Unofficial and Deniable

by John Gordon Davis

  And so Josephine paid Harker somewhat over two million dollars – a sum agreed by both her accountant and his as fair – for Neptune, which owned fifty-one per cent of Harvest House. The other forty-nine per cent remained in the ownership of Westminster NV, the registered offices of which were in Curacao, which unknown to anybody except the Curacao International Trust Company was formerly owned by the South African Defence Force but was now owned by Jack Harker. Harker then bought back a two per cent shareholding in Harvest from Neptune: ‘Just to retain a stake in the company, a small say in the voting.’ And so Harker both had his cake and could eat it: he had two million dollars and he still retained secret control of Harvest with his total of fifty-one per cent shareholding – Westminster’s forty-nine and his own two per cent. With enormous relief he paid off his personal debt to the bank and invested the remainder. He told Josephine that he had invested in gilt bonds averaging seven per cent: in fact he invested in high-yield mutual funds whose track record for a long time was over fifteen per cent.

  And so, piecemeal, Harker wound up his affairs, while all the time the amnesty clock ticked deafeningly loud. Now it was one hundred days away, now ninety, now eighty.

  It was their last day in New York. The Gramercy Mews apartment was stripped of all its paintings, flowerpots, rugs, books, ornaments, all packed into crates ready to go into storage when the furniture removers arrived the following day. Harker stood in the living room. He was very sad to leave this apartment, knowing he was never coming back to it. He had been happy here. There had been many good times. Josephine was not sad because she believed they were coming back to it in a few years. Harker sighed: God, the web of lies he was caught up in … And at stake was his very life.

  That evening there was a farewell party at Harvest House. Harker felt emotional. He loved these people, most of whom had been with Harvest since its inception, he loved this old brownstone house, its big windows and faded carpeting and marble fireplaces, its creaking floors, and he hoped that one day he would come back to it after this Truth Commission crisis was dead and buried. He made a brief farewell speech but by agreement with Josephine he did not announce that she had invested in the company: he intended dropping that news by letter from some faraway place, with no return address. That was also the way he intended closing down his American bank account, operating thereafter exclusively on a numbered Swiss account. It was a pleasant little party until, right at the end, the telephone rang. It was for Harker. He took it in his secretary’s cubicle. ‘Hullo?’

  ‘So,’ Dupont said, ‘doing a disappearing trick, are we? Just as long as you don’t go anywhere near the Truth Commission. Or you’ll end up in that big publishing house in the sky. In Head Office we do hope that you’re mindful of that little detail as the countdown to the fifteenth of December approaches.’

  Head office? Christ, this was 1996, five years since F.W. de Klerk had disbanded the CCB – and there was still a Head Office! ‘Where the hell are you speaking from? Washington?’

  ‘My dear fellow, I’m calling you from the old Head Office.’

  Harker stared. He was calling from Pretoria? The old Military Intelligence still functioned? For whose benefit – the old guard of the apartheid regime? It was terrifying. He said:

  ‘My lawyer will send you a letter advising that I haven’t got a fucking clue what you’re talking about and that if you trouble me again you’ll have a writ slapped on you! Now go to hell!’ He slammed down the telephone.

  He was shaking. Christ, he couldn’t wait to get out of this town, right out of this country.

  And then, as they entered their apartment after the party, the telephone was ringing. Josephine picked up the receiver. ‘Hullo?’ Then, ‘Hullo, Looksmart!’

  Harker froze. He turned into the bedroom and picked up the telephone extension.

  Josephine was saying, … were talking about you, I thought about trying to get in touch with you but we didn’t know where you were staying and it’s been all go go go since I got back from South Africa last month.’ She added: ‘Jack and I are married now.’

  ‘Congratulations!’ Looksmart exclaimed. ‘All the more reason for me to buy you guys a drink tonight – make that a bottle of champagne!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Looksmart, but we really can’t; we’re leaving tomorrow morning crack of dawn for the Bahamas and we’ve still got a lot of packing to do – we’ve bought a boat, you see, and we’re setting off around the world.’

  ‘Yes, so I’ve heard, but I didn’t realize you were leaving so soon.’

  Harker’s heart lurched. How did he know that? Looksmart continued, ‘Can’t I pop around with a bottle for a few minutes right now to see you before you disappear?’

  ‘Well …’ Josephine hesitated. Harker stepped hurriedly into the corridor and shook his finger at her. ‘Well, I don’t think so,’ Josephine said, ‘I’m undressed already and Jack’s soaking in the bath right now, we’re both really tired.’ She changed the subject. ‘So how’s your investigation into the Long Island massacre progressing?’

  Harker tensed.

  ‘That’s one of the things I wanted to tell you about.’ Harker held his breath. ‘My detective is progressing well. For obvious reasons I’m told not to discuss details but I can say that we are now absolutely certain that the massacre was not committed by the Cuban exiles – it was definitely the South Africans. We’ve now got the DA convinced too.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Josephine enthused. ‘Oh, I really want to hear all about this, I need this for my book. Would you be so kind as to dictate it all – or as much as your detectives permit – on to a tape and post it to me?’

  Harker could imagine the wolfish smile on Looksmart’s face.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘What address?’

  ‘Address it to yacht Rosemary, Post Restante, Nassau, Bahamas, until I advise you that we’re moving on to some other port. What’s your phone number?’

  ‘Will do,’ Looksmart said, ‘and please send me any comments or clues you may have.’ He gave her his telephone number and fax number.

  When she hung up Josephine went through to the bed-room and said, ‘Isn’t that exciting news?’

  Harker ripped off his tie shakily. ‘But it’s bullshit, darling.’

  ‘How can you say that without seeing the evidence?’ Josephine demanded.

  The next morning they woke early. The apartment seemed abandoned: their bags stood ready, awaiting the final garments before being zipped up. Josephine stripped the bed. The taxi arrived as they finished dressing. As they left the apartment Josephine looked around.

  ‘Goodbye, Gramercy Mews.’ She crossed the living room and kissed the wall. ‘If you kiss a house it knows you’re coming back.’ She called down the staircase: ‘Goodbye, Madam Velvet, see you in three years, don’t do anything we wouldn’t!’ She turned to Harker. ‘Okay, let’s go, Captain.’

  It was noon when the turquoise waters of the Bahamas unfolded below them. Down there the deep blue water of the Gulf Stream suddenly turned to the silvery clear shallows of the Bahama Sea, sparkling clear, the sand just a couple of metres below the surface, the fringes of Bahama’s hundreds of islands easing into view through the haze.

  ‘It’s beautiful.’ Josie squeezed his hand. ‘Do you think there’s any truth in the Bermuda Triangle theory?’

  Harker was a superstitious man: yes, he believed. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ Josie said, ‘we’re going to have a lovely time …’

  PART V

  35

  The boat lay at the end of the jetty, fifty-two feet long not counting her bowsprit, her woodwork dull, her fibreglass unkempt, strands of weeds awash below her waterline: but she was a handsome, strong, sleek, comfortable round-the-worlder and Josephine was thrilled.

  ‘A gas oven and a microwave. A big refrigerator and a big deep-freeze!’

  Harker slid back a panel of the engine room. ‘And a separate generator to run them. And a desalination plant so we need never worr
y about fresh water crossing oceans.’

  ‘Oh, darling, she’s beautiful. And a third cabin for me to work in!’

  That was a most important feature – a study in which she could write. It had a table and two bunks, one above the other. ‘Absolutely ideal … Oh, we did do well for a hundred and forty thousand.’ She looked around the spacious saloon. ‘All this lovely teak. And those super brass lamps.’

  Harker led her down the companionway to the aft section. ‘Our master-cabin.’

  ‘Oh boy …’ She looked around happily. ‘All this space. And that sexy double bunk. And our own en-suite bathroom. And our own living room when we get sick of our guests.’

  ‘And,’ Harker pointed to the corner, ‘our own fridge for our booze.’ He opened it.

  ‘Now you’re talking! Oh, I’m so thrilled. Such space. And glamour. All this teak and brass is a lot of work but it’s going to be a labour of love.’

  And she loved Nassau, the quaint little colonial capital with the subtropical flowers and trees, historic buildings drenched in shade, the old cathedral, the supreme court, the library, the Victorian shops and cafés along the water-front, the markets and jetties and bars, the long bridge over the shipping channel to Paradise Island with its row of tourist hotels opening on to the white beaches and coral reefs of the Atlantic. And out there were hundreds of islands with little sprinklings of villages, the shallow waters crystal clear, the coral heads growing up like flowers, the multi-coloured fish swimming amongst them. Every day at noon, when they stopped work, Harker and Josephine went out in their dinghy with their lunch and snorkelled along the reefs.

  There were dozens of yachts in the marina, more anchored outside in the channel. There was a bar overlooking the marina and Paradise Island beyond. Many yachts came and went during the time that Harker and Josephine prepared their vessel, and they met many people. Most of them were Americans who regularly sailed the Caribbean but a good number were Europeans, Australians and New Zealanders sailing their way around the world: some were retired people but many were young, making ends meet by doing odd jobs. There were a lot of tales around the bar of faraway places, good ports and bad, safe places and treacherous places, good seas and dangerous ones, pirates and ghost ships.

  ‘Have you ever seen a ghost ship?’ Josie demanded.

  ‘Yes,’ said the skipper of Mermaid, the guy with the pony-tail. ‘Right here in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle. Large as life she was, two hundred metres away on my port side. The sun on her sails. Nobody on deck. “Where the hell did you come from?” I thought. Astonished, I was. Then I thought, “Are we on a collision course?” So I watched her closely. I noted the angle between us on the compass for two or three minutes. When I was satisfied we were not going to collide I went below to the galley. Came back up three minutes later and – poof – she was gone.’

  ‘What were you drinking?’ Josephine grinned.

  ‘Coffee. It was only sunrise.’

  ‘Had you been keeping a good lookout?’

  ‘Every fifteen minutes I stood up and did a three-sixty, looked around in a full circle. So she had appeared from nowhere. And disappeared into nowhere.’

  ‘But,’ Josephine said, ‘as it had appeared from nowhere why did you go below?’

  ‘Well,’ the young pony-tailed skipper said, ‘afterwards I asked myself that same question. And the only answer I can give is that that ghost ship made me stop being astonished, made me like having her there, she was kind of comforting.’

  ‘She bewitched you?’ Harker said.

  ‘Maybe. Like that US Air Force squad that all disappeared over the Bermuda Triangle. They flew out over the Atlantic in formation one sunrise then suddenly the leader radioed back to base that their compasses had all gone haywire. So their base commander instructed them to fly west, back towards America. And the leader said, “Which direction is west?” Although the sun was just up he was so disorientated that he couldn’t even decide where west was.’

  ‘So what happened to them?’

  ‘Whole squadron just disappeared,’ the skipper said. ‘Never seen again. No radio contact, nothin’. So, maybe something like that happened to me. I liked that ghost ship being there.’

  And they heard many tales of pirates. There was a converted trawler manned by four young Americans armed with guitars and rings in their ears heading north and living life on the ocean wave as if these were their last days on earth, drinking and singing and wenching – do not imagine it is not hard work to enjoy yourself so much. They had been attacked by pirates.

  ‘Mostly they’re drug runners,’ said Pete, the trawler’s owner, who looked like a drug-runner himself. ‘They rush up to you in the middle of the night, swarm aboard, kill you, use your boat for one or two drug runs between Colombia and Florida, then they sink it and steal another one.’

  Josephine was riveted. ‘Why do they sink the boat?’

  ‘To destroy the evidence. Shit, that Gulf Stream over there is full of yachts that’ve been sunk by those bastards. If they use the same boat their pattern will be noticed by the US Coast Guard. So it’s better and cheaper just to sink her and steal another one.’

  ‘And murder another boatload of people.’

  ‘Nice guys, aren’t they?’

  Josephine’s writer’s blood was stirring. ‘Who are these guys?’

  ‘Ask the Coast Guard. Ask the Drugs Enforcement Agency. They all know who the big bad guys are in America and the Caribbean but they can’t prove it.’

  ‘How did you escape when you were attacked?’

  ‘Two blasts from my shotgun. They fell back.’

  ‘God. Did you kill anybody?’

  ‘Don’t know for sure, it was night. But I sure made a mess of his wheelhouse.’

  ‘Where do these people operate?’

  ‘All over the western Caribbean. But right here in the Bahamas is bad. Particularly near the island of Andros. Don’t go anywhere near Andros. Big island, full of creeks and reefs. And the weirdest people who still talk Elizabethan English – “thee” and “thou”. If you go near those guys come zooming out and you’re a goner.’

  ‘But why doesn’t the US Coast Guard go in there and root the bastards out?’

  ‘Andros is in the Bahamas, the US Coast Guard has no jurisdiction there. And the Bahama government ain’t going in there because of corruption – some politicians are in cahoots with those pirates. The Bahamas is a nation for sale.’ He snorted. ‘See that long speedboat there?’ He pointed at a sleek vessel forty feet long anchored in the channel. ‘That’s called a cigarette boat, because it looks like one. Boats like that belong to smugglers. They load them up with drugs, crank up those two engines on the stern, and set off at night, screaming across the Caribbean heading for Florida. No Coast Guard vessel can catch them. They hit the Florida coast where their buddies are waiting for them, throw the drugs ashore, grab their money, zoom back deep-sea and head flat-out for home. The next week they take a new load.’ He shook his head. ‘They make a lot of money. But if they’re caught they’re in jail for a long time.’

  And then there were tales about the ‘floaters’, refugees from Cuba and Haiti who try to make it to Florida on rafts and in overloaded old boats.

  ‘They can be just as dangerous if they get near enough because they’re desperate,’ Clive said. He was the captain of a charter yacht that took tourists around the islands. ‘So if you see a bunch of people waving from a raft pleading for help just look the other way. Don’t be tempted to be a Good Samaritan.’

  Harker shook his head and sighed. ‘I couldn’t do that.’

  ‘Nor could I,’ Josie said.

  ‘Well,’ Clive said, ‘it’s you or them …’

  For the first couple of weeks it was hard to believe, in this exotic setting, that way down there in South Africa the amnesty clock was ticking. Josephine had arranged with her friends in the Anti-Apartheid League to send her regular digests of developments in the Truth Commission but nothing arrived in N
assau during their first fortnight. The radio on which Harker would have listened to the South African news was undergoing repairs and the marina bar had no television. Every day Harker bought the Miami Herald, but there was little international news. He telephoned Luke Mahoney but only got his answering machine; Redfern was away from New York on vacation; every morning Harker jogged to the post office to intercept any letter or tape from Looksmart Kumalo to Josephine. But there was nothing; and in the languor of the Bahamas with their turquoise waters, coral reefs, balmy beaches and pubs and restaurants it was hard to imagine that the harsh world of the Truth Commission was grinding away relentlessly on the other side of the Atlantic; that down there matters of life and death were being bitterly argued, remorse and fear and indecision running rampant, the panic mounting as the amnesty cut-off date loomed. Most of the time in the balmy Bahamas it was hard for Harker to realize that all that drama was actually relevant to him. Indeed it applied to him more than to most of those bastards over there shaking in their old apartheid boots because most of them had committed their crimes inside South Africa and they could get a cast-iron indemnity – whereas Major Jack Harker could be sent to Sing-Sing for the rest of his days for his contribution to the defeat of communism. Most of the time when he was working on his boat, putting in new plumbing, rewiring, replacing parts of the rigging, he was able to shove the Truth Commission out of his mind, and when at midday they climbed into their dinghy and went chugging out to the coral reefs to explore their underwater wonderworld it seemed impossible that he could be in deadly trouble. Then one day his cellphone rang. It was Luke Mahoney.

  ‘Remember General Malan, the former Minister of Defence who was charged with a dozen others with the massacre of ANC people in Natal? Well, they were all acquitted this morning for want of reliable evidence.’