Deaken's War

by Brian Freemantle

  “Hello, Mother,” said Deaken.

  She acknowledged him with a curt nod, the sort of gesture she would have accorded a stranger. He supposed he should go across to kiss her, but didn’t think she would want him to. He decided to sit down on one of the deep, green velvet settees.

  “What is this all about?” His mother was as rigid and formal as her carefully waved white hair. It came as something of a surprise to Deaken to realize that she was a stronger person than his father. But it was he who elected to tell the story, more concisely than Deaken had done, missing none of the details, and showing the ability that had taken him from the advocates’ floor to the judges’ bench before exchanging a legal career for one in politics. But he didn’t stop at the account of missing the Bellicose in Dakar.

  “There’s something else,” he said to his wife.

  “What?”

  “I’ve got the Interior Ministry. I was told tonight officially.”

  She looked at her son. “And then he had to arrive!”

  “I need your help,” said Deaken, understanding now the reason for his father’s silence in the car.

  “What do the authorities say?” asked his mother.

  “They deny all knowledge or involvement,” said her husband.

  “They think I’m insane,” added Deaken.

  She looked at him. “Are you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You don’t look well.”

  “Karen’s been kidnapped. I’ve been tricked, cheated and left for dead in the middle of nowhere. I’ve just flown four thousand miles. How do you expect me to look?”

  “We’ve a meeting with the Director in the morning.” As always the old man tried to come between them. “They’re making more inquiries.”

  The woman didn’t look at him, eyes fixed on her son. “You almost ruined your father’s career once,” she said. “I won’t have you do it again.”

  “I’ve no intention of ruining anything,” said Deaken wearily. “I just want Karen back.”

  She didn’t speak for several moments and when she did Deaken realized she hadn’t listened to him.

  “I’d have you committed rather than let it happen again,” she said.

  Deaken knew that she meant it.

  27

  The appointment with the Director of the Department of National Security had been arranged for ten, but just as Deaken and his father were preparing to leave the Parkstown house there was a telephone call from Skinner Street, postponing it until midday.

  “Why?” asked Deaken.

  “I don’t know. They didn’t say,” replied his father.

  Deaken was still at the breakfast table, set out on the wide, sweeping verandah overlooking the gardens. The water sprinklers were already revolving over the grasses and shrubbery to beat the cooking heat of midday. Deaken noted that the arbour was still as colourful and as carefully kept as he remembered it. He could see four Africans working in the grounds but knew there would be more. The maintenance staff had been twenty strong when he had lived there. His mother had always insisted on neatness and efficiency. He was glad he didn’t look such a mess this morning. Whoever had cleaned, pressed and mended his suit had made an excellent job of it.

  His father, who had remained standing after returning to report the telephone call, sat down again and gestured for the waiting houseboy to clear the breakfast debris. Deaken saw that the serving staff still wore white gloves.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” said the older man unexpectedly.

  Deaken shrugged. “1 suppose she’d reason enough.”

  “It was still rude … unnecessary. She was very hurt by what happened last time.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Your mother was always ambitious. She thinks if I’d got the original appointment, I could be premier now.”

  “Couldn’t you still?”

  “I’ve got to make a success of the Interior Ministry first.”

  Deaken looked back at the garden and the working Africans. His father epitomized the Boer: member of the Broederbond, the closed, secret society of ruling class, always a participant in the Voortrekker marches, which commemorated the occupation of the country and their subsequent fight against the British. There was everything he hated in the man he loved so much.

  “Do you believe Swart … that this country wasn’t involved?”

  “My appointment has been rumoured for some time,” said the older man. “They wouldn’t lie to me, knowing that I can find out easily enough.”

  “Then I won’t do anything to embarrass you,” promised Deaken. “I intended to. The threat of publicity was the only weapon I had to protect Karen. But not now.”

  The old man nodded.

  “Do you believe me?”

  “It’s difficult to.”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “I don’t think you are.”

  “What do you think then?” demanded Deaken.

  “That it’s going to be difficult to convince anyone else.”

  Deaken caught a movement from the French windows. It was one of the house servants. Seeing his expectation, his father said, “She won’t be coming out.”

  “Oh,” said Deaken. He supposed half a reconciliation was better than none. Was this really a reconciliation with his father? Or the action of a man who had lost one opportunity and was trying to minimize the risk of losing another? It really wasn’t important. Deciding what to do next was important and he realized, emptily, that he didn’t know.

  “We’d better go,” said his father. “They said noon.”

  The limousine which had brought them from Johannesburg was waiting, with the uniformed driver at the wheel; it had been washed and polished and gleamed in the sun. They moved off along the broad residential roads, between landscaped gardens jewelled by mansions and villas and beneath the purple and violet jacaranda trees. Deaken was surprised to feel a certain nostalgia.

  The Department of National Security was a modern, tall, tinted-glass building and the office of its Director, Brigadier Heinrich Muller, was on the top floor, occupying a corner with a panoramic view over Pretoria. Deaken followed his father into the room and closed the door behind them. Muller was a large, heavy-bodied man, fullfeatured and with thick, heavy hands. Like Swart, who stood alongside and was the only other man in the room, he wore plain clothes. In fact Swart didn’t appear to have changed since the previous night. Deaken saw that the expressions weren’t as sceptical as he had expected, just blank. His father made the introductions and Muller offered his hand. Deaken took it, surprised.

  “I’m sorry for the delay,” said Muller, gesturing to chairs. “Things took longer than we thought.”

  “What things?” said Deaken.

  “Checking that a yacht owned by a man called Adnan Azziz, who has a son in a Swiss school, was in harbour at Monte Carlo,” elaborated Muller. “That there was an unexplained and so far unsolved assault upon a holiday villa near a small French town called Rixheim. And that a freighter named the Bellicose, owned by the Levcos shipping company, sailed from Marseilles over a week ago and made a call within the last two days at Dakar.”

  Deaken experienced the sensation of being in a lift that suddenly descends faster than expected.

  “Thank you,” he said, soft-voiced. “For believing me … for bothering to make the inquiries.”

  “It wasn’t altruism,” said Muller. “We’ve an interest in stopping major campaigns in Namibia.” He hesitated. “Which remains a problem.”

  “What do you mean?” demanded Deaken’s father.

  Muller looked at Swart. The stocky man cleared his throat and said, “According to what you told me last night, Azziz has ordered the Bellicose to return for a rendezvous off Algiers.”

  The falling sensation hit Deaken again, but this time it was a result of fear—fear and blinding anger. “Don’t say the bastard has—!”

  “Lloyds report a northerly course,” said Swart. “The last report put the fre
ighter forty miles off the Mauritanian coast, making twelve knots in a medium swell.”

  Deaken frowned at the man. “So he is doing what he said?”

  “We’ve long-range reconnaissance aircraft,” interrupted Muller. “We ordered a check, initially little more than a precaution. At dawn this morning a freighter, later identified from aerial photographs to be the Bellicose, was proceeding southwards towards Angola.”

  There was a protracted silence in the room. Deaken’s father broke it. “That doesn’t make sense,” he said.

  “Only if there are two ships,” said the security chief. “And we know there aren’t. That’s why we delayed this meeting. We overflew the Mauritanian position two hours ago—a supposed Air Force training flight to the Azores. We’ve swept the area. There are ships certainly. But none of them is the Bellicose.”

  “So Underberg …” said Deaken, beginning to understand, “or whoever he is will think we’re keeping to the arrangement,” he said. “He is getting his information from Lloyds.”

  It made sense of what had happened in Dakar. Azziz was the bwana mkubwa, the big man who had wanted to keep him off the Bellicose, so that he wouldn’t discover that a change of course was never intended for the freighter.

  “I understand your reaction,” said Muller. “Of more concern to us is that whoever bought all the weaponry appears to be getting delivery as planned.”

  “It has to be SWAPO surely?” said Deaken.

  “That’s the obvious conclusion,” said Muller. “But there are still too many uncertainties about this business.”

  He looked at Swart again. The man took from Muller’s desk two photographs and showed them to Deaken. “Do you recognize either of these two men?”

  They were official pictures, both men staring directly and self-consciously at the camera. “No” said Deaken. “I’ve never seen either of them before.”

  “I’m glad,” said Muller.

  “Who are they?” said Deaken.

  “Marius Underberg and Jan Underberg,” said the Director.

  “So who’s the man I saw in Geneva?”

  “Will you do something for us?” asked Muller.

  “Of course,” said Deaken. As he spoke, he realized the final irony. He was cooperating, even seeking the assistance, of an organization which he had criticized and fought all his life. But there was no choice. “What do you want?” he said.

  “For you to work with our artists. Identikit and photofit specialists, We need a picture of the man you met in Geneva.”

  Two men were waiting in the office next door, one with paper pinned across an artist’s drawing board, the other standing at a table before assorted boxes. Deaken worked first with the photofit expert, picking his way through the containers holding every feature of the human face, from basic outline to warts, moles and strawberry birthmarks. Deaken worked with total concentration, occasionally closing his eyes mentally to picture again the smug, selfassured countenance that had confronted him over his cheap office desk in Switzerland. It took a long time and at the end he ached with the effort.

  “It’s as good as I can get it,” he said.

  “Then let me improve it,” said the artist.

  While the photograph was being taken off the composite image, Deaken went over the photofit features with which he was not completely satisfied. He remained at the man’s shoulder while he worked, with fine-haired brushes and then an air brush, tinting and paring until at last Deaken was staring down at the man who called himself Underberg. The retouched version was photographed again and then the three of them went back to the Director’s office.

  “Comparisons?” asked Muller.

  “Begun from the original photofit,” said the man who had created it. “This version is put through a physiognomy computer.”

  Deaken looked curiously between the intelligence director and his technicians. “So what happens now?” he said.

  “More checking,” said Muller.

  It took ten minutes. A third, white-coated man came in with a folder and handed it to Muller. The Director detached a snapshot-size photograph and handed it to Deaken. “Is this the man?” he said.

  It was clearly a photograph that had been taken without the subject’s knowledge. It showed him striding down a wide highway, bordered by modern buildings, and from the number of blacks Deaken guessed it was somewhere in Africa.

  “Who is he?” said Deaken.

  “His name is Vladimir Suslev,” replied Muller.

  Mitri brought the message from the radio room, padding respectfully into the stateroom and handing it to Azziz. The Arab read it, his face clouding. He studied it a second time to ensure that he had properly understood. Then he looked up to Grearson and said, “It’s from Levcos. They’ve had a signal from the Bellicose that Deaken didn’t board in Dakar.”

  “What!”

  “He apparently made contact with the agent there the day before the docking. But that was the last they saw of him.”

  “So where the hell is he?”

  “God knows.”

  “What about the messages?”

  “They’re being sent as arranged. They were never dependent upon Deaken’s presence anyway.”

  “If he tries something on his own, he could ruin everything.” Grearson brought his fist down hard on the chair arm.

  “Your people in Marseilles—Evans and the others—they know Deaken, don’t they?” asked Azziz.

  “Sure,” said Grearson.

  “If they see him, poking around the docks … doing anything … I want him killed.”

  It was a long, frustrating discussion, with frequent cul-de-sacs from which none of them could find an exit. It had long since grown dark, and Pretoria was still and quiet. The Director’s office was littered with debris of long occupation, discarded coffee cups and half-eaten sandwiches.

  “Why should Vladimir Suslev, whom we know to have acted as a military adviser to Angola and again with SWAPO guerrillas in Namibia, represent himself as South African? Why should he kidnap a Saudi Arabian arms dealer’s son—and the wife of a South African of some notoriety—and stipulate the ransom to be the rerouting of an arms shipment for an organization which the Soviet Union supports against us?” demanded Muller.

  It was the recurring question, the maypole around which they had all danced until the strings had become tangled.

  “And what the hell is Azziz doing?” said Deaken.

  “That at least we may be able to find out,” said Muller.

  “I’ll have people with me?” said Deaken

  Muller indicated Swart. “He’ll be in charge. There will be as many men as are needed. We’ll get your wife back.”

  It took a couple of hours to make all the arrangements and assemble an immediate advance group to join Deaken and Swart. When the time came to leave, his father asked if he could drive him to the airport at Johannesburg.

  “If the guerrillas are planning an offensive in July, the government have got a lot to thank you for.”

  “Will you tell mother what happened?” said Deaken, unsure why it was so important for him to impress her.

  “Of course,” said the older man. “As far as I’m allowed to.” He smiled ruefully.

  “I’d like her to know.”

  The man stretched across the car, putting his hand upon his son’s arm. “Come back,” he said.

  “I will,” promised Deaken.

  “And bring Karen.”

  “Yes,” said Deaken after a pause. “I’ll bring Karen.”

  28

  Eight men flew from South Africa with Deaken and Swart, in two separate aircraft. Two more went directly to Paris to the South African embassy to collect the weapons that had been shipped over in the diplomatic bag to bypass customs interference. There were contingency plans for more men to follow if Swart decided it was necessary. The first priority was to locate the Russian and, even before the conference in Muller’s office had ended, everyone had recognized the problem facing them in M
onte Carlo and the risk of Deaken’s accidental recognition. They chose Nice, taking a series of rooms in the Hotel Negresco; Swart’s suite overlooked the Promenade des Anglais, and it was here the group assembled early on the first morning.

  Deaken sat beside Swart but took no part in the briefing, admiring the military precision with which the security man deployed his men, dispatching six to Monte Carlo but reserving two for Marseilles, the departure port of the Bellicose. Despite the speed with which they had left South Africa, Deaken saw Swart had managed to bring a family photograph with him: a woman, as small and stocky as her husband, and two children, a boy and a girl, both fair-haired, smiling into the camera from what appeared to be a picnic scene. It disclosed a personal side of a man whom Deaken had regarded as a hardened professional.

  As the men filed from the room Swart said, “And now we wait.”

  “And think,” added Deaken.

  “About what?”

  “The Lloyds reports give the speed of what’s supposed to be the Bellicose sailing back?”

  “Yes.”

  “So it’s a simple calculation to work out when it should arrive off Algiers.”

  “But we know it isn’t going to,” said Swart. “How can Suslev contact a ship that isn’t going to be there?”

  Another dead end, thought Deaken.

  “I’d like to know what we’re working against,” said Swart.

  Deaken looked up sharply. For these unexpected new allies it was a matter of vital security to discover Russia’s part in the arms shipment and if possible to prevent a major battle in a disputed area. For him it was simply a matter of getting Karen back.

  The telephone sounded insistently. Swart lapsed into Afrikaans as soon as the caller identified himself, smiling at Deaken. As he replaced the receiver, he said, “Why is it that so often the most complex problem is really the most simple?”

  “What’s happened?” said Deaken.

  “One of the people I sent to Marseilles did the obvious thing as soon as he arrived there and checked the ships in port. There’s a Levcos-owned freighter named the Hydra Star, loaded and waiting sailing instructions.”