NOW Parliament’s number one comic laughingly dismisses his controversial Nkandla residence as “just a house”.

If so, South Africa’s taxpayers have every right to feel cheated. For R246 million, they would have expected rather more for their money. Particularly since the final figure was far beyond the original budget.

But Jacob Zuma is wrong. “Just a house” would be one of those dwellings down in the valley, made of wattle and daub or corrugated iron and scrounged wood. Painfully close to Nkandla, should he deign to lower his lofty gaze to take them in.

Or, moving up, the term could apply to a low cost house of the kind intended to replace informal houses.

The president might be interested to know that what was splurged on Nkandla could have built more than four thousand of those. Had the government chosen the “site and service” option (providing lights, water and a slab, with cost-price material for residents to build their own home) that number would be considerably higher. I will not try to estimate how many shacks could be erected with that money, but the figure must be in the hundred thousands.

Going further up the ladder, many families in the middle and higher income bracket might occasionally regard their homes as “just a house” because they’ve become too familiar with them or outgrown them.

But nowhere can the term refer to a place with a swimming pool that cost as much as an upper middle-class home (pool companies say they could have built an Olympic-size pool for half the price); a cattle kraal and chicken run; conference centre, amphitheatre, helicopter pad, underground bunker, tuckshop; and separate residences for four wives, cosseted at State expense.

Such a place is a monstrosity.

Recently, Mr Zuma seems to be resorting more and more to laughter and derision as his defence mechanisms. He chuckled when parliamentary officials broke the rules and called in the police to control Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Front. This week, he chortled at the Leader of the Opposition’s claim that he was a “broken man”.

And he sniggered at the general mispronunciation of Nkandla (though why anyone should wish to properly pronounce a word that only amounts to “just a house”, goodness knows.)

Is Jacob Zuma giggling while the ANC burns? A growing number of South Africans must be hoping so.

EIGHTEEN

Colonel Fyfe King responded to the news of the Drill Hall break-in as if his own home had been violated. Digger O’Brien calmed him down and then asked to see his copies of the missing security reports.

Mainly they concerned thefts of explosives from mines and ammunition magazines; raids on government pay clerks; an escape by several of Leibbrandt’s Storm Troopers from an internment camp; and attacks on young men in uniform. The youth wing of the Ossewa-Brandwag appeared to be behind most of these incidents.

Attempts had been made to destroy two lines of rail in Natal and across the Transkei border in the Ciskei. These were the only items that might have reflected on local events.

‘So what do you think, Digger?’ Fyfe King asked.

‘I don’t know what to think, sir,’ said O’Brien. ‘Without a doubt, we have some sort of spy network operating in our territory. We have to believe there are at least two of them now, one working the coast and another right here. And that person was well enough informed to know where we keep our confidential documents.

‘I’ve alerted the Royal Navy to the U-boat sightings we’ve had.’

‘Oh,’ said the colonel, ‘I’ve got some sort of documentation from the navy I haven’t had a chance to open yet. Maybe that’s in response to your report.’

He went back to his car and returned with a leather briefcase. He rummaged inside, produced a large white envelope labelled OHMS and proceeded to open it.

‘Digger!’ he said a while later. ‘It’s worse that we thought! Look at this!’

The report was short, and stark. According to the Royal Navy, the coast around Natal and the Transkei had become the main hunting ground in the Southern Hemisphere for German submarines pursuing Allied convoys.

On November 1, the French steamer Mendoza had been sunk off the Natal coast. Soon afterwards, six ships in one convoy were hit by torpedoes fifty miles south of Durban.

‘And British intelligence believes it was all the work of one sub,’ said Colonel Fyfe King. ‘What’s it called?’

‘U-160,’ said Digger O’Brien. ‘It must be the one with the flower on its conning tower.’

He read the report again, and tapped it with his finger. ‘This is what our friend was after, sir,’ he said. ‘He wanted to find out how his submarine mates were doing.’

‘What do they actually do, Digger?’ asked the colonel.‘These spies. What’s their aim?’

‘Not much more, I would think, than giving the submariners some food, maybe fresh fruit,’ said O’Brien. ‘Maybe mealie meal, sugar, meat. And fresh water. They’d need that more than anything else. So the bloke on the coast finds a safe harbour for them, they launch a dinghy and collect the stuff.’

‘How do they know where he’ll be on the coast?”

‘Oh, radio contact,’ Digger said. ‘Undoubtedly. He must have a good shortwave transmitter.’

They studied the brief report again. ‘I’m sorry, Digger,’ said Colonel Fyfe King. ‘I should have opened this earlier. But we’re all too complacent here. We don’t believe the war can be so close to us, do we?’

‘No, sir, we don’t,’ said O’Brien. He thought, well, some of us don’t.

‘You said when last we talked that you might have a suspect. Why don’t we pick him up and get Jock Brown to interrogate him? I think it’s time for a bit of third degree!’

Digger told him about the previous night’s meeting between Nick Mostert and John Moore.

‘So Moore thinks he’s genuine?’ said the colonel. ‘That’s not necessarily true, of course. He could have been well trained, well primed. They are, you know.’

‘All we can do for now is watch the man, sir,’ said O’Brien. ‘I’ve told my chaps that if he leaves town, they must make sure someone with enough petrol in the tank follows him.’

The summer hurried on. Armistice Day was a solemn affair. George Trebble survived the march past, but made sure his NRV colleagues were aware of the pain he was suffering.

Christmas came and went, meagre by past standards and likely to be worse the next year.

Christmas in the Cathedral, however, was as enthralling as ever for the O’Brien boys. The hand-carved manger scene was set up as usual near the Christening font. Dean Stewart preached a sermon of peace and love.

Later on Christmas day, the O’Briens drove out to the Nambedhlana location with a cooked chicken and presents for Matilda Makewane and her children. Afterwards, Danny saw Matilda take his mother aside and talk to her seriously.

At tea that afternoon, with quasi-Christmas cake made with bread flour, Iris announced to Digger, ‘Matilda wants to come back to work.’

‘Well, that was always the arrangement,’ said Digger. ‘Once the baby was old enough.’

‘But what about Moses?’ asked Danny’s mother. ‘We can’t just tell him to go and find another job!’

‘No, Dad!’ said Danny. ‘Moses is our friend. You can’t do that to friends!’

‘And what about my homework?’ said Patrick.

His mother laughed. ‘That’s the first time I’ve heard you worry about homework,’ she said. ‘But we can’t have two domestic workers, Patrick. And Matilda says she would like to move into that room.’

‘Why?’ said Digger. ‘She’s always been happy to stay at home before.’

‘It’s the baby, little Greta. She seems to be a sickly child. Chesty, Matilda says. So she’d like to have her here in town, near the hospital.’

Patrick and Danny looked downcast. ‘Where is Moses, anyway?’ their father asked. ‘Let’s get him here. I think I may have a way out of this.’

The boys rushed off to find Moses. Back on the verandah, Digger asked, ‘Moses, can you drive?’

‘No, sir,’ said Moses. ‘I’ve seen a lot of people drive, and I’ve watched how they do it. But I don’t think I could just go and drive.’

‘Do you think you could learn?’

‘Oh, yes, sir,’ Moses said. ‘I think I would be a fast learner.’

‘What’s this all about, Jim?’ Iris O’Brien asked.

Digger told them what he had in mind. One of the Bunga’s senior drivers was due to retire in two months. If Moses was able to get his driver’s licence in that time, he could apply for the job.

That wide smile moved into place, but then receded. ‘But how will I learn, sir?’ he asked.

‘On the Ford,’ said Digger. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll teach you.’

‘What about the neighbours?’ Digger asked Iris. ‘Don’t you know any who might have a room?’

His wife thought for a moment. ‘Margaret Buhl has that little cottage,’ she said. ‘But I don’t know if she’d be prepared to let it to’ – she lowered her voice – ‘you know.’

‘Let’s go and see her in the morning,’ said Digger. ‘Moses would be starting on a much lower grade of salary than Enoch Zwane, so we could find a bit of money in the budget for accommodation.’

‘How much?’ Margaret Buhl asked when Iris and Digger approached her the next day.

‘Not too much,’ said Digger. ‘About eight pounds a month.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs Buhl. ‘I’ve seen Moses with your sons and he seems like a nice boy. But I enjoy my privacy. Give me a day or so to think about it.’

Instead she responded that afternoon, surprising Iris who was watering the flowers around the top lawn.

Margaret Buhl said, ‘I think it would be selfish of me not to let Moses have the cottage. Nobody else is using it.

‘And frankly,’ she added, ‘I could use the money.’ She sighed and suddenly, Iris O’Brien thought, looked several years more worn. ‘The garage is not doing well. Nobody’s getting cars serviced, never mind fixed. I struggle every month to pay Ossie McComb’s salary.

‘For more than three years now, I haven’t known where Fritz is. Or even if he’s still alive. Can you imagine that? It’s bad enough for the other wives here with husbands at the front. But at least they hear from them occasionally.

‘At first, I thought I might have something in common with those women. But it’s very different, or they think it’s very different, because I’m married to a German.’

At once, Margaret Buhl became tearful. ‘And there’s nothing I can do about it,’ she said. ‘If I could leave town, I could get out of this awful rut. But I can’t. I can’t sell the business and go.’ She sobbed as if rocked by a spasm. ‘So I’m stuck here. I’m stuck!’

Iris O’Brien took her hand. ‘Oh, my dear!’ she said. ‘I never realised. We’ve all become so self-centred. We’ve stopped thinking about other people.

‘There you are, right on our doorstep, and we’ve not been anywhere for you. We’ve been bad neighbours. I’m so very sorry.’

‘I asked her,’ Iris told Digger later, ‘if she’d thought of going to the Red Cross, to find out if they could help. If they had some way of finding out what has happened to Fritz.

‘She said she had, but I’m not sure I believe her. There was just something in her eyes. Then I told her that our family would make sure she never felt so lonely, so by herself again. She sort of withdrew then.’

‘Well, there is something I can do for her right away,’ said Digger. ‘I told you I was having the Ford and the Bunga vehicles serviced by Ginger Southwood. Instead of Ossie McComb. But what I’ll do is arrange for half the Bunga’s cars and trucks be serviced at the Buhl’s place.

‘That should help her a bit. But I’ll still get Ginger to service the Ford.’

NINETEEN

For Danny and his friends, the discovery of the underground maze was such an injection of excitement into their lives that they almost forgot that the main purpose of the mission was to track Nick Mostert.

The ability to walk unseen around the town, while under it, became a compelling pre-occupation. The idea of drawing up Mostert-watching rosters went by the board. After school, and once homework was done, it would have taken physical force to keep any of the four out of the tunnels.

Forget about the Invisible Man. Here were four Invisible Boys, watching the comings and goings of the townsfolk, catching some of its prominent citizens in unguarded moments.

There was old Trevor Smale, outside his drapery shop, digging in his ear with a motion that suggested he might be winding up some mechanism within his head; then staring at the finger as though he expected something to bloom from it. Further up York Road, Steve Kalendas would emerge from his Grand Tearoom to engage in serious nasal mining when he felt sure no one was looking.

They discovered too that some people of the town had set routines, like Mrs Howlett and Mr Fuller. Yet although they met so regularly, those two embraced as if they hadn’t seen each other for months. Billy Miller said it was something called harmones, but Charles Perkins said no, that was a kind of mouth organ.

Pondo Harrington and Alf Apple also kept regular hours. They appeared to have a standing arrangement to meet black people at three every afternoon on a plot next to the police station. Pondo would appear in his shirtsleeves, look about quickly and from the folds of his blazer produce bottles of a brown liquid and money would change hands.

Yet as the four watched, and moved around the central grid of streets, they found that Nick Mostert’s life also followed a pattern. Later in the afternoon, though not every afternoon, he would park his De Soto just above the forecourt of Buhl’s Motors, cross York Road and turn the corner to the Grosvenor Hotel.

But the assignations they were watching for, the slipping of a piece of paper to the hand of some seemingly casual passer-by (in their minds, that piece of paper would contain vital radio co-ordinates or the venue for the next U-boat landing) never happened. Not the first week, nor the next.

In fact, Nick Mostert kept his head down, walked wide of everyone and acknowledged almost nobody.

George Trebble was frustrated, and had been ever since the break-in at the Drill Hall. Here he was, in a position where he might have held the Grosvenor bar regulars enthralled about the events of that night, and their implications for national security.

But Colonel Fyfe King had decided, and Digger had agreed, that no one outside the hierarchy of the NRV should be informed.

So George had been unable to tell even his friend, Gerald Wilson, of the likelihood that the Nazi spy who had been active at various areas of the coast had now moved to Umtata. Or if not he, then an accomplice.

At the same time, George had come to realise that he himself could have been responsible for that spy’s action, having told the pub at large in a loose-tongued moment that Digger had a file of confidential documents.

Nick Mostert had not returned to the Grosvenor bar for some days after his meeting with John Moore.

The first time he did, Gerald Wilson had commented, ‘It must have been good, finding out how things were going at your old base.’

George Trebble added, ‘And we hear the two of you had a fine old chat about flying, the technical aspects and so forth.’

Mostert smiled and said, ‘Well, Moore’s still a youngster, still pretty new in aerial combat. There are some things you only pick up once you’ve done a few missions. I just tried to help him out a bit.’

A week later, in the Grosvenor bar, Gerald Wilson was in his cups.

It didn’t happen often, but when Gerald consumed more whisky than usual, the combination of his bulk and drunken volubility ensured that he held the centre of everyone’s attention.

Tonight he appeared to be into a repertoire of bar room ballads. He made a hash of “Eskimo Nell” and was halfway through doing the same to “One-Eyed Riley” when he suddenly fell backwards off his stool, hit the floor with a crash that rattled the bottles on the shelves, and began to snore loudly.

George Trebble was the first to act. ‘Phone a doctor!’ he yelled at Baldy the barman. He undid Gerald’s shirt, exposing a continent of flesh, and began to apply First Aid. He looked like Jonah, trying to ride the whale.

Alf Apple knew the best place to find doctors. He sprinted around the corner to the Umtata Club. Ten minutes later, Ian Ross was on the scene, stethoscope in hand.

He ran it over the large belly, checking Gerald Wilson’s heart beat. Then he slapped him lightly on the cheeks. The snoring stopped and Wilson lifted his head.

‘I’m taking him straight to hospital,’ said Dr Ross. ‘He might have had a small stroke. Some of you can give me a hand to put him in my car.’