The Harbinger

by Mark Graham

  “So here are the Americans still talking about this bloody disinvestment bullshit like it’s the black man’s last great hope. Shit. But it’s not just the, government; you’d expect that. It’s these other sanctimonious institutions—the courts, the church, the university. Now, that’s a good one. Okay. Ten days ago, guess what happens? Bloody Radcliffe College threatens to sell a hundred thousand shares of its Firestone stock. Why? They’re demanding the company pull out of South Africa unless, of course, we straighten up and fly right, sure, the way all red-blooded democracies do. Right, chief. Very forceful. Very impressive. Firestone refuses, of course. The next day, Phillips and Drew in London buys the whole block at a discount, and the president of Firestone rips up the letter from Radcliffe and throws it in the trash. And so what if Firestone does pull out? Ten thousand blacks out of a job. Now, that’s what I call doing your civic duty. But that’s okay, because then Michelin, or Mitsubishi, or somebody else who doesn’t give a shit what the American Congress wants, moves in here and hires the blacks right back. Thank you very much Radcliffe College.”

  Jarrad was off on another tirade. Mansell put salt in the hollow between his thumb and first finger. A lime wedge in one hand, tequila in the other. Salt first, tequila, the mandatory grimace, suck the lime, feel the heat spread through your system like ripples over the water.

  Mansell poured two more shots. He said, “All right. So you’re Firestone. What do you do? Stay or leave?”

  “It’s business, Nigel. Not racial. If business stinks, get out. But tell it like it is, that’s all. ‘We’re out of here ‘cause business stinks, not because we’re doing the black man a big favor.’ One minute the Americans are preaching the inviolate rights of their fellow man, the next they’re sticking a welfare check in his hand. Then they console the poor guy with a pat on the back and say, ‘Hey, you’re better off this way, believe me.’ “

  Nigel Mansell stared into the bottom of his shot glass. With a single motion he disposed of the tequila. He gazed out across the black shimmering sea.

  “Sounds oddly familiar, Jarrad.”

  On the beach, Jennifer walked with arms folded over a bulky sweater. Mansell wore swimming trunks, but a long-sleeved soccer jersey felt good. The sun stood at the peak of its journey, pale and dim through a veil of clouds.

  He said, “The ocean doesn’t let you get away easy, does it? It talks and whispers and soothes no matter how much you fight it. It creeps under your skin and into your soul, and finally, inside your head. Three murders, a suicide, a township in flames, a killer on the loose, and the ocean still manages to relax me.”

  “Harriet said that Jarrad’s planning to open a new branch office in Cape Town.”

  “He mentioned it. My ex-roomie’s doing well for himself, isn’t he? I told him if he’s not careful some monster conglomerate’s going to come in here and make him a rich man.”

  The tide charged up the sand, and Jennifer stepped above the rising waterline. “Did he make you an offer?” she asked.

  “He always makes an offer. Harriet would kill him if he didn’t.”

  The tide receded, and then rushed forward again, hauling forth its quota of sand. When the water withdrew it deposited the particles across the beach with a sizzling sound like bacon frying. Mansell carved deep impressions with his heels.

  “So what did you say?” Jennifer asked anxiously.

  “I told him there was no way he could afford me.” They paused, turning, eyes locking. The sea lapped at their feet. Mansell turned aside. “Of course, then I found out he could.”

  “Take it. Please take it.”

  “And would that be the answer?”

  “It would be a start.”

  “For who? Me, or you?”

  “For us both.”

  “Why?”

  “At least you wouldn’t come home with the picture in your brain of some maniac who decided to jump out of a ten-story window. At least you wouldn’t spend half your nights on a cot in some burrow hole of an office. Maybe we could go out to dinner one night a week, or to a movie. I’ve forgotten what that’s like. Maybe we could afford a place like this on the beach, or a summer house in the mountains. Or maybe we could just afford a new car.”

  Clouds parted overhead. Mansell faced the sun, eyes closed. “A policeman turned advertising agent,” he said. “That’s a tough one.”

  “You could do it,” Jennifer implored. “You’d be good at it. You’d learn.”

  “Easy.”

  “You don’t want it.”

  Mansell glanced at his wife. A pout pulled at the lines around her lips. Her eyes flared like pilot lights, cold flames. Mansell wanted to say, “And in a month or a year, when the glitter wears off, will there be another Jason, another turn of the head? Or will it be my turn to get bored, my turn to point the finger?”

  But he didn’t.

  Two sanderlings raced back and forth with the tide, plucking crabs from the settling sand. A sea gull circled overhead, drifting, landing at the peak of a dune.

  They walked in silence back to the beach house.

  When the telephone rang during cocktails, every eye turned in Mansell’s direction. Jarrad answered it on the fifth ring, but they were right.

  “Joshua. What is it?”

  “Sorry to intrude, Nigel. But I thought you should know. Last Monday, two blacks were arrested outside of Johannesburg in a city called Springs.”

  “I know the place.”

  “Well, they were drunk, and they were carrying guns.” Blacks were not permitted to own or carry firearms. The question of a license was a moot point. “They’re also being held in connection with the alleged rape of a sixteen-year-old white girl. Evidently they were on their way to some mining job on the East Rand, and—”

  “Joshua. I have three pairs of eyes boring holes in the back of my head. I know there’s a point to all this.”

  “Three points, actually,” Joshua replied. “One, they were both in possession of ANC membership cards. Not too smart. Two, the guns they were holding? American-made .45-calibers. Model M1191 Al. Yes? And third, they were both carrying blank business cards with four words typed on one side.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right. ‘Caves of the Womb.’ “

  At dinner, Harriet drank too much.

  She said, “Nigel, we’ve been friends for a lot of years. Sure, maybe Jen’s a better friend than you, but I still care. I care a helluva lot. And for a lot of reasons.” Mansell smiled remotely. Harriet leaned across, the table, exposing ample breasts. “Do her a favor, huh? And yourself, for God’s sake. Jarrad’s offering you a future. He’d run the Cape Town office if you went down there. Things aren’t so goddamn tense on the Cape, Nigel. You know that. Christ, you can’t spend the rest of your days breaking heads.”

  Mansell tipped his head, a sudden weariness stealing the color from his face. “Breaking heads?”

  “God damn it, Harry,” cried Jarrad. “Save the theatrics for Sunday choir, okay?”

  “It’s becoming more like the Gestapo every day,” Harriet exclaimed. “Jennifer deserves better.”

  Mansell touched a napkin to his lips. “Who might that be?” he asked quietly.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Don’t make the mistake of grouping me with them, Harriet,” he replied. Jennifer excused herself from the table. She walked out to the deck. Mansell fished for a cigarette as she disappeared down the stairs. “I’m not the enemy.”

  “No? The Elgin case! That boy!”

  “Harriet,” Jarrad intervened. “Good God, woman.”

  “Shut up, Jarrad.” She struggled to her feet. Throwing back her shoulders, she said, “I’m not the one who voted for the Nats in the last election, am I?”

  She stormed out. Jarrad threw up his hands. “Nigel, I’m sorry. Really sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Mansell said. He reached out for the wine bottle at the center of the table, studied the contents without enthusiasm, and deci
ded against it. “Did you really vote for the Nats in the last election?”

  ****

  Five years ago at the East Fields mine, the roofs of two empty storage tanks had been converted to accommodate sliding steel plates four meters in diameter. The plates moved on hydraulic-assisted tracks, allowing access from above.

  From his station atop a flatbed railroad car, Jan Koster watched as the boom arm of a derrick crane swung gracefully above the open plate at the top of the nearest tank. Slowly, the crane operator lowered cable and hooks to the crew inside.

  Koster removed his cap and mopped sweat from his brow. He massaged a day-old beard. Dark circles below his eyes testified to another sleepless night spent in another cramped airplane.

  He allowed his mind to drift, thinking again of the letter from his wife, Julia, worn now from so many readings. Eleven-year-old Tonya was down with the flu. She’d missed three days of school this past week. Hannah was busy with ballet lessons two mornings a week and swimming classes on the weekends. Julia’s opening at the Rhine Gallery had been a rousing success. Four sculptures had already been purchased, and two commissions taken. The very idea of leaving South Africa had shocked them all. Still, toward the end of the letter, in words now etched in his brain, Julia had said that she understood. My God, he thought, what will she say when I tell her the rest of it? And I will have to tell her. And soon.

  The crane’s diesel engine coughed, shaking Koster from his reverie. Black smoke belched from the exhaust pipe. The cable went taut, and the cargo began its sixty-meter ascent.

  Koster considered the news from Port Elizabeth without enthusiasm. If the fag can just keep his cool, he thought, we’ll be all right. Koster shook his head. Fags and addicts. How did it ever get to this?

  Replacing his cap, he scanned the compound and considered the state of East Fields’s increasing population, now sixteen thousand strong. Wanting a drink, he settled for a cigarette.

  The pallet materialized at the end of the cable. When it was centered next to fifteen similar crates, a diesel locomotive nudged the flatcar inside the huge hull of Central Access. There, a stationary boom unloaded sixteen handheld bazookas, eighteen grenade launchers, and four dozen submachine guns into a shaft elevator.

  Two hundred and twenty meters belowground, the weapons began a methodical journey through man-made tunnels to the connection tunnel that linked East Fields with the White Ridge Mines. The guns were then loaded onto tunnel cars, and three hundred meters of electric track brought the cars to a deserted access shaft.

  One by one the crates were hoisted by pulleys to an abandoned work station forty meters below the plant facilities of South Africa’s most profitable gold mine.

  ****

  Eight days out of New York—eight days of uninterrupted sailing save the refueling stop in Freetown, linkage problems three days past, and twenty-four hours of severe thunderstorms outside the Gulf of Guinea—ARVA II rounded the Cape of Good Hope within sighting distance of Table Mountain.

  The crew worked feverishly repackaging the last twenty crates of M1191 Al semiautomatic handguns. Andrew Van der Merve encouraged the crew with cigarettes and the promise of a cash bonus.

  From the bridge deck, Captain Amil Aidoo radioed the Port Elizabeth harbor control tower to confirm their berth assignment, and the tower reaffirmed that berth number ten had indeed been reserved for his vessel. Pilotage, he was told, was scheduled for 2:30 P.M. the following day, Monday, the fourteenth day of July.

  ****

  Working nights was a good excuse for Delaney Blackford to get out of the house.

  She packed a briefcase with the forum outline for the General Mining Group negotiations scheduled for midweek, the arbitration proposals with the Harbour Association, and the UDW contract with International Consolidated. If all went according to plan, she thought, the contract would be finalized and signed Tuesday. In a paper bag she stowed a box of Earl Grey tea, a tomato and cheese sandwich, and an old fingerpainting that Amanda had done in kindergarten—something new for the office bulletin board.

  Delaney left Gelvandale at 10:35 in her 1978 Fiat convertible. A bright moon the color of topaz lit the sky. She took the highway, to Settler’s Way, and reached downtown ten minutes later. Main Street retired early on Sunday night. The bars were closed all day, the buses quit at six, and the restaurants locked their doors by ten. Streetlamps stood their lonely vigil, while tourists window-shopped. A taxi delivered its last fare. Coal smoke drifted in from New Brighton and Kwaford.

  Britannia Street led Delaney beneath the overpass, across the tracks, to the waterfront and Charl Malan Quay. A frontage road paralleled a high chain link fence for a hundred meters. Spotlights illuminated the entrance. Delaney tapped the Fiat’s horn, but the guardhouse was empty. She used her own key and rolled the gate aside. She drove onto the tarmac, locked the gate behind her, and then continued on. The UDW building was situated beyond a bank of storage sheds and a row of empty shipping containers.

  Delaney parked in an empty lot at the side of the building. The moment she stepped out of the car she saw the light, a dim reflection coming from the rear of the office. The overhead lamps, she thought, above the filing center. She hesitated. Clarisa must have left the light on, she told herself. It happens, right? So relax.

  With her briefcase in one hand and a brass-headed walking stick in the other, Delaney started toward the office. Her ankle ached more than usual, the result of a long hike in the Kouga Mountains earlier in the day. Feeling silly, but still anxious, she skirted the steps with the thought of peeking through the front window. The blinds were drawn. Butterflies invaded her stomach. “Clarisa,” she whispered, “never closes the curtains.”

  Deliberately, Delaney stepped away from the porch. She circled to the north side of the building. A gravel lot extended from here to the bay. Black water glistened beneath the heavens.

  The windows on this side were shoulder-high, squares with diamond-shaped quarrels in the center. Stretching, Delaney peered inside, and in the far corner, hunched over an open file, was Steven de Villiers.

  Irritated with herself and annoyed with him, Delaney returned to the front door. Without warning, she burst in. Had she expected de Villiers to flinch, she was very much mistaken. In fact, he righted himself with such deliberateness that she was taken by a cold foreboding. He turned, showering her with stern, piercing eyes. Delaney felt a chill at the base of her spine.

  Hoping to cover it, she asked, “What brings you here at this time, of night?”

  “I don’t recall anyone mentioning your authority in matters pertaining to the Federation of Mineworkers Union, Mrs. Blackford,” de Villiers replied. He closed the file unhurriedly. Delaney noticed that the top drawer of the cabinet nearest the window was ajar. The shipping manifests. “But, like you, I rather enjoy the cover of darkness.”

  “How did you get in here? I wasn’t aware you’d been given a key to the front gate or to the office.”

  “Of course not. Lucas Ravele was so kind as to oblige me. I didn’t think it was necessary that you knew.” De Villiers turned his back to her. He slid the file into the drawer and closed it. Delaney caught sight of the red index tag on the upper-right corner—the berthing insignia. A green tag was third day; a blue, second day; and a red tag indicated a vessel scheduled to dock the following day. “Lucas suggested that I familiarize myself with the filing system here in the office. And with the contracts coming up next week, you know, the union’s negotiations with the Chamber and all? I thought that after hours would be more convenient for your staff.”

  “How thoughtful,” Delaney answered evenly, but that didn’t explain the shipping manifests.

  De Villiers started toward her. The muscles in Delaney’s shoulders tensed. She retreated a step. She dropped her briefcase on the edge of Clarisa’s desk; the head of the walking stick caught the lip of a clay planter, knocking it to the floor. The pot shattered. Red lilies scattered across the floor.

  De Villiers continu
ed to weave his way through the desks, watching her. Amid the scatterings of broken clay and dirt, he paused. He bent forward. He reached out for a stray blossom. Eyes still upon her, he lowered his head to the bloom, sniffing the fragrance. Then, with the flower cradled in his palm, he arose.

  Again, he approached her. This time he stopped so close that Delaney caught the sweet sick scent of cologne diluted by perspiration. He held the bloom out, but Delaney didn’t move. Suddenly, his fist closed around it. His knuckles were red with exertion by the time he opened his hand again, and the crushed flower tumbled to the ground.

  “Good night, Mr. de Villiers,” Delaney said definitively.

  A smile split de Villiers’s waxen face, spreading the gray and white bristles of his moustache across hollow cheeks, but having no effect on his eyes.

  “Indeed it is, Mrs. Blackford. And a splendid night to you as well.”

  ****

  The next morning, Joshua Brungle sat at the computer. The CRT screen flashed dot-matrix impressions of exploding fireworks. Mansell stepped into the office with the Port Elizabeth Daily Bulletin under his arm.

  “What’s this?” he asked. “A step toward early retirement or a brief return to childhood?”

  Joshua reclined further in the swivel chair, stretching. He said, “This is an eager lad’s first taste of what Monday morning can be like away from the mania of the Pit. You’ve probably forgotten what it’s like down there. “

  “Energizing, invigorating, inspiring.”

  “You have forgotten.”

  Mansell sat behind his own desk scanning the headlines: U. S. CONSIDERS MASSIVE BOYCOTT. A subheading read, “Black Policeman Succumbs to Injuries.” At last, he pointed to the simulated fireworks on the monitor. “And that?” he asked.

  “That, Inspector, is the reply sent by Research Bureau and Security Branch Central when I so politely asked them for follow-up material on those two yo-yos arrested in Springs last Monday. Their names are Joseph Mokane and Amos Hlongwane. They’re being held in Jo’burg at Modder Bee.”