A song in the morning

7

Janice and Lucille stared at the open office door.

Jack was on the phone. He had spun his chair round so that he could rummage into his filing cabinet as he talked.

He didn't see Duggie Arkwright. He was a disaster, wearing his oldest patched jeans and a scarlet t-shirt under a skimpy denim top. He saw Jack, and whistled. Jack spun, saw who it was, and with a brisk apology finished his phone call.

Jack stood and muttered something to the girls about being out for most of the day. He took his coat. He felt their questions on his back and ignored them.

They went out of the office and into the mild morning air.

When Jack looked back from the pavement at the office window he saw that Nicholas Villiers and the girls had their noses pressed to the panes.

"You said you were going to ring," Jack said.

"The kiddie was crying in the night. I got up, I was holding the kiddie near the window and I saw this guy on the far side of the road, covering our place. The kiddie had a bad night. I was up again a couple of hours later, he was still there. I didn't go back to bed, I just stayed in a chair. Each time I went to the window he was there."

"Have you ever been under surveillance before?"

"Not that I've known… " Duggie had a brittle, nervy laugh. "I went on the tube this morning, travelled a few stops. There was another guy in the carriage, he got up when I got up. I came right across London, did two changes, he was always in the same carriage. I fixed him with the old

'on-off. Stay on till the doors are closing, then you squeeze off. He went on down the line, he looked pretty pissed off.

He must have been a South African…"

Jack was sombre, chewing at his thumb nail. "Why not our police?"

"They don't have an underground railway in Johannesburg. 'On-off is the oldest one in the book, any London copper would know that one. Have to be a Boer not to know that one."

Jack felt sick. "Why follow you?"

"Perhaps they were there last night, saw us with the big fellow. Perhaps they're wondering who you are, perhaps they want a line into Thiroko. I don't know."

They were still watched from the window. Jack would have loved to have turned on his heel, walked back into the offices of D amp; C. He would have loved to have remarked easily to Nicholas Villiers that the distractions of the last days were a thing of the past.

The sneer came to Duggie's mouth. "Don't bloody whine.

You were the one whispering about explosives, you were the one wanting to meet the military wing of the A.N.C."

"Sorry."

"I couldn't ring you. I couldn't be sure you weren't tapped here."

"Thanks."

Duggie looked exhausted. "Let's go meet the big boy."

They drove into London.

•* •

Thiroko had come early. He was not a frequent visitor to London, but he was familiar enough with the British capital to be able to select his own rendezvous. He had chosen Lincoln's Inn Fields, a square of lawns and shrubs and tennis courts and flower beds and net ball courts. He liked open air meeting places where there were exits at all corners.

He was intrigued by the young man he had met the previous evening. And the young man was a distraction for his mind from the physician's message. He was sufficiently interested in the young man's brief explanation to him to have agreed to the meeting. And he knew, of course, of James Carew. He knew of the taxi driver who carried messages between dead letter drops, transported weapons between arms caches, could take photographs and draw maps.

A White had access to many target areas where it was not safe for a Black to go. He knew of the usefulness of the quiet-tongued taxi man.

Thiroko was forty-eight years old.

He had been out of South Africa since the military wing was formed, since the banned African National Congress had gone underground. He had never been back. His homes had been in Moscow and Dar in Tanzania and Luanda and Maputo and Gaberone and now Lusaka. Some months he dreamed of a triumphant return with the war won and the apartheid regime humbled and beaten. Most years he doggedly refused himself horizons of hope and struggled on, organising the infiltration of men and munitions into his former country.

Thiroko straddled two generations of the Movement. He was neither a part of the old political hierarchy who wanted the military wing to attack only hard targets where the gesture mattered more than the mayhem, nor was he among the ranks of the young hawks who demanded the right to hit the soft targets of the White supermarkets and railway carriages and resort hotels. To his colleagues he was dedicated, humourless and reliable. To the South African police he was a murderous enemy, one they would dearly love to have trapped when the Recce Commando went into Maputo and Maseru in Lesotho and Gaberone. He had been out of Maseru less than twenty-four hours when the Recce Commando stormed the A.N.C. base houses. He hated the White war machine. He knew of no sacrifice too great if the regime could be brought down.

He saw Jack come into the square. He watched him pass the office girls playing net ball in their morning break. He saw him look around and pass the gardener laying out the first trays of the year's bedding plants. He knew of the boy's hither. The Movement was peopled with men and women who could not keep their mouths tight shut. Carew had never been suspected of leaking information. A dozen years was a long, long time to have survived the resistance war in Johannesburg.

It had been Thiroko, from his office in Lusaka, who had suggested that Carew should drive the getaway.

He owed it to Carew that he should meet his son.

He watched Arkwright settle onto a bench close to the net ball pitch. He disliked the foreign Whites who lionised the Movement from t h e comfort of their European cities.

He watched to satisfy himself that there was no tail on the young man. The young man saw him, and Thiroko recognised the relief on Jack's face. The relief told him of the strain. The strain told him of the genuineness of Carew's boy. He presumed he was to be offered explosives, that he would have to explain gently that the Movement had all the explosives it could h a n d l e. He would do it in a kindly fashion.

•**

"I am sympathetic to you, as I am sympathetic to the families of Happy Zikala and Charlie Schoba and Percy Ngoye and Tom Mweshtu. To all of the families goes the very sincere sympathy of the Movement..

"And what should those families do about it?" A harshness in Jack's voice.

"They will pray, they will attend protest meetings, in South Africa they are going to make video cassettes that will be sent to every head of state represented at the General Assembly of the United Nations… "

"Prayers and protests and petitions, Mr Thiroko, are a great waste of time."

"Tell me what is not a waste of time."

"I am going to go to South Africa. To the gaol where my father is held. I am going to blow a hole in the wall, and I am going to take my father out."

"Should I laugh because you are so stupid, should I cry because you are so sincere?"

"It's not a joke to me."

Thiroko was hissing back at him. "You know what the gaol is, boy? The gaol is the peak of a security system. From every other gaol in the country men are escaping, and no man has escaped from that gaol for ten years. They are desperate men, they are going to hang, they are sitting in their cells for more than a year, most of them. They are thinking of escape, and for more than ten years none of them has managed it."

Jack on the offensive. He had the man arguing, not laughing. That was good.

"Anywhere that's maximum security is vulnerable.

Maximum security breeds complacency."

"The gaol isn't up against the street. The gaol is in the middle of a complex. You would be shot hundreds of yards short of the walls. If you are shot dead, how does that help your father?"

"How does it help him if I sit on my arse, and pray and shout outside their embassy and ask politicians to watch a video? That's doing fuck all to help him."

"You would be killed."

"He's my father," Jack said flatly. "So be it."

Thiroko leaned back against the arm of the bench. He was trying to read Jack.

"You are a good boy. You work here, you have a family.

You have to exist through the next weeks, then you have to resume your life. After it has happened you have to forget your father."

"I'm going to South Africa."

"Do you listen to anybody?"

Jack couldn't help himself, a snap grin. "Hardly ever."

"It is not my intention to help you to kill yourself."

''I'm going to bring my father home."

''Impossible, you understand that word?"

''Give me the chance."

"Your failure would hurt us, and it is impossible that you could succeed."

"Not if you helped me."

Thioko shook his head, as if he did not believe what he learned in the slate grey eyes of Jack Curwen.

"I can't do it."

Jack's hand covered Thiroko's fist, a hard unyielding grip.

Where were you when the Court bomb went off? Where will you be when five men hang? Sitting on your arse and comfortable?"

"You take a chance with me, young man." The anger was brilliant on Thiroko's face.

"Lying in your pit and snoring?"

"I care about my men," Thiroko spat the answer.

"Your Movement took a chance with the lives of five men.

You owe it to them to help me."

"No one tells me my duty."

"Your duty is to help them, not to sit on your bloody hands."

Thiroko softened. He had never been in combat in South Africa. He had never fired a Kalashnikov assault rifle at the Boer police or the Boer troops. He had never carried a bomb to a target and known the fear sweat in the fold of his stomach. He thought of what the physician had told him.

"What do you want?"

Jack felt the glow of success. "I can't take explosives with me, I can't get them through the airport. I want access to explosives in South Africa – and I want a team."

"Why should I trust you with a team?"

"When I get to Johannesburg, give me explosives, that's all. Sit on your hands, on your arse, and wait, and listen to the radio. You'll hear what your explosives have done, the radio'll tell you, what I've done on my own, and when you're satisfied then you'll give me a team."

"What is it you want exactly?"

"When I arrive I want a minimum of twenty pounds of explosive. I want detonators and Cordtex and safety fuse. I will hit the target of my choice. Then you'll know I'm worth the team."

"All for your father."

"To bring him back."

Thiroko took a notepad from his pocket. He wrote out an address. He showed the address to Jack, told him to memorise it, let his eyes linger on it, then folded the paper and tore it into a hundred pieces that he threw to float away and disperse over the grass. He told Jack to meet him at the address the following morning.

"You're going to help me?"

"I am going to think about helping you."

"Time's very short."

"I too learned to count. I know how many days are available."

Thiroko walked away from the bench. He was soon gone from sight. Jack was trembling. God, the assurance and the bombast had fled him. God, and was he frightened.

•* •

He was an age finding a phone box that worked.

He rang Jimmy Sandham at work. He wanted to meet with him, had to talk to someone.

A brisk voice answering, stating that he was through to the Foreign Office. Jack gave the extension number. Sandham had started him on his road. Jack wanted to meet him for a drink, to listen to his quiet control.

"Could I speak to Mr Sandham, please – a personal call."

A woman's voice, "Not here I'm afraid."

"Will I get him later, this afternoon?"

"He's taken a few days' leave."

"Since when?"

"He left yesterday."

''How long is he away?"

" Who is it asking for him, please?" lack put the phone down. He tried the home number. No reply.

He rang George Hawkins and invited himself over. He rang D amp; C and said he wouldn't be back that day.

It hit him. He had forgotten Duggie Arkwright. After leaving Lincoln's Inn Fields, he had walked into the West End, and then he had spent another ten minutes looking for a phone that wasn't broken or occupied. Duggie had sat down at the entrance to the square when Jack had gone forward to meet Thiroko. He hadn't been there when Jack had left. Duggie had done the introduction and had himself a tail, and Jack had put him out of his mind. He'd ring him when he could. He'd ring him when he came back.

He looked into a shop window. There were three layers of television sets: cash, sale, and credit. They all carried the same picture. Of high armoured personnel carriers driving through a South African township of tin roofs and brick walls, and of gas plumes, and of the blue uniforms blasting with their shot guns, of running crowds, of police chasing with the long whips held back to strike in anger. The caption said they were old pictures, had to be because the camera crews were banned from the riot areas.

He wasn't going there to take a side in a civil war. He was going there to bring his father home. And it wasn't real. It was only old pictures on a bank of television screens. He knew what was bloody real. It was that his father was going to hang in three weeks, that Duggie had a tail that morning, that a woman had said Sandham had gone on leave.

He went to find his car, then to George's to talk about explosives.

He was the moth, the file was the lamp.

The Director General had read, word by word, every page in the Curwen/Carew file. He had started to imagine that he knew the man.

There was a photograph in uniform, early twenties from its date. There was a portrait shot before the fiasco in Albania. There was another shot taken during the debrief and after the hospital check-up. There was a blow-up of a Johannesburg newspaper photograph of Carew being brought out of court. The change was Albania. The flesh had been stripped off the man. But he couldn't mistake the defiance in the features, especially in those taken after the decade in Spac.

He had read Carew's South African reports. They were poorly written, but they were dense with names and gossip.

There was no analysis, no interpretation, all as raw as sewage in a down flow. It crossed his mind to wonder whether the security police in Pretoria often had access to such quality information.

In the Alexandra township, three doors down Fifteenth Avenue from the north side junction with Hofmeyer there were stored under the back room floor boards, two R.P.G.-7 anti-tank rocket launchers, and eight missiles for the launchers were in waste ground beside the church wall on Second Avenue.

A 49-year-old street cleaner, who lived on Key in the Jabulani district of Soweto, had for two years been Umkonto we Sizwe commander of the whole township.

Seven Kalashnikov rifles were buried in protective grease wrapping in Dobsonville in the park that was bordered by Mahlangati and Matomela.

At a house, number given, on Mhlaba in the Chiawelo district, military planning meetings were held, when security conditions allowed movement in the night of the first Tuesday of each month. The fall back rendezvous was on Pilane in the Molapo district.

There was the house number in the Mamelodi township of Pretoria where a press printed A.N.C. literature. There was the name of the school from which that literature was dispersed, the identity of the schoolmaster who wrote the broadsheets.

Lists of officials in South African Laundry, Dry Cleaning and Dyeing Workers Union, and in Textile Workers Union (Transvaal), and in South African Chemical Workers Union, who were either politically or militarily active in A.N.C.

The names of couriers, African names, who carried low-level messages around the townships. One White named.

| van Niekerk, aged 19, disabled, student. And a White girl, named. Both addresses.

Careful maps showing infiltration routes into South Africa from Botswana.

The numbers of bank accounts, and the addresses of those hanks. Accounts and banks where the A.N. C's money was lodged.

The Director General read through lists of intended targets. Police stations, power lines, railway track, a sewage filtration plant, a military recruiting office. A long list • • • There was a sketch plan of the approach route to be used for the rocket attack on the Sasolburg fuel storage tanks. There were the operational orders for the strike on the Voortrekkerhoogte army base. There were verbatim arguments between cadre cells on the priorities of attacks. Damned hard material to come by, no mistake.

The reports from years back had been worked over, he could see the pencil and ink ticks and underlinings that showed him that once these reports had been valued. Not the reports of the year before Carew's arrest. They were unmarked, and he thought they had gone unread into the file.

He was fitting together his picture of his man. He read that the S.I.S. officer attached to the British embassy in Pretoria used to come once a month to Johannesburg and go to a certain taxi rank at the South African Airways terminal and take a certain licensed taxi and pay for his fare and receive the latest Carew report with his change. All as amateurish as if his service had been playing boy scout pranks.

Carew had never come home. An addendum note stated

"Gone native". A note in Fordham's handwriting to the effect that Curwen wouldn't trust himself too close to his former wife and his grown-up son should he ever return to London.

All the time the poor devil was being paid. Last Friday of every month a pay cheque rolling into a bank account in Liechtenstein. Signatories to the account: James Curwen, Col. B. Fordham. Statements from accounts at Century concerning the amounts deducted from his salary to make allowance for monies earned from his taxi driving.

He had misjudged his man, but he still believed he was past saving. He rose from his desk.

Silently he paced his carpet.

Past saving?

He pondered the options.

He extended the forefinger of his right hand. They could come clean to the South African government and make an apology and plead for clemency. Second finger. They could scuffle around for sufficient leverage to ensure that Pretoria would respond to negotiation and spare his man and hold silence. Third finger. They could break the legman out from the hanging gaol.

He snapped his fist shut. Absolutely not on. Inconceivable in the time, and fantasy.

Past saving.

He had a meeting scheduled with the Permanent Under Secretary for the late afternoon. The P.U.S. outranked the Director General for all that the Director General was in a position to control the flow of information available to the P.U.S. In the matter of James Sandham, the flow would be dammed at once. He had set aside 45 minutes directly after lunch, for himself and his principal officials to discuss the Carew case. It was a gesture, the setting aside of senior men's time, and unless someone came up with something right out of the ordinary it was the last gesture the Service would and could make.

•* •

Major Swart had fretted through the morning. He had sat in his office at the end of a corridor behind an automatic locking steel-barred door, willing the telephone to shout for him.

The two warrant officers who did most of the footwork in his small empire had called earlier to report that they had lost Arkwright, been tricked by him on the underground.

Their second call had told Swart that they had picked him up again when he returned to his flat. Swart wanted badly to know the identity of the young man in the well-cut suit who had been huddled at the meeting with Thiroko. That young man was probably worth opening up, and Arkwright should have been the way to him.

There was a third call. Arkwright had just drawn the curtains to his room. From his state of undress it was to be assumed he was taking his slut to bed.