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‘Figuratively – but if you can do so literally so much the better, of course. Fuck the information out of the bitch.’
Oh, Harker really didn’t like his boss – and it sounded clear that the man was drinking, at seven o’clock in the morning. ‘What information in particular are you looking for?’
‘Any information, old man, you know that, don’t you remember anything they taught you at Intelligence School? Any fucking information is important in this dog-eat-dog world of espionage, these veritable valleys of dust and ashes in which there are so few oases of hope – any fucking information even if it’s what she has for breakfast or how she likes blow-jobs, because we never know when the info will become useful. But what we really want to know urgently is what Castro’s knuckle-dragging, tree-dwelling generals are planning in Angola, and we figure that your girlfriend may have some clues from all the pillow-talk she has out there.’
‘Is it known that she’s got a new lover in Angola?’
‘Of course she’s had another lover out there, how else does she get her free ride back to Havana? So get on to her and find out what she knows.’
‘Any specific orders about how I achieve that?’
‘The Three Bs – don’t they teach you anything at spy-school? Burglary, Bonking, Blackmail. Burgle her apartment, of course. Don’t do it yourself – send Clements in. She’s sure to come back with all kinds of film, notes, computer disks and so on – make microfilm and computer copies of everything. And you should also burgle her Anti-Apartheid League’s offices; it’s about time we dry-cleaned them to find out what they’re up to. You never know what snippets our lady may have sent back to them from sunny Angola.’ Harker heard Dupont take a swallow of something. ‘And then there’s bonking. Pillow-talk. Give her some of her medicine, old man. Swear undying love, tell her you want to publish her innermost memoirs, particularly what the generalissimos told her over the vino and cigars. That shouldn’t be too much of a hardship.’
Harker grinned to himself. Jesus, did Dupont really think that what this left-wing adventuress might know was worth all the effort?
‘And then,’ Dupont continued, ‘if all else fails, blackmail her. But that’s only as a last resort. And don’t you do it personally, get Clements on to it – but consult me first.’
Harker smiled. ‘Okay, send me her flight details.’
After Dupont hung up, Harker looked at Josephine Valentine’s file again. He turned up a colour photograph of her. Yes, she was beautiful … So, she was a member of the famous New York Yacht Club. He should try to meet her there before she started dating somebody seriously.
4 (#ulink_b013dc0e-d3f9-573e-9efa-d5c6b239e86f)
The following day Derek Clements checked out her apartment. The locks were standard; he picked them, made impressions, got keys cut. The next day he was at Kennedy Airport to tail her. That night he met Harker in a bar near Union Square.
‘How do you know it was her father who met her?’ Harker asked.
‘I heard her call him Dad.’ Clements was a tough, wiry little man with a ferrety face. He had been a US marine before showing up in the Rhodesian army as a mercenary.
‘What is the father like?’
‘About sixty. Stony-faced sort of guy. Grey hair. Good-looking. Nice suit, obviously lots of dough.’
‘How much baggage did Josephine have?’
‘One big holdall, one rucksack, sleeping bag. Camera box, video case, one camera around her neck.’
Harker was making notes. ‘And then?’
‘They took a taxi into Manhattan. I followed. They went straight to her apartment block on East Eightieth Street. It was now lunchtime, five-past-one. While she entered, the old man went to the delicatessen on the corner and came back with a package. He went inside. I went to the same deli, bought a coffee and sat and observed her apartment block. At two-thirty a taxi arrived, the old man emerged, got in and drove off. I waited another hour – had another coffee – waited to see if subject came out. She didn’t. I took a taxi home.’ He pulled out a wad of receipts. ‘Bureau owes me over a hundred and fifty bucks.’
‘Put it on the monthly sheet. Okay, you said you’d give me a plan of her apartment.’
Clements pulled an envelope from his pocket, took out a sheet of paper and unfolded it.
‘Small two-bedroom place but a nice view of Central Park. She uses the second bedroom as a study. Here.’ He pointed. ‘Computer, a rack of disks, lots of stationery. Piles of files with her stories and photos. Lots of framed photos on the wall, mostly military stuff. I microfilmed everything and copied all her disks.’ He indicated a small hand-grip on the end of the table.
‘When you go back in after she’s unpacked, will you be able to identify the new notes and disks?’
‘Yeah, all her disks are numbered, and all her notebooks, and all the entries are dated. When do you want me to go in again, sir?’
‘Give her a chance to settle down and establish a routine. Maybe she goes to the gym every day, or for a jog. You better set up an OP and find out her movements.’
‘Where, in a car?’
‘In a car. Read a paper, like they do in the movies. Move the car around, and change the model. Put Spicer on to the job as well, do a rota with him.’
‘Does Spicer know about this?’
‘No, and there’s no need for him to, just tell him I say so.’
‘He likes you, Spicer does, wants to know when you’re coming to his whorehouse again.’
Harker smiled. ‘And give me a call every morning before nine o’clock to report progress.’
A week later Harker had established a pattern of Josephine Valentine’s movements: Clements reported that her study light burned until about midnight every night, so she was writing hard. She slept until about mid-morning when she went to the corner delicatessen to buy newspapers, milk and fresh fruit. At one o’clock she emerged again wearing a leotard, wheeling a bicycle and wearing a pink crash helmet: on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays she rode across town, belting through the traffic, to attend an aerobics and dance class in a loft studio on the west side of Manhattan. On Tuesdays and Thursdays she rode to the rackets club where she played squash. In both cases she returned to her apartment block at three o’clock; her study light burned until midnight.
‘No evidence of a boyfriend yet?’
‘Not yet, sir,’ Clements said. ‘You want me to go in again one lunchtime? She’s settled down now, all her new gear must be on that desk.’
Harker sighed. He hated this – the risk, plus the dishonour of it, of unlawfully entering somebody’s home. But, war is war.
‘Not yet, helluva risk doing it in daylight. We’ve done well in a week. Let’s cool it, I’ll see if I can meet her at the yacht club or the rackets club before we do anything dangerous.’
It was much easier to meet her than anticipated. He had imagined that she would be surrounded by friends, that he would have to bide his time and ask somebody to introduce him, or contrive, with his usual uneasiness, to strike up a casual conversation. But she was alone when he first saw her, sitting at a table reading Time magazine: she was dressed to play squash, wearing a short white skirt, her racket on the table.
‘Miss Valentine?’
He had expected her to have a no-nonsense manner but she looked up with a ready smile. ‘Yes?’ And she was even more beautiful than her photograph suggested. And, for a flash, Harker glimpsed her again in that room in the heat of battle, naked but for her white panties, her breasts swinging as she turned on him.
‘I’m Jack Harker, I’m a member here. I saw your picture in the paper some time back and I’ve read a number of the war stories you’ve written. So I decided to be bold and introduce myself, because I admired them.’
‘Why, thank you!’ Josephine Valentine beamed. Praise is the quickest way to a writer’s heart but she surprised Harker by seeming flustered by it; he had expected a hard-nosed war journo who had seen and heard all the blandishments – instead she was blushing.
‘May I sit down a moment?’
‘Certainly, but I’m off to play squash in a few minutes.’ Harker sat, and she continued hastily, for something to say: ‘And what are you doing in New York, Mr Harker? You’re not American, with that accent.’
‘No, I’m a sort of British–South African mongrel.’
‘I see.’
He wondered whether she thought she saw a racist. ‘I run a publishing firm here, Harvest House. We’re fairly new in town but we’re keen. And that’s another reason I’ve introduced myself, apart from the pleasure of meeting you – I wondered whether you’ve considered writing a book?’
He felt he saw the light in her eyes.
‘As a matter of fact,’ she said, ‘I’m busy writing one right now. About South Africa, in fact.’
‘Well,’ Harker said, ‘would you consider having lunch with me one day to discuss it? Or dinner?’
‘That would be lovely.’
He felt a shit but he was a publisher. And war requires espionage. Personally, he felt as pleased as she was. As he watched her walk away to her squash date he thought: what a lovely girl, what lovely legs …
5 (#ulink_e2f85759-5f1c-5a58-a2f9-f9ad54042cd3)
‘Never conceal,’ the Chairman had said, ‘that you were in the South African army. People like Clements and Spicer can do that but you’ll be too high-profile to get away with a lie like that – you may fool people for a while but sooner or later somebody who knows you will blow into town and people will wonder why you concealed the truth. So tell ’em upfront: you were a professional officer fighting an honourable war against communism. Rub in Sandhurst, the sword of honour, all that good stuff. But disown apartheid, make all the usual noises against it – these people love to hear others singing their song …’
But it wasn’t that easy when Harker met Josephine Valentine the next Saturday for lunch at the Tavern on the Green. She came striding into the restaurant, ravishingly beautiful, her long blonde hair flowing, wreathed in smiles for her potential publisher, the file containing her typescript under her arm. He had intended telling her that they had met at the Battle of Bassinga only if the conversation and atmosphere between them warranted it: within minutes of the small-talk beginning he saw a look enter her eyes, a glint of challenge when he mentioned his military background, and he decided against it. She listened with close attention as he sketched in his personal history, fiddling with the cutlery. Then she politely took up the cudgel.
An honourable war? Yes, she understood how a career officer had to do his duty to the state, even if he didn’t personally approve of all its policies. And she understood how most people might consider the communists to be dangerous people, she could understand that honourable soldiers would feel justified in fighting them to their last breath – one took up a military career to defend one’s country and that would necessarily involve killing as many of the perceived enemy as possible. But in the case of South Africa, the communist ‘enemy’ – she made quotation marks with her fingers – was also fighting for the liberation of South Africa from the apartheid yoke, helping the ANC in their armed struggle. This surely made the Cubans the honourable soldiers, because apartheid – ‘on your own admission, Mr Harker’ – is evil, and the intelligent, honourable South African army officer must surely have seen this paradox and been in a quandary, not so? He was indirectly – indeed directly, surely? – fighting for the evil of apartheid? So how this officer could have justified his actions, if only to himself, profoundly puzzled her. A moral dilemma, no?
‘Did you come up against this quandary in yourself, Mr Harker? Or in any of your brother officers?’
‘Please call me Jack.’ Harker could see his potential relationship with this lovely woman going out of the window. He didn’t give a damn about the CCB’s loss, it was his own. He said, truthfully, ‘Oh yes. We didn’t talk about it much in the officers’ mess but I and a good few others had considerable qualms. But I considered myself to be fighting the greater evil of communism only, the important thing was to defeat the enemy, drive him into the sea, and then let the politicians unscramble the mess of apartheid.’
She smiled sweetly. ‘And if the politicians had not unscrambled the mess of apartheid, what would you have done? Would you have quit the army?’
‘I quit anyway. The politicians still haven’t unscrambled apartheid, but here I am.’
‘But you were wounded.’
‘But not killed. I could have stayed in the army in a non-combatant role.’
She looked at him calculatingly, smiling. ‘Okay, but when you went into battle did you really feel that you were only fighting against communism?’
Harker smiled. ‘Yes.’ That was more or less true.
‘But in the heat of battle too?’
He didn’t think it would be helpful to explain that in the heat of the battle all you felt was terrified hatred for the bastards trying to kill you. Like the saying ‘There are no atheists in a fox-hole’, there are few starry-eyed liberals on an African battlefield. But he didn’t want an argument with this beautiful woman, he wanted to have a nice lunch while Clements burgled her apartment again and then, if at all possible, he wanted to get laid. If not today then some time. Soon. ‘Yes, in battle too. Shall we order?’
She gave him a dazzling smile. ‘A bit later perhaps; I’m enjoying this conversation, I’ll bring it into my book.’
Harker smiled. The Chairman would love that. ‘So tell me about your book. May I?’ He indicated the folder containing her typescript.
She placed her hand protectively on it. ‘Please, not yet.’ She gave him another dazzling smile. ‘I’ve only written about ten chapters so far, anyway. I thought I was ready to show them to you but now I know I’m not. You’ve given me some new ideas.’ She grinned, then hunched forward earnestly. ‘So tell me, what’s going to happen in South Africa?’
This was the opening he was waiting for, the reason why Clements was burgling her apartment at this moment. He turned the question around: ‘What do you think is going to happen?’ He particularized: ‘In Angola?’
‘I asked first.’
He decided to give his honest opinion rather than the propagandist one.
‘The war will go on for some time. But communism is on the ropes. Russia is in big economic trouble. Cuba is Russia’s cat’s-paw and Russia cannot afford to support them much longer. Angola is Russia’s Vietnam. However, nor can South Africa afford it much longer, though we’re in better shape than Russia and Cuba. So even if we don’t achieve a knockout blow now and drive the Cubans back home – which we could do militarily – Russia’s poverty will eventually do the job for us. So I think South Africa will finally win the war.’ He added, in the hopes of drawing her out, ‘I don’t think the South Africans will ever quit, no matter what economic hardships they encounter. And I think Castro realizes this and he’ll soon start looking for a face-saving way to make a peace deal.’ He added, ‘Don’t you?’
Josephine was not to be drawn. She had her hands clasped under her chin, her eyes attentive. ‘And what’s going to happen to apartheid?’
Harker took a sip of wine. ‘Meanwhile apartheid is on the ropes too. It is a proven failure. Cruel, and economically unjust – and economically wasteful. So there will be reform – already the state president has warned his Volk that they must “adapt or die”, and a lot of apartheid’s petty laws are not being enforced. So after the communist threat is removed, I expect apartheid will be eroded until there is none of it left. There’ll be resistance to the process, of course, diehards threatening civil war, but my guess is that by the turn of the century apartheid will be well and truly dead and we can get on with reforming ourselves our way.’
Josephine took an energetic sip of wine. ‘And what is “our” way? One man, one vote?’
‘Yes, but we must prepare for that over at least a decade. To instil a democratic culture into the blacks.’ He added, ‘One of the greatest sins of apartheid is that we wasted forty years during which we could have done that, brought them up gradually into political maturity. Instead, apartheid just translocated them back into their tribal homelands, threw independence at them and let them make a mess of it.’
Josephine sat back, on her hobby horse. ‘You don’t think that their “mess” is perhaps a teeny-weeny bit due to the rape of colonialism?’
Harker sat back also. He frowned reasonably. ‘Indeed, some of it. The Germans, for example, were bad colonialists, ruling by the whip. But they were kicked out of Africa during the First World War. The Portuguese were also bad – but at least the Latins didn’t practise segregation. King Leopold raped the Belgian Congo and brutalized the natives with forced labour, and the government did nothing to prepare the natives for the independence they threw at them at the first sign of rebellion, so of course the place erupted in chaos – particularly as the Russians and Chinese were fuelling the flames in their quest for worldwide communist revolution. Yes,’ he agreed sagely, ‘the communist powers were very bad neo-colonialists.’
Josephine sat back firmly in her chair, one hand clutching her wine glass to her breast.
‘And the Dutch were bad colonialists,’ Harker continued. ‘They subjugated the natives, very much like you Americans did with the Red Indians – you people were also bad colonialists.’ He smiled and took a sip of wine, then frowned. ‘But the British were pretty good colonialists, Josephine. They tried to teach the Africans democracy, tried to bring them into government gradually. But the Wind of Change forced them to go too fast, grant independence too soon and their colonies became corrupt dictatorships.’ He ended mildly: ‘Don’t you think?’
‘So,’ Josephine said, ‘you think that South Africa should spend the next ten years teaching them a democratic culture, before giving them the vote?’
‘It’s starting now. The government has created a separate parliament for Coloureds, by that I mean the half-castes, and another one for Indians. Apartheid is in retreat.’
Josephine leant forward. ‘Bullshit!’ She tapped her breast. ‘I’ve just come from that neck of the woods and I can tell you that apartheid is monstrously alive and hideously well! South Africa is not ruled by parliament any more, it’s ruled by the goddam security forces! By so-called securocrats. By the so-called State Security Council which is nothing more than a committee of police and army generals which bypass the whole goddam parliament!’ She looked at him. ‘Your parliament is irrelevant now, the country is run by the goddam generals, like the Argentine was. Like Chile.’ She glared at him. Before Harker could respond she went on, ‘And what about the NSMS – the National Security Management System that this State Security Council has set up – hundreds of secret intelligence committees across the country with tentacles into every facet of life, spying on absolutely everybody, committing murders and mayhem. Absolutely above the law.’ She glared. ‘What your parliament says is irrelevant in these days of the Total Onslaught, Total Strategy.’
Harker was impressed with her general knowledge. He said: ‘But that sort of thing happens all over the world when a state of emergency is declared. However, I doubt that parliament is irrelevant. I agree that in matters of security the State Security Council bypasses parliament, but I don’t believe that they are above the law.’
Josephine said: ‘You don’t think that the South African police has a hit-squad of two? Boys in dark sunglasses who knock off the odd enemy of the apartheid state?’
Harker shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Nor the army? The army hasn’t got Special Forces capable of hit-and-run skulduggery?’
Harker dearly wished to change the subject. ‘Of course, all armies have. Like the British SAS, the American Green Berets. But hit-squads? No.’
Josephine had her hands clasped beneath her chin, eyes bright. Then: ‘Not even with the policy of Total Onslaught, Total Strategy inaugurated by your President P.W. Botha ten years ago – in 1978 to be exact. The ends justify the means – any means?’
Harker shook his head, and took a sip of wine. ‘Not “any means”.’
Josephine looked at him, very polite. ‘But what about the bomb that exploded at the ANC headquarters in London in 1982? Who did that? And who blew up Cosatu House last year in downtown Johannesburg – the headquarters of the Congress of South African Trade Unions? The Boy Scouts? And who blew up Khotso House only last year, the headquarters of the South Africa Council of Churches – also alleged to be the underground headquarters of the ANC?’ She smiled at him. ‘President Botha blamed it on “the Godless communists”.’ She snorted. ‘What crap. As if the communists would blow up the ANC’s headquarters – their ally. And what about Khanya House, the united church’s building in Pretoria, a couple of months later? And what about Dulcie September? And what about the beautiful Jeanette Schoon, who worked for the British Volunteer Service in Angola, got blown to bits with her little daughter by a parcel bomb. You remember that case, only last year?’
Harker remembered reading about it. He had attributed it to rogue cops. ‘Yes.’
‘Who do you think sent the Schoons that nice parcel bomb? Father Christmas? And what about Albie Sachs, the ANC lawyer in Mozambique, somebody rigged a bomb to his car last year which blew his arm off when he opened the door. Who did that, d’you think?’ She frowned. ‘Albie Sachs was the sixth senior ANC official to be targeted in foreign countries.’ She looked at him. ‘Doesn’t that suggest to you that there is a department in the South African government that specializes in that sort of thing?’
Harker badly wanted to get off this subject. ‘That could all be the work of individual rogue cops acting on their own initiatives.’
Josephine smiled and sat back. ‘Come on. Taking all the evidence together, the irresistible conclusion seems to be that the Total Strategy means the police and army can do what they goddam like to combat the perceived enemy.’ Josephine took a sip of wine. ‘Anyway, what’s your opinion of the anti-apartheid movement?’
Harker was relieved to change the focus of the subject. ‘They do important work, raising public awareness.’
Josephine looked surprised. ‘Really? Would you be prepared to join us? Work with us?’
Harker could almost hear Dupont and the Chairman whooping in glee. He said, ‘Sure, though I don’t know how much practical work I could do.’
