The Land God Made in Anger. John Davis Gordon

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СКАЧАТЬ 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’ СКАЧАТЬ