A Sailor's Honour (11 page)

PC
Crosthwaite ran his finger across the light fitting. There was no dust there either.

‘What are you running from?'
PC
Jones asked. ‘Or who, to be more precise.'

How could he tell these men that at night, when the demons got too much for him, he scrubbed the floor and walls and wiped all the other surfaces with a rag dipped in disinfectant? Would they understand if he told them that he washed himself and his clothes in the same bucket? Would they understand if he said that he never felt completely clean?

PC
Jones read his thoughts. ‘What are you trying to wash off here? Have you been in prison? This place looks like a prison cell.'

‘I'm recovering,' De Villiers said. It was a mistake. He knew it as soon as he said it.

‘Recovering from what?'
PC
Jones wanted to know.

De Villiers sighed. The two policemen stood over him, waiting for an answer. ‘From what?'
PC
Crosthwaite said.

De Villiers stood up and undid the top buttons of his shirt. He pulled the shirt to one side. ‘From this,' he said. The bullet wound was clearly visible.

He turned his back. ‘It came out here.'

When he faced the two policemen again,
PC
Crosthwaite asked, ‘And the leg?'

De Villiers tugged at the leg of his cargo pants. ‘And here.'

The two policemen stooped to get a closer look. ‘Where did it happen?'
PC
Jones asked.

‘Pretoria,' De Villiers said.

‘Are the police back home looking for you?'
PC
Jones asked.

‘No,' De Villiers said. ‘They're looking for the people who shot me.'

‘You'd better come with us to the station,'
PC
Jones said suddenly. ‘So that we can check out your story.'

They led him to the door.
PC
Jones carried the passport and the money belt. De Villiers locked the door behind them and followed them. They opened the door and De Villiers got into the back of the police car. They travelled in silence to the police station.

They made De Villiers sit on a bench while they signed him in. There was a desk in the public section across from where De Villiers was sitting. A woman constable sat under a recruitment poster.
There is a career in the police for you.
PC
Jones gave De Villiers a receipt for his possessions and they led him into a cell. It was the same size as his room. There was a steel bunk and a stainless steel lavatory. He smelled disinfectant. He ran his finger along the wall. It was clean. He lay down on the bunk and fell asleep. A defence mechanism.

They returned two hours later and shook him awake. His mouth was dry and he needed a drink.

‘You're clean,'
PC
Crosthwaite said. ‘Why didn't you tell us?'

‘Tell you what?'

‘That your wife and children were murdered and that you were wounded in the same incident.'

PC
Crosthwaite shook his head. ‘For what it's worth, I'm sorry.'

De Villiers nodded. He followed them to the counter. ‘How can I become a policeman?' he asked. He had no idea what made him ask that.

‘You want to become a policeman?'
PC
Crosthwaite said.

‘Yes,' De Villiers said. ‘What's so odd about that? They took the two of you.'

PC
Jones burst out laughing. ‘That's true,' he said, ‘but I think their standards are a little higher nowadays.'

‘There's a recruitment officer there,' De Villiers said. ‘I could join up right now.'

‘Maybe not right now,'
PC
Crosthwaite said. ‘We have to take you back to your place first.'

PC
Jones intervened. ‘And you'd better shave and clean up first. You need to make a good first impression.' He winked at De Villiers. ‘That's how we got in.'

De Villiers signed for his possessions.

The radio in the police car crackled as they were called to another scene. They dropped him off outside a small superette.

I can do this, De Villiers thought.

That was how De Villiers met Emma later, while walking the beat as a newly qualified police constable in Hyde Park. They were married in a private ceremony with a few work colleagues as their witnesses. After six years in London, they emigrated to New Zealand.

Between them, they had enough money to buy a house cash. The
SADF
'
S
million plus their savings. They settled down in Auckland and had Zoë.

When Johann Weber had come out of court and had sent De Villiers on his way, he sat down behind his desk with a cup of coffee and phoned his mother. It was an interesting case, the
Alicia Mae
. He could tell his mother about it. Although he owed his client the duty to maintain the confidentiality of the client's case and all communications between them, he knew he could tell Anna Weber. Her memory for recent events was nonexistent.

She listened in silence as he told the story, but asked a lot of questions when he mentioned Hamburg. She remembered Hamburg. Growing up on its outskirts. The beauty of the city before the war. The devastation when it was bombed to a state of burning rubble by the Allies. The sense of loss and fear. The irresistible impulse to hide. The death of her husband. And that she had never returned.

Weber seized the moment and asked her, ‘Mutti, tell me again how we came here on a ship.'

The seeds for Weissdorn had been planted in 1936.

Sidney Robey Leibbrandt was a man of broad shoulders and narrow intellect, quick with his fists but slow-witted, the perfect soldier for an operation with virtually no chance of success. His handlers' assessment of him was that he was unintelligent and incapable of working in a team, but they valued his fanaticism, his unshakable belief in Adolf Hitler's vision of Aryan dominance of the world.

A man like him could do a lot of damage to the enemy.

After his heroics during the 1936 Olympic Games, Leibbrandt had spent the better part of a year in Germany as a student of physical culture before the war broke out. The plan which had brought him to Germany in the first place had been to send him back to the country of his birth on completion of a three-year course so that he could start a physical culture movement based on the Aryan model in South Africa. In due course he would recruit the men and women best suited to carry the Aryan ideal deep into the fabric of the ruling class. Leibbrandt had been born to a father who had fought the British during the 1899–1902 war alongside men like Smuts and De Wet and De la Rey. They had hoped that Germany would come to their rescue then, but the Kaiser had done little more than send a consignment of Mauser rifles and ammunition.

For Robey Leibbrandt, England would always be the enemy and he had been keen to train in Germany. It was a long-term plan, but his ultimate goal was clear. Then the war broke out and General Jan Smuts persuaded parliament to authorise the declaration of war on Germany. To Leibbrandt, this was the ultimate betrayal, that one of the stalwarts of the resistance against British imperialism should take sides with England against his beloved Germany.

True to form, he immediately demanded a change of plan. He would return to South Africa immediately by any available means and kill Smuts himself. The task was too important to leave to others. And he would mobilise the Storm Troopers of the Ossewabrandwag – a body of well-trained, armed men numbering more than ten thousand, all occupying important positions in the army, the police, the prisons department and even the fire and ambulance services of the cities and major towns. Together they would take over the government as soon as Smuts was dead, Leibbrandt proposed.

The man across the table from Leibbrandt shook his head. They had met more than five years earlier, when Germany had been the host to the Olympic Games and Leibbrandt had been a member of the South African boxing team. Fighting in the semifinals with a broken right hand, and being robbed of the decision by incompetent refereeing, Leibbrandt had so impressed the Führer that Hitler had sent for him for a personal meeting. The man who had escorted him to his meeting with the Führer now watched him from behind his glass.

Consul-General Karlowa smiled at the sight of the soldier sipping at a soft drink. Leibbrandt was as fanatical about his personal habits as he was about his politics. He was a strict vegetarian and took no alcohol. He slept on a board, believing that a bed would make his body soft. He completed a strict regimen of exercise every day. He shaped his body into a machine ready for any eventuality the war on his enemies might bring his way.

Karlowa had become a mentor to Leibbrandt, but was unimpressed by his protégé's demands. ‘I have spoken to the men who are experts at the kind of operation we want to launch to start the recovery of Deutsch-West Afrika for the Reich,' he said. ‘They say that we need a year of planning and training.'

Leibbrandt was fluent in German and spoke with hardly an accent. ‘I want to go immediately. All I need is about three thousand men. I'll take care of Smuts myself and then we'll take over the police and the army. Within a year we'll have Oppenheimer's assets and we'll throw all the Jews out. We'll take Deutsch-West and South Africa without having to fire a shot and place the wealth of both countries at the Führer's disposal for the war against the imperialists and the communists.'

Karlowa had heard the Leibbrandt plan before and decided to stop the rant. ‘No, no,' he said. ‘We have it all planned for you.'

He placed his hand over Leibbrandt's. He leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘We will teach you the theories of National Socialism and train you as a saboteur, radio operator, parachutist and infantryman.'

Leibbrandt was disappointed and resolved to accelerate the pace of the operation at every opportunity. He withdrew his hand from under the Consul-General's.

‘It will take a year,' Karlowa insisted. ‘A year.'

In that year Leibbrandt received military training of the highest order, which he endured stoically, and political indoctrination, which he passed with ease. His mind was shaped by the best propagandists and theorists behind the Nazi philosophy. Operation Weissdorn was ready.

Kapitänleutnant Karl-Heinz Weber stood to attention before Grand Admiral Dönitz's desk at
U
-boat Command in Lorient, France. ‘You sent for me, Herr Admiral.'

Dönitz closed the folder he had been studying. ‘Yes. Sit down.'

Commander Weber removed his cap and sat down.

Admiral Dönitz was not a man of many words. ‘The Führer has a mission for you,' he said. ‘Operation Weissdorn.'

‘The Führer?'

‘Yes, the Führer.' There was a hint of disapproval in the admiral's voice. Admiral Dönitz studied the man in front of him. ‘You have a good record,' he said and tapped with his finger on the folder on the desk. ‘Top of your class in practical seamanship as well as
U
-boat tactics. Second in weaponry and navigation.'

Commander Weber could see his name, rank and serial number on the folder. It was not for him to speak, so he waited.

‘I disapprove,' Admiral Dönitz said and stood up. ‘This is madness, risking a boat and crew on a stupid mission like this.'

‘I don't understand, Admiral,' Commander Weber said.

‘The Secret Service wants to take a man to the coast of Deutsch-West Afrika for an important mission to South Africa. They are laying a false trail, using a yacht, but the Führer has ordered – over my objections – that the man be taken there by
U
-boat. And I have chosen you to do it.'

‘I shall do as ordered, Admiral,' Commander Weber said.

‘Good, I never expected any less. God help you and your crew, because this is not what you were trained for. Nor what our boats are designed for.'

‘Thank you, Admiral.'

Admiral Dönitz came around the desk and sat down. He opened the folder and took out a brown envelope. ‘Your orders are in here. You have two weeks to prepare. And don't lose my
U
-boat.'

During the long journey south towards the Cape of Good Hope, Commander Weber got to know his passenger very well. He came to share the Secret Service's opinion of Robey Leibbrandt: impulsive, driven by passion rather than reason, with a pathological hatred of black people, communists and Jews, likely to cause trouble wherever he went.

The
U
-boat with its unusual passenger surfaced near Lambert's Bay on the South-West African coast in mid-June 1941. They had sailed submerged during the day to avoid detection and on the surface at night to make better speed. Commander Weber used the opportunity to train his men for various actions which could be expected if contact were made with an enemy warship, aircraft or merchant ship. By the end of the voyage south, the crew were fit and ready for action. They were at action stations, ready to submerge and leave in the shortest possible time should an aircraft pass overhead.

In the conning tower, Commander Weber shook hands with his passenger.

‘
Danke schön, Herr Käpitan
,' Robey Leibbrandt said.

‘Go well,' Commander Weber said. ‘My men will accompany you as far as the shore and unload your equipment from the dinghy. I trust you will understand that I cannot risk the safety of my boat or my crew and will not allow the men to assist you beyond the shore.'

‘
Ich verstehe, Käpitan
,' Leibbrandt said. His handshake was firm and he followed with the Nazi salute. ‘
Heil Hitler
.'

By the beginning of 1945, all of that was history. Germany was history, surrounded on all sides by the Allied forces. The
U
-boats had been routed in the Battle of the Atlantic and the remaining ones were in hiding in their special bunkers carved deep into the sides of their bases. Robey Leibbrandt was history too. He'd run a campaign of terror during which he did not hesitate to use a sjambok on anyone who would not join his cause. After carving a swastika into the sandstone of the Soutpansberg while hiding from the police, he was arrested on a suburban road on the outskirts of Pretoria. His death sentence for high treason was history too, since Jan Smuts commuted it to life imprisonment.