Unofficial and Deniable

by John Gordon Davis

  Harker felt a stab of guilt through a chink in his armour when he read about the mutilated survivor, as yet unidentified, but he thrust it aside – he had seen plenty of his soldiers mutilated over the years: if you play with fire you must expect to get your fingers burnt – the bastard had been plotting far worse, he was lucky to be alive and if he’d been caught in South Africa he would have been hanged after the police had wrung the truth out of him. Harker had no fear that the man could be dangerous: no ANC official would be so dumb as to tell the FBI he was meeting with Fidel Castro’s henchmen on holy American soil. Without much difficulty Harker parried the thrust of guilt as he encoded his report to Dupont that Sunday afternoon, and when his computer began to print out the information from Washington that the survivor was now positively identified by the CIA as Alexander Looksmart Kumalo, his remorse evaporated further. Looksmart Kumalo was well known to Military Intelligence as one of the ANC’s sabotage strategists.

  That afternoon Harker took the shuttle flight to Washington to deliver to Dupont all the documents seized at the farmhouse. He had not read them; he had tried, he could read Spanish with difficulty but he could not concentrate; indeed he did not want to know any more than he had to about the misery of war and murderous skulduggeries in its name, and he wanted to forget his work of last night. But when he walked into the soundproof office behind the reception desk of the Royalton Hotel a happily drunk Dupont not only thrust a large whisky at him after pumping his hand in congratulation – ‘Jolly good show, fucking good show! Sanchez and Moreno!’ – but also insisted Harker give him a blow by blow account. And sitting in the corner was the CIA man whom Harker knew only by the codename ‘Fred’, the guy who was Dupont’s handler or contact with the United States’ ‘Dirty Tricks Bureau’ as he called it, and Fred wanted every detail on tape.

  ‘Fucking good show …’ Dupont interjected frequently.

  Neither Dupont nor Fred was unduly concerned about the survivor, Looksmart Kumalo. It was a pity, of course, that he had not perished with the rest of the blackguards but there was no danger of the bastard spilling the beans: he would be debriefed by the CIA and advised, ‘in the nicest possible way’, that not only was his liberty at stake because of the cocaine the FBI had planted on him, but his health was also because – if he didn’t have a mysterious fatal heart attack in hospital – he would be deported to South Africa where he belonged and where he would receive a warm welcome from the authorities if he opened his big mouth. And if he broke the bargain he was being so generously offered, the British MI5, France’s Sûreté and most of the civilized world’s secret services would have him prominently on their shit-list.

  ‘He won’t talk publicly,’ Froggy Fred croaked, ‘and if he does they’ll be the last words he utters.’

  ‘You planted cocaine on him?’ Harker frowned. ‘I thought the FBI were going to blame the whole thing on the Cuban exile community in Miami. Now you’re going to claim it was a drug-war assassination?’

  ‘Both,’ Fred rumbled. ‘We blame it on both, as alternative possibilities, to raise confusion.’

  Dupont leered happily, stroking the pile of documents. ‘He’ll keep his mouth shut, don’t worry …’

  It was after midnight when the debriefing was declared over and a taxi was summoned to take Harker back to the airport. Dupont offered him a room in the hotel –‘The presidential suite indeed’ – and Fred volunteered to throw in a good hooker ‘on Uncle Sam’ – ‘Or two!’ Dupont cried – but Harker just wanted to get the hell, away from yesterday, from these awful guys, from this hotel where they festered.

  As he climbed into the taxi, Dupont breathed alcoholically through the window. ‘Fucking good show! Now you relax, disappear to the beach for a few days, then get on to the Bigmouth case …’

  He did disappear to the coast, but not to enjoy himself – it was to brood. Ah yes, his soldier’s conscience was clear, more or less, but even soldiers sometimes want to be alone after they have done battle, spilt voluminous blood, mourn not for the enemy but the whole dreadful business of taking so much life. And he did not want to ‘get on to the Bigmouth case’ – he felt a fraud. He was a fraud. Jack Harker dearly wished he was not bound to take the beautiful Josephine Valentine to lunch next Saturday, he wanted to be alone, he dearly wished he did not have to pose fraudulently as her potential publisher in order to further the ends of apartheid. Josephine Valentine’s book was hardly a legitimate military target.

  And he would not do so.

  No, he would not do so. Jack Harker refused to defraud Josephine Valentine any further by pretending that he was interested in publishing her book. He would have to pay her the courtesy of reading her ten chapters, and he would give her his honest opinion, but he would tell her immediately thereafter that Harvest would not publish it. He was not going to give her false hope, and he certainly was not going to obey orders and bury her book, kill it by publishing it badly. Fuck you, Felix Dupont.

  Having made that decision he felt better. On Saturday, when he drove back to Manhattan, he was again looking forward to having lunch with one of the best-looking women in New York.

  When Josephine Valentine came sweeping into the yacht club dining room, clutching her file, beaming, hand extended, she was even lovelier than he remembered.

  ‘Hi!’ She pumped his hand energetically: hers was warm and both soft and strong. She was a little breathless, as if she had been hurrying. ‘Am I late?’

  ‘Indeed you’re two minutes early,’ Harker smiled. ‘You look beautiful.’

  ‘Thank you. Well …’ She plonked the file down on the table. ‘Here it is.’ But she put her hand on it. ‘Please, don’t look at it now. I want you to give it your undivided attention at home. And,’ she grinned, ‘I’m nervous as hell.’ She sat.

  Oh dear. ‘Don’t be, I know you write well.’ Harker sat down. And he decided that right now was the moment to start extricating himself. ‘And I’m not the only publisher in town. Indeed you’ll probably do better with a bigger house.’

  Consternation crossed her lovely face. ‘But you will consider it? Are you saying you’re not interested any more?’

  Oh Christ. ‘I’m just being realistic, for your sake.’ He smiled. ‘On the contrary, I’m the one who should be nervous that you’ll take it to somebody else.’

  Josephine sat back and blew out her cheeks. ‘For a moment I thought you were trying to tell me something.’ Then she said anxiously, ‘You will be brutally honest with me, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Okay.’ She sat back, with a brilliant smile. ‘And now let’s stop talking about it – I’ve been burning the midnight oil all week.’

  ‘So what’ll you have to drink?’

  ‘A double martini for starters. Followed by a bucket of wine. And remember I’m paying.’

  ‘You are not.’ The fucking CCB was paying.

  They had a good time again that day. They laughed a great deal, drank a lot, became very witty and wise. Harker got into a mood to celebrate too, but he was not sure what: he still felt a fraud. And, God, he just wanted to get this masquerade of being her potential publisher over so he could do what publishers should not do – make a pass at an author. Oh, to take her hand across the table, look into her blue eyes, tell her how beautiful she was, to feel her body against his, to go through the delightful process of courtship: but as long as he was defrauding her his conscience would not permit it, his head had to rule his loins. So the sooner he went through the motions of reading her typescript, grasped the nettle and told her that Harvest could not publish it, the better.

  ‘So tell me, Major Jack Harker,’ she said over the rim of her first glass of Irish coffee, ‘whatever happened to Mrs Harker?’

  ‘There hasn’t been one. There very nearly was, but she changed her mind. One of the casualties of war. She’s now Mrs Somebody Else.’

  ‘Oh. Well, all I can say is that she was either very, very stupid or Mr Somebody Else must be very, very ni
ce. So tell me …’ she raised her glass to her wide full lips and looked at him, ‘is some lucky American gal filling her stilettos?’

  ‘Nobody special.’ He felt himself blushing. ‘And how about you?’

  She grinned. ‘Nobody special. I’ve only just hit town after a long time away.’

  Oh, Harker badly wanted to know about her past, how many of the legends about her were true. In particular he wanted to know about that dead Cuban lying on the floor of the building at Bassinga when she had tried to kill herself – but the time was not right for a confession that he had killed her lover, and doubtless never would be.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve been close to marrying?’ he said.

  ‘Several times. But, at the last minute, there was always something amiss.’ She flashed him a smile from underneath her dark eyebrows. ‘Like, not enough soulmateship.’ She added: ‘I’ve got the feeling you know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Soulmates? Sure. Lovers who think and feel alike. Share the same interests.’

  ‘And passions. Interests and passions. Like…Justice. And Democracy. Freedom. A fair wage for a fair day’s labour. And poetry, and music. And … God.’ She looked at him seriously, then flashed him a smile. ‘All that good stuff.’

  ‘And have you ever found it?’

  Josephine nodded sagely at her glass. ‘I thought so, several times. But each time it turned out to be a false alarm. Or something like that. Until the last time, I think. Maybe. But he was killed.’

  Oh Christ. Harker waited, then said, ‘How?’

  She said to her glass, ‘He was a soldier, like you.’ She smirked. ‘And he lost his life fighting you guys.’ She looked up. ‘The Battle of Bassinga? Mean anything to you?’

  Harker feigned a sigh. What do you say? ‘It was a big do, I believe. I was in hospital at the time, wounded in an earlier action, the one that pensioned me out.’ He glanced at her. ‘So, what happened exactly?’

  Josephine took a sip of Irish coffee. ‘I’d been living with him in his base camp for about a month. First met him up north in Luanda, then flew down with him to cover the southern front. We were asleep in his quarters when your guys struck, just before dawn. Helluva mess. Anyway, Paulo got shot at the beginning. So did I, but that was later on.’

  So she wasn’t admitting attempted suicide. ‘You were shot in the cross-fire?’

  ‘When Paulo was shot I went berserk, I grabbed his AK47 and started firing out the window. There was a box of loaded magazines and I just kept firing, slapping in one magazine after another. Stupid, because journos aren’t supposed to become combatants if they don’t want to be treated as an enemy, but I was frantic about Paulo. Anyway, finally a bullet got me. Here.’ She tapped her left breast. ‘Missed my heart, fortunately. Next thing I knew I was being loaded into one of your helicopters and flown off to one of your bases, where they patched me up – which was nice of them, seeing as I’d been trying to shoot the hell out of them an hour earlier. Then they deported me.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I heard about this. So you’re the blonde bombshell who threatened to sue us. Wasn’t there a row about your photographs?’

  She smiled. ‘Your guys developed my film to see what they could find out about the enemy’s hardware. I kicked up a fuss and they gave me my negatives back.’

  ‘Did they interrogate you?’

  ‘Sure, but I told them to go to hell.’ She added, ‘I must admit, grudgingly, that they were perfectly gentlemanly about it.’

  Harker wondered what she would feel and say if he told her he knew the truth. ‘And this man Paulo – you were in love with him?’

  She nodded. ‘Wildly. Or I thought so. I’d only known him for a little more than a month. Now with the wisdom of hindsight I realize that I was only infatuated, and confused by my admiration for him. He was a very admirable man. And swashbuckling.’ She smiled.

  ‘And handsome, no doubt.’

  ‘But that doesn’t cut much ice with me. It is what’s in here that counts.’ She tapped her heart. ‘And here.’ She tapped her head. ‘He was an entirely honest, dedicated social scientist, if that’s the word, dedicated to the well-being and betterment of his people – a true Christian, but for the fact that he was an atheist, of course, being a communist. Dedicated. His men loved him. Several medals for bravery. And ‘a great sense of humour. And a great reader, a very good conversationalist in both Spanish and English.’

  Harker couldn’t stand the man. No doubt a fantastic Latin lover too. ‘Sounds good. But?’

  ‘But,’ Josie smiled, ‘I now realize it wouldn’t have worked. For one thing I’m not a communist. For another I espouse God. English is my mother tongue, and freedom of speech and of the press is my credo. And I’m a fully liberated Americano who regards herself as every inch her man’s equal, not as a Latino wife. Oh, he was macho, Paulo. Machissimo.’ She smiled wanly. ‘And there was something else wrong. I knew it at the time but wouldn’t admit it to myself – there was lots of lust, and lots of fun, but I knew deep down that it was just a rip-roaring affair, not love with a capital L.’

  Harker was pleased to hear that: Señor Paulo sounded quite a tough act to follow. Before he could muster something appropriate Josephine asked with a smile, ‘And what about that extremely silly lady who nearly became Mrs Harker, then lost her marbles?’

  Harker smiled. ‘Well …’ He was tempted to exaggerate, to match her description of Paulo, then he decided to do it straight. ‘Well, rather like your Paulo, who had something missing, my Pauline – and that was truly her name, would you believe the coincidence? Pauline was also dedicated to liberal politics, uplifting the Africans. Trade unionism, defeating apartheid, et cetera. She was a teacher, and she was going to set the world on fire. Anyway, I was off in the bush most of the time, dealing with her pals the enemy, and she met this crash-hot stockbroker who took her away from it all.’

  ‘And the first you knew about it was when you came back from the bush?’ She shook her head. ‘Well, he must have been one hell of a sexy stockbroker.’ She smiled at him.

  The compliment made Harker’s heart turn over. And he longed to reach out across the table for her hand.

  Then she confused him by changing the subject abruptly. ‘And tell me, do you believe in God?’

  For the next half hour, through another round of Irish coffees, religion was the animated if solemn topic. Yes, Harker did believe in a Creator but he had arrived at this conclusion by logic rather than by what had been instilled into him at Sunday School: the upshot was an inability, on the evidence, to conclude whether He was the Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, African or some other kind of god. Josephine on the other hand described herself as ‘eighteen-carat Catholic’: ‘Alas, I believe in Heaven and Hell, the whole nine yards.’

  ‘But why the “alas”?’

  Josephine tossed back her head and grinned at the ceiling: ‘“Oh Lord, make me good, but not yet”.’

  Harker smiled. ‘Saint Augustine.’

  Josephine pointed a red fingernail at his nose. ‘So you’re not such an infidel after all. Inside that rugged exterior there’s a Christian trying to get out …’

  And then she said, halfway through the third Irish coffee, ‘And they tell me, Major, you’re a shit-hot sailor.’

  Harker was surprised. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I’ve made a few enquiries around this club, and the feedback is you’re probably a gentleman, maybe even a scholar, but certainly a very good sailor. But you don’t come here often enough, they say.’

  Harker was pleased with his credentials. And more pleased that she had enquired. ‘Unfortunately I can’t afford the time to come here often. But, yes, I’ve put my name down as crew for a few regattas and some kind skippers have taken me on. I’ve had a lot of fun.’

  She leant forward: ‘Oh, isn’t sailing fun?’ Her eyes sparkled. ‘The wind, harnessing it, squeezing the most out of the sails? Even the skipper bawling you out. And getting drenched, and all the bullshit back in the c
lubhouse, the hot toddies and the post-mortems – I love it!’ She looked at him happily. ‘I’m a very competitive soul, Jack Harker. And I think you are too, huh?’

  Harker ached to take her hand. Yes, of course he was fucking competitive, you have to be in the military. But a lot of the steam, the fight, seemed to have gone out of him since he had become a .civilian in New York. ‘Not as much as I used to be. Something to do with age.’

  ‘Bullshit. You’re not even forty. And you emerge from God-knows-how-many years of mortal combat and decide to become a publisher! That’s a very competitive business. Oh, he felt a fraud. She continued. ‘It takes balls. In New York, of all places. Why did you choose America?’

  ‘The American dream?’ He smiled.

  ‘See? Anyway, before I tell you my American dream, have you ever sailed across an ocean?’

  ‘I’ve been crew in the Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro yacht race several times.’

  ‘Oh, I’d love to do that! Was it scary? Those huge waves?’

  ‘Well, you knew you had a good strong boat and a good strong crew.’

  ‘Love to do it. And one day I will.’ She hunched forward. ‘Okay, my American dream: I’m going to make a pile of money out of writing, then buy a good strong boat and sail around the world.’ She grinned. ‘What do you think of that?’

  Oh yes, Harker would love to do that. ‘Marvellous.’

  She said with a twinkle in her eyes, ‘Okay, so what else are we compatible about, Major? We’ve canvassed books, booze and boating very successfully.’