Barking At 206

By Wolf Sherman

Foreword:

Firstly to Alicia. Thank you for your valuable time.
To Mike, Sean, and Francesco, from the then OGME Branch, this is for you. RIP. In your honour as we agreed if ever there was the reason to talk of these things, and to get it off our chests, that we'll be discreet, like gentlemen. We also agreed that there would be rules to how the truth shall be flavoured if ever someone woke up one morning after a restless night and tell what had happened. That for fear of judgement it wouldn't be believed without some measure of research to ensure that what lurks behind the political curtain remains obscure since it's not necessarily evil. But it is indeed of a necessary nature. I do hope with fitting sincerity that you do approve of your new names. Alicia phrased it so wonderfully that I suggested she takes up writing poetry. She said, in the story, we'd all contradict each other like we used to and see who could lie the most under a polygraph. Tell me that wasn't fun. That our versions would lie down like lovers who had an argument — close to the truth, but not hug it and have a romance with the truth. I figure your rank must be quite irrelevant where you are now; apparently, that's how it works when your departure is of a permanent nature. You'll be glad to know I take life in no way seriously. As we agreed we would — after — when we decided we were done with the system — or the system, with us. "After" could easily be used in the stead of a lengthy sentence. "After" IS, after all, a sentence. Nothing carries with it the enormous unbearable weight of finality, like "After". Maybe death does. By the way, I hope you're in heaven. I'd hate to think that they lied to us about heaven too... We were lied to about everything else, it now seems so many years — after.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wolf Sherman
• Release date: Jul 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463108024

Wolf Sherman

Biography - Wolf ShermanWolf was born in 1970, grew up in Pretoria and after school joined the South African Police in 1988. During 1993 he was transferred to Johannesburg. During his colourfully interesting police career he was attached to several specialist divisions that include the anti-vehicle theft unit, organised-crime-and-political-investigations unit, and the East-Rand Murder & Robbery unit. After his police career he successfully applied his experience in the corporate financial world as insurance investigator and financial planner.Wolf is 48-years of age, have been blessed with three daughters, and is an avid blood and blood platelet donor. He fills his time by weaving his unusual life experience and keen interest in religion, metaphysics, war and political research and that of his love for food and classical music - into his poetry, fictional short stories, and novels.“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.” - George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons.I'm always curious to listen when people talk about which book - ever - they'd first read. For me it was “The Man Called Noon” that was published in 1970. I suppose that it goes without saying the 1973 film directed by Peter Collinson - of the same name - as the 1970 Louis L'Amour novel, was quite a hit in the day.I was always in love with the books in which storytellers extended an invitation right from the word go, and pulled me in into a different world. The next early love for me growing up were bookshops and libraries. But I'd consider libraries had the first place. My love for both novels and short stories grew over the years, but somehow short stories found me more often. In part, I think because one can sponge it up in a single sitting, and move on to the next world, so to speak.On the topic of short stories, the storytellers in this instance tell how they see it - but being forced far quicker to relay that. I have no doubt that any short story can be stretched out and pinned down to become a novel - if one wanted to. Obviously there is no set length that a short story has to subscribe to, but I'd imagine anything from five-thousand to twenty-five-or-so-thousand words is adequate to save someone, murder a few people, get some revenge, use most of the rope in your boot, discard the spade when you're done, and go in hiding till the whole thing blows over. Of course, if there's a body to begin with... Which really stems from poor planning - I have always thought - in a story. Naturally. Of course, we also need to fall in love at some point and give our whole heart to someone special. It makes for a more balanced killer. In a story. Naturally.Look me up on:Pinterest @ Wolf Sherman BooksInstagram: @Wolf_ShermanTwitter: @WolfSherman2

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Barking At 206

Copyright © All rights reserved - Wolf Sherman. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [e-mail]

Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. Although this is a fictional work, some locations, organisations and events are factual. The characters and times in the storyline are fictional - therefore, all resemblances to actual people present or past are purely coincidental.

Historical Factsheet

Fact: On 28 May 2004, a man called Dormehl F. Vosloo died in his Cape home. He was 87 at the time and died in his sleep — peacefully they say. The phrase RAU TEM was mentioned in a letter his wife had found in their safe. The letter contained the wishes of the deceased and an address where two objects were buried, if the man who it was addressed to, wanted to do something about the contents of this letter. One wonders what others would have done with the secrets of South Africa. I'm not talking about the odd so-called state secrets like the designs of streamline projectiles as base-bleeding ammunition for the G5, or the marvellous electronics on board the Rooivalk battleship helicopter. Look, let's not fool ourselves, if even a half-good Israeli female Mossad agent or a CIA spy hadn't stolen them from South Africa, they would have stolen these elsewhere and sold them to Armscor and made these miracles of war possible for South Africa — with or without sanctions over apartheid.

Fact: In the future, some of these things that had been brewing in the vast and obscure underbelly of the Internet, will turn up in the well-lit public domain; some already has. CICADA might have had something to with that, or Wikileaks, Or not. What I'm referring to are the things that some long dead; but not forgotten members of the then OGME East-Rand, wanted to tell. The chameleons who managed to shape-shift - if you want, just once too many and found that it was better to go talk to God than putting up a fight and report back. Their persistent whispers were really the basis for this work. Whispers of sufficiently tortured souls that lurk in the shadows where even spies would call in sick if they were tasked to go fetch a thing or person. Or hide a thing or person.

Fact: Doctor Mike Smit was the representative at the International Monetary Fund, and employed at the South African Reserve Bank in the days of Owen Horwood as finance minister. It would come to light later (after his November 1977 murder) — that by 1984 Anglo-America; De Beers, had smuggled out at least ten-billion Rand out of South Africa with the assistance of Gerrard De Kock who was the president of the South African Reserve Bank, and the then minister of finances Owen Horwood. The funds were moved over to the Bermuda Islands. Smit's visit to the Union Bank of Switzerland's head office in Zurich, to ask for access on behalf of the South African government, to the account holders' details involved in this, it's believed, sealed his fate — and sadly that of his wife. RAU TEM, was painted in large red letters on the walls and cupboards of the kitchen of the couple who was stabbed repeatedly and shot. Not the cleanest of kills.

Fact: You'd be told by the media that had been silenced for many decades that the meaning of the words RAU TEM had never been uncovered.

Fact: The mysterious words RAU TEM, which were spray-painted in red on the walls and kitchen cupboards at the scene of the Smit murders, are believed to have been decoded, and the media silenced on this. The recent televised interview during November 2019 with the daughter of the murdered couple, said exactly nothing of what went on behind the scenes. One of the stories that had surfaced not long ago was that RAU TEM is an Afrikaans acronym for Randse Afrikaanse Universiteit – Tegnies En Moord (Rand Afrikaans University — Technical And Murder). It was a name given to a specialist sub-unit of the Bureau of State Security (B.O.S.S.), an intelligence agency created in 1969 by Hendrik van den Bergh (aka, The Tall Assassin). Hendrik van den Bergh, the creator of the term RAU TEM, was the only person who knew the meaning of the name and also the location of the main base of his clandestine unit, for some time. It was situated on an island in the middle of the Vaal Dam on a piece of ground owned by the old Rand Afrikaans University (now known as the University of Johannesburg). If you're a curious kind of soul, it's said that the coordinates of this location are 26' 51' 53.83 S and 28' 09' 44'.58 E. No one knows what happened to the two suitcases that were buried on this island. No one knows what level of truth can be stuck to the story that the person who the death wish was addressed to, had re-buried it again either. The suitcases were supposed to contain files on a number of notorious events:

Files on the Smit murders,

The assassination of H.F. Verwoerd,

The CIA link to the Broederbond,

A cassette recording of a meeting between then P.W. Botha and Nelson Mandela,

A file called, The Mechanic,

One of the 1st April 1924 — Adolf Hitler — The Beer hall Putch, and the 20 July 1944 unsuccessful assassination on Adolf Hitler,

One on the 22nd November 1963 assassination of JFK,

And one on the presumed suicide of David Pratt. Many people have forgotten about him. David Beresford Pratt (1 October 1908 – 1 October 1961) was a South African businessman who shot South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd in 1960. Verwoerd survived but was killed six years later by Dimitri Tsafendas. For some background, on 9 April 1960, Pratt shot South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd twice, at point-blank range, with a .22 pistol. Verwoerd, who had been opening the Union Exposition in Milner Park, Johannesburg, was rushed to the hospital, and within two months had made a complete recovery. Pratt was arrested at the scene and taken to the Marshall Square police station, and then to the Forensic Medical Laboratory. He appeared for a preliminary hearing in the Johannesburg Magistrates' Court on 20 and 21 July 1960, once it was clear that the Verwoerd's injuries were not fatal. Pratt claimed he had been shooting 'the epitome of apartheid'. The court accepted the medical reports submitted to it by five different psychiatrists, all of which confirmed that Pratt lacked legal capacity and could not be held criminally liable for having shot the prime minister. On 26 September 1960, he was committed to a mental hospital. On 1 October 1961, he committed suicide. Of course, what made this event quite different from other suicides, was the manner it had been done in. In the first place, had it actually been a suicide, his head had to be fitted between two-bed sheets. He then had to repetitively have done somersaults on his bed that he finally strangled himself with the twisted sheets. At the time the state mortuary, during his autopsy, found bruises under his arms that weren't immediately visible when he was found dead. Rumours were that the duplicate key to the room he was kept in, was stolen.

Synopsis

It was Professor Michael Bar-Zohar, member of Knesset, who said about Mossad — The dirtiest actions should be carried out by the most honest men. To protect civilians, the state needs sometimes to do things that are contrary to democratic behaviour.

Foreword

Firstly to Alicia. Thank you for your valuable time.

To Mike, Sean, and Francesco, from the then OGME Branch, this is for you. RIP. In your honour as we agreed if ever there was the reason to talk of these things, and to get it off our chests, that we'll be discreet, like gentlemen. We also agreed that there would be rules to how the truth shall be flavoured if ever someone woke up one morning after a restless night and tell what had happened. That for fear of judgement it wouldn't be believed without some measure of research to ensure that what lurks behind the political curtain remains obscure since it's not necessarily evil. But it is indeed of a necessary nature. I do hope with fitting sincerity that you do approve of your new names. Alicia phrased it so wonderfully that I suggested she takes up writing poetry. She said, in the story, we'd all contradict each other like we used to and see who could lie the most under a polygraph. Tell me that wasn't fun. That our versions would lie down like lovers who had an argument — close to the truth, but not hug it and have a romance with the truth. I figure your rank must be quite irrelevant where you are now; apparently, that's how it works when your departure is of a permanent nature. You'll be glad to know I take life in no way seriously. As we agreed we would — after — when we decided we were done with the system — or the system, with us. After could easily be used in the stead of a lengthy sentence. After IS, after all, a sentence. Nothing carries with it the enormous unbearable weight of finality, like After. Maybe death does. By the way, I hope you're in heaven. I'd hate to think that they lied to us about heaven too... We were lied to about everything else, it now seems so many years — after.

Background

About Barking At 206. If the reader knows a little about the human anatomy - that's to say - if it had become necessary for you to take a man apart at some point with a measure of haste and without being a messy kind of employee, then 206 would make a lot of sense.

Or, it could be an address in your voter-based world - where you have no choice but to hang on to your truth that your voice - even as a collective - can bring about the change that you have over time carefully conditioned and then told - again - is needed.

Maybe you have driven past this address on occasion and would never have given it a second thought. An unassuming place where now a high rise towers over the old world as if keeping watch, for in case.

Barking — Alicia decided before finishing reading it, could just as well be about people in the shadows who'd been barking orders over many many decades, and frankly, still do. Or maybe it's just a chained-up dog that barked and barked all night long at the sound of shovels, till someone restless decided to ask it to please just stop.

I traced her in the meantime. Alicia I mean.

So here it is. Barking At 206 (Revamped)

If you're looking for a good detective story, this, I'm afraid to disappoint you — is not it. It is however about detectives and a story never told, and as twisted as they come. Maybe I should have told you so at the outset... But if you're still keen, this is how it all happened.

Prologue

"Hello! Is that the police? The dogs next door at 206 are barking incessantly — it's impossible to fall asleep. The neighbour normally keeps them