‘And you? I suppose you know better,’ Blanchaille said angrily.

‘I joined the police because I believed I would find out what was really going on. You know what it’s like. Under the Regime everything important is called a police matter, history is a police matter. All presidents as far back as Babbelas and Breker have also held the portfolio of Minister of Police. You know the argument — the State is an instrument of God. Its security is a matter of divine concern. The police are the mediators between the Almighty and the citizen. I believed it. We all believed it.’

‘Of course.’

‘But Blanchie, what if it isn’t true?’

‘You mean it isn’t true?’

‘Not entirely. That’s the thing. Nothing is entirely true. Or entirely anything. I began to learn that as a rookie cop when they put me on surveillance in a department called “foreign friends”. Now that alone was an eye-opener. I thought we didn’t have any foreign friends. Or need them. Or want them. We were the Albania of the South. Our foreign policy was to tell everyone to go and get stuffed. But that’s wrong! We’ve got loads of foreign friends. That’s why President Bubé went on his whirlwind foreign tour. He wasn’t foisting himself on his hosts in the capitals of Europe. He was returning calls! We do have foreign friends. Lots. And I was detailed to watch over them. Once they came singly: businessmen, politicians — here to collect their bribes to arrange shipments of materials we needed like planes or football teams. But soon we had so many foreign friends they took block bookings and came on chartered flights calling themselves the Patagonian Hockey Team and were taken away in buses with darkened windows. I got assigned to one of these teams. The papers usually got the story after the new arrivals had been spirited away and ran headlines like: VICTORY FOR GOVERNMENT SPORTS POLICY: PATAGONIANS TO TOUR! This led to world-wide protests and the Patagonians would flatly deny that any of their teams was playing in South Africa. By then the ‘team’ had disappeared. I looked after a team who wore baseball caps the wrong way round, with the peaks down their necks. Or yarmulkas. And they’d get drunk with the township girls and cause us a lot of trouble. They worked in a camp in the mountains outside the capital. It turned out that the language they were speaking was Hebrew and they were scientists of some sort. I went to my superiors and said, “Look there’s a colony of Jewish scientists working in the mountains.” “Nonsense,” my superiors said. “They’re not Jews, they’re Israelis. And this conversation did not take place.” I was sent to another camp about five miles away. This one was a very different kettle of fish. It was full of Chinese. Now wasn’t that strange? I mean we don’t even have Chinese laundries and here is a colony of Chinese working in a strange factory. I went to my supervisors. “Look here,” I said, “what are all these Chinese doing? I thought we didn’t like Chinese. I thought the Regime had taken a vow of No More Coolies! Ever since their bad experience with the indentured labourers on the gold mines early this century.” “There are no Chinese,” said my superiors, “only Taiwanese and this conversation did not take place.” Then I was taken off people and put on to things. I was posted to security on the atomic research station out there in the mountains. I missed the voluble scientists and the quiet, hardworking technicians but you go where you’re sent. The atomic research station was getting large shipments of equipment. I happened to see the inventories. They took delivery of something called the Cyber 750–170 which is an interesting computer. Because its main strength is multi-channel analysis, it’s used for sorting through the hundreds of cables collecting data from a test-blast site. Other shipments to the research centre included vibration equipment and ballistic re-entry vehicles. Oh, I almost forgot, there were supplies of some gas too, Helium 3 it was. I thought about this. You put together the scientists, the technicians and the equipment and you come up with something that explodes.’

Blanchaille began to understand. He knew the rumours, the unmentionable stories.

Van Vuuren’s blue eyes widened. ‘Go on, Blanchie, take a guess.’

‘A bomb! The bastards are building a bomb. Now the question is — are we working on a large dirty weapons system, or small, relatively clean devices? Neutron bombs, say? Or field launching systems. Yes, tactical battlefield weapons. Or both? That would give flexibility. Large bombs against hostile forces on our borders, or on the capital of an enemy, or on the capitals of states supporting that enemy. Then the smaller, cleaner, weapons for specific jobs, say the 155 millimeter cannon, capable of lobbing nuclear shells. But what’s the gas for? This Helium 3?’

‘It’s used to make Tritium. That’s a form of hydrogen used in thermo-nuclear weapons.’

‘What a lot you know about this sort of thing,’ Blanchaille said.

‘I remember hearing about it first years ago from Kipsel, Silberstein and Zandrotti and the others in their bomb-making days. No, I did not interrogate them, that affair was before my appointment to Interrogation, or Twenty Questions, as they call it here. But I read the report of Kipsel’s confessions. Even though all they were planning to demolish were a few pylons, Kipsel was never one to do anything by halves. He got Silberstein to swot up on everything from fireworks to weapons in the megaton range.’

Blanchaille nodded. ‘Lawyers read.’

Van Vuuren looked cagey. ‘They were young. They confused yearning with faith. They really believed the revolution had started. Zandrotti was convinced.’ Again the odd look, almost embarrassment. ‘Poor old Zandrotti.’

‘We were all young and we all believed. What else could we do?’

‘Sure, sure.’ Van Vuuren regarded him steadily. ‘From what I’ve told you, then, you conclude that we’re building a bomb, or rather the Taiwanese are building us a bomb designed by the Israelis who are selling it to us wholesale?’

‘Seems like it.’

‘You know of course that the Regime deny that we possess any nuclear weapons — and when mysterious explosions occurred in the southern hemisphere the Regime rejected American claims that we were testing nuclear weapons. They said it was atmospheric disturbance, or the American instruments were faulty. Then they said a meteorite landed in the Namib Desert. So what do we surmise from that?’

‘That they were lying.’

Van Vuuren’s blue eyes widened still further. ‘Certainly not. We agree that there was no explosion. From there we go on to state categorically that we have no nuclear weapons.’

Now it was Blanchaille’s turn to stare. ‘But you said —’

‘No. I didn’t.’

‘But I heard you.’

‘You couldn’t have done. This conversation never took place.’ Van Vuuren took a photograph from a desk drawer and fanned himself with it absently. ‘What is the official policy towards the Russians, Blanchie?’

‘The Russians are our enemies. They are after our gold, our diamonds, our minerals, our strategic positions, our sea-lanes. We do not talk to the Russians, have never talked to them, will never talk to them.’

‘Excellent answer. Now have a look at this.’ Van Vuuren handed him a small black and white photograph, rather grainy and blurred, as if taken from a distance. In the foreground two men were walking together, behind them a busy street with trams. ‘Paradeplatz in Zurich where the banks sell gold like hot rolls in a baker’s window. Do you recognise the men?’

Blanchaille studied the grainy photograph. The two men were deep in conversation. The older man wore a black Homburg. The other looked younger, was bare-headed, fair-haired.

‘Never seen either before.’

‘The man on the left in the hat is a Russian. The official, accredited roving representative of the Bank of Foreign Trade in Moscow, on secondment to the Wozchod Handelsbank in Zurich. The other man is Bennie Craddock, an executive of Consolidated Holdings and the nephew of its Chairman, Curtis Christian Himmelfarber. Here is another photograph of Craddock, this time in Moscow. Notice anything?’