Ghosts of the Past

CHAPTER 3

20 CHAPTER 3

Sabie River, eastern Transvaal, South Africa, 1902Claire took off her broad-brimmed cattleman’s hat as Nathaniel opened the door of the farmhouse, a Colt .45 revolver in his hand. He grinned then stuck the pistol back in his belt. ‘Ma’am.’

It was pleasingly warm as she went inside and Nathaniel took her cloak from her. The Transvaal lowveld was much warmer than Pretoria, on the highveld, from where she had ridden two days earlier, and while the May days were sunny and clear now that the summer rains were a memory, the nights were beginning to turn cool. A small fire crackled comfortably in the hearth.

Nathaniel took a step back, his eyes blatantly, proprietorially reacquainting himself with her body. Claire took a step towards him and kissed him.

‘We’re alone, except for one man, Christiaan, who’s keeping watch from the stables,’ he whispered in her ear as he waltzed her down a hallway, through a door to a four-poster bed. The building, made of pole and dagga – timber and mud – with a grass thatch roof had once been the home of a Portuguese trader 21who had established his store in a second building. The property sat astride one of the routes plied by transport riders travelling from the goldfields higher up the escarpment to Lourenço Marques, the capital of Portuguese East Africa, and its port of Delagoa Bay, some two hundred and fifty kilometres further eastwards. ‘Christiaan’s looking the other way.’

Claire liked the American and she knew he was besotted with her. As he lay over her she shifted and reached for his pistol, which was digging into her belly. She slid it out and placed it on the bedside table.

‘My turn.’ He kissed his way down her bodice and dropped to his knees on the floor, where he lifted her skirts. ‘I know it’s in here somewhere.’

Claire put her head back and savoured the feel of his fingers moving slowly up her woollen stockings to the bare skin of her thighs. Nathaniel found the pocket derringer she kept there in the loop of a custom-made leather garter. He pulled it free, and when she looked down over her breasts she couldn’t suppress a laugh. He had the tiny gun between his shiny white teeth, like a dog fetching a bone. He took her pistol from his mouth and placed it on the bedside table next to his. He lowered his head again.

She grabbed the posts at the top of the bed with both her hands, her grip tightening and her hips undulating as Nathaniel continued the ministrations hidden by her petticoats. Quite where he had learned his repertoire even she was too modest to ask, but he had clearly been a willing and erudite student. Claire tried to keep her mind on the goal she had set herself, which was to learn where the Boers had hidden the loot that would be used to pay for her guns, but it wasn’t easy.

Unable and unwilling to maintain total control, Claire gasped and shuddered and, satisfied he had completed his mission, Nathaniel navigated his way back onto the bed and scaled her. He kissed her and, once she had found her breath again, she rolled him onto his back.

22When they were sated a naked Nathaniel led her, wrapped in a sheet, back to the hearth. He moved a Chinese printed screen to one side to reveal a brass hip bath. He topped up the water from a copper.

‘Thought you’d never get here,’ he said.

Claire saw his cigar box on the mantelpiece. She opened it, took out a cheroot and lit it with a taper from the fire, then drew on it. Claire passed it to Nathaniel, dropped her sheet and slid into the bath.

‘Bliss,’ she said, reaching for the soap.

He went to a side bar table and uncorked a bottle of whiskey. He poured generous measures into two glasses and came to her.

Claire took her drink, and the cheroot, drew on it again and exhaled the smoke into the glass. She sipped the smoky brew and let it warm her as she reclined in the water. Nathaniel warmed his back by the fire as he took his drink, then bent down for her sheet and fastened it around himself.

‘As you were. I was enjoying the view.’

‘You, Miss Martin, are incorrigible.’

‘Why, thank you, Colonel,’ she said, using the English equivalent of his rank, and handed the cigar back to him. ‘Tell me, Nathaniel, why exactly are you in South Africa fighting for the Boers?’

He shrugged. ‘Lot of my boys are Irish; they’ve got personal scores to settle with the British. Me, I’m a businessman.’

‘I would have thought that as a businessman and an uitlander it would not have been in your interest to side with the Transvaal and the Orange Free State?’ One of the reasons the two Boer republics had gone to war with Britain, Claire knew, was that President Paul Kruger had denied British and other uitlander – foreign – mine workers the vote in a bid to maintain Afrikaner control of the territories the Boers had carved out.

He smiled. ‘I was happier trying to bring about change from within the South African Republic than have some big guy – Great Britain in this case – force his will on the little guy.’

23‘The record of your Washington Battalion would indicate you know something of soldiering as well as business,’ she said. In fact, Claire knew a good deal about Nathaniel Belvedere, but her job was to get him to do the talking.

‘I killed my first man, a Yankee, when I was sixteen, and while I learned a trick or two I hoped I’d never see another war. The Boers are great fighters but I fear I’m going to be on the losing side again.’

Claire calculated Nathaniel’s age. He was in his fifties, but in remarkably good shape. ‘You would have been too young to have been an officer in your civil war?’

Nathaniel nodded. ‘I was a student of engineering and found myself under the command of an officer by the name of Gab Rains. He was a brilliant man who turned his mind to new ways to kill. I helped him develop a new weapon call the sub-terra torpedo. It was an explosive device buried underground, with a detonator that was activated when a man or a horse stepped on a concealed metal plate. We had quite some success against the Yankees.’

Claire shuddered, and was not quite sure why Nathaniel should take the time to reminisce about his role in the development of something so fiendish.

‘You fought to protect slavery in America,’ she said, changing the subject, ‘something that the civilised world, the British, banned. Is that your idea of sticking up for the “little guy”?’

‘Ha!’ Nathaniel exhaled and took another drink. ‘If you’ve seen the way the British are waging this war you’ll change your tune on civilised, little lady. But, no, I was no plantation owner and I don’t give a damn about slavery either way. I was in that war because the North was fixing to strangle the South’s economy. Seemed to me, when I was running a goldmining operation here in South Africa up until three years ago, that the English were trying to do the same to ol’ Paul Kruger and his burghers.’

She ignored his ‘little lady’ remark, with some effort. His labours of half an hour ago had earned him some leeway, and 24there was work to be done. She raised a leg and pointed her toes. ‘My feet are sore from my new riding boots.’

Nathaniel put his drink on the mantel and his cigar between his lips and took hold of her foot, still dripping and soapy. She closed her eyes in a moment of genuine rapture as he began to massage it.

‘Why are you really here, Claire? Do you hate the British? Got a grudge to settle, like my Irish boys?’

She weighed up how much to tell him. She not only needed to do a business deal with Nathaniel, she had to win his trust. Claire didn’t just want payment for the armaments she was supplying to the Boers, she wanted Nathaniel to reveal where he would get the funds from. A good lie, Claire knew, was always based on the truth. ‘Money.’

‘The root of all happiness.’

She smiled, though kept her eyes closed as he started on her other foot. She could get used to this, she decided. ‘You’re fighting so that you can make more money when you go back to mining.’

‘That may be, but how do you stand to gain from a deal to sell German artillery to the Boers?’

‘It’s my late husband’s ship that’s transporting the guns to Portuguese East Africa and it would have been my vessel if the bank hadn’t reclaimed it. He ran a small shipping line, but he overextended and had a terrible problem with gambling – and expensive mistresses, as it turned out. He killed himself before I could do it for him and he left me with a mound of debts.’

‘So you got into the gun-running business to buy back the ship?’

She gave a laugh that she hoped sounded natural. ‘My cut won’t be that much from selling cannons to you. No, I’ll make enough, I hope, to buy a parcel of land in German South West Africa. I want a farm, with horses. I’ve no love for the British – my father was Irish, a Fenian – or the way they’re fighting this war, and Germany, my mother’s country, gave my father a home, so I’m happy enough to do my bit for the Kaiser.’

25‘Your bit? How is it that you, a woman, as capable as you are, are negotiating an illegal arms deal?’

She smiled and raised one eyebrow. ‘I’ve friends in high places, as well as on the docks. Fritz Krupp is a distant cousin of some sort.’

‘Aha,’ Nathaniel said. She didn’t have to tell him that Fritz Krupp had built a fortune on designing and manufacturing heavy weapons and warships and selling them to the Imperial government and many customers abroad.

‘I’ve met a few admirals in my time, and when I volunteered to send reports on the progress of the war here in South Africa to Naval High Command no one said, “Don’t bother, you silly girl”. When I got wind that the Boers needed more artillery I thought I might position myself as the go-between, as it were.’

‘You’re anything but a silly girl, Claire, and the Germans were wise to accept your offer. Our British foes are so set in their ways that they probably wouldn’t even think a woman could be a spy.’

Claire smiled briefly in thanks at the compliment, but she did not underestimate their enemy. ‘There are some in the Kaiser’s court and the government, and the colony of German South West Africa, who’d prefer it if the Boers won, and they’re mad enough to think a last-minute shipment of artillery might save the day.’

Nathaniel raised his eyebrows. ‘You don’t think it will?’

She shrugged. They had met twice before, to organise the logistics of the deal, and it had been during their last meeting that Claire had let Nathaniel seduce her. After their encounter he had confided in her that while he was loyal to the Boers he secretly doubted that any influx of arms or men could prevail against the British.

‘No more than you do,’ she said. ‘But it wasn’t too hard to use my family connections to arrange for a consignment of FK-96 77-millimetre Feldcannones, field guns destined for the Schutztruppe in Windhoek to be diverted to Lourenço Marques, where they’re currently waiting for you and your lot. Fritz did the deal with me direct, as a family favour, so there’s no official 26paperwork, as it were. I’ll take a cut of the payment, and it will hopefully be enough to pay off my late husband’s debts. The rest of the money will go into my dear distant cousin’s private account in Capri in Italy, where he keeps a villa. I’ll be saying goodbye to the shipping business, though, and I’ll buy myself a small farm in South West Africa.’ More like half the colony, she thought to herself.

Nathaniel gave a sigh and she felt the pressure of his fingers on her lighten. ‘So it really is just about the money.’

She opened her eyes and realised she had misread him. Though he may have been disillusioned and had joined the fight against the British because of economic reasons, he was an idealist at heart, a romantic. Claire hadn’t thought she needed to win his heart – she had already given him her body – but the truth was she had agreed to spy for the Germans before negotiating the gun-running deal because of something else that had happened to her.

Claire looked into his eyes. She would need to appeal to his sentimental side. ‘I have a friend – had a friend, I should say. Wilma was like a sister to me when my family lived in South Africa, during the start of the gold rush. She met a young man, a farmer, and they married. When war against the English broke out her husband joined a Boer commando unit. Wilma was carrying their first child, but some British colonial forces raided their farm, torched it, slaughtered their dogs and took their cattle. Wilma was taken to a concentration camp. You know what I mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wilma wrote to me, managed to bribe one of the guards to get the letter out. She told me she’d had the baby, in the camp, a little boy named Piet. She told me of the horrors – a lack of clean water and decent food; dysentery, measles, other diseases. Wilma asked me if I would try and let the world know of what was going on here in South Africa. I wrote letters to everyone I could think of, contacted the newspapers, and I decided to go and visit Wilma, to petition for her release.’

27‘And?’

‘And by the time I made it to the camp Wilma and Piet were dead. The child died in the big measles outbreak last year and soon after that, Wilma’s husband was killed in battle. I don’t know if someone can really die of a broken heart, but maybe Wilma just gave up. I was just in time for her burial.’

Nathaniel took her hand in his and looked into her eyes. She saw the war weariness there, and something else, something softer.

Claire changed the subject and asked quietly: ‘Is my payment for the artillery here, Nathaniel?’

He looked away. ‘No, but I know where it is.’

‘Tell me. Maybe we can save time and go there, together, and get it.’

He shook his head, but turned his eyes back to hers and took his cue from her renewed smile. Once more he dropped to his knees and his hand moved under the water in the bathtub.

She placed her hand on his. ‘At least tell me there’s enough to cover the cost of the guns, Nathaniel.’

He grinned. ‘Oh, Claire, trust me, there is more than enough to pay for a few cannons.’

‘Tell me, please,’ she cooed again, then had cause once more to close her eyes and loll her head back over the high metal back of the tub. She removed her hand, giving him free rein. ‘Is it far?’

‘Close. Less than a day’s ride from here. Good things come to those who wait, my dear.’

‘Oh, Nathaniel, I don’t mind waiting.’

Her body stiffened and her legs straightened over the edge of the tub as the pleasure took hold of her body again. When it had subsided and her breathing had stilled she opened her eyes and saw that he was staring at her.

‘Claire …’

‘Yes?’

‘You’re right. I don’t think the Boers have a chance in hell of winning, even if they get your guns.’

28‘Neither do I,’ she said.

‘Truth is, I’m sick of war. I lost a dozen good American boys trying to keep the location of the gold meant to pay for those guns of yours secret.’ He ran a hand through his long hair and looked away from her.

She nodded, but said nothing. Nathaniel had told her last time that his troop of volunteers had been ambushed by a rogue commando of Boers. Their leader, an old brigand by the name of Hermanus, had given up the cause and set his sights on finding the hiding place of the former republic’s gold reserves. Nathaniel and his men had actually been on their way back from delivering a consignment of gold, their wagons empty, but they had been cut down by their erstwhile comrades, with only Nathaniel and Christiaan escaping. He was mulling something over, the same thing as her, she hoped, but she needed him to say it first.

‘With the gold, Claire, with just a portion of it, we could disappear forever. We could carry enough to make sure no one could ever find it. I’m probably the last person alive who knows where it is – Christiaan stood sentry near the hiding place and didn’t actually go in.’

In? Her mind turned; was the gold in a building, a cave perhaps, an old mine shaft? Her heart beat faster. She watched him intently, wondering if he was laying a trap for her, if she had overstated her monetary motives. Claire realised, though, that he, too, was holding his breath, perhaps waiting to see what she would make of him. Claire had dropped enough hints that she was in this for the money, but she had stopped short of saying she would consider abandoning the deal and simply stealing the gold – all of it. ‘Go on.’

He grinned at her. ‘I know where the gold is, Claire, and I have the only map in existence.’

*

Anja stretched at her desk in the university library and read the next page of the letter. 29

It became clear to me that Kommandant Belvedere was suggesting a criminal enterprise, that he and I make off with some or all of President Kruger’s gold reserves. Naturally, I would countenance nothing of the kind, but as this man was displaying criminal tendencies I pretended to go along with his plan, knowing that he would have to reveal the location of the gold to me.

My mission remained clear in my mind: to further Germany’s strategic interests, covertly, by seeing that the armaments reached the forces for whom they were intended.

I was afforded appropriate accommodation at the trading post, by Kommandant Belvedere, for the evening, but I was awoken before dawn.

The collection of Claire’s letters to her spymasters was incomplete; the country’s archives had been in a building that, like much of Berlin, was bombed during the Second World War, and many of the papers had been burned. There was a reference in this instalment to guns. It was now clear that Claire had been an integral part of a plot to supply artillery weapons to the Boers in a last-ditch attempt to turn the tide against the British, but Anja had read nearly all of the letters she had, and if she didn’t find some mention of horses being released into the desert of a neighbouring country soon then her recent weeks of research would amount to nothing more than a diversion – albeit a fascinating one – and a dead end.

Kommandant Belvedere’s horse was whinnying by the window. Belvedere sensed danger and, worried by the prospect of a predawn raid, a tactic favoured by the British colonial forces, he insisted I leave the farmhouse and ride through the night to the top of a nearby hill. He informed me he would join me there at dawn, if all was safe, and gave me his Colt revolver.

I quickly dressed in a set of men’s riding clothes that I carried with my meagre possessions for the purposes of disguise, left 30the house as quietly as I could and went to the stable. I found Belvedere’s Boer sentry asleep. Rudely, I woke him, and told him to report to the trader’s house. The man was able to make it to the house without being seen, but when I looked out of the stable door I saw men approaching through the dark. Fearing I would be seen if I took out a horse I left the building and hid in the bush.