FIFTEEN

In the end, it did not matter that Danny’s father was unable to make known the presence of a German U-boat in the Transkei’s coastal waters. For not too many weeks later, in the early evening, an enemy submarine sailed right into the mouth at Port St Johns, brazen as you like.

And this time there were more witnesses: people fishing on both banks of the estuary, people in the lower part of town.

Port St Johns was a small community on the Umzimvubu River.  It was named after another ship that had gone down off that coast many years before – the Portuguese Sao Joao. The town centre was composed of a few general dealers, two hotels and a boatyard that built skiffs and small boats. Below was a wooden pier where coasters from Durban and East London discharged their cargo.

For a while, it seemed to the onlookers that the U-boat might be intent on sailing right into that centre to tie up at the jetty. Then some of them noticed, from beyond the river mouth at a place the locals called Ferry Point, what seemed to be a frantic signalling to the vessel by someone using a powerful torch. The submarine reversed engines until it was back in open sea, turned and disappeared.

Brian Eayrs, the owner of the Needles Hotel, headed a posse of residents to investigate the area from which the signals had come. They combed the milkwood bushes but saw no one. Eayrs called off the search and went back to the hotel to phone the police.

Sergeant Jock Brown and Digger O’Brien were on the scene early next morning. While Jock took statements from witnesses, Digger drove with Brian Eayrs to Ferry Point. High up on the side of a dune they found fresh tyre tracks. They established that none of the local vehicle owners had been in the area for some days.

Jock and Digger met for breakfast at the Needles. ‘I think we should get somebody down here who knows the different tyres,’ said Digger.

‘Ossie McComb?’

‘Ginger Southwood, rather,’ Digger said. ‘I think he’s sharper than Ossie these days.’

Ginger Southwood took a while to get there, finally arriving in his own car, an eight-horsepower Flying Standard. He had bought the vehicle the year before from Keith Heathcote, the lawyer, who needed something larger. The Flying Standard, despite its fine name, was essentially a town car. Southwood had spent some months refurbishing it.

‘Flying Standard?’ he said, prising himself out of the front seat. ‘Well, it certainly flew when I started hitting those potholes. I thought it might never come down. Jock, does the police budget run to new springs?’

‘I’m afraid it doesn’t even run to petrol,’ said Jock Brown.

They drove him up to the place where the tyre tracks were. ‘Dunlops,’ Ginger Southwood said at once. ‘I’ll tell you that for nothing. But then probably ninety per cent of the tyres in the Transkei are Dunlops.’

He knelt and spread his right hand in successive movements to gauge the rough distance between the two treads. His hands were large, with unusually prominent knuckles.

‘I should have brought a tape measure,’ said the mechanic. ‘But I would say these tracks weren’t made by a normal sedan. Something bigger, maybe a Buick or a De Soto. Or a truck. I don’t know.’

Since there was no point in trying to keep this sighting secret, Jock Hopkinson was allowed to go down to see the area for himself. The next edition of the Territorial News was almost totally devoted to the incident. “Nazi sub seen in Transkei waters!” the headline said, almost echoing what Digger had considered in the first instance. The article contained lengthy interviews with every witness Jock could lay his hands on and other residents who said they were terrified although they had seen nothing.

There were graphic descriptions of how the vessel had broken through the waves at the river mouth, of the light that suddenly began flashing dramatically in the semi-darkness.

Colonel Fyfe King called an emergency meeting of the territory’s NRV. ‘It seems we have a spy in our midst,’ he said. ‘Either someone who has been here for some time, or someone who was put ashore off that U-boat.’

‘Except that Brian Eayrs and his chaps couldn’t identify those tyre tracks,’ Digger O’Brien reminded him.

‘Yes, of course,’ said the colonel. ‘So it has to be somebody who has been here long enough to have access to a vehicle. Maybe someone then who’s familiar to us, someone who was a stranger until recently but now has been accepted into our society.’

‘Maybe it doesn’t even have to be recently,’ George Trebble said. ‘Remember Spain, sir, where the Fascists planted fifth columnists years ahead of them taking over.’

‘I think what we should all do,’ Digger said, ‘is to go back to our homes, towns and villages, or wherever, and think of anyone who comes to mind. Anyone we remember acting suspiciously, or out of character, in particular any outsider who has come into the Transkei in the past few years. Because I can’t believe our spy is a Transkeian. We know one another too well. Or most of us do anyway.’

Elsewhere, five other minds were contemplating the same issue.

‘I think it’s got to be somebody in Umtata,’ said Charles Perkins. ‘Those other towns and villages. They’re so small. Everybody knows everybody. And how many cars have they got?’

‘Unless it’s a black person,’ Steyn Mostert said. ‘Black people, we don’t know them. And my father says we can’t trust them. He says they can steal you blind.’ He thought a while longer. ‘But then blacks don’t have cars. Not too many of them. There’s that witchdoctor, Khotso, in Kokstad but that’s a long way away.’

The man who called himself Khotso, the isiSotho word for peace, had become a legend some years earlier when he arrived at Manning and Patterson’s showroom carrying a battered suitcase. He chose a blue Chrysler off the floor and paid for it in cash. The suitcase was full of five-pound notes.

‘If it’s somebody in Umtata,’ said Danny O’Brien. ‘Who is here who wasn’t here before? Who’s new? I can’t think of anybody except – ’

‘ – Steyn’s cousin,’ said Billy Miller. ‘How about him?

The other four fell silent. ‘But he was in the air force,’ Alan Dewes said. ‘And he got wounded. A spy is somebody on the other side. He lives in a secret house and he wears a disguise.’

‘Steyn, he is your cousin,’ said Charles. ‘He can’t be a spy too. Can he?’

Steyn Mostert looked as if he might be close to tears. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes he acted funny. My mother also thought he acted funny. I know. When she spoke to him she always looked cross. She told my dad he was a sponger. What’s that mean?’

‘It means a person who sucks up things like a sponge,’ Danny said. ‘But all the spies I’ve read about seem to have lots of money. They get it from their governments. They don’t go around sponging on people.’

‘Well,’ said Charles. ‘There’s one thing we can do. We can watch him, follow him. Maybe creep into his house and see if there’s a hidden wireless.’

‘You mean radio receiver,’ Billy said. ‘This could be fun. We’ll take it in turns following him. And while one of us is following him, we’ll search his house.’

‘That’s against the law,’ said Alan. ‘You can’t just go into other people’s houses like a thief. Let’s follow him and see what he does that’s suspicious.’

‘All right,’ said Billy. ‘Bags I go first then.’

At least one regular in the Grosvenor Hotel bar voiced the same opinion as Danny and his friends.

‘A spy among us?’ Ginger Southwood said. ‘What was I warning you about just the other day, George? Talking in front of strangers? And what about that stranger? What about a man who comes in, claiming to have broken his leg in a “prang” and now it seems didn’t break his leg at all?’

‘Are you sure about that, Ginger?’ asked Pondo Harrington.

‘Well, you heard me in here telling you that Ian Ross doesn’t believe he had a fracture in that leg. Or were you sitting there with your finger up your bum and your mind in neutral?’

‘That’s quite an accusation you’re making,’ said Gerald Wilson. ‘What if he just faked an injury to get out of going to the front?’

‘Also,’ George Trebble added, ‘he told us in detail what happened to him and his crew. I can’t believe he pulled that story out of thin air. But I’ve been thinking since Ginger gave us that warning.

‘And yesterday I happened to be talking in the club to Peter Moore. His two sons are in the air force, as we know. Well, one of them’s been up with Twelve Squadron, where Mostert was. Or says he was. And the lad’s getting a spot of leave soon before the squadron relocates to Cairo.

‘So I’ve arranged with Peter to bring his son around one evening when Nick Mostert’s here. Maybe a Friday. He normally pops in about six-ish on a Friday, doesn’t he?’

‘Six-ish or a bit earlier,’ Baldy the barman said.

‘Well, then,’ said George Trebble. ‘Let’s see how that little arrangement goes. See if it sets the cat among the pigeons. Either way, we should be able to know if he’s been telling the truth or stringing us along.’

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