Читать книгу The Land God Made in Anger - John Davis Gordon - Страница 16

There is definitely something in the Old School Tie. Roger Wentland and McQuade had hardly anything to do with each other at school. Roger had been one of those bespectacled swots who sat in the front row and always came top, whereas McQuade had sat in the back row and cribbed the homework of the likes of Roger. At university they had had even less contact, where Roger had done political philosophy, law and spent his vacations on archaeological digs, whereas McQuade did marine biology and spent his university vacations on the whaling boats. But when McQuade had returned to Walvis Bay and found that Roger Wentland had a law practice in town, they had greeted each other like long-lost buddies and McQuade had immediately given Roger all his legal business out of a vague loyalty. They only saw each other on business but it was always conducted over a row of beers and Roger hardly ever sent McQuade a bill. That afternoon they met in the bar of the Atlantic Hotel in Walvis Bay. They sat where nobody could hear them.

‘This is absolutely confidential, right?’

‘Of course.’ Roger was a fleshy, bespectacled, untidy man with thick lips who looked like an absent-minded professor.

‘I want to know my legal rights if I salvage valuables from a German submarine that was sunk off the coast of South West Africa forty-odd years ago.’

Roger looked at him. ‘You’ve found such a shipwreck?’

‘Not yet. But I think I know where one is.’

Roger sat back. ‘Boy … You’d better tell me the story.’

McQuade gave him as much of the facts as he needed to know.

Roger stared pensively across the bar. ‘Boy … Look, I’m not the best guy to consult on this. You need a maritime law specialist. I’d better write to a firm in Cape Town for an opinion.’

McQuade said: ‘That’s exactly what I don’t want you to do. In case the word gets out. I don’t want any of this written down for clerks to read. I’d have every treasure hunter in the world up here trying to beat me to it – they’re all fucking pirates.’

The lawyer sighed. ‘Well, then I’ll have to do some research. But, in general principle … In principle, a sunken ship and its contents belong to whoever salvages it if the original owner has abandoned it. That’s if the vessel is sunk in international waters. If it’s sunk in a nation’s territorial waters, that nation’s laws apply. Now, because South Africa administers Namibia, I think you’d have to register a salvage claim with the maritime authorities.’

‘Could they refuse my claim?’

Roger spread his hands. ‘A submarine is a warship. Indeed an enemy warship, because Germany was South Africa’s enemy at the time. And it may come under the peace treaty signed by the Allies and Germany at the end of the war.’

‘Oh boy …’

‘And if they granted your claim, I think the government would demand part of the salvage.’

‘How much?’ McQuade demanded.

‘I don’t know. Never had a case like this. It would probably depend on your effort and expense, and the risks you took.’

McQuade did not like the sound of that. ‘And if they refused my claim?’

‘Well, you could appeal to the courts, but that’s expensive, and you may end up appealing to The Hague, the International Court of Justice, because the United Nations and Germany may get in on the act.’

‘The United Nations?’ McQuade said indignantly. ‘Why?’

‘Because,’ Roger said, ‘of Resolution 435. This submarine lies in Namibian waters. Well, Namibia is governed by South Africa as a trusteeship territory, under the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the First World War. Under that treaty Namibia was confiscated from Germany and given temporarily to South Africa to govern. Well, the United Nations, which is dominated by black states, passed Resolution 435 in 1978, demanding that South Africa grant independence to Namibia immediately. South Africa refuses because of the thousands of Cuban troops in Angola, et cetera, et cetera. Well, if you end up appealing to the courts, the United Nations may decide to make this a cause célèbre, take the opportunity to argue that the salvage belongs neither to you nor South Africa, but to the people of Namibia who should be independent. Et cetera, et cetera.’

McQuade sat back. ‘Oh Lord …’ He signalled for two more beers. He waited until the barman was out of earshot again. ‘And why might Germany get in on the case?’

‘Look, until I’ve researched these points I can only outline the potential snags. But this submarine is technically the property of the present German government. I remember reading some years ago about a German frigate that was found off the coast of Denmark by a Dutch salvage company. The Dutchmen got inside it and found a few skeletons. They filed their salvage claim with the Danish authorities. The Danes refused because the frigate was in their territorial waters and the Danish government began to salvage it. Whereupon the German government intervened through the courts and stopped the Danes, because they said it would be the desecration of a German war grave. So? Nobody got the ship.’

‘Oh God! So what might they do with a treasure trove involved?’

‘Exactly. Now, if you want me to do the research, I will. But it’ll be expensive.’

McQuade shook his head. ‘No, you’ve told me enough to worry the shit out of me. Let’s see if I find the submarine first.’

‘And how does one look for it?’

‘With my trawler’s depth-sounder. The depth of the ocean bed registers on a graph. If I go over the area in a pattern, the graph will jump when I pass over something as big as a submarine. Go over it again, in the next leg of the pattern. Do it often enough and the whole outline of the submarine should show on the graph.’

‘Clever. And then? Send a diver down? Who?’

‘Me. If it’s not too deep. It can’t be very deep if two men escaped from it.’

‘Can you dive? Yes, of course you can.’

‘I’ve done a bit of scuba-diving. But only in shallow water. But Kid Childe can dive. And Tucker, if he has to. We keep a couple of scuba-kits on board for emergencies with propellers and nets and things.’ He added: ‘But I don’t like doing it any more. Sharks and similar.’

Roger shook his head. ‘Rather you than me. But then you always were one of the boys, going on the whaling ships and all that when we were students – the girls were always vastly impressed. Made the rest of us look rather wet.’

‘The rest of you got nice wives and got rich.’

‘And the rest of us got grey hair and paunches. You don’t look a day over thirty-five. What about visibility down there?’

McQuade smiled. ‘The visibility down there will depend on the current, the amount of plankton, weed, sunlight, the depth and so on. It could be clear or it could be like pea-soup.’ It gave him the willies to think about it.

‘And? How do you get inside?’

‘Worry about that after I’ve seen it. Maybe there’s a nice big hole in the side. I may have to get a professional diver to help me, and I’ll have to read up about submarines, so I know what to expect.’

‘Somebody at the naval base here should be able to advise you. But be careful, if you want to keep this a secret. Say you’re writing a story. And if you employ a diver, don’t go near Straghan Salvage Limited – Red Straghan is a bad bastard, he’ll steal you blind. Go to Alan Louw, he’s honest.’

‘I hope I won’t have to use any diver.’ He took a tense breath. ‘Okay. Send me a bill for this consultation.’

Roger smiled. ‘You pay for the beers. When you crack that submarine I’ll send you a whopper.’ He added: ‘And? You said there were two things you wanted to ask me about.’

McQuade nodded. He produced the book he had borrowed from the Swakopmund library.

‘That looks complicated legal stuff for a marine biologist. Can you give me a run-down, in a nutshell, of the constitutional history of Namibia and how we got it off the Germans?’

Roger flipped through the book then looked at the list from the Sam Cohen library.

‘Why this sudden passion for German history of this neck of the woods?’ He looked over the top of his glasses. ‘You’re looking for a political reason for this submarine being off this coast?’

McQuade said: ‘If there was a political reason – if these guys were high-up Nazis and not ordinary sailors, they probably had a stack of loot on that submarine.’

Roger looked at him over the top of his spectacles. ‘Okay. Where do you want to begin?’

‘Assume I know nothing.’

Roger raised his eyebrows. ‘And he wants it in a nutshell. Okay …’ He rubbed his chin. Then began like a professor delivering a lecture. ‘When South Africa was colonized, this whole vast area of South West Africa was unwanted by anybody. Because it was desert. Then the Scramble for Africa began in earnest. The Germans grabbed Togoland, the Cameroons and Tanganyika. Then a young German, called Lüderitz, found a nice little shallow-water harbour and persuaded the local chief to sell it to him, plus the surrounding area in a radius of five miles. Trouble is that Lüderitz meant five German miles, which are twenty miles of ours. So local war broke out. Lüderitz asks the Kaiser for protection. Troops arrived and pacified the natives. Then Great Britain gets nervous that the Germans may threaten her Cape sea route so she seizes the only deep-water harbour, namely here at Walvis Bay. Which pisses off the Krauts. Even Queen Victoria wasn’t amused because she wanted the Kaiser, who was her dear nephew, to have a bit of an empire too. So Germany officially colonizes the rest of South West Africa. Then …’ he held up his finger, ‘diamonds were discovered. Such as the world has never seen, just lying in the sand dunes for the picking. Fortune hunters from all over the world arrive in thousands, and the German colonization of South West began in earnest.’ Roger spread his hands. ‘And the inevitable happened. When the natives found they were being forced off their land they rebelled. The colonists mounted punitive expeditions, and inevitably full-scale bloody wars of pacification.

‘Finally, after years of intermittent warfare, the Germans were fully in control of the whole vast territory. With only the British enclave of Walvis Bay spoiling the Teutonic picture. And …’ he shrugged, ‘the Scramble for Africa was over. Great Britain had Egypt, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Northern and Southern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Nigeria, Ghana, and the Union of South Africa. The French had Algeria, the Sahara and Equatorial Africa, the Portuguese had Angola and Mozambique, the Belgians had the Congo, and the Germans had the Cameroons and Togoland and Tanganyika and South West Africa – or Namibia. Everything seemed stable in the world. But …’ he held up his finger again, ‘Germany had other plans for Africa.’

He took a swallow of his beer.

‘It was Germany’s plan to expand from Namibia and Tanganyika, gobble up South Africa and start to strangle the British Empire. With her warships based in Namibia she would have been able to dominate the Cape sea route, and with her warships based in Tanganyika she would have dominated Suez and the Indian Ocean. Then South Africa would have fallen into their hands. It was the South African goldfields and diamonds that Germany desperately wanted. However, they jumped the gun: the First World War came a little too early. And Great Britain asked the South African Government to send troops into Namibia and Tanganyika, to save the empire. But you must know all this?’

‘The First World War is distant history for me.’

‘But it’s not distant history to the Germans.’ Roger nodded down the bar. ‘These guys are more German than the Germans. Just like in the former colonies you meet people who are more devoutly British than the British. But the Germans?’ He sighed. ‘As individuals they’re fine – even less offensive than the British. But together? Put a dozen Germans together and you’ve got a fucking regiment. They’d love this territory to revert to German rule.’

‘And in 1945?’

‘I’ll come to that. Under the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 at the end of the war, Britain took over Tanganyika, and South Africa took over the administration of Namibia.’ He glanced down the bar. ‘The Germans were stripped of their colonies for two reasons. Firstly, their strategic value. Secondly, the Germans were told by the Allies that they were “Unfit to govern”.’ He snorted. ‘And the Allies were right.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning,’ Roger said softly, ‘that the Germans were bastards towards the natives …’ He glanced down the bar. ‘Drink up and let’s go to my house. I’ll lend you some books. Barbara’s got people coming to dinner, but we’ve got time for a beer there.’

The Wentlands’ house overlooked the lagoon that was always full of flamingoes and sea birds. Roger went straight to the living-room bookshelf. He looked at the list provided by the Sam Cohen library, then pulled out a book. ‘This list is inadequate. You must read German Rule in Africa by Evans Lewin.’ He pulled out another. ‘And Britain and Germany in Africa, published by Yale. This compares the two countries’ policies and behaviour.’ He reached for another book. ‘And The Germans and Africa.’

McQuade took them. ‘But how were the Germans so bad?’

‘In a nutshell?’ Roger went to the bar in the corner and got two beers. ‘British colonial policy was to maintain the tribal structures and the natives’ rights as far as possible, as well as the authority of the chiefs. German policy was the opposite. It was to destroy the authority of the chiefs, to render the natives powerless so they could be press-ganged into labour and deprived of their land. It was even written in the Koloniale Zeitschrift …’ He reached for one of the books and leafed through it. ‘Here. This was written in the German press. Quote: “Our colonies are acquired, not for evangelization of the blacks, not for their well-being, but for ours. Whosoever hinders our object we must put out of the way”.’ He looked at McQuade. ‘That was German policy, in a nutshell. When the Hereros rebelled, General von Trotha arrived from Germany with nineteen thousand soldiers and his entire purpose was extermination. He slaughtered them in their scores of thousands. He drove them into the desert where they died of thirst and starvation in the thousands, while his soldiers gleefully picked them off. Only a few thousand survived, to struggle across the desert into British Bechuanaland. Finally there was an outcry in Germany against this inhumanity and von Trotha’s extermination order was cancelled.’ He shook his head. ‘They were the same in Tanganyika and Togoland and the Cameroons, and the result of their policies has always been ruin and chaos. Because of their extermination campaigns the Germans had no native labour! In 1898 the black population here was 300,000. Fourteen years later, in 1912, there were only 100,000 blacks! Two-thirds of the population slaughtered!’

‘Jesus.’

Roger nodded. ‘So when the First World War broke out and South Africa occupied this territory, we came as liberators. At least we brought law and order and Native Commissioners to look after natives’ rights, et cetera.’

McQuade’s schoolboy history was certainly sketchy. ‘And how did the Germans take it?’

Roger snorted. ‘After the war, many South Africans immigrated up here, and the Germans were bitter. When local self-government was set up by South Africa, the legislative assembly was always divided: Germans against South Africans. The Germans wanted to run it their way, but the South Africans wanted the country to become another province of South Africa. Then …’ Roger held up a finger again … ‘Herr Adolf Hitler came along …’

He got up and went back to his bookshelves. He plucked out three volumes.

‘You must read Germany’s African Claims. Published by the Daily Telegraph in the 1930s. And this, Nazi Activities in South West Africa, published by the Friends of Europe. But the most important book of all,’ he held it up, ‘is Hitler Over Africa, by Benjamin Bennett.’

McQuade was all attention. Roger drained his mug. He was beginning to get along with the beer. He got out two more.

‘Hitler came to power on the massive wave of German bitterness after their defeat in the First World War. They had been humiliated, forced to pay reparations for the war costs, and stripped of their colonies. Germany was bankrupt. Hitler came along with his Brown Shirts and started whipping up the good old German martial spirit. “We demand that the unjust Treaty of Versailles be scrapped! We demand our Lebensraum, space for expansion! It was international Jewish money which waged the war against us! The Jews – the Jews!” And we know what happened to the Jews. The same that happened to the Hereros. The German Solution …’ He sighed. ‘Anyway, the Germans in South West Africa and Tanganyika loved all this rhetoric … They loved Hitler’s shouting. They were smarting under South African rule. And Hitler was bellowing that the former German colonies had to be returned to Germany, to provide Lebensraum and raw materials to rebuild her economy which had been bled white by international Jewry. And Hitler’s bully-boys were running around kicking the living shit out of any German who disagreed. Remember?’

McQuade nodded. Roger continued:

‘Hitler and his Nazis created a tyranny – before they were even elected as the government – and they intimidated the rest of Europe as well. The Germans were on the march again, rattling their sabres and singing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me …” And all the time demanding their African colonies back. Then …’ Roger held up his finger again, ‘Hitler was elected the Chancellor of Germany. And within weeks German democracy ceased to exist. Within weeks Hitler had suspended the German parliament, the Nazi Party became Germany and Adolf Hitler became the Nazi Party. Absolute dictator.’

Roger leant across the bar at him. ‘But even before Hitler came to power the Nazi Party had formed branches here and in Tanganyika! Bullying, just as in Germany. They set up cells across this country ruling the German community with a rod of iron. They kept dossiers on everybody, and any uncooperative German was reported to Berlin and the SS took reprisals against their relatives in Germany.’ He waved his hand. ‘They set up their own courts, circumventing the local courts, and a vast local Hitler Youth, with the Ordeal of Fire ritual – kids leaping over flames to cleanse and harden themselves for the Führer. Taking the oath of undying loyalty to the Führer.’ Roger snorted. ‘Of course, the South African government banned the Nazi Party – these Germans were legally British subjects, because South Africa was the legal government, and owed allegiance to the King of England. So it was unlawful to swear allegiance to Hitler.’ He shook his head. ‘The Nazis respected no such niceties. The Hitler Youth changed their name to the Pathfinders and sent local Germans to Berlin to undergo training courses in preparation for the day when Hitler would retake the place.’ He shook his head. ‘Most Germans here were caught up in this fever. Every day they huddled around the radios listening to the propaganda bellowed from Berlin, listening for the joyful news of the day of liberation. “Der Tag” they called it, The Day, and they went around warning the South Africans to watch their step. “Nobody can stop our Führer!”’ Roger smiled grimly. ‘They were bloody nearly right, weren’t they?’

McQuade’s mind was working ahead. ‘And?’

‘The Berlin Colonial Office – and remember that since Germany didn’t have any colonies, how the hell did they have the nerve to have a “Colonial Office” – anyway, they even published a celebrated map of how Africa was going to look after Hitler had got their colonies back. Did you know that?’

The door bell rang. The first dinner guest had arrived. Roger stood up. He pointed at the books.

‘It’s all in there. It was an improved version of the Kaiser’s plan, but, in short, it was South Africa Hitler was after and from there the whole of Africa would crumble under the German might, with its vast reservoirs of raw materials and black slave labour to build the Thousand Year Reich.’ He jabbed his finger again. ‘That was his plan.’

Roger left to go to the front door. McQuade stared out the window.