The Zero Hour

Baumann had been moved here in a van, in leg irons with twenty others, from Pretoria Central Prison, immediately following his secret trial. To most of the boers, or warders, and all of his fellow inmates, prisoner number 322/88 was a mystery. He almost always kept to himself and rarely spoke. At supper he sat alone, quietly eating his rotten vegetables, the maize and cowpeas glistening with chunks of fat. During exercise periods in the yard, he invariably did calisthenics and hwa rang do. After lockup, rather than watching a movie or television like everyone else, he read books-an enormous and peculiar range of books, ranging from histories of the atomic bomb or of the international oil business to biographies of Churchill or Nietzsche, an exposé of a recent Wall Street scandal, Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and a treatise on sixteenth-century Italian Renaissance architecture.

The other prisoners (called bandiete or skollies) smoked contraband zolls, long homemade cigarettes wrapped in brown paper, while Baumann smoked Rothmans. No one knew how he had got them. He never took part in the smuggling schemes of the others, nor joined in their escape attempts, which were usually amateurish and always failed, ending in capture or, most often, death.

Nor was he a member of any of the numerous gangs, which, with the encouragement of the prison officials, controlled the inmate population. These were rigid, highly stratified organizations, controlled by governing councils called krings. They engaged in ritual killings, beheadings, dismemberment, even cannibalism. They were hostile to nonmembers, whom they called mupatas, or sheep.

Once, a few days after Baumann had arrived at Pollsmoor, one of the gangs dispatched their most vicious lanie-a leader serving a long sentence, whom everyone knew to avoid-to threaten him in the exercise yard. The lanie was found brutally murdered-so horribly mangled, in fact, that the men who discovered him, all hardened men, were sickened. Several inmates were unlucky enough to witness the act, which was done quickly and efficiently. The most terrible thing about it was that even in the thick of the struggle, there was no visible change in Baumann’s glacial demeanor. Afterward, no one would ever admit having seen the killing. Baumann was treated with respect and left alone.

About Baumann, it was known only that he was serving a life sentence and that he had recently been reassigned from kitchen duty to the auto shop, where repair work was done on the prison officials’ cars. It was rumored that he had once been employed by the South African government, that he used to work for the state intelligence and secret service once called the Bureau for State Security, or BOSS, and now called the National Intelligence Service.

It was whispered that he had committed a long string of famous terrorist acts in South Africa and abroad-some for BOSS, some not. It was believed that he had been imprisoned for assassinating a member of the Mossad’s fearsome kidon unit, which was true, although that had merely been a pretext, for he had been ordered to do so. In truth, he was so good at what he did that he frightened his own employers, who much preferred to see him locked away forever.

A boer had once heard that within BOSS Baumann was known as the Prince of Darkness. Why, the warder could not say. Some speculated it was because of his serious mien; some believed it was because of his facility at killing, which had been so vividly demonstrated. There were plenty of theories, but no one knew for certain.

In the six years he had been imprisoned here, Baumann had come to know the place extremely well. He had become so accustomed to the smell of Germothol disinfectant that it had become a pleasant part of the ambience, like the salty sea air. He was no longer startled by the whoop of the “cat,” the siren that went off without warning, at odd moments, to summon guards to an incident-a fight, an escape attempt.

At half past nine in the morning, Baumann entered the auto shop and was greeted by the warder, Pieter Keevy. Baumann rather liked Keevy. He was basically a good sort, if a bit slow on the uptake.

The relationship between boer and bandiet was a strange one. Warders were famously cruel, to the point of sadism-yet at the same time, touchingly, they desperately wanted to be liked by the prisoners.

Baumann was aware of this vulnerability and took advantage of it whenever possible. He knew that Keevy was fascinated by Baumann, wanted to know about his life, where he came from. Baumann duly provided the guard with morsels from time to time-morsels that piqued Keevy’s curiosity without ever satisfying it. He liked Keevy because it was so easy to manipulate him.

“We’ve got a new one in for you boys today,” Keevy announced heartily, clapping Baumann on the shoulder. “Food-service lorry.”