looked at it in the lamplight. A banknote? A white banknote? On the corners were the symbols £5, and the text read: The Governor of the Bank of England promises to pay to bearer on demand the sum of five pounds sterling … McQuade turned it over. The other side was blank. A banknote printed on one side only? Its date of issue was 1944. An old English fiver? He looked at the Damara. ‘What’s your name?’
The Damara said drunkenly; ‘Skellum Jagter.’
‘No, man, your real name.’
‘Skellum Jagter!’
McQuade half-smiled, despite himself. Jagter means hunter and Skellum is slang meaning sly. ‘Where did you get this?’ It was then that he saw the identification tag in the man’s dirty open shirt-front, and the words stamped on it, Seeoffizier Horst Kohler.
He frowned. Seeoffizier is German. Horst Kohler is definitely a German name. How did this drunken Damara come into possession of such a personal thing? ‘Where did you get that?’
Skellum suddenly looked alarmed. He tried to snatch the banknote back. McQuade said in Afrikaans: ‘No, I’ll pay for it! Just tell me where you got it.’ He pointed at the identification tag. ‘And that. Five rand and a bottle of wine.’
They sat in the front seats of the Landrover, outside Kukki’s Pub. It was a long story, difficult to extract, because McQuade made the mistake of giving Skellum the bottle of wine immediately, and the drunken Damara got drunker.
‘And where is your father now?’
Skellum waved the bottle northwards: ‘Damaraland.’
McQuade said in Afrikaans, ‘And are you sure he says there was no boat? These two men just came up out of the sea?’
‘No boat! They were just white wizards!’
Then they came from a submarine, McQuade reasoned. Absolutely fascinating. Forty years ago. It must have been a German submarine, with an officer named Horst Kohler, and it must have been wrecked. Why else would two men erupt out of the sea? ‘And one was wounded?’
‘Blood,’ Skellum said happily. He wiped his hand downwards over his face. ‘Blood.’
‘And the first man was carrying a package.’
‘Ja.’ Skellum clutched one hand to his chest and made exaggerated swimming motions with the other.
‘And then they fought on the beach?’
‘Fight,’ Skellum said joyfully. He punched the air aggressively. Then drew his finger across his scrawny throat cheerfully. He collapsed back onto the seat, to signify death.
McQuade thought: two submariners escape from a sunken submarine, then fight to the death when they reach the shore? Why? ‘And then the man who won the fight forced your father to lead him down the coast? But your father hit him with a piece of wood?’
‘Wham,’ Skellum said joyfully, reliving the battle. ‘Whok!’ He smashed one hand down on his forearm. ‘Blood!’ He made the clubbing motion again. ‘Whok!’ He curled his arm over his head and cowered theatrically. ‘Finish,’ he said triumphantly as if he had laid the man low himself.
‘And your father returned to the place where the other man was buried? And the jackals had dug him up? And he took this tag from him. Did he ever return to the place where he had hit the first man, to see what had happened to him?’
‘Gone.’ Skellum waved his hand extravagantly at the horizon. Then he fixed his eyes on McQuade’s nose. He slurred conspiratorially, ‘Does the Baas want to buy some more white money?’ He burrowed into his pocket, and pulled out a black wallet importantly. ‘My father found this after the fight.’
McQuade took the wallet. It was bulky and made of leather. Some initials were imprinted on it. He switched on the cab light. The letters were in Gothic style: the initials were H.M.
The wallet was packed with white paper money. He pulled a note out. It was the same as the one he had bought. He pulled out some more. They were in good condition, though the edges of some were worn. He counted them. There were ninety-seven notes. Four hundred and eight-five pounds. He turned to Skellum. ‘This is old English money. It is not used any more. How many of these have you managed to sell?’
‘None,’ Skellum proclaimed. ‘Only to you.’
McQuade did not believe him. ‘So this wallet did not belong to the man who was stabbed to death? The man this tag came from. It belonged to the first man?’
‘Ja.’
Then McQuade noticed something else: the serial numbers on two notes were the same.
He flicked through a dozen notes. They all had the same serial number.
Counterfeit money …
He had read somewhere that during the war the Nazis had counterfeited tons of English money which they intended to flood onto the market to destroy Britain’s economy. He thought, this gets curiouser and curiouser. Two men escape from a sunken German submarine over forty years ago. One, a man called Horst Kohler, is already wounded but is chasing the other man, whose initials are H.M. H.M. is carrying a package. On the beach they fight to the death. H.M. is also carrying a wallet containing a lot of counterfeit English money.
Where had he got that money from? And why did they fight? Over the money? The contents of the package? Why did only two men escape from the submarine? Why was Horst Kohler chasing H.M. so furiously? H.M. was armed with both a pistol and a knife, Kohler had nothing but his fists, yet he persevered. Surely he would not have done that just for five hundred pounds. That meant H.M.’s package contained something much more valuable. Like diamonds?
Another point: H.M. was carrying the package as he swam ashore: he swam with difficulty. Only after the fight did he open the package and put the two bags into his pockets. Why did he not do that before he escaped from the submarine? Answer: H.M. did not have time to open the package inside the submarine – he only had time to snatch it up. That suggested that he left behind more valuables.
The more McQuade thought about it, the more convinced he became. That submarine was shipwrecked, because only two men emerged from it, in disarray, one pursuing the other. So, it was still where it sank, and inside was a hell of a lot more valuable stuff than H.M. had managed to struggle ashore with. Why? Because of the counterfeit fivers. Surely only a very senior Nazi official had access to counterfeit money and a submarine. McQuade had read somewhere about the vast treasures the Nazis were said to have accumulated and shipped away to South America. Well, here we have another case. To arrange a submarine you must be a very senior official, and a high-up Nazi official has more loot stashed away against the day the shit hits the fan than five hundred counterfeit English pounds and one package of diamonds.
McQuade stared down the sandy street, his excitement mounting. God, if all that was correct, there was a fortune somewhere down there, in that submarine. Crates of the stuff.
But why was this German submarine off the coast of South West Africa? That’s a long, long way from South America where all the Nazis ran to.
McQuade stared through the windscreen, trying to think as a seaman.
