The Land God Made in Anger. John Davis Gordon
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little golden swastika.
She hissed. ‘That is just jewellery – the swastika is an ancient international symbol of good!’
‘The Nazi Party was good?’
‘You drink a toast to the Queen on her birthday …?’
He wanted to shake her. ‘The Queen of England happens to have an unblemished political record! You are celebrating the birthday of the most brutal mass-murderer the world has ever known! The man who ordered the Holocaust of six million Jews!’
Her hand flashed in the moonlight and cracked across his face. He stared at her, shocked, his face stinging, and she screamed: ‘That’s the hoax of the twentieth century! There was no Holocaust!’ Her breasts were heaving.
McQuade took a deep breath to control his fury. ‘Goodbye, Helga.’ He added sarcastically: ‘Heil Hitler.’ He turned and strode away.
Helga stood on the lawn, her eyes bright; then she shrieked; ‘Yes, Heil Hitler!’ She stamped her feet together and shot out her right arm and screamed: ‘Heil Hitler!’
A man leapt over the verandah rail and started running towards the Landrover. McQuade got in, slammed the door, and started the engine. He roared off down the gravel drive.
He drove hard back towards Swakopmund, the desert flashing by in his headlights. He was over the anger of the confrontation: now he was left with the shock. It made his flesh creep. It was macabre. Not just because she had obscenely shrieked Heil Hitler at him; it was the whole nine yards of the great swastika in all its frightening glory, the arrogant uniforms, the strutting jackboots – it evoked a legend of dreaded times, a legend he had learnt at his mother’s knee had been brought to life before his eyes. He had just seen ordinary, decent people ritualizing it, rejoicing at the altar, and if ordinary people were doing this on a remote farm in the heart of Namibia, what was happening in the rest of the country tonight?
Almost everything in life is a coincidence, in that something happens because something else has just happened to happen. If the good ship Bonanza had not come back to port a day early so that the Kid could have his new teeth installed for Beryl, this story would never have happened: if the Bonanza had returned any other day, the Stormtrooper would have been waiting for McQuade with open arms, he would not have driven out to the ranch in his determination to get laid, and he would not have come roaring back into the little German town of Swakopmund, angry and determined to get drunk, and parked outside Kukki’s Pub at the moment that the drunken Damara tribesman lurched around the corner and offered to sell him an Iron Cross.
McQuade was in no mood for drunken peddlers and he glared at the German medal because he presumed the man was also trying to exploit the birthday of Adolf Hitler. ‘No thank you.’ But the drunken Damara had more to sell. He buried his hand into his pocket and laboriously extracted a piece of white paper. He thrust it at McQuade dramatically and said: ‘Sell you this for only one rand!’
McQuade looked at it in the lamplight. A banknote? A white banknote? On the corners were the symbols £5, and the text read: The Governor of the Bank of England promises to pay to bearer on demand the sum of five pounds sterling … McQuade turned it over. The other side was blank. A banknote printed on one side only? Its date of issue was 1944. An old English fiver? He looked at the Damara. ‘What’s your name?’
The Damara said drunkenly; ‘Skellum Jagter.’
‘No, man, your real name.’
‘Skellum Jagter!’
McQuade half-smiled, despite himself. Jagter means hunter and Skellum is slang meaning sly. ‘Where did you get this?’ It was then that he saw the identification tag in the man’s dirty open shirt-front, and the words stamped on it, Seeoffizier Horst Kohler.
He frowned. Seeoffizier is German. Horst Kohler is definitely a German name. How did this drunken Damara come into possession of such a personal thing? ‘Where did you get that?’
Skellum suddenly looked alarmed. He tried to snatch the banknote back. McQuade said in Afrikaans: ‘No, I’ll pay for it! Just tell me where you got it.’ He pointed at the identification tag. ‘And that. Five rand and a bottle of wine.’
They sat in the front seats of the Landrover, outside Kukki’s Pub. It was a long story, difficult to extract, because McQuade made the mistake of giving Skellum the bottle of wine immediately, and the drunken Damara got drunker.
‘And where is your father now?’
Skellum waved the bottle northwards: ‘Damaraland.’
McQuade said in Afrikaans, ‘And are you sure he says there was no boat? These two men just came up out of the sea?’
‘No boat! They were just white wizards!’
Then they came from a submarine, McQuade reasoned. Absolutely fascinating. Forty years ago. It must have been a German submarine, with an officer named Horst Kohler, and it must have been wrecked. Why else would two men erupt out of the sea? ‘And one was wounded?’
‘Blood,’ Skellum said happily. He wiped his hand downwards over his face. ‘Blood.’
‘And the first man was carrying a package.’
‘Ja.’ Skellum clutched one hand to his chest and made exaggerated swimming motions with the other.
‘And then they fought on the beach?’
‘Fight,’ Skellum said joyfully. He punched the air aggressively. Then drew his finger across his scrawny throat cheerfully. He collapsed back onto the seat, to signify death.
McQuade thought: two submariners escape from a sunken submarine, then fight to the death when they reach the shore? Why? ‘And then the man who won the fight forced your father to lead him down the coast? But your father hit him with a piece of wood?’
‘Wham,’ Skellum said joyfully, reliving the battle. ‘Whok!’ He smashed one hand down on his forearm. ‘Blood!’ He made the clubbing motion again. ‘Whok!’ He curled his arm over his head and cowered theatrically. ‘Finish,’ he said triumphantly as if he had laid the man low himself.
‘And your father returned to the place where the other man was buried? And the jackals had dug him up? And he took this tag from him. Did he ever return to the place where he had hit the first man, to see what had happened to him?’
‘Gone.’ Skellum waved his hand extravagantly at the horizon. Then he fixed his eyes on McQuade’s nose. He slurred conspiratorially, ‘Does the Baas want to buy some more white money?’ He burrowed into his pocket, and pulled out a black wallet importantly. ‘My father found this after the fight.’
McQuade took the wallet. It was bulky and made of leather. Some initials were imprinted on it. He switched on the cab light. The letters were in Gothic style: the initials were H.M.
The wallet was packed with white paper money. He pulled a note out. It was the same as the one he had bought. He pulled out some more. They were in good condition, though the edges of some were worn. He counted them. There were ninety-seven notes. Four hundred and eight-five pounds. He turned to Skellum. ‘This is old English money. It is not used any more. How many of these have you managed to sell?’
‘None,’ Skellum proclaimed. ‘Only to you.’
McQuade did not believe him. ‘So this wallet did not belong to the man who was stabbed to death? The man this tag came from. It belonged to the first man?’
‘Ja.’
Then McQuade noticed something else: the serial numbers on two notes were the same.
He flicked through a dozen notes. They all had the same serial number.
Counterfeit