Daniel O’Brien beat the Woods to the draw by inviting them to dinner at Mac’s.

Colin McMillan’s grand house came with three domestic workers – a cook, a maid and a gardener. Since he had arrived, Daniel had tried to give them as little additional work as possible.

This evening, he did the cooking himself. The main course was a spicy Moroccan lamb casserole. It was a recipe he’d got from the news agency’s correspondent in Tangier.

Mark’s wife, Lorna, was a petite woman with large eyes. The Woods told Daniel they had two sons at Selborne College in East London.

‘Is that a reflection on the standard of education at Umtata High?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Mark. ‘I’d have to say so. The local principal is a good man and he tries hard. As do most of the teachers. But the pupil-to-teacher ratio is well over forty. We felt we had to send the boys away.’

The oven clock pinged. Daniel went out and checked the stove.

The meal and small talk over, Daniel asked how they thought the Transkei would progress under the new disposition.

‘It can only get better,’ said Lorna. ‘But the tragic thing about the Transkei is the amount of money that’s been pumped into it. To very little effect. And that’s been going on for nearly twenty years.’

‘That’s pretty much it,’ said Mark. ‘As you know, we’re soon to become part of a new province, the Eastern Cape. That will incorporate the old Eastern Province and the Border as well.

‘The Transkei’s contribution to that new province will be a load of bad debts, no goodwill, and an aggravation of every problem that existed before it became independent in 1976.’

‘So you think things should only improve now,’ said Daniel.

‘I don’t know,’ Mark Wood said. ‘Do you? You’ve had experience all around Africa. What do you expect will happen?’

‘Well, you can’t deprive people of political power for generations and then expect them not to get drunk on that power when you eventually hand it to them,’ Daniel said. ‘That’s what happened in this territory. It’s bound to happen nationally in South Africa now. To what extent, we’ll just have to see.’

Mark Wood asked, ‘What actually are you doing here, Daniel?’

‘It’s something that goes back a long time,’ he said. ‘I almost feel foolish talking about it.’

‘Why?’ asked Mark.

‘Because it’s so airy-fairy. So far in the past. And in the time I’ve been here, I’m fast reaching the conclusion that maybe there will be no conclusion.’

‘Tell us about it,’ Lorna said.

Daniel paused, then asked Mark Wood a question. ‘Did your father ever talk about the war?’

‘No, not really,’ said Wood.

‘Why not?’

‘Well, it was history long before I was born. At school, we were taught the bare details.’

‘Didn’t your dad tell you how he lost the index finger on his left hand?’

‘So you know about that?’ Wood said. ‘No, not exactly. He said it happened in an accident.’

‘An accident with a live three-oh-three bullet,’ said Daniel, and smiled. ‘And that was during the war. On Fridays, the hostel boarders’ afternoon out, a bunch of us would go out to the quarry on the Engcobo road and look for doppies, spent cartridges. We knew the NRV chaps usually had rifle practice there on Thursday afternoons.

‘We’d make water pistols out of the doppies. If you took out the old percussion cap, by banging the cartridge at the firing end, you’d find two small holes. Then we’d wrap a piece of cloth around a six-inch nail, insert it into the cartridge, and we had a water pistol.’

Daniel added, ‘This has got nothing to do with my story. It’s just something that came to mind, thinking about that time. Well. One day, out there in the quarry, your father found a live round. He took it back to the school, stuck it in a vice in the woodwork shop, got a hammer and a nail and hit the end to see what would happen.

‘The bullet ricocheted off the walls and came right back and took off his finger. He was quite a celebrity for a while but he got an awful caning when he got out of hospital.’

‘Well,’ said Mark Wood. “Maybe that explains why he didn’t talk too much about the war.’

‘So he wouldn’t have told you about the spy?’

‘Spy? A spy in the Transkei?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Daniel. ‘In fact, at one stage it seemed that there might have been two of them.’

‘What on earth was there to spy on?’ Lorna Wood asked.

‘Well, the Wild Coast was a great hunting ground for U-boats, with all the convoys that passed around the Cape. And those subs obviously were looking for remote bays or harbours to re-provision.

‘One even tried to sail right up the estuary at Port St Johns. There was a signal from the shore and it turned around. That’s when it first became clear that there was a spy, a traitor, setting up these landings.’

‘Why wasn’t the spy nabbed right then?’

‘The person with the torch was some way away and there were only a few civilians around. But the police and my father came down the next day and found tyre tracks. That started a witch-hunt that went on for months.’

“Why was your father involved?’ asked Lorna Wood.

‘He was head of the NRV, the National Reserve Volunteers,’ O’Brien explained. ‘After that he became very involved in the hunt. Which is why I came to know all about it.’

‘Was the traitor caught?’ Mark asked.

‘Identified, after one of the locals died. But never caught. My father saw it as a failure on his part. If wasn’t, of course, but it bothered him for years. It bothered him that the person could have just got away like that. Disappeared into thin air.

‘So that’s what I’m doing here,’ said Daniel. ‘Trying to solve a mystery for my father. With a name from the past, a pretty common one at that, and nothing much else.’

From Spy Story.