Unofficial and Deniable

by John Gordon Davis

  The war in Angola was over. It was the beginning of the end of white rule in South Africa. Harker was sure it was also the beginning of the end of the CCB.

  14

  Harker’s Christmas present to Josephine was to be a fortnight’s sailing holiday in the Caribbean. Hers to him was a fortnight’s skiing holiday in Vermont.

  There was the usual hectic round of Christmas celebrations, publishers’ parties, literary agents’, Harvest’s, the Yacht Club’s, the Racket Club’s and Ike’s, Mike’s and Spike’s – even Ferdi Spicer threw a black-tie binge at Cleopatra’s Retreat for favoured United Nations clients, which, of course, Harker dared not attend though he would have liked to do so. The Anti-Apartheid League held a bring-a-bottle bash down in Greenwich Village. At all these parties the end of the Angolan war, the peace treaty so dramatized in New York’s harbour, was a much-mentioned topic. At the Anti-Apartheid League’s party the war’s end was joyfully toasted as a South African collapse largely attributable to League efforts. Josephine made a ringing speech urging her troops ever onwards. ‘Once more into the breach, dear friends – victory is in sight at last!’

  On Christmas Eve, and again on Christmas Day, Josephine telephoned her father to try to make peace but she only reached his answering machine. She left messages ‘from Jack and me’ but there was no response. They left for the snow the day after Christmas. The forested mountains were breathtakingly beautiful. Dusk was falling as they drove up to their skiing lodge, its lights twinkling cosily amongst the snowy trees, jolly music coming from the rustic bar, red-nosed skiers crunching home for the day, a roaring log fire in the reception hall. Their room had a magnificent view of the valley, with a balcony and a heart-shaped Jacuzzi. Josephine grinned. ‘In the summertime this area has a reputation for dirty weekenders.’

  They didn’t make it to a single breakfast that week. Only when the sun was about halfway down the mountain across the valley did they think about getting up. It was lovely to lie deep in the big double bed together in the hours after morning love, drifting in and out of sleep, revelling in the fact that she was not going to leap out of bed on to her bicycle with her passion-pink crash-helmet and go hurtling uptown. It was lovely to take a long time waking up before ringing room service for croissants, orange juice and champagne and then slopping into the Jacuzzi to consume it, letting the hot jets and bubbles ease the stiffness and aches of yesterday’s skiing while the Buck’s Fizz did its gentle work. It was not before noon that they were togged up in boots and ski-gear, feeling no pain. Five or six hours later, after numerous eggnogs and Glühweins and a long lunch in one of the many little bars on the beautiful slopes, they came skidding to a stop back at their lodge in the sunset, unclipped their skis, put them in their locker and went tramping into the bar for an hour’s jolly socializing before trudging back upstairs to their heart-shaped Jacuzzi. It was bliss lying in the whirling hot water, letting the jets massage them, the air bubbles titillate them whilst they sipped wine, feeling their stiffness and aches seeping out into the hot water. Each night they intended to get their act together and go downstairs to dinner but each night it was too much effort, much more fun to ring room service. It was not until New Year’s Eve that they finally made it downstairs to dinner.

  ‘Do you have a reservation, sir?’ the head waiter asked.

  ‘We’re residents,’ Harker said. ‘Room three-oh-seven.’

  ‘Three-oh-seven!’ the head waiter beamed. ‘Room service is going to be very disappointed …’

  Their table was in a corner near the big log fire; they were alone in a crowd which was how they wanted to be. When midnight came they joined hands with adjoining tables and sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at the top of their voices, but when the whistle-blowing and kissing of strangers began they ducked out and headed back upstairs. While Harker opened a bottle of champagne Josephine threw herself on the bed, and stared up at the ceiling, arms outflung.

  ‘You know, this time last year I danced until dawn. This year all I want to do is go to bed with you. Could this be love?’

  ‘See how you feel this time next year.’

  ‘I know exactly how I’ll feel this time next year.’

  Harker put a glass of champagne in her hand, then took a sip of his own. ‘So why don’t you want to get married?’ He sat down beside her.

  ‘Oh I do. Don’t you?’

  ‘So?’ He waited, took another sip.

  Josephine smiled, staring up at the ceiling. ‘Oh I do,’ she repeated. ‘But not just yet.’ Then she sat up and kissed him hard. ‘You know I adore you.’ She collapsed back on the pillows again. ‘But I’m not ready yet. And that’s got nothing to do with loving you. It’s just that … I just need to be technically free for a while yet. It’s just … until my book is finished and published – if it’s ever published – I want to be free to complete my education, as it were.’ She looked at him. ‘Free to be a bit selfish, I suppose. Is that very terrible of me?’

  Harker sighed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But I suppose people are like that until they know their own mind.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Josie, we’ve been together six months. And you’re twenty-seven next birthday, not seventeen. Isn’t it time you knew your own mind?’

  ‘But I do know my own mind – that I want to marry you! But not until I’m older and wiser. Okay? In fact …’ She frowned at him, then stretched her arm around his neck and squeezed him. ‘In fact, my New Year’s wish is that I finish my book before this summer and that it’s so brilliant you insist on publishing it and you make us both such a pile of money that we keep on as a team for the rest of our lives. So that we’re both free, free for the rest of our lives to roam the world seeing wonderful sights and plumbing the depths of mysteries, talking and listening and reading and writing and publishing. And trying to teach the world – about its folly, about the political mess it is in and the terrible environmental wreck we’re making with our pollution and acid rain and global warming, and the oceans that we’re stripping and killing.’ She looked at him, eyes bright. ‘That’s what I want to be free to do – with you. But as of now we cannot do it together because you’re a publisher with a load of responsibilities. You simply cannot turn your back on them and come away with me to the rainforests of the Amazon, you simply cannot jump on a plane with me to the Kalahari to research the Bushmen. Can you?’

  Harker shrugged.

  ‘But I’m a writer, Jack,’ Josephine said. ‘I can do those things and it’s a crying shame if I don’t.’ She looked at him earnestly. ‘It would be irresponsible of me to get married and then disappear on these junkets. It would be a recipe for divorce.’

  ‘But most of the time I could probably disappear on those junkets with you.’

  ‘But how could you afford to leave your work?’

  Harker shrugged again. ‘Harvest is up and running now. Sure, we’ve got bank overdrafts but every publisher has those. I could leave the office to the editor and our accountant for a while and fly out to join you for a few weeks in Timbuktu or Rio, wherever you are.’

  Josephine smiled. ‘It’s a pretty thought. But I don’t think it’ll work out as simply as that when the chips are down, I think you’ll be too busy. Or something.’

  ‘Where there’s a will there’s a way.’ He added, ‘Without relying on your inheritance.’

  Josephine said earnestly, ‘When we’re married you’re welcome to rely on me for anything, as I will rely on you for anything and everything, I didn’t imagine otherwise. But darling?’ She smiled at him ravishingly: ‘Not just yet, please?’ She skated over that one and raised her glass high. ‘This is my New Year’s wish. I wish that I write such a good book that you’ll be desperate to publish it and be my editor and my guru. So we can plan future books and projects together, wonderful trips to faraway places with strange-sounding names, researching important subjects of international moral significance, publishing wonderful books which are going to make
the world sit up and do something constructive. Can we drink to that?’

  Harker smiled. ‘But when am I going to be allowed to read this fabulous book?’

  ‘It won’t be ready before next summer. I want to put absolutely my best foot forward. So …’ She raised her glass high again: ‘To 1989. It’s going to be a wonderful year, I know …’

  15

  At the end of that fortnight they drove back down to New York – their skiing skills honed, their stiffness and aches replaced with muscle-toning, their faces glowing with snow-tanned health, and they went back to work. But every weekend for that January and February they returned to the mountains to ski, and a couple of nights a week they went skating. Sometimes they went up to the Rockefeller Plaza to waltz around the rink to music with all the beautiful people but more often they took a cab down to Greenwich Village and whizzed around with the fun people for a couple of hours before adjourning to Ye Olde Shakespeare, where they met up with Josie’s League comrades. And then, in the spring, they went south to the Virgin Islands, to enjoy Harker’s Christmas present.

  That was a lovely time. They took delivery of their forty-five foot chartered ketch from The Moorings jetty in Tortola, British Virgin Islands, and sailed off into the best cruising grounds in the world where the trade winds blow gently all year over the long chain of palm-slung islands stretching from the eastern bulge of South America across to Cuba. On their first day Harker set their course due south for Venezuela and they went creaming out into the clear blue Caribbean under a riotously sunny sky, the sails taut, the deck gently heeled, the bow-wave sh-sh-ing down the hull; Harker and Josephine lounged behind the wheel, the wind in their hair, champagne glasses in hand. ‘This even beats skiing,’ Josie said. They creamed southwards for a hundred miles, then, in the moonlight, they swung east-north-east towards Barbados to begin their meander through the most beautiful string of islands in the world.

  They had a lovely time. Cruising through the islands on an even keel, the trade winds astern, the sails gently full, the water turquoise, the palmy beaches white. For a fortnight they wore hardly any clothes. Lying at anchor in peaceful bays, the water crystal clear, the coral reefs just below them. Snorkelling along the reefs in the underwater wonderworld amongst the myriads of many-coloured fish, Josephine’s long legs smoothly working, her long blonde hair streaming silkily behind her: she was the most naked woman in the world. And wallowing together in the little waves lapping on the white beaches, and lying flat out naked in the sun – it was all beautiful, and very erotic. Sometimes there were one or two other yachts in the bay, but usually they had their beach to themselves. If anybody was watching them through binoculars they did not care.

  ‘Let ’em have a good time,’ Josephine said. ‘I am, the best time of my life.’

  Thus they meandered westwards on through the turquoise waters, through islands called Guadeloupe and Montserrat and Antigua and St Kitts and St Bart’s and Anguilla. On the second-last day of their holiday they were back where they started from, lying at anchor in a beautiful bay in the British Virgin Islands. The sun was going down in a glorious blaze of red, shimmering on the water, tinting the tropical verdure of the encircling islands with mauvey gold. Harker and Josephine sat in the cockpit drinking rum punches, picking on cashew nuts, tanned golden brown, glowing, fresh from their snorkelling and wallowing, fresh from their showers: they felt good and healthy and rested, and sad that tomorrow it was all over, that they were handing this yacht back to the charter company before taking a taxi out to the little airfield and boarding a plane to Puerto Rico and New York.

  Josephine said, as if in answer to his question: ‘Oh, I don’t want to go home tomorrow. Sure I love New York, I love my work, my friends, I love all the hurly-burly and bullshit, but it will all get along perfectly well without me.’ She sighed. ‘D’you know what I think we must do, pardner? What we must work towards?’

  ‘Tell me. Pardner.’

  Josephine said, ‘When my book is published let’s buy a boat like this. A bit fancier of course but about this size, and let’s live on her. I can write aboard – one of the joys of being a writer is that you can work anywhere, so why don’t we work aboard a yacht while we sail her slowly around the world? First we’ll keep her right here in the Caribbean, exploring all these magnificent islands again, and Mexico and Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and Brazil and Argentina. And then we sail her through the Panama Canal into the Pacific, over to the Galapagos Islands. Then right over to Tahiti and Micronesia. And all the time I’m writing my books, you see. And from New Zealand we sail across to Australia, and then up the Great Barrier Reef. Then up into Indonesia and Malaysia, then across to India …’ She looked at him. ‘Wouldn’t you love to spend a few years doing that?’

  Yes, he would love it. ‘And what about Harvest House?’

  Josephine lifted her finger. ‘I’ve been thinking about this – I’ve been thinking about little else for the last two weeks. Well, in a few years we’ll know whether I am making it as a writer or not. But surely to God by then Harvest is going to be very prosperous – Priscilla Fischer tells me so. So with a bit of luck in a few years you’ll be able to hire some wizard to take over as managing director so you can rest on your laurels and sail around the world. Right?’

  Harker smiled. ‘It’s a pretty thought.’

  ‘And not impossible.’

  ‘Okay, let’s work at it.’

  ‘It’s a deal. I’ll work my sweet ass off!’

  Harker knew that the end of the Angolan war was also the beginning of the end of the CCB, but Dupont didn’t. Dupont was cock-a-hoop that the Russian empire was collapsing, the Cubans were withdrawing in disarray without a paymaster, that Fidel Castro had the king-size headache of what to do with fifty thousand troops returning to his impoverished island. Dupont was delighted that the peace treaty required that the ANC remove their military bases from Angola – ‘Now we can really knock the living shit out of them! But that’s Pretoria’s job, our job is to concentrate on these anti-apartheid activists now that there’s not much military intelligence for us to worry about …’

  Harker was amazed that Dupont couldn’t see the writing on the wall. Sure, South Africa had the military resources to pursue the ANC from their old bases in Angola all the way to Cairo if she wanted to – but the world would not allow her to do so. America would no longer support her now that the Cuban threat was gone, the world would be outraged if she invaded across her borders again, increased sanctions would rain down on her, her economy would be truly broken. The likes of Dupont – and, evidently, the Chairman – just could not see that although South Africa had the military ability to conquer the whole of fucking Africa she did not have the money, the economy, to keep it up, and another blast of sanctions would flatten her. Meanwhile the situation inside the country was chaotic, the black townships aflame with rebellion.

  And it amazed Harker that Josephine did not see the writing on the wall either: she was aghast at Gorbachev abandoning the Cubans in their valiant war against apartheid, dismayed that the ANC now had to move their military bases and that the undivided resources of the South African army could now be dedicated to knocking the living shit out of them. She was entirely convinced, like Dupont, that apartheid had the strength to continue crushing opposition indefinitely: she was determined that the League’s efforts had to be redoubled to increase economic sanctions on South Africa.

  ‘Bullshit,’ Harker sighed. ‘Apartheid is on its last legs – segregation is hardly enforced any more, South Africa is burning –’

  ‘Bullshit, South Africa’s going to go for the kill now! And what about Grand apartheid, all those millions of blacks forcibly translocated to their impoverished homelands because their labour is surplus to the white man’s requirements – Big Crocodile P.W. Botha will never change that –’

  ‘Josie,’ Harker sighed, ‘believe me, President Botha is on his way out too. Rebellion is brewing in his party.’

  And then, at the
beginning of that fateful summer of 1989, a murder took place that made Harker think that Josephine might be right. Dr David Webster, a lecturer in sociology at the famous University of Witwatersrand and a leading anti-apartheid activist, had just returned from his Saturday morning jog when he was gunned down by white men driving past in a car, his chest blown to bits by a shotgun blast outside his suburban front gate. Harker was astounded at the gangland style of the slaying, Josephine was outraged.

  ‘Christ, David Webster – one of the nicest guys you could meet! Such a tower of strength for the League! All that guy did was stand up for justice, and decent, Christian social principles – and so apartheid murders him!’

  ‘We don’t know yet who shot him.’

  ‘Christ,’ Josephine cried. ‘It wasn’t a robbery, it was a cold-blooded drive-by murder. So – who do you think these white men were? Christian revivalists? Or a government hit-squad?’

  ‘They may be ordinary AWB, ordinary right-wing Afrikaner thugs.’

  Josephine snorted, ‘Ordinary Afrikaner thugs wouldn’t dare be so brazen as to shoot down a leading figure in broad daylight! Those gunmen knew that if they were caught they would get off, that the police would make sure there wasn’t a conviction.’ She held her face. ‘Oh Christ–David Webster. I wonder who’s next?’

  And much as he wanted to believe otherwise, Harker also thought it was a hit-squad job – he only had to remember the Long Island farm, the smashing of windows, the clatter of the machine pistols. But the Long Island job had stopped a terrorist campaign, saved innocent lives – what had the murder of David Webster achieved? Christ, was this what the mentality of the South African securocrats had sunk to? Was this the system he was part of? Please God the army wasn’t involved, please God it was the security police who did it.

  ‘Doctor who?’ Dupont chuckled when Harker called him demanding reassurance. ‘Never heard of the man, dear fellow. But I dare say the civilized world is better off without him.’ He chuckled again.