Unofficial and Deniable

by John Gordon Davis

  ‘If it was us I want out right now!’

  ‘Have you taken leave of your senses? Of course it wasn’t us. Goodness gracious me!’

  Oh Jesus, Jesus. All that summer the riots and strikes and boycotts racked South Africa. Josephine was convinced that all the black-on-black violence was the work of the mysterious Third Force. Harker could not believe it, did not want to believe it – and then another shocking murder occurred. On the eve of the democratic elections that would finally bring Namibia independence from South Africa, Advocate Anton Lubowski, a well-known anti-apartheid white man certain to become the first Minister of Justice in the forthcoming black government, was gunned down gangland-style outside his suburban home, just as David Webster had been, nine shots from an AK47 fired from a passing car, his blood and guts blasted across the garden. The murder provoked furious international headlines, furious fingers pointed at the South African government. Josephine was outraged all over again – she had met Anton Lubowski through the Anti-Apartheid League.

  ‘Anton of all people …’ she wept. ‘Now do you believe there’s a Third Force assassinating apartheid’s opponents?’

  Harker did not know what to believe. ‘But the South African government has just granted independence to Namibia, so why should they murder one of the candidates – especially a white man who’s likely to have a stabilizing influence on the new black government?’

  ‘Because,’ Josephine hissed furiously, ‘the apartheid government does not want the new black Namibian government to be stable! They want it to be a failure so that they can say to the world, “We told you blacks can’t govern themselves!”’

  Oh God, Harker could not quite believe his government would be guilty of such treachery.

  ‘Never heard of Anton Lubowski,’ Dupont chortled, ‘but whoever bumped him off deserves a medal, aha-ha-ha!’

  ‘What the hell does that mean? Just tell me – was it us, because if it was I want to retire forthwith and exercise my contractual right to buy Harvest! I’m not an assassin – the war is over, we’re irrelevant now and I want to be demobilized!’

  ‘You,’ Dupont snarled, ‘will remain at your post. The most important war is just beginning and we’re going to win it now we’ve got the albatross of Angola off our backs!’

  ‘Can’t you see that apartheid is fucking finished?’ Harker cried. ‘South Africa is burning!’

  Yes, Harker could see the writing on the wall for apartheid, for P.W. Botha and his securocrats, for the CCB, for General Tanner, for Colonel Felix Dupont, for Major Jack Harker. He was intensely relieved that the war he had waged was finished, that there were no more real battles except possibly rearguard actions while the forthcoming new South Africa sorted itself out. Thank God, is what Harker felt on those scores. But what was going to happen to Harvest House? The government would sell it when it disbanded the CCB. But could Harker afford to buy it?

  He instructed Harvest’s accountant to calculate the value of the company; an effective shareholding was way beyond his reach without a crippling bank loan. The building alone was worth a lot: the goodwill and author list alone would be beyond him. And would the Defence Force even release him from his military service? They could refuse to accept his resignation and if he declined to return to South Africa his pension would be forfeited and he would be court-martialled for desertion if they ever got their hands on him.

  But much worse than all that, much much worse: What would happen to his relationship with Josephine if he was recalled to South Africa?

  It would mean revealing to her that he had deceived her all along, that Harvest House was a front for the apartheid regime she detested – she would loathe him, she would never believe that all the anti-apartheid sentiments he had expressed were true, he would never see her again.

  He had to stay in America, he had to find a way of buying Harvest House, by hook or by crook.

  16

  Harker’s next move was to write an official memorandum. He summarized the military situation, the political situation and its likely developments. He posed a number of alternative scenarios as to what could happen to the CCB in the near future, then asked what would happen to CCB operatives, their front businesses, files, assets, bank accounts in the different circumstances envisaged. After proposing answers to the questions he concluded:

  With the threat of communism removed, South Africa is going to enter a new era: apartheid is now a proven failure. It is almost common knowledge that President Botha’s own party want him to step down now and be replaced with a younger leader who will throw off the apartheid ball-and-chain. Clearly, a rapidly diminishing role for the CCB lies ahead, until it disappears completely.

  To avoid a disorderly liquidation of CCB assets, I respectfully suggest that those operatives who wish to do so be allowed to purchase their business under a payment system linked into their salary schemes to mitigate financial hardship. This would have the double merit of immediately reducing Defence Force expenditure and relieving operatives’ anxieties about their future. Operatives should be allowed to resign their commissions or terminate their contracts …

  Contrary to departmental regulations, Harker sent this memorandum direct to the Chairman, General Tanner, in Pretoria, bypassing Dupont in Washington. But it was Dupont who responded, by telephone.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing writing to the boss direct? You know everything has to go through me as your senior officer! And what the fuck are you talking about, saying the CCB is going into liquidation? Bullshit, man – the CCB is more important than ever now that we’ve won the war in Angola and the ANC are on the run! Now we can concentrate all our efforts on busting sanctions and kicking ANC ass! Things have never looked better! And it’s absolute crap to suggest that P.W. Botha is on his way out!’ Dupont paused, breathing heavily. ‘And as for buying Harvest House, forget it! Produce some results or you’ll have your cushy number kicked out from under your ass and you’ll be posted back to Pretoria! And if you write another letter to the Chairman without sending it through me you’ll be disciplined!’

  Jesus. Now we’ve won the war? But Dupont knew things Harker didn’t; the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing in the espionage game. Perhaps apartheid was going to be reinforced, maybe the CCB was going to function for years … But, Jesus, Harker did not believe it – did not want to believe it.

  The summer went this way. In South Africa it was winter: the fires of outrage mounted, the black townships resounding with the clatter of AK47s as ANC impis fought it out with Inkatha impis, as ANC youths barricaded roads with burning tyres and pelted the buses bringing the black people home from work and beat them with sticks and made them eat the soap powder and foodstuffs they had bought in the white man’s shops. And all the time the running battles with the police and army. South Africa was in a hell of a mess, the ANC’s policy of ‘Liberation before Education’ and rendering the country ungovernable was certainly paying off. The Anti-Apartheid League in South Africa e-mailed daily digests of the situation to Josephine and it made very scary reading indeed. Josephine was cock-a-hoop that apartheid was collapsing; Harker would have been too, had he not been so worried about what was going to happen to his beloved Harvest House. To keep within his orders he sometimes sent Dupont information about these League communications but it was nothing the man wouldn’t know two days later from reading the Clarion. There was little other CCB work now that there was no significant military intelligence to gather on this side of the Atlantic. And then, towards the end of that year the news broke across the world that P.W. Botha, President of the Republic of South Africa, had been bullied by his cabinet into resigning from office. The headline of the New York Herald shouted gleefully: THE OLD BIG CROCODILE BITES THE DUST AT LAST.

  Mr F.W. de Klerk was elected by his party caucus to replace him, and he announced to an astonished and sceptical world that when parliament resumed after the Christmas recess he would introduce legislation that would dismantle the edifice of apartheid,
and institute a Great Indaba between all races which would bring about a totally new South Africa.

  Harker would have rejoiced at the news had it not been for his worry about Harvest.

  ‘Bullshit!’ Josephine snorted. ‘Dismantle apartheid, my poor achin’ ass! All this guy de Klerk will do is abolish some of the most offensive aspects but he won’t touch Grand apartheid, no sir, not the so-called homelands. He won’t repeal the Group Areas Act and let blacks live next door to whites, he won’t let black kids go to the same schools as his precious white Afrikaners, he won’t give blacks the vote – I tell you the League still has years of work!’

  Harker didn’t believe it, but Dupont did. Harker wrote him another memorandum reiterating his urgent recommendations for the purchase by operatives of CCB businesses in preparation for the day the organization was disbanded, but Dupont barked on the phone: ‘You really believe that F.W. de Klerk is going to commit political suicide? For Christ’s sake, it’s only window-dressing to get the world off our back. All he’s promised is that there’s going to be a Great Indaba.’

  ‘For a completely new South Africa wherein no race oppresses another, quote unquote.’

  ‘Christ,’ Dupont rasped impatiently, ‘we’ve heard that all before, even from Botha himself. Relax, man, the CCB has lots of work ahead.’

  Harker even began to wonder whether the writing he saw on the wall was illusory – Dupont must have some good reason for such conviction – and he was ashamed to admit that he wanted to think he was.

  And then the Berlin Wall came crashing down.

  Harker stared at the dramatic scene on his television screen. People were joyously getting stuck into the dreaded wall with picks and sledgehammers, hijacked mobile cranes were taking great bites out of it. Harker was almost unable to believe that the communist ogre he had spent his life fighting was dying so ignominiously before his eyes: and he was convinced that the walls of apartheid would collapse now too.

  ‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ Josephine retorted.

  Dupont thought so too. ‘Like hell this proves that the CCB are finished,’ he responded to Harker; ‘we can really knock the living shit out of the ANC now that they’ve lost their paymaster – I just wish this had happened before we gave up Namibia!’

  Then something totally unexpected happened that cracked the ramparts of apartheid’s securocrats. One Thursday night in Pretoria Central Prison a condemned black man who was due to be hanged in the morning for a murder committed in the course of a burglary broke down when he was told that a last-minute reprieve was not forthcoming, and he screamed for a lawyer.

  His name was Daniel Sipholo and he frantically told the lawyer who came to his condemned cell that he was a member of an undercover government hit-squad, based on a police farm called Platplaas, which murdered the state’s enemies. He named his commanding officers, the chain of command. Daniel Sipholo had expected his police superiors to arrange for his reprieve at the last moment in exchange for his silence about hit-squads: a hysterical Daniel instructed the lawyer to tell the Minister of Justice that unless he issued a reprieve the scandal would be released to the press. The lawyer did better than that: he telephoned the newspapers, then got the Minister of Justice out of bed and told him that unless he signed a stay of execution to enable the shocking claims to be investigated the government would be forever condemned for hanging a man to prevent him from revealing state atrocities.

  The Minister of Justice, while protesting at such scurrilous allegations by a man trying to save his worthless neck, had no choice: a stay of execution was ordered. The next morning the story was front-page news around the world.

  17

  Josephine was absolutely delighted. ‘At last the truth is out! My God – police death-squads?! The people who’re supposed to be upholding law and order are going around murdering people who oppose apartheid! Oh boy, what’s Ronald Reagan going to do about this one? Oh boy – is the League going to go to town on this story!’

  Harker was a very worried man. Once this investigation began the existence of the CCB could emerge. The military would hotly deny it, the Minister of Defence would vow in parliament that it was a pack of nonsense, but the press would pick it up, there would be a public outcry. ‘Did you know that there were police hit-squads?’ Josephine demanded.

  ‘Of course not.’ That was the truth.

  ‘But didn’t you suspect?’

  ‘I only knew that the security police had a bad reputation, that a number of people have died in police custody over the years, that’s common knowledge. But I attributed that to rogue elements, not to organized hit-squads, for Christ’s sake.’

  Josephine snorted. ‘Really, you surprise me, darling. Well, now we all know who blew up those guys in Long Island last year.’

  Harker flinched inwardly. ‘That was the Cuban exile community – the FBI said so. What would the South African police be doing in America, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘The same as the ones who burgled the League’s offices three years ago!’

  Oh Jesus. Harker telephoned Dupont. ‘I’m coming to Washington to discuss the fall-out from this death-squad affair.’

  ‘Stay where you are!’ Dupont ordered. ‘There’s not going to be any fall-out …’

  Harker took the shuttle flight to Washington the next morning without telling Josephine.

  ‘I ordered you to stay where you were!’ Dupont barked as Harker walked into his panelled office at the Royalton Hotel. ‘We have nothing to do with the police, they don’t even know of the CCB’s existence!’

  Oh, this was such crap. ‘How can that be? Military Intelligence set up the CCB, therefore the Minister of Defence knows about us. He sits on the State Security Council along with the Minister of Police, therefore the top brass in the police must know about us. So how far down the ranks does this knowledge extend? And how much is going to come out when this investigation into these death-squads starts and Daniel Sipholo spills all the beans? And when the other cops he fingers start passing the buck – how long before one of them tries to blame the CCB for one of their murders – then they’ll start investigating us.’

  Dupont looked at him sagely, his round, hard face solemn, his eyes wide. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really! Am I the only guy with any foresight in this goddam department?!’

  Dupont laced his knuckles under his chin and leant across the desk.

  ‘Really,’ he said, ‘you surprise me … You believe that there is going to be a real investigation? You’re so full of all that Sandhurst crap about officers and gentlemen that you’re not really cut out for this military intelligence game, are you?’ He shook his head. ‘Do you imagine that the Minister of Defence, let alone our new President with all his new South Africa mumbo-jumbo, is going to let a condemned man bring down the government?’ His fat face crinkled in disparagement. ‘Do you really think that an investigative tribunal is going to believe this condemned man desperately trying to save his neck from the hangman by making these scurrilous allegations?’

  Harker stared. ‘But surely there’s going to be an open investigation by a judge, proceedings open to the press?’

  ‘The proceedings will be conducted by the Attorney General.’ Dupont leered, then waved a fat hand. ‘Oh, all the relevant police officers will be called as witnesses, all will be very impressive when they deny Daniel’s allegations.’ He smiled. ‘Who is going to believe a desperate man?’ He smiled again. ‘Don’t worry.’

  Harker stared at his boss, and was ashamed that he wanted to believe him. ‘So after the Attorney General’s bullshit investigation Daniel will go through the hangman’s trapdoor disbelieved. And the whole scandal will die with him?’

  Dupont spread his hands. ‘What scandal, old boy?’ He glared, his blue eyes suddenly piercing. ‘Do I make myself clear, Major?’

  Harker said quietly, ‘Was it the CCB who murdered Dulcie September in Paris? And blew the arm off Albie Sachs? And blew up Mrs Schoon and her daughte
r in Angola – and Ruth First?’ He looked at Dupont grimly. ‘Or was it the police?’

  Felix Dupont sat back with a twinkle in his eyes. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, old boy. Dulcie who? Albie? Don’t remember them, old chap. But if those people are now deceased, it’s nothing to do with us, and I’m quite sure their demise is nothing to do with our police either. As I’m sure the forthcoming investigation will confirm.’ Then he frowned, puzzled. ‘But what worries me, Jack, as your boss, is that you even ask the question. Surely you know that even if I knew the answer I would not tell you? Because you have no need to know!’ Dupont looked at him sharply, then rasped, ‘Now get your ass back to your post and stop worrying!’

  But there was plenty to worry about.

  That month the Attorney General’s investigation into Daniel Sipholo’s allegations began. It seemed that Dupont’s assessment was correct. One by one the senior police officers named by Daniel entered the witness box and denied that Platplaas was anything more than a counterinsurgency base, denied having ordered the murder of anyone: if anybody had ever been murdered it must have been done on the orders of Daniel’s immediate commanding officer, Captain Erik Badenhorst, acting on his own unlawful initiative. And Captain Erik Badenhorst was a very worried man: his testimony was being kept till last and it was clear to Harker, reading the reports five thousand miles away, that he was going to be made the scapegoat.

  Then one day Erik Badenhorst walked into the Pretoria offices of Lawyers for Human Rights, and asked for their help. He told them that everything Daniel said was true, that he, Badenhorst, wanted to blow the whole story to the international press, that he wanted to escape from the country and join the ANC, the only people with an organization big enough to protect him from the might of the South African Police. Lawyers for Human Rights immediately put him in the hands of a lawyer named Luke Mahoney who was also an established writer. A week later his bloodcurdling story of police mayhem and murder was front-page news around the world.