sandals.

‘Help, I’m dying,’ he said as he felt a sting on his left big toe and saw a scorpion crawling away in the grass.

‘You shouldn’t have walked into five-inch grass without real shoes – or at all, really. Especially not when it’s windy,’ said Nombeko.

‘Help, I’m dying,’ the interpreter said again.

‘Why not when it’s windy?’ wondered the engineer, who didn’t care about the interpreter’s health but was curious.

Nombeko explained that insects take shelter in the grass when the wind blows, and this means that the scorpions crawl out of their holes for a bit of food. And today there was a big toe in the way.

‘Help, I’m dying,’ the interpreter said once more.

Nombeko realized that the whimpering interpreter actually believed what he was saying.

‘No, I’m pretty sure you’re not,’ she said. ‘The scorpion was little, and you’re big. But we might as well send you to the hospital so they can wash your wound properly. Your toe will soon swell up to three times its size and turn blue, and it will hurt like hell, if you’ll pardon my language. You’re not going to be much good as an interpreter, anyway.’

‘Help, I’m dying,’ said the interpreter for a fourth time.

‘Soon I’m going to start wishing you were right,’ said Nombeko. ‘Instead of sniffling that you’re dying when you aren’t, look on the bright side – it was a scorpion and not a cobra. And now you know that in Africa you can’t just pee however and wherever you want and go unpunished. There are sanitary facilities everywhere. Where I’m from, they even come in rows.’

The interpreter went quiet for a few seconds, shocked that the scorpion he was about to die from could have been a cobra that he
definitely
would have died from. Meanwhile the guide found a car and a chauffeur that could take the man to the hospital.

The scorpion-afflicted man was placed in the back seat of a Land Rover, where he resumed his repetition of the path he expected his health to take. The chauffeur rolled his eyes and departed.

This left the engineer and the Chinese man to stand there and look at each other.

‘How is this going to work?’ the engineer muttered in Afrikaans.

‘How is this going to work?’ the Chinese official muttered in his Wu Chinese dialect.

‘Might you be from Jiangsu, Mr Chinese Official?’ Nombeko said in the same dialect. ‘Possibly even from Jiangyan?’

The Chinese official, who had been born and raised in Jiangyan in Jiangsu Province, couldn’t believe his ears.

How could that cursed whatshername always be so incredibly irritating? thought Engineer Westhuizen. Now she was standing there speaking some totally useless language with the Chinese guest, and the engineer had no control over what was being said.

‘Excuse me, but what’s going on?’ he said.

Nombeko explained that it just so happened that she and their guest spoke the same language, so it didn’t matter that the interpreter would soon be lying there whimpering in a hospital with a blue toe instead of doing his job. If the engineer would allow them to speak, of course. Or perhaps he would prefer that they sit in silence all day and night?

No, the engineer would not. But he would ask whatshername to stick to interpreting and say nothing else. It would not be appropriate for her to make small talk with the Chinese official.

Nombeko promised to do as little small-talking as possible. She just hoped that the engineer would understand if she happened to answer the Chinese official if he spoke to her. That was what the engineer himself had always said she should do. Furthermore, one might say that things had worked out for the best:

‘Now you can say whatever you want about advanced weapons technology, Engineer, and other things you don’t quite have a grasp on. Should you say the wrong thing – and we can’t rule that out, can we? – well, then I can just adjust it in translation.’

Essentially, whatsername was right. And since she was utterly below him, he didn’t have to feel distaste. One does what one must to survive, thought the engineer. He felt that luck had increased his chances of making it through tonight’s dinner with the Chinese official and the president.

‘If you take care of this, I’ll see if I can’t order a new scrubbing brush for you after all,’ he said.

The safari was a success: they had close encounters with all of the big five. In between, they had time for coffee and small talk. Nombeko took the opportunity to tell the Chinese official that President Botha would happen to run into them five hours later. The Chinese official thanked her for the information and promised to look as surprised as he could. Nombeko did not say that they would probably all be plenty surprised when the acting interpreter suddenly disappeared in the middle of dinner at the safari lodge. Then they could all sit there, staring at one another.

Nombeko climbed down from the Land Rover to walk into the restaurant with the engineer. She was fully focused on her approaching escape. Could she go through the kitchen and out the back? Some time between the main course and dessert?

Her thoughts were interrupted when the engineer stopped short and pointed at her.

‘What is that?’ he said.

‘That?’ said Nombeko. ‘That’s me. Whatever my name is.’

‘No, you idiot, what you’re wearing.’

‘It’s a jacket.’

‘And why are you wearing it?’

‘Because it’s mine. Have you had a bit too much brandy today, Engineer, if I may ask?’

The engineer no longer had the energy to reprimand his cleaning woman.

‘My point, if you even have sense enough to listen, is that that jacket looks awful.’

‘This is the only jacket I have, Engineer.’

‘Doesn’t matter. You can’t look like you come from a shanty-town when you’re about to meet our country’s president.’

‘Although, to be precise, I do,’ said Nombeko.

‘Take off that jacket at once and leave it in the car! And hurry. The president is waiting.’

Nombeko realized that her planned escape had just been cancelled. The seam of her only jacket was full of diamonds, which she was to live on for the rest of her life – if circumstances allowed her to have one. Without them, fleeing South African injustice . . . no, she might as well stay where she was. Among presidents, Chinese officials, bombs, and engineers. Awaiting her fate.

* * *

Dinner began with Engineer Westhuizen explaining the day’s scorpion incident to his president; it was no big deal, he added, because the engineer had had the foresight to bring along one of the servants, who happened to speak the Chinese official’s language.

A black South African woman who spoke Chinese? And wasn’t that the same person who had both served bubbly and discussed the tritium problem during the president’s most recent visit to Pelindaba? P. W. Botha decided not to investigate this any further; he already had enough of a headache. Instead he let himself be satisfied with the engineer’s word that the interpreter wasn’t a security risk for the very simple reason that she otherwise never left the facility.

P. W. Botha took command of the dinner conversation, president that he was. He began by telling them about South Africa’s proud history. Interpreter Nombeko had resigned herself to the thought that her nine years of imprisonment would not end there. Thus, in the absence of any new, spontaneous ideas to the contrary, she interpreted word for word.