Atom Bomb Angel

18

Arthur wasn’t wrong about the warm weather; I could feel it through the walls of the Trident as we taxied along the runway at Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. With the country sandwiched between two deserts and straddling the Tropic of Capricorn, it wasn’t surprising that it was hot.

Namibia, or South West Africa, is approximately the size of England and France combined, and has a population of between 900,000 and 1,500,000 depending on whom you talk to. It is bounded, on the north, east and south by Angola, Zambia, Botswana and South Africa, and on the west by eight hundred miles of shipwrecks, shifting sands and buried diamonds.

Like a great many other countries in the world, it had got along quite happily since time began without the assistance of the white man. When white men finally got there, in the late nineteenth century, they consisted not of wise people bearing gifts of frankincense and myrrh but of Trek-Boers who were tired, hot and extremely smelly. In 1885, by the Treaty of Berlin, Germany annexed South West Africa, and treated it to its first Governor, one Heinrich Göring. During the next twenty-five years, Göring proceeded to butcher seventy-five per cent of the black population, and produced a son, Hermann, who inherited his talent for genocide, and was given plenty of opportunity to exercise this talent a few decades later in the guise of Air Minister to Hitler.

In 1915, South Africa took over control of the country from Germany, and at the end of the First World War, South West Africa was formally declared a protectorate of South Africa, a state of affairs that a substantial percentage of the population has been attempting to change ever since.

I mulled over the lengthy briefing I had been given on the country by Roger Brandywine, the Foreign Office resident expert on South West African affairs, as I stepped out to the top of the gangway steps. In the blinding sunlight it was hard to see anything for a few moments, and I trod on the heel of a large man in front of me, who wore long khakicoloured trousers, a loose shirt with an orange goldfish pattern, and a straw pork pie hat on top of a very large head with a fat white face; he swivelled round, and in a strong German accent laced with an even stronger stench of garlic, spat out, ‘Votch your step, you fucking man,’ then proceeded to miss his own and fell headlong the entire length of the gangway. I didn’t see any great banners saying Welcome to Namibia. Reckoned I didn’t need to.

It was unlikely that anyone was keeping watch on Wind-heok Airport, waiting for me to turn up, and even more unlikely still that, if they had been, they would have recognized me when I did. I handed a German passport to the white immigration officer and he studied it closely for some moments. The photograph he looked at showed a man with a Zapato moustache, thick tortoiseshell glasses and hair lacquered down and brushed straight back. When he looked up at me, he saw exactly the same man. The name on the passport was Josef Shwartzenegger, and under the heading for occupation it said: Geologist. He closed the passport, handed it back to me and nodded. Geologists were a dime a dozen through this airport.

I took a cab the thirty-eight kilometres up into the centre of Windhoek, and checked into the Kalahari Sands Hotel in Kaiser Strasse. I put my bags in my room, and went out of the hotel into the street in search of a public call box. There was a possibility that the hotel’s phones were bugged by the South African secret police, BOSS, and as I was going to have to use my real name to the person I was going to call, in spite of having checked into the country and into the hotel under the name of Shwartzenegger, I didn’t want to arouse anyone’s suspicions.

When the telephone rang at the Westondam Corporation’s Dambe Mine, about fifty miles north-west of Windhoek, it was answered immediately. The Dambe Mine was one of Westondam’s many worldwide interests. The chairman and chief executive of Westondam was one Sir Donald Loewe-Congleton, better known to readers of Private Eye as King Kongaroo, and better known to me as father of Gelignite.

The girl on the switchboard put me through to the foreman-manager right away.

‘Smed here,’ said a curt, thick South African accent.

‘Pieter Smed?’

‘Yes?’

‘My name is Flynn — I’m a friend of Sir Donald—’

‘Welcome to South West Africa — you have a good journey?’ His tone had changed from the curt, defensive, to the welcoming.

‘Thank you.’

‘Sir Donald telexed that you would be coming.’

‘Grand. When could we meet?’

‘I am at your disposal. I could come into town — or I could send a car for you to bring you out here to see the mine?’

‘I’d like to see the mine.’

‘I am sure you want to rest this afternoon after your journey. I’ll send a car for you at nine o’clock tomorrow — it’s only half an hour’s drive out here.’

‘Fine.’

‘Where are you staying?’

‘The Kalahari Sands. Describe the car and I’ll be waiting outside.’

‘It’ll be a white Peugeot 505.’

‘I look forward to meeting you tomorrow morning.’

‘Me too, Mr Flynn. Goodbye.’

The car arrived ten minutes early, and luckily I was already outside waiting; it could have been embarrassing if they had paged me. The car was driven by a black in a white, open shirt and white shorts, and either he wasn’t much of a conversationalist or he didn’t like white people, or, most probably, both. He also appeared to be under the impression that the maximum speed in each gear was the speed one had to reach before charging up, and I wondered, as the engine howled flat out — the worst thing for it in this searing heat — how many gearboxes and engines he got through in a year. As we left the main road and started to climb what was little more than a pot-holed mountain cart-track, with the speedometer gyrating between seventy and ninety, I wondered also how many cars and passengers he got through in a year.

The scenery that jerked up and down outside the Peugeot’s windows was dramatic; it was rocky terrain, with low hills, steep cliffs, massive boulders, and little shrubbery. We passed three wrecked cars in as many kilometres. I wondered why he didn’t take the hint, and decided it was because they were all his.

He swept right across the road, taking a racing driver’s line into a blind corner, and I gritted my teeth so tightly I thought my gums were going to collapse. ‘Do you get much traffic on these roads?’ I shouted, in the hope that getting him to talk might slow him down.

‘No, you don’t,’ was the reply he shouted, and the next moment he was fighting for dear life with the steering wheel, brakes and gear-lever, as he struggled to fit the car into a gap between the rock side of the road and an articulated fuel-tanker that was also playing boy-racer through the corner in the oncoming direction. There was a bang, followed by the sound of rock ripping open metal as the near-side of the car rubbed itself against a piece of protruding cliff-face, but the driver didn’t even bother to slow down.

It was to my great relief that we finally rounded a corner and could see a large valley a short way to the right, with buildings and machinery. ‘Dambe Mine,’ said the driver, sweeping off the road and stopping what remained of the Peugeot at a perimeter gate. Two men in white uniforms, with white blancoed webbing, and machine-guns hanging from their shoulders, looked in through the car windows and then waved us on. Just beyond the guards was a huge notice-board, at the top of which was the round, three-bladed, black-and-yellow, international radiation warning symbol, and underneath the words in red: Danger. Radioactive materials mined here. No unauthorized persons permitted. Protective clothing must be worn at all times in controlled areas. The message was repeated underneath in Afrikaans and in German.

We drove over to a large prefabricated but permanent-looking two-storey building, and the driver leaned back to me. ‘You go through there.’ He pointed to a doorway.

I got out, very relieved to be standing once again on terra firma, and looked around for a moment. We were in a huge bowl that appeared to have been hewn out of the rock. Apart from the fact there was no music and no jolly lights, the place had the atmosphere of a fairground. It was a massive complex of pipes, cranes, wires, overhead conveyors, pylons, vehicles and buildings, and the noise was deafening. I went in through the doorway, and gave my name. A few minutes later a blond-haired man with a thin, wrinkled face and clear blue eyes strode in. He was very tall, standing a good six inches above me, and he stretched out a hand the size of a boxing glove. I took a good look at my own hand, in case it was the last time I ever saw it, and offered it up like a sacrificial lamb. As he crushed it, I attempted to crush his back, but there was nothing to grip on at all; it was like trying to crush a block of polished granite.

‘Nice to meet you, Mr Flynn. You had a good drive out here?’

‘I got here in one piece — but I’m not quite sure how.’

‘Niggers can’t fucking drive,’ he said. ‘Lost three people this year on that road, but the management won’t accept what I tell them. Come on up to my office. We’ll get white drivers one day — but only when they make them pay nigger drivers the same.’ He grinned. ‘You got many niggers in England?’

‘One or two,’ I said, following him up the stairs to a small office with a large fan.

‘You’re lucky; they’re all over the fucking place out here.’ He pointed me into a chair, and sat down himself.

‘I guess it was their land once.’

‘And America belonged to the Indians. So what are they going to do — kick everyone out of New York, paint the Empire State Building up like a fucking totem pole, and fill the place with Indians? Everyone wants to go back, no one wants to go fucking forwards. Let the whites bust their guts to develop this country, get it all going well, then give it back to the fucking niggers. Smoke?’

‘Thanks.’

He handed me a Chesterfield, shoved one in his mouth and produced a flame from somewhere within his hand. ‘So your company is interested in buying some mining rights out here?’

‘Well, this is a very exploratory visit.’

‘Take my advice and go someplace else. Going to be a lot of problems here soon, lots of fucking problems.’

If there were many more like him around, I wasn’t surprised. Although, judging from what was reported in the press from time to time about the strong-arm business tactics of Sir Donald Loewe-Congleton’s empire, this particular example was probably one of the more kind-hearted employees.

‘What problems do you get at the moment?’

‘All sorts of problems, Rates of Pay in the mines; conditions in the mines; land ownership. There’s a lot of change in the wind, and it’s not blowing any good for the white man.’

‘What exactly do you mean by conditions in the mines?’

‘Health and safety; hours of work; length of years a man is permitted to work; monitoring it all, checking it all — we got ten miles of files out the back, it’s a pain in the ass and it costs a lot of money.’

‘Do you get many health problems?’

Smed looked at me slightly curiously. ‘Sure you do. We don’t get so much now they’re wearing the masks and we’re monitoring the air-dust levels — but then we don’t get so much work done, either. We even have a full-time doctor now.’

‘What kind of health problems do you get?’

‘The normal ones for uranium miners — respiratory, mainly.’

‘Lung cancer?’

‘Pretty high rate in the past; it should come down now.’

‘Have SWAPO put much pressure on you?’

‘Not directly, but indirectly they have, through the bloody South African government — they’re scared of the rest of the world. They’ve got the West telling them to pull out of here; the Russians are right behind SWAPO — they’re treading very carefully. So now we have to look after our niggers and keep them fat and well.’ Smed spat on the floor. ‘I’m paid to run this mine at a profit for Westondam — if I don’t, I’m out on my ass, and I got four kids at school. Every day that I work here, I’m meant to lead them to the bathroom and wipe their asses; but I don’t. Because I’m not putting my neck on the block for any fucking niggers.’

I nodded, and stubbed out my cigarette. ‘Did you ever have anyone by the name of Tsenong working for you?’

‘Tsenong? Down on the face?’

‘I don’t know; he died in August.’

‘Daniel Tsenong?’

I nodded.

‘I remember the name all right. His son caused us one hell of a lot of problems. Came sniffing round here — we had to throw him out. Said we’d been covering up his father’s medical records — he put the chief medical officer from Windhoek onto us.’

‘What was his son’s name?’

‘Ben.’

‘Can you tell me a bit more about his father?’

‘I’ll get his file — I still have it.’ Smed went to a filing cabinet and pulled out a drawer, then rummaged through several files. He pulled one out and opened it up. ‘Not much, I’m afraid. He joined us thirty-three years ago: started at twelve; lived with his family in a shanty village about twenty miles west of here. Lot of our workers come from there and a few other villages in the same region; we bus them in each day. Got a wife, and two sons. Left us in May — or rather, we got rid of him. He couldn’t get through a day’s work; he had lung cancer.’

‘Contracted as a result of working in the mine?’

‘Probably.’

‘What about his son, Ben — have you got any more information on him?’

‘May I ask what your interest in him is?’

‘He’s just applied to us for a job.’

‘To you?’

‘My company advertised for an expert on South West Africa to advise us on mineral prospects. He was one of the applicants for the job,’ I said.

‘His son?’

‘He’s in his third year at Oxford University, studying atomic energy.’

‘That’s right. I knew he was at university in England. You want to be careful — smart niggers are dangerous niggers.’

I nodded. ‘That’s one of the reasons for my visit. We are thinking of hiring him — he’s a bright youngster — but we suspect he might have other motives.’

Smed raised an eyebrow. He went back over to the filing cabinet, and pulled out a file that was an inch and a half thick. ‘I suggest you take a read through this, Mr Flynn: it’s a psychologist’s report. I’ve got a couple of jobs I must go and do, which will take me about half an hour. We have to watch our backs the whole time in this country; we watch anyone we think is dangerous, or could one day become dangerous, very closely. We employ a team of psychologists, and their job is to alert us to any warning signs they see. Would you like some tea or coffee — or a drink?’

‘Coffee, please.’

‘I’ll have it sent up. Have a good read.’ Smed went out and I opened the file; it was not a cheerful read.

Ben Tsenong had been lucky enough to win one of only three science scholarships a year awarded to the whole of Namibia. After two years away at college, he had returned home for the summer holidays before commencing his third year. He had found his father very ill and his mother demented with worry. He then discovered Westondam’s doctor had lied to his father about his illness; he’d told him he had bronchitis. Not having sufficient money to go to a doctor on his own account, Ben’s father had accepted the Westondam doctor’s diagnosis. Ben paid for a specialist, and found out the truth. If there had been a chance of curing his father when the disease was first discovered, there certainly wasn’t now.

Ben Tsenong was eaten up with hatred — hatred against Westondam Mining Corporation, against the South African government, against Germany for beginning it all with their colonization. But the strongest hatred he had was for the country that he now knew best of all: England.

He hated England firstly for the way it took over where Germany left off. England could have done something to improve life for the Namibians, but instead did nothing. He hated England because he believed that it was England that was responsible for everything bad about South Africa and the way it ruled. He hated the fat cats of England who licked the cream its colonialism had raked off the world. He hated the fat people of England in their Jaguar cars most of all, but he hated them almost as much in their Fords or their Vauxhalls or in their Minis, or their imported Renaults or BMWs or Mercedes, or any of their cars.

Ben Tsenong was a scientist, and he understood science. He did not understand the world, and most of what he knew of the world, he hated. He hated all the countries that used nuclear energy; he hated the people in those countries for the lights they left on, for their mindless television programmes, for their Space Invader machines, for their ice-crushing machines, for their neon lights and moving staircases and sunray lamps, for their electric toothbrushes, and toy train sets, for everything that was useless and meaningless and guzzled the energy that had made nuclear power at all necessary; and made it necessary for his father to spend his life down in that mine, breathing in those particles of dust that had radon atoms clinging to them, which had gone down into his lungs, and sat there, and set to work, beaming out destruction, killing good cells and making bad cells, until the bad cells began to multiply on their own, without any assistance, and dreadfully, painfully, started to kill the life that was his father, and destroy forever the will to live that was his mother.

Namibia had no nuclear power stations. The uranium that was mined here went mostly to Europe and North America. His father had never switched on a light that was fuelled by the uranium he had dug from the ground.

Smed came back in. ‘How’s it going?’

‘I can see what you mean,’ I said.

Smed offered me another cigarette; I declined. He lit one for himself.

‘Does the name Lukas Ogomo ring a bell?’

Smed’s eyes opened wide, and he nodded. ‘A very bad bell.’

‘Why?’

‘If he had his way, he would close down all uranium mines in the country, and if independence comes, he may well get his way. He’s totally committed to it, and although generally speaking he’s only a small noise in SWAPO, on uranium he is their leading spokesman. He’s friendly with Tsenong’s son too — but I don’t know how they know each other.’

‘Where is he based?’

‘Windhoek. Operates from SWAPO’s headquarters there. You thinking of employing him too?’

‘No, but I’d like to have a chat with him.’

‘I don’t think you’ll get very far.’

‘How about if I went to see Felix Wajara?’

Smed grinned broadly. ‘He eats white men for breakfast. You wouldn’t get an audience; you’d be wasting your time. If you want to talk to anyone, Ogomo is your best bet — it’s a slim bet, but at least he would be approachable. But be careful what you say.’

‘I’ll try.’

Smed looked at his watch. ‘Do you want to see around the mine before lunch? Or shall we just have a large drink here?’

‘Let’s just have a large drink here,’ I said.

‘Quite right,’ agreed Smed. ‘Anything that’s above ground you can see from here anyway. Below ground, there’s nothing but niggers, darkness and dust.’

I thought I might be in luck having a different driver take me back to Windhoek, but I wasn’t. He was a different driver, but there was no difference in the way he drove.

Shortly after we hit the main road, we passed a pull-in bar called the Beerstop, and I made a mental note of it.

We made it to Windhoek without being wiped out, and I thanked the driver out aloud, and God under my breath, and got out. It was three o’clock, and I had some business to do. I went first to hire a car; a slightly dented, but fairly recent model Datsun was all Avis had, and it suited me fine. I next went to a shop-fitters, and bought a male shop-window dummy, which I put in the boot of the car. From there I went to a hardware store, and bought a ball of twine, a packet of absorbent cloths and some long nails. Then I went to a chemist and bought a pack of disposable hypodermic syringes and some Elastoplast. Then I went to the public library, and asked to see some articles on Ogomo; never having seen him before, I wanted to look at some photographs of him so I would know what he looked like.

He was short, and quite fat, with goldfish eyes, a dimple in each cheek, and an inane smile. My first impression of the photographs were that they had been taken while he was stoned out of his mind. It was the same for everyone who saw him for the first time — everyone, that is, who didn’t know that the dimple on the left cheek had been caused by a 2mm soft-nose bullet entering his mouth, and the dimple on the right cheek by the same 2mm soft-nose bullet leaving his mouth, courtesy the anonymous sniper, for whom no one had claimed responsibility, who had failed to test his new image-intensifier telescopic sight before firing, a test which would have revealed to him that, at a range of two hundred and fifty yards, the rifle was firing four inches too low.

The bullet had severed an important muscle in each cheek, the result of which being that Ogomo was left with a permanent grin on his face.

At a quarter to five I went to a call box and dialled the number of the SWAPO headquarters in Windhoek. A girl answered.

‘May I speak to Lukas Ogomo — it is very urgent.’

‘Hold a minute, please.’

I breathed a sigh of relief — at least she hadn’t said he was out, or, worse still, abroad. Another woman’s voice came on the phone.

‘Who are you please?’

If they had gained one thing from one hundred years of white domination, it was the white man’s art of vetting unwanted telephone callers. ‘A friend of Ben Tsenong — from England.’

A surprisingly high-pitched man’s voice came through the receiver. ‘Ogomo speaking. Who are you, please?’

‘A friend of Ben Tsenong — from England.’

‘What do you want?’ He sounded tense.

‘I have a message from Ben. I must speak to you in private. I’m in danger, and it’s very urgent.’

‘Do you want to come here?’

‘No good.’

‘You tell me where?’

‘Have you a car?’

‘Of course.’

‘Take the Okandja Road, and take the turning for Otjiwarongo. Go on for about three miles and you pass a bar on the right-hand side of the road — it’s called the Beerstop. About four hundred yards further on, there’s a turning to the right marked with a small post which says Otjosundu. You take that turning. Immediately on the left is a piece of flat land. You’ll see a yellow Datsun parked there. I’ll be in that car waiting for you. Leave your car and join me. If anyone comes with you I shall know something is wrong and will drive straight off.’

‘I understand,’ said Ogomo in a voice that sounded as if he didn’t understand at all. However, he repeated correctly the directions I had given him.

‘Half past nine this evening.’

‘Half past nine,’ he said.

I hung up and went back to the hotel, leaving everything locked in the boot of the car except for the syringes, which I took up to my room. I opened my briefcase, and removed a small black box containing two phials labelled with the names of chemicals used for rock-testing analysis. From each one I filled a syringe, then I emptied the remainder of the chemicals down the sink, and rinsed the phials out carefully. I put the syringes into a plastic bag, together with one of the cloths I had bought, sealed the bag carefully, and put it into my jacket pocket. Outside, dusk was beginning to fall. I wanted to get to the site before it was completely dark in case there was anything I hadn’t noticed as I had jolted past on two occasions earlier that day.

The drive took about forty minutes. The place was even better than I had at first thought. The bar, with two battered cars and the remains of a bicycle outside, could not accurately be described as the hub of the universe, and there was no other building anywhere in view. I pulled the Datsun a good way off the road, switched off the lights, and settled down to wait until night had fallen completely. It was a calm, muggy evening; there was a new moon and the sky was quite dark, which pleased me — I didn’t have any desire to be floodlit.

After about ten minutes, the quiet was broken by the clattering of bicycles, and I saw the silhouettes of a bunch of people pedalling past. They cycled off into the dark and then there was silence again.

When it was as dark as it was going to get, I unscrewed the cover of the interior light in the car, and removed the bulb. Next, I took the dummy out of the boot, assembled it, and placed it in the driving seat. I removed the bag of syringes from my pocket, wrapped one in the cloth, and put it back in my pocket. I laid the other, and the Elastoplast, on the front passenger seat of the car. I hoped no policeman would come along on a routine patrol and decide to do a check up on the car. I didn’t know what he’d make of a junkie dummy.

I walked back down to the main road, where I could see clearly in all three directions. There were no lights on in the Beerstop, and the cars and bicycle were gone. A pick-up truck with several men crammed in the cab drove down the road, and I stepped back into the bushes to avoid being caught in the beam of its lights. It pulled into the forecourt of the Beerstop, and I heard the sound of cursing; they had evidently been expecting the bar to be open. They drove off down the road. I walked over to the bar. The door was pad-locked, and there were large shutters pulled down to the ground. I walked all around the outside, safety catch off my gun, but there was no one there. I went back to my watch post.

I was glad to have my Beretta with me, and it is thanks to Trout and Trumbull that I am able to take it wherever I go. They constructed a shoulder holster for it, which, if assembled in a certain way, gives the whole thing the appearance of being a pistol-grip super-8 movie-camera. It never fails to fool airline security guards.

At nine twenty-five, I saw the bright glow of headlamps stab the sky some way in the distance. They disappeared, then stabbed the sky again, this time closer, and I began to hear the sound of a car. Two minutes later, a Toyota estate car slowed down and turned right onto the Otjosundu road. It drove slowly for some yards, and then turned left off the road. As quietly as I could, and keeping to the shadow of the bushes, I sprinted across towards where my car was parked. The Toyota placed itself so that its headlamp beams were full on the Datsun, and the dummy silhouetted perfectly; even to me it looked as though there were a real person sitting in the car. The driver got out of the Toyota and walked across to the Datsun. I took the rag from my pocket, and emptied the contents of the syringe into it. Holding the rag in my left hand, I ran up behind him, silent on my rubber shoes, passing the Toyota closely and glancing in to make sure no one was concealed in there.

I waited until he had put his hand on the handle of the Datsun’s passenger door, then I clamped the chloroform-soaked rag over his nose. The shock of it must have made him take a deeper breath than usual, for he went limp right away. I had no trouble in recognizing him from the pictures of him I had seen in the library: it was Lukas Ogomo.

I removed his jacket, rolled up his right shirt sleeve, laid him out on the back seat of the Datsun, and tied his arms and legs firmly together. Then I picked up the syringe and waited for him to come round. The content of the syringe was a pale-yellow, liquid barbiturate, Pentothal. When Ogomo came round, I would inject into him just enough to put him into a happy, relaxed state of near-euphoria — the final point of consciousness before sleep — in which he should completely lose all his inhibitions.

It took about fifteen minutes before he began to stir, and then he started to come awake quite quickly. I stuck the needle into his arm, and pushed in a fairly generous helping of the mixture. His eyes rolled. I lashed the syringe to his arm with the Elastoplast.

‘Hallo, Lukas,’ I said.

‘Man, hi!’

‘Good, eh, Lukas?’

‘That’s good; feels real good.’

‘You relax and enjoy yourself, Lukas.’

‘Sure, sure. Where am I? Where am I? I can’t move — what is all this? Hey? Hey?’ He was starting to panic. I pushed the plunger in further and he relaxed immediately. ‘Who the hell cares,’ he said cheerfully, ‘this is a nice place!’

I gave another gentle push on the plunger.

‘What the fuck’s going on, man?’

‘Don’t worry, relax, lie back, have a nice time.’

‘I’m having a nice time.’

‘Tell me some things, Lukas.’

‘What would you like to know, man?’

‘Tell me about Angel?’

‘Angel’s top secret, man, I can’t talk about that.’ He laughed. ‘No way; that’s my little secret — well, not just mine, everyone’s, but — hey — I have to get back now. What’s up? I can’t move my hands—’

I pushed the plunger again.

‘Aren’t you meant to be telling me things?’ he said.

‘No, Lukas, you’re telling me, you’re giving me messages for Ben, for Ben Tsenong, and for Patrick, Patrick Cleary.’

‘This feels good.’

‘They’re screwing you, Lukas.’

‘Whatd’yer mean?’

‘You’ll find out.’

‘How can they? Why would they?’

‘You know better than I do. Ben isn’t happy. He thinks you’re ignoring him.’ I pushed the plunger in a short way.

‘Tsenong’s just a boy. He’s small fry. He’s just a kid, just a kid. Cleary’s the smart one in England. I like Cleary, he’s nice.’

‘Kind to you, is he?’ I pushed on the plunger.

‘Oh yes, I mean, we’re not great buddies, you know, or anything like that, no, but — er — he’s nice.’

‘Who is your great buddy?’

‘Felix is. He’s always been good to me. Felix is my good friend.’

I pushed the plunger in further.

‘I could stay like this for ever; feels so good, so good.’

‘Felix who?’

‘Wajara. And Hadino — Dusab: he’s good to me too.’

‘Is he in Angel?’

‘Sure he is. Felix and Hadino and a lovely bunch of men.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Not all lovely; guy I can’t stand — German — hate all Germans — they killed my grandparents, German bastards. I’ll kill them all, fucking Germans. I can’t move my feet.’

He was getting panicky. I injected more Pentothal and he relaxed.

‘Who’s the German?’

‘Can’t move my feet.’

I gave a long push of the plunger. ‘Who’s the German?’

‘Killer, Keller, Keller-Bluff, no, Keller-Blaus, Gunther Keller-Blaus; he’s in charge of France.’

‘France? Why not Germany?’

‘Not allowed to touch Germany.’

‘Who isn’t?’

‘Angel.’

‘Why not?’

‘Konyenko said so. Said Spain instead. Much help from ETA.’

‘Who’s Konyenko?’

‘Russian. Don’t want the winds blowing over Russia. Don’t want to radiate Russia. Radiate, radio, radio, rashio, russiate,’ he rambled on.

‘Radiate with what?’

‘Fall-out from the nuclear power stations we’re going to fucking blow apart, man.’

‘Who is?’

‘That would be telling.’

‘Go on, tell.’

‘All right — long as you promise not to tell anyone else.’

‘I promise.’

‘I believe you. You’re a nice man. For a white man, you’re pretty nice.’

I pushed in a drop more. ‘Who is going to blow up the power stations?’

‘Mossif Kaleb.’

‘He’s from the PLO?’

‘Yeah, nice man. Doesn’t talk a lot. But he acts! He and Ballard are going to sort out the US of fucking A. Wow! They’re going to sort out Canada too. Wow! They’ve got connections in Quebec. Big connections. Big fucking bang. Wow!’

‘Who else?’

‘I can’t remember. Oh yeah, the fat man Rey — er — Jose Reythal. Spanish man. Spaniard man? Spanner man? Spandard man? Something like that!’

‘Who else?’

‘Don’t know. Posgnyet, but he’s only in charge, he doesn’t count, only a fucking Russian.’ He laughed. ‘They’re nice to us, the Russians.’

‘I’m glad, Lukas. Tell me about Angel? What is Angel?’

‘Didn’t I tell you, man?’

‘No, you forgot.’

‘Angel — Anti Nuclear Generated Electricity. Simple, eh?’

‘Very simple, Lukas. Did you think that up yourself?’

‘No. The Russians did.’

‘Tell me more about the Russians.’

‘Yes, they’re nice. Lovely Russians; blonde ladies and vodka. They pay bills — big bills, small bills — and screw blonde ladies.’ He giggled.

‘Which power stations are you going to blow up?’

‘All over. I can’t move my hands.’

I pushed the plunger again. There wasn’t much left in the syringe.

‘Which countries?’

‘United States, Canada, France, Spain, England. All going to be big fucking bangs. All the contact states, man. Except Germany, Spain instead of Germany.’

‘Why Spain instead of Germany?’

‘Winds. Russians don’t want radiation blowing over East Germany and into Russia. ETA in Spain keen to take action against nuclear energy — everyone decided it would be pity not to include them.’

‘Which power stations in each country?’

‘Whichever they decide on, man.’

‘Which ones?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You’re being screwed by everyone.’

‘No, I’m not, they love me. I am big man.’

‘There’s a plot to kill you. I’m the only one who can save you, Lukas. I want to save you, Lukas, I want to save you very much.’

‘Thank you. Please save me.’

‘If you want me to save you, you’d better tell me everything, and tell it fast. Now, which power stations?’

‘I don’t know, I tell you, all over, some here, some there, some fucking everywhere!’ He began to giggle again.

‘Which power stations, Lukas?’

‘Wherever the wind is good.’

‘Why are you doing all this?’

‘Whole goddam world’s going to stop raping our land, going to stop digging their greedy fists into that uranium, man. That’s no-good stuff. We want to leave it in the land, man, and cover it up again — almost as much, man, as we want our freedom. Yeah! To be free! We are going to make the world take notice of us, man. After next month, nobody’s going to ignore Namibia, man. No fucking way!’ He laughed.

‘Why are the Russians helping you?’

‘Different Russians got different reasons,’ he giggled. ‘Konyenko — he’s our contact here — he help us because we fix him up with blonde girls.’

‘And Posgnyet?’

‘He control Operation Angel. From Moscow. I don’t remember why he help us.’

‘Try and remember.’ I squeezed in more of the drug. There was now only a tiny drop left.

‘Russia helps us, because it is good for Russia, maybe. I don’t know. Things not good for those countries are good for Russia. Who knows? Who knows with Russians at all?’ He giggled. ‘First they make things good and easy for us — then maybe later they make them hard. We must be on guard, eh? They think we are simple. But we are not. We will outsmart them.’

‘Of course you will,’ I said.

‘Of course we will,’ he agreed.

‘Now why don’t you tell me which power stations?’

‘They only know in each country. Security, man. If we don’t know, we can’t tell. Good, man, eh? Smart!’ He grinned.

I squeezed in the last of the drug.

‘I like you,’ he said.

‘What else would you like to tell me?’

‘Anything. I like talking to you. I want to go on talking to you for ever.’

‘Who went to Libya last August?’

‘Everyone, man, that was the big meeting. Yes, that was the big one!’

‘Who was everyone?’

‘Everyone I told you.’ His eyelids closed.

‘You, Hadino Dusab, Felix Wajara, Gunther Keller-Blaus, Jose Reythal, Mossif Kalib, Patrick Cleary, Joel Ballard and Ben Tsenong?’

‘Not Tsenong, man, he had to go back to England.’

Ogomo was not lying.

‘Tell me about Patrick Cleary, Lukas.’

‘Irish. I don’t know more. Met him only once. Nice man. Kind.’

He was showing signs of coming round. I placed the chloroformed cloth over his nose; he went unconscious at once. I removed the Elastoplast and pulled out the syringe. Then I untied him, rolled down his shirt sleeve, put his jacket on, and carried him over and put him behind the wheel of his own car. Then I took one of the large nails I had bought that afternoon, and pushed it up hard in the gap in the tread of his front off-side tyre. I didn’t want it to burst the tyre then and there, but equally, I didn’t want it to fall out.

I went to my car, and drove a short way further up the road, turned around, switched off the engine and the lights, and waited. After half an hour, I heard the sound of an engine starting, and then lights came on and what I presumed to be Ogomo’s Toyota headed off back in the direction of Windhoek. I threw the syringes and the cloth out of the window into a thick clump of bushes. Ogomo, I figured, would have a pretty thick head at the moment, and be wondering just what on earth had been happening. He would have a pretty good idea and wouldn’t be feeling too happy about it all. He wouldn’t be able to remember much about what he had said, but he would remember enough to know that he had probably said a damned sight too much. He needn’t have worried, however, about whatever anyone was going to say to him.

I looked at my watch. Four minutes had passed; that should be about right. I started up, but did not switch on the lights. My eyes were well accustomed to the dark now. I drove about a quarter of a mile, and came up over the brow of a hill. There, some way in front, were the tail-lights of a car that was certainly Ogomo’s. I drove down into another dip, and put my headlights on. When I came to the next brow, the Toyota was only a few hundred yards ahead. It was at the side of the road and leaning slightly to the right.

I could see a figure kneeling by the front off-side wheel, winding up what looked like a jack. One hundred yards and there was no mistaking it was Ogomo. I kept my speed steady. He turned to look at me for a moment, then turned back to his jack. Then he turned to look at me again, and must have wondered why I wasn’t giving him a wider berth, in fact, why I wasn’t giving him any berth at all. By the time he realized that I was coming straight at him at sixty miles an hour and tried to do something about it, he had left it too late. The near-side section of the Datsun’s bumper hit him straight in the chest, and the headlight hit him full in the face; the car shook, there was a sharp report, no louder than the sound of a light bulb popping, and Ogomo’s smashed body was catapulted through the air.

Although I stopped to check, I knew he would be dead before he landed. I left him where he was, and climbed back into the Datsun. It was half past eleven. At nine o’clock in the morning, I would be on a plane heading back to London. I had a heavy heart. Yet again, a white man had come to Namibia and killed.