The Viper's Nest Read online

  Amy took a deep breath. The idea sounded so Dan. She closed her eyes and thought about the past few days. About Alistair and the hunt. About Dan and his body travel.

  Lift the shades …

  The quicksand was fading away. Relief washed over her. And she began to cry. “I hate myself,” she said. “I hate what I’m seeing.”

  “Why?” Dan asked.

  Stop feeling relief! she scolded herself. Relief is weakness. Relief is compassion. Compassion is trust.

  Trust no one.

  “Why do you have such stupid ideas, Dan!” she blurted.

  Dan smiled. “You do feel happy, right? About Alistair?”

  “I shouldn’t!” Amy willed back the tears. “I can’t! He always escapes. Mom and Dad didn’t escape, but he does. It’s not fair. He deserves to die.”

  “Amy?” Dan said.

  “I don’t want to feel glad that we saved Alistair!” Amy said. “Because saving him is like betraying the memory of Mom and Dad.”

  Dan nodded. He fell silent for a long time and then finally said, “You can’t help it, Amy—being glad he’s alive. I think Mom and Dad would be proud of you. They valued life. It’s what made them different from some of those other Cahills. And Madrigals.”

  Amy thought for a moment. He was right. Being like a Madrigal was the worst possible fate she could imagine.

  Sometimes — just sometimes—Amy wanted to put her arm around her brother. But the last time she’d done that, he’d washed his shoulders off and written CP on his shirt for Cootie Protection. So she just smiled and asked, “How do you know, Dan? You were so young when they died. Do you really remember them?”

  “Not in my mind,” Dan replied, gazing at the passing scenery. “But everyplace else …”

  “Turn left, now …” said a soothing voice from the Yugo dashboard.

  “Thank you, Carlos,” Nellie replied with a grin. “I’m going to marry Carlos. I tell him what to do, and he just does it. No complaints.”

  Nellie’s new GPS device, which they had named Carlos, was leading them into the city of Johannesburg. In the near distance, a cluster of glass-and-steel skyscrapers sloped up gently toward a slim, graceful structure like a giant scepter.

  Amy’s face was buried in a book. She had been reading aloud from it, a fact that made the trip seem about fifteen hours long. “ ‘The N1 Western Bypass is part of a road system that rings the city, the busiest section of road in South Africa,’ ” Amy recited. “ ‘As you approach Constitution Hill, notice the Hillbrow Tower, one of South Africa’s tallest structures, resembling a more modest version of the Space Needle in Seattle.’”

  “Uh—Amy?” Dan said. “We’re here. We are in the traffic. We can see the tower.”

  Amy ignored him. “Let’s find the Jan Smuts exit.”

  “Sounds like one of Nellie’s boyfriends,” Dan said.

  Nellie leaned over and smacked him. “I’m loyal to Carlos. And he will find the exit for us.”

  “Smuts — pronounced Smoots — was an Afrikaner military leader and prime minister of South Africa,” Amy said. “He supported apartheid, the separation of races. But in 1948 he came out against it — and lost the election. Can you believe it? I mean, the Africans — the ones who were here first — were treated like that? And you could only be president if you agreed to it?”

  “They could have voted the bad guys out,” Dan said, “like we do in America. Well, sometimes.”

  “We’re not so squeaky clean,” Nellie said. “My dad— Pedro Gomez—was chased out of this town in the ’burbs? They hated Mexicans gathering on the street — but they were just waiting for farmers to hire them for daily work! My grandmother? She was going to settle in the South, until she saw this sign on a water fountain that said ‘Coloreds Only.’ She wasn’t sure if she was or wasn’t. But just the idea that she had to think of it was disgusting. Dude, why do you think there were marches and protests in the fifties and sixties?”

  Dan recalled all pictures in textbooks and on a million PBS specials Aunt Beatrice used to sleep through. “People were crazy back then,” he said.

  “Crazy is something you can’t help,” Amy said. “This was planned. South Africa had always separated races, even in colonial days. Tribal people couldn’t go into white cities after dark. They had to carry passes, or they were jailed. But apartheid didn’t even start, officially, till, like, the forties. You had to be labeled black, colored, white, Indian. ‘Colored’ meant you looked part white, part black. If you weren’t white you couldn’t vote. You had to live in segregated areas — like our Indian reservations but called Bantustans. You had your own schools, doctors, and stuff—totally inferior. The government made Bantustans separate countries, so they could control people with immigration laws. You had white bus stops and colored bus stops. You couldn’t marry out of your race.”

  Dan’s head was spinning. This somehow didn’t seem real. It didn’t match what he was seeing outside the car window. But when Amy was on a roll like this, she had the facts locked.

  Colored?

  “How could you tell if someone was, like, colored?” Dan asked. “What did that mean?”

  “They had tests,” Nellie said with a shrug. “Like, looking at your skin color with paint samples? I don’t know. Sometimes two people in the same family were called different races. So they had to move. Dude, people protested all the time. The Soweto student uprising in, like, the seventies? Kids were killed by police. Nelson Mandela? He was in jail for almost thirty years. He nearly died.”

  “Mandela’s like this big honcho,” Dan said. He could picture the guy on news reports, all smiley and kind-faced like your favorite uncle.

  “Now he is,” Amy said. “The government woke up. Foreigners stopped investing in South Africa. Protests were ruining the country. Apartheid ended, but not till 1994.”

  Dan looked out the window. He was feeling sick but not from the car. Different countries for different races … police killing kids … 1994? It didn’t seem real.

  He saw people of all colors heading out of buildings, leaving work. Some had heads down, some were on cell phones. If it weren’t for the weird languages, it could have been home.

  As the Yugo puffed up a hill, he saw a strange collection of buildings and a sign welcoming them to Constitution Hill. The building on the left was sleek and modern, with a glass tower rising out of the center. A wall near the entrance contained the words Constitutional Court in different colors and languages.

  Nellie parked, and she and Amy went straight to the court entrance, a massive carved wooden door. But Dan stood staring to the right, at another set of buildings, dirty and flecked with peeling paint. A decrepit lookout building sat above a thicket of razor wire, straddling two of the larger buildings. It was balanced precariously, as if a shove in either direction could send it tumbling.

  “Sorry, miss,” he overheard a guard saying to Amy, “Shaka Zulu died many decades before the prison was built. There is no connection to Shaka here. But of course you are welcome to come inside to see the museum.”

  “Come on,” Amy said, grabbing Dan’s arm.

  Dan fell in behind her and Nellie. “Great. A museum next to a prison in the wrong town. That’s a good start.”

  “Ssshhh,” Amy said. They stepped into a cavernous, light-drenched foyer with slanted columns and colorful mosaic walls. “There’s a library here. I saw signs.”

  “Whaaat?” Dan shot back. “The guy said prison, not library! Oh, I forgot. Same thing.”

  Amy took a left, then followed signs down a long hallway until they emerged into a towering room with a wide spiral staircase. “May I help you?” asked a woman with light brown skin and salt-and-pepper hair. She was wearing a simple string of white pearls that somehow seemed to pick up the tint of her deep brown eyes.

  Amy wondered if her skin shade would have been considered “black” or “colored” in apartheid South Africa and immediately felt embarrassed. “Hi I’m, um, Amy and th-th-this is my
b-b-brother, Dan, and N-Nellie,” she said.

  “We’re looking for, like, Shaka Zulu information?” Dan said. “Also ice cream. If you have it.”

  “Americans — how delightful.” The woman smiled and extended a hand. “I am Mrs. Winifred Thembeka, and I’m the librarian here. This is mainly a place for information about human rights. Alas, I’m afraid we don’t have much about Shaka, although they’re planning an exhibit for two years from now.”

  “Two years?” Dan said.

  Mrs. Thembeka gave a sympathetic nod. “Our main reading room is on the third floor, should you care to use it. Ice cream is sold in the café.”

  “Thank you.” Amy pulled Dan toward the stairs.

  The third floor contained an airy reading room leading to endless stacks of books. “I thought this was a center for human rights,” Dan said, shaking free of Amy’s grip. “Now what? We look up every book about Shaka and hope we find a clue?”

  “Have faith,” Amy said, sitting at a computer terminal and typing in Shaka’s name.

  Nellie sighed. “I hope you’re right, Amy. ‘Cause Little Mister Ben and Jerry’s here has a point. I mean, I love you and all, but I’m thinking that at this rate we’re going to end up living in this library.”

  Dan sat at another terminal, ready to start his own search. A glossy Constitution Hill pamphlet rested on the keyboard, and as he pushed it aside, he glanced at its title: “The Shameful History of Number Four.”

  Shameful History. That had some potential.

  He began reading:

  To understand the history of the South African people, their grit and defiance against oppression, we start at the Old Fort Prison Complex, also known as “Number Four.”

  Originally called Mentonville, it opened in 1893 on what was then called Hospital Hill. A fort was built around it several years later, after British uitlanders (outsiders) tried to overthrow the Boer government. At first, the prison housed only white prisoners. “Number Four” was built as a so-called “Native Prison” for blacks. Informers had their teeth yanked out. Some wore them around their necks. Built for 356 prisoners, it soon housed over 1100. Gangs of inmates often attacked each other. Flush toilets were not introduced until 1959. Striking mineworkers, victims of petty apartheid laws, “Pass Law” protesters, rebelling students of the 1976 Soweto uprising—all were kept in Number Four, as well as many heroes of the Congress Movement, including Nelson and Winnie Mandela, Albertina Sisulu, and Oliver R. Tambo.

  Dan stopped reading. This was how they treated people under apartheid. What a waste of human life at Number Four!

  Number Four.

  Dan’s mind flashed to the handwriting at the bottom of the Shaka card.

  BIMRSESOSEIM GEKK #4

  “Amy!” he blurted out. “Number Four—remember? It was written after the name we decoded? Number Four is also the name of the Old Prison!”

  Amy bolted over. “Constitution Hill, Number Four—that’s it, Dan!”

  Dan went on reading, this time aloud:

  “ ‘The notorious prison has had its share of historical figures: Mahatma Gandhi, for protesting the condition of Indians; Winston Churchill, held here while a war correspondent before being transferred to prison in Pretoria. Although Churchill wrote publicly about the Boer War in his books London to Ladysmith via Pretoria and Ian Hamilton’s March, a hidden trove of private correspondence about Number Four was found recently in Pretoria. Most of the papers were instantly stolen, but one of the only remaining documents was given to the Constitution Hill library as a bequest from the private collection of the late Mrs. Grace Cahill…. ’”

  Dan stopped reading. The silence on the third floor was total, as if even the air-conditioning ducts and computer electricity had shut down. “Grace …” he said.

  “Dan …” Amy said. “That second name? The other Gekk brother? Do you remember what it decoded to?”

  Dan remembered. “Church Hill …” he said. “Churchill!”

  “Typo,” Nellie said. “Should be two Hs, not three.”

  “Churchill was a Cahill,” Amy said. “A Lucian.”

  “And the document was from Pretoria — as in ‘Marching to Pretoria,’ ” Dan said. “The song Irina quoted? It pointed to where the document was. But Grace got there first!”

  Dan typed in the name WINSTON CHURCHILL. A list of documents appeared, each with a line of identifying text. Dan looked for the one that said “gift of Mrs. G. Cahill” and pressed a button marked ACCESS.

  The screen instantly turned blue:

  PRIVATE HOLDING

  NOT FOR PUBLIC VIEWING

  Dan’s patented I’m just a cute, curious kid expression always got him results. “Can we just see that Churchill document?” he asked Mrs. Thembeka, with Oscar-winning innocence. “It would be, like, so cool to touch something that Churchill personally wrote.”

  He turned to Amy for support, but she was barely paying attention. Her nose was in a biography of Winston Churchill that she had found.

  Mrs. Thembeka’s phone started beeping, and she turned to pick it up. “I’m dreadfully sorry, dear, but our private holdings have very strict access. Excuse me.”

  “Nice try,” Nellie muttered.

  Dan’s eyes wandered over to the file cabinets in the library office directly behind Mrs. Thembeka. The papers had to be in there. He looked around frantically for anything that he could use to help distract the librarian. But his eyes locked on a bronze plaque hanging directly over the file cabinet:

  The Constitution Hill Library

  Is Grateful for the Support

  Of Our Generous Patrons to the

  Literacy Campaign

  ***

  Ruth Aluwani

  Oliver Bheka

  Piet Broeksma

  Grace Cahill

  “Amy, look!” Dan blurted out. “Grace! She’s all over this place.”

  Mrs. Thembeka glanced up at Dan. She murmured something into the phone, hung up abruptly, and came out from behind her desk. “Did you know Grace Cahill?” she said. As she looked from Dan to Amy to Nellie and back, her eyes misted. “Oh, my goodness, I should have known. You look just like her.”

  “I do?” Dan said. He adored his grandmother, but she did have silver hair and wrinkles.

  “The eyes are the same. And you …” Mrs. Thembeka took Amy’s hand. “You must be the beloved granddaughter of whom she so often spoke. Please, sit.” She gestured toward a chair and a small sofa and went to shut the office door. “I was so sorry to hear of your grandmother’s passing. We were good friends, you know. How did you find this place? Was it Robert?”

  Dan looked at Amy. “Uh, we don’t know any Robert.”

  Mrs. Thembeka reached inside her desk, pulled out a stack of old photos, and held one toward them. “You see? This was, oh, ten years ago.”

  In the photo, Mrs. Thembeka and Grace stood arm in arm under a theater marquee, on which could only be seen the words by Athol Fugard. Grace’s skin was quite tan. In fact, her skin color was nearly identical to Mrs. Thembeka’s. “You look like sisters,” Amy said.

  Mrs. Thembeka laughed. “Perhaps we were. In our souls we were very much the same.”

  Dan flipped the photo and saw a faded inscription:

  He held it toward Amy, who looked as if she were about to cry. “Lemur …” she said. “That must be The Flying Lemur, Grace’s private plane.”

  “We’d had a full day of flying that afternoon — oh, did she love that airplane! Swaziland, Banhine National Park in Mozambique, refueling …”

  “What’s ‘Aloes’?” Dan said.

  Mrs. Thembeka smiled. “A reference to the play we saw, A Lesson from Aloes. The aloe plant thrives under the worst imaginable deprivation—harsh sun, no water for months. It is a symbol of the South African people, surviving despite apartheid. Some aloe species have quite remarkable healing properties. Grace loved this play.”

  “How did you know her?” Amy said.

  “She was on the library board
committee that interviewed me,” Mrs. Thembeka said softly. “They were about to hire a more seasoned administrator, but Grace insisted on someone passionate about human rights. I’d been involved in the struggle since my cousin Vuyo’s … experience. He was a student in Soweto….”

  Was.

  Mrs. Thembeka’s voice trailed off, and Dan recalled what Nellie had said about the Soweto uprising.

  Kids were killed by police.

  He had to turn away.

  “Can I look through these?” Amy asked, gazing at the pile of photos.

  “Of course, dear.” As Amy eagerly took up the photos, Mrs. Thembeka unlocked another desk drawer. “A few months ago, Grace left me a phone message. She sounded weak, but I had no idea she was dying. She alerted me about the Churchill document. She said I was to list it in the catalogue but limit it strictly to scholars and her direct descendants. With positive identification.” Mrs. Thembeka shrugged, looking a little embarrassed. “It was an odd request, something we weren’t used to — frankly, I don’t imagine any library would be. But she was insistent. Because she had done so much for us, the board approved. So, although I hate to ask, I will need to see proof….”

  “I think I have my school ID.” Dan fumbled in his pocket. He pulled out a crumpled Mars Bar wrapper, some loose string, a cherry Starburst, several unidentified pieces of clear plastic, and his dad’s Australian passport. He panicked for a moment, until he spotted a corner of his school ID jutting out from it.

  He opened the passport and laid it flat. His ID was sticking to an inner page. He peeled it off to reveal his dad’s passport photo and fake name, Roger Nudelman. “Here you go!” Dan said, holding out the ID.

  But Mrs. Thembeka was riveted on the photo, her eyes widening. “Nudelman …?” she said. “What on earth are you doing with Nudelman’s passport?”

  “Oh,” Dan said. “That’s actually not —”

  Amy stomped on his foot under the desk. Dan was about to whap her upside the head, but he caught her glance and instantly read what was behind her eyes. She obviously doesn’t know Dad, and there must be a good reason for that, they were saying.