Unofficial and Deniable

by John Gordon Davis

  There was international outrage. Harker, reading the League’s faxed reports that Josephine brought every evening when she came hurtling downtown on her bicycle, was aghast at the depravity of the security forces he was serving. And then his anger turned to fear as he read the final paragraphs of the article written by Luke Mahoney.

  I asked Erik Badenhorst if he knew who had gunned down Dulcie September in Paris, Anton Lubowski, Dr David Webster, blown up Jeanette Schoon and her daughter with a parcel bomb, who had assassinated the Cuban and ANC officers in Long Island New York – to name a few. He replied:

  ‘Those weren’t police jobs, too far afield for us cops. But I’ve got a bladdy good idea who did it – the CCB.’

  ‘The CCB,’ said I; ‘who are they?”

  Badenhorst replied: ‘The Civil Cooperation Bureau. I don’t know much about them but they’re part of Military Intelligence. They operate worldwide. They pretend to be businessmen but really they’re spies and hit-men for South Africa …’

  Harker slapped down the report and stared, his heart pounding. Oh Jesus, Jesus!

  Across the world there were headlines and editorials about the comeuppance of apartheid; in the United Nations there was outrage, in South Africa there was an outcry for a public judicial inquiry. In parliament the new president, F.W. de Klerk, wrung his hands, told the world that he was assured by his Minister of Defence that this so-called Civil Cooperation Bureau did not exist, that it was the wild invention of this rogue Erik Badenhorst. A judicial inquiry, he said, would distract the nation from all the reforms he intended to make, open a Pandora’s Box of recriminations …

  The outcry redoubled. And then, that same week, two white men, former policemen, were arrested in connection with the murders of Anton Lubowski and Dr David Webster.

  Both men claimed to work for Military Intelligence, for an outfit called the Civil Cooperation Bureau, the CCB.

  18

  Harker’s heart lurched when he read that news. Sick in his guts, he left Harvest House immediately, without telling his secretary where he was going, and flagged a taxi to take him to the airport. He caught the shuttle flight to Washington. He walked into Dupont’s office without knocking.

  ‘So it was us who hit those two left-wingers, Webster and Lubowski!’

  Dupont had bloodshot eyes, smudges beneath them. ‘What the fuck you doing here?’

  Harker glared at him. ‘Two guys have just been arrested for those murders in Pretoria and they said they were working for Military Intelligence! For the CCB, in fact!’

  ‘Calm down!’ Dupont rasped. ‘They haven’t admitted to murder – they’ve only been arrested, protesting their innocence saying they worked for Military Intelligence. And anyway, why the holier-than-thou? I seem to remember you doing something similar a while ago.’

  Jesus. Harker said slowly: ‘My targets were military personnel plotting sabotage and murder. Not civilians whose only crime was that they opposed apartheid!’

  ‘Want to resign?’ Dupont sneered. ‘Give up Harvest House? And I repeat, what the fuck you doing here?’

  Harker cursed. Damn right he’d love to resign, wash his hands of the whole stinking fucking business! ‘There’ll have to be a judicial commission of enquiry now and the whole CCB will be blown sky-high. That’s why I’m here – to discuss what the hell we’re going to do about that little problem.’

  Dupont’s face creased in exasperation. ‘My dear fellow, there will be no commission of enquiry. If our illustrious new president exposed us, the whole security establishment would turn against him, he knows that. All the top brass in the police and army would turn on him. And so would most of Afrikanerdom, there’d be a coup d’état, if not civil war.’ Dupont shook his face. ‘So stop worrying and get back to work. When parliament resumes in February the president is going to make his oh-so-dramatic announcement about the so-called new South Africa and the press will forget all about police hit-squads and Military Intelligence.’

  Harker wanted to believe it. ‘What do you mean the so-called new South Africa?’

  ‘I’m suggesting, dear fellow, that our wonderful new reformist president is not going to commit political suicide – national suicide. Whatever reforms the dear man’s got in mind, I’m quite sure there’s going to be a healthy remnant of apartheid in such titchy little matters as overall political power remaining firmly in white hands for the foreseeable future – including the security forces. What will go by the board is petty apartheid: You know, kaffirs will be allowed to sit next to you in a pub, or on the bus, probably even swim in the same bit of sea as you, maybe even shit in the same public lavatories – though perish that thought. But political power? No, that will remain firmly in white hands.’ He smiled unpleasantly. ‘I don’t think you need worry about commissions of enquiry into the CCB, dear fellow. Your beloved Harvest House is safe for a long while yet.’ He leered: ‘Unless, of course, you blot your copybook and don’t produce results …’

  But both Dupont and Josephine were wrong. On 2 February 1990 parliament reconvened with all its pomp and ceremony, and President F.W. de Klerk introduced the new South Africa. An astonished world was told that his government was unbanning the ANC, that he would call a Great Indaba of all political parties to negotiate a new constitution on the principle of one man, one vote. And he announced that Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners would be released.

  Harker had gone to the office early to watch the opening of parliament on television: it was five a.m. in New York as the dramatic scenes unfolded in faraway Cape Town, the opposition Conservative Party storming out of the legislative chamber in protest at this ‘capitulation’ whilst outside there was dancing in the streets, jubilation. Harker stared at the scenes, joy flooding over him, joy that apartheid was finally over, that the wars were over – and profound relief that surely there would be no commission of enquiry into the CCB now! Surely to God in this new South Africa goodwill would abound and all the battles of not so long ago would have to be forgiven and forgotten as the parties forgathered round the Great Indaba table to work out a new constitution. All the acts of sabotage and murder committed by all sides would surely have to be relegated to history as acts of war, surely there would have to be amnesty for all as the returning soldiers beat their swords into ploughshares, the CCB would be quietly disbanded, surely Military Intelligence would quietly sell off its foreign companies …

  So now was the time to make sure Harvest House was sold to him and not to anybody else. He snatched up the telephone and dialled Felix Dupont.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Dupont rasped, ‘it’s six o’clock in the morning!’

  ‘You haven’t heard the news?’

  ‘Of course I’ve heard the fucking news, I’ve been up all night talking to the Chairman, my e-mail is running hot, I want to go to bed!’ He sounded drunk. ‘So what do you want – apart from buying Harvest at a knock-down fucking price?’

  ‘Right,’ Harker said. ‘Apartheid is over, so the CCB is going to be disbanded. Now the battle is going to be between the ANC and the Zulus for supremacy; they’ll leave us whites alone because we’re irrelevant now. So let’s fold our tents smartly and get out of the crossfire.’

  Dupont said angrily: ‘The whites are not irrelevant now and the CCB is not going to be disbanded.’

  ‘Christ,’ Harker cried, ‘sure, the Conservative Party are going to threaten war and start blowing up buildings but that’ll have nothing to do with us in America!’

  ‘You’re missing the fucking point!’ Dupont shouted. ‘Do you imagine that the ANC is going to disband its army, its military intelligence? No way! And anyway, when the ANC and Zulus go to war against each other, whose side do you think we’re going to be on?’

  Harker stared across the basement. He said slowly, ‘I presume the South African Defence Force is going to be on the side of law and order. I presume we’re going to do our duty and stop them fighting each other!’

  Dupont snorted. ‘Oh, you make
me sick. Don’t be so pukkah, for Christ’s sake! We’re going to let the Zulus do our work for us, knock the living daylights out of the ANC.’

  Jesus Christ. ‘Is that what the Chairman’s told you?’

  ‘You have no need to know what the fucking Chairman’s told me! All you need to know is that the CCB ain’t going to be disbanded and that you’re to stay at your fucking post and await orders! And now I’m going to bed!’ He slammed down the telephone.

  Harker jumped up and strode to his computer. He punched the keys and on the screen appeared his last memorandum concerning the disposal of CCB assets, addressed to the Chairman. He rewrote the opening paragraph to read: In view of today’s parliamentary developments I respectfully submit that the initiatives outlined below are now most urgent.

  He scrambled it and hit the transmission button.

  He got up, went to his refrigerator and took out a beer. Fuck ’em. He had not joined the fucking army to fight civil wars!

  Just then his telephone rang. He snatched it up. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hullo, darling,’ Josephine said. ‘What’re you doing at the office so early? Have you seen the television?’

  ‘I came here to watch it so I wouldn’t wake you. Where are you?’

  ‘Back at my apartment. Isn’t it wonderful news? They’re dancing in the streets! But d’you realize what this is going to do for my book – it’s going to make it a bestseller!’

  ‘It’s going to be a bestseller anyway.’

  ‘Thank you, so that means you want to publish it, huh?’

  And why not? Harker thought. If it was going to be a bestseller and if he was going to buy Harvest, why shouldn’t he have the benefit of it? Apartheid was finished, so the CCB was finished; there was no reason why Harvest should not become the best publisher for Josephine Valentine.

  ‘Well, I’m looking forward to seeing it when it’s finished. Tell Priscilla Fischer to talk to me about it.’

  ‘Is this for real?’ she cried.

  Harker hedged his conscience: ‘But a bigger publishing house may still be better for you. However, Piranha Fisch will advise you well, she didn’t get that nickname for nothing.’

  ‘Oh, darling, I love you! So,’ she said happily, ‘what’s going to happen now in South Africa?’

  Harker wanted to say, The shit’s going to hit the fan. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think everything’s going to be wonderful! I think I can end the book right there, with Nelson Mandela walking out of prison to roars of applause. The new South Africa …’

  19

  But it didn’t happen like that.

  Thousands of people lined the road outside the Victor Verster Prison in Cape Town, newsmen from around the world were there to report on the release of Nelson Mandela, the world’s most famous prisoner upon whose shoulders most of the hopes of South Africa now rested.

  ‘Indeed the hopes of all Africa,’ the CNN television anchorman said, ‘because the leadership of the new South Africa will be vital for the regeneration of the whole desperate continent. The atmosphere here this glorious summer’s day is charged with excitement and emotion …’

  Harker felt emotional too. Josephine, sitting beside him in Madam Velvet’s dungeon at four o’clock that New York morning – ten o’clock in South Africa – had tears in her eyes.

  Suddenly roars of applause went up as the prison gates opened, mad cheering and waving and clapping, fists thrust aloft. And there was the grand old man, his hair white, hand in hand with his wife Winnie, smiling, waving, reaching out to shake eager hands, answering greetings. He walked down that avenue of adulation, smiles all over his handsome face, and Harker’s eyes were moist: he could almost feel the joy in that old man’s breast, at being free at last, his triumph of having won the long, bloody battle against apartheid. The tears were streaming down Josephine’s face. At the end of the long walk to freedom Nelson Mandela climbed into his waiting limousine to drive into Cape Town centre to make the speech the world was waiting to hear.

  And when it was made, from the grand mayoral balcony of City Hall against the backdrop of Table Mountain, the world watching and listening agog, Harker’s heart sank. Josephine was rapt, tears dropping on to her notebook as she scribbled, but Harker felt the cold hand of despair, for himself and for South Africa: it seemed that everything Felix Dupont had prophesied was going to come true, that the battles were a long way from over. For Nelson Mandela, the grand old man of African politics, proclaimed to the world that until the democratic process was complete the ANC’s war against South Africa would continue, that South Africa would become a socialist state, the land would be redistributed amongst the proletariat, ‘the commanding heights of commerce nationalized’, and that until a democratic government was installed the world must continue to apply economic sanctions.

  Harker groaned. But Josephine sobbed: ‘Isn’t it wonderful? This is how I’m going to end the book!’

  For the next three days he did not see Josephine as she toiled over the final chapters of her book in her uptown apartment; they only spoke by telephone when she was having something to eat. ‘Jack, I’m looking after myself just fine, eating lots of high-energy food, trust me. But when I finally pack it in for the night I’m just too tired to think about getting a taxi.’

  Late on the fourth night she came striding across the mews courtyard carrying a big plastic shopping bag in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other. She burst into the apartment, wreathed in smiles and smelling of wine. She threw the shopping bag on the dining table.

  ‘There it is!’

  Harker clutched her tight. ‘Congratulations …’ It seemed she had been away on a long journey. And, oh, the sweet feel of her in his arms.

  ‘Save your felicitations until you’ve read it. So who’s a gal gotta fuck around here to get a drink?’

  Harker tapped his breast. ‘Me …’

  It was after midnight. Josephine sprawled magnificently naked, fast asleep, her long blonde hair flaming across the pillows, when Harker pulled on a dressing-gown and tiptoed out of the bedroom down to Madam Velvet’s dungeon to read.

  It was dawn when he crept back into bed beside her and took her in his arms.

  ‘It’s brilliant,’ he whispered to her warm sleeping form.

  At ten o’clock that morning he left the apartment with her typescript, leaving her still fast asleep. At Harvest House he sent for his editor-in-chief. He handed him the first half of the book and said, ‘Start reading this. Drop everything else. I want your opinion fast.’

  Harker continued reading the latter half. At one o’clock Josephine telephoned. ‘Well?’ she said. ‘No, don’t tell me.’

  ‘It’s very good. Congratulations.’

  She sighed. ‘Oh darling, I love you! So can I tell Priscilla to call you?’

  ‘If you’re sure that’s what you want.’

  ‘Oh darling, I’m so excited!’

  On his way out of the building to meet Priscilla Fischer he put his head in the editor’s doorway. ‘Well, Alan?’

  ‘It’s brilliant,’ Alan said.

  ‘How high should I go?’

  Alan sighed. ‘A couple of hundred thousand? Once Piranha Fisch starts hyping this around town the sky’s the limit.’

  Harker met Priscilla Fischer in the restaurant of the Algonquin Hotel. She was a tough, glamorous redhead with big, dancing, green eyes, perfect capped teeth and a cleavage she displayed to full advantage. The rumour was she had screwed most of the publishers in New York. ‘Christ,’ Harker said, almost snorting into his martini. ‘Half a million dollars?’

  ‘I’ll get it easily if I hold an auction,’ Priscilla said. ‘And I must tell you I am offering it first to you against my better judgement. Sure I respect Harvest but I feel this book deserves the biggest and best. However, the author insists I offer it to you.’

  ‘Half a million,’ Harker said, ‘is too much for Harvest.’ He even felt relieved. This spared him the responsibility for Josie’s
professional advancement.

  ‘But you do agree the book is worth half a million upfront?’

  Harker smiled inwardly. Oh, he would love to take the CCB’s half a million and give it to Josephine – what poetic justice that would be. Trouble was, it was taxpayers’ money. ‘Yes. And I think Josephine may make twice that when the book’s in the shops. But half a million is too much for me.’ He added, ‘I think you should warn her about the ending. It’s a great piece of writing describing Mandela’s release, but it’s too optimistic about the future. I think further violence is going to break out as the different black political parties battle for supremacy.’

  ‘Sounds a rather racist statement.’

  ‘Just a realistic one. That’s the African way. All I’m suggesting is that Josephine writes in a paragraph or two somewhere which allows for the possibility of undemocratic violence ahead.’

  Priscilla Fischer sniffed. ‘Doubt that’s necessary, I think we’ve got a perfect ending. Well,’ she said, ‘my instructions are not to rush you. So you have until six o’clock this afternoon to decide. After that the book goes on auction.’ She folded her knuckles under her chin and looked at him. ‘So tell me about my client who’s about to take the literary world by storm. You very serious about each other?’

  Harker smiled. ‘What does Josephine say?’

  ‘Hasn’t confided in me. Strikes me as a very serious sort. So?’

  ‘Yes,’ Harker said, ‘we’re serious.’

  ‘Marriage-type serious?’

  ‘One day.’

  ‘But not yet. Author wants to spread her literary wings? Warm both hands before the fires of life? Meanwhile, back at the ranch, you ain’t in no hurry either.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? Promiscuous?’

  Harker smiled. ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Faithful type? Or because AIDS has dealt a numbing blow to the one-night stand?’