Flyaway / Windfall

by Desmond Bagley

  ‘Most of the stuff down there was Russian,’ said Chip. ‘Probably captured equipment from Angola. The South Africans smuggled it in, probably through Mombasa. We’re going into that now.’

  ‘Indirection,’ said Stafford. ‘What do you think they were going to use it for?’

  Chip shrugged. ‘There’s a lot of talk going on at the top. The general opinion is that the stuff was going to be used to arm various groups in the general interest of stirring up trouble. Those being used would even think they were being paid by the Russians. It could have caused a lot of bad blood.’

  ‘What does Brice say?’

  ‘Brice is saying nothing; he’s keeping his mouth shut. Patterson isn’t saying much, either. But Luke Maiyani will talk as soon as his jaw is unwired,’ said Chip grimly. ‘You’re going to have visitors, Max. They’ll tell you to keep your mouth shut, too. All this never happened. Understand?’

  Stafford nodded. ‘I think so,’ he said wearily. ‘How are you going to keep it under cover?’

  ‘I’ve brought you some newspapers and marked the relevant stories. The matter of Brice hasn’t come up yet so it hasn’t been reported. I’ll tell you what will happen about him. He’s under arrest for embezzlement of Ol Njorowa funds; we found enough in his office to nail him on that. He’ll go on trial and he’ll stand for it because he can’t do anything else. We don’t know who he is but we do know he isn’t Brice.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Before Brice left Zimbabwe—Rhodesia—he got into trouble with the Smith government for some reason or other. Anyway, our brothers in Zimbabwe had a look through police records and turned up his fingerprints, and they don’t match those of the Brice we’ve got.’

  Stafford began to laugh. ‘So Brice goes to jail for embezzlement. He can’t do anything else.’

  ‘He’ll spend a long time inside, and he’ll be deported when he comes out.’ Chip smiled. ‘We’ll probably put him on a plane to Zimbabwe.’ He chuckled. ‘And the Zimbabweans will arrest him for false pretences and travelling on a false passport.’

  ‘I almost feel sorry for him,’ said Stafford.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Chip in a grim voice. ‘We found a safe built into the wall of the cellar. It was strong and fireproof. In it, among other things which I won’t go into, we found three passports in the name of Gunnarsson, Hendriks and Rosters. That pins the Tanzanian attack directly on Brice. The Hendrix passport had been tampered with.’

  ‘They’d replace Hendrix’s photo with that of Corliss,’ said Stafford. ‘What happens to Corliss?’

  ‘We’ll give him the passport and send him home,’ said Chip. ‘He knows nothing of what went on. He’s a very confused boy and will never tell a straight story.’ He stood up. ‘When you get out of here you must have dinner with me and my wife.’

  Stafford was somewhat surprised. ‘I didn’t know you were married.’

  ‘Most people are.’ Chip flipped his hand in a semi-salute and left.

  Stafford picked up the newspapers and read the articles Chip had marked. An American visitor, Mr John Gunnarsson, had been killed by a hippopotamus on Crescent Island, Lake Naivasha. His body was being returned to the United States. A brief editorial in the same issue commented that this should reinforce the warning to all visitors to Kenya that the animals they saw in such profusion really were wild and could not be approached with impunity. While regretting the death of Mr Gunnarsson it could not be the function of the Kenyan authorities to wetnurse headstrong tourists.

  In another issue was an account of the disastrous fire at Ol Njorowa College. The animal migration laboratory had been wrecked, mostly by the explosion of butane cylinders stored in the basement. Several people, including the Director, Mr Charles Brice, had been injured, and Mr Dirk Hendriks and Mr Paul Miller had been killed. Mr Brice was not available for comment but the Acting Director, Dr James Odhiambo, said it was a grave blow to the advance of science in Kenya. The police did not suspect arson.

  Stafford was about to reach for another newspaper when there was a tap at the door and Hardin and Curtis came in. Curtis said, ‘I have taken the liberty of bringing the Colonel some fruit.’ He put a brown paper bag on the bedside table. Stafford looked at him with affection. ‘Thank you, Sergeant. And I understand I have to thank you for getting me out of the lab before it blew up.’

  ‘That was mostly Mr Hunt, sir,’ said Curtis imperturbably. ‘I’m sorry I let Brice and Hendriks get past me. I had to watch out on two sides and I was in the office when they came in.’

  Stafford thought it was not so much an apology as an explanation. He said, ‘No harm done,’ then amended the statement. ‘Only to Hendriks—and Brice.’

  ‘Is there anything I can get for you, sir?’

  ‘Just a new head,’ said Stafford. ‘This one feels a bit second hand.’

  ‘I felt like that,’ said Hardin. ‘But you got a bigger thump than me. We’ll come back when you feel better.’

  ‘Hang on a minute, Ben. Do you mind, Sergeant?’ Curtis left the room and Stafford said, ‘Are you still going to work for me?’

  Hardin grinned. ‘Not if it’s going to be like this month. The pay’s not enough.’

  ‘It isn’t always as exciting as this. How would you like to go to New York? I want someone across there fast—someone who knows the ropes.’

  Hardin looked at Stafford appraisingly. ‘Yeah, Gunnarsson Associates will be up for grabs now Gunnarsson has gone. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’

  ‘Something like that. I need you there; you know the business. With a bit of luck you could get to be the boss of the American end of Stafford Security.’

  ‘Gunnarsson always kept the reins in his own hands,’ said Hardin musingly. ‘I guess things could tend to fall apart now. Sure, I’ll give it a whirl and see if I can pick up a few of the pieces. To tell the truth I’ve gotten a bit homesick. All this fresh air seems unnatural; I miss the smell of gasoline fumes. Hell, I’d even take Los Angeles right now.’

  ‘Go by way of London,’ said Stafford. ‘I’ll give you a letter for Jack Ellis. Arrange for whatever expenses you need with him.’ He paused. ‘Talking of Los Angeles, I wonder what happened to Hank Hendrix—the real one?’

  ‘I’ll ask around but I don’t think we’ll ever know,’ said Hardin.

  When Hardin had gone Stafford felt tired and was beginning to see double again. He closed his eyes and composed himself for sleep. His last waking thought was of Alix Hendriks who would never know the truth about the death of her husband. It occurred to him that every time he helped Alix she got richer and he achieved a few more scars. This time she would inherit her husband’s fortune by courtesy of the South African government, and might even get Henry Hendrix’s money with a bit of luck.

  He made a mental note that the next time Alix appealed for help or advice was the time to start running.

  THE CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDING THE CRIME

  Nineteen-Sixty was not a particularly good year for South Africa. January was not too bad, but on 3 February Harold Macmillan, the British Prime Minister, made his famous ‘wind of change’ speech to the South African Parliament in which he warned of the storms to come. This did not sit well with South Africans, particularly those of the ruling Nationalist Party, who regarded it as an interference in South African internal affairs.

  Then on 21 March an inexperienced police commander made a grave error of judgment when he gave the order to fire with machine guns on a crowd of demonstrating black Africans in the small town of Sharpeville.

  Within thirty seconds the death toll was sixty-nine and many of those killed and wounded were women.

  On 30 March a State of Emergency was declared in South Africa, and on 1 April the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution deploring the shootings at Sharpeville which were categorised as a massacre.

  On 4 April the Union Expo at Milner Park opened its gates to the public.

  By this time Johannesburg had become a magnet at
tracting the journalistic hot-shots—the international leg-men. World news is where you find Time magazine rubbing elbows with Paris-Match, both of them trying to get a beat on Stern. Noel Barber was there from London, and Robert Ruark represented Scripps-Howard. This was Ruark towards the end of his life—the famous hard-drinking, bestselling novelist and old Africa hand. At this time his idea of breakfast was half a bottle of Scotch and a couple of lightly boiled aspirins. I read one of his two-thousand-word cables and wondered how the desk man back in Chicago was going to make sense of it.

  Then there was the brash character who entered the bar of the Federal Hotel, a drinking hole favoured by newspapermen and broadcasters, announcing, ‘I’ve come to interview your Prime Minister—Forwards or Backwards or whatever his name is!’

  And, of course, there was the home-grown newspaper talent such as James Ambrose Brown. After Sharpeville all the surviving wounded had been put into Baragwanath Hospital around which the Army had thrown an iron cordon. Jimmy Brown penetrated the ring by wearing a white coat, an ostentatious stethoscope, and a preoccupied medical expression. He got his exclusive eyewitness interviews and duly made his scoop. Early 1960 was an exciting time for newsmen in Johannesburg.

  And where did I come into all this? I, too, was a newspaperman, freelancing for the Rand Daily Mail and the Johannesburg Sunday Times, and my one aim in life at the beginning of April 1960 was to cover the Union Expo. I was not interested in political matters and scurried about the feet of the journalistic giants doing my own thing. So let us take a look at the scene of the crime, the Union Expo, which was my beat.

  Every year at Milner Park in Johannesburg there is an event called the Rand Easter Show. Originally it was an agricultural show—indeed it is still organised by the Witwatersrand Agricultural Society—but it has been overtaken by industry and taken on an international flavour because a dozen nations have built permanent exhibition halls which are brought into use only once each year for about ten days around Easter.

  Here the French push their wines, perfumes, military helicopters, and minor guided missiles; the Germans display Bavarian beer and heavy machinery; the British offer Harris tweed, Scotch whisky, and Stilton cheese; the Japanese are there with transistor radios, the Czechs with Bohemian glass, and the Belgians with Browning rifles. The cattle, sheep, pigs, and goats are still there but somehow they seem lost among all the machinery.

  Ironically, 1960, the year of disaster, was the Golden Jubilee of the founding of the Union of South Africa in 1910. The Government had decided that this was an occasion for celebration, so a couple of new exhibition halls were built in Milner Park, artists and sculptors were commissioned to decorate them, and the Rand Easter Show was lengthened to three weeks and rechristened the Union Expo, a coinage to chill the blood of anyone who respects the English language. Attendance was expected to top the million mark.

  Long before the gates opened on 4 April I had been busy. The Rand Daily Mail, Johannesburg’s English morning newspaper, was to run a special daily supplement on the Expo and there were many pages to be filled. And I had hopes of pushing material to the Sunday Times, the Mail‘s stable companion. So I was kept busy interviewing exhibitors and anyone else who would provide a good story.

  Among these was Kobus Esterhuysen, a relaxed Afrikaner who was an exhibition designer of no mean talent and who was responsible for the Combined Provinces Pavilion. He admitted rather shamefacedly that it was he who had coined the term Expo, and added that he was having trouble with the bats in the Transvaal Pavilion. It seemed he had an animal exhibit and the bats would not hang upside-down properly. It made a paragraph.

  By the time the Expo opened I was so busy that I drafted my girlfriend, Joan Brown, into helping me. All that first week we scurried about, me working full time, and Joan in the few hours she could spare from her job in a city book shop.

  I had no time to think of the political scene but the politics were there and would not go away. The international pressmen were at the Expo in strength on Saturday, 9 April, because Prime Minister Vervoerd was to be guest of honour and was due to make a speech in the Main Arena, supposedly a ‘keynote’ speech on the State of Emergency.

  Just before three I joined them in the arena, standing before the VIP box where C. J. Laubscher, the general manager of the Expo, was sitting with the Prime Minister, the Mayor of Johannesburg, the President of the Witwatersrand Agricultural Society, and a dozen assorted visiting firemen, including my designer friend Kobus Esterhuysen. Behind us, in the arena, were about 500 prize cattle. There were thirty thousand onlookers in the stands.

  I was with Stan Hurst, Features Editor and principle layout man of the Sunday Times. Stan was a good friend and was to be best man at the wedding when I married Joan later that year. He looked at Vervoerd, and said, ‘He’s got to pull a rabbit out of the hat today. He must—the country can’t go on like this.’

  Vervoerd made his speech in both English and Afrikaans, the two official languages of the country. It was of mindnumbing dullness, much to the disgust of the visiting newsmen who were not as hardened as were we locals to the stupifying qualities of South African political discourse. There was not a word spoken that was newsworthy, so when the speech ended they vanished from the arena, some going direct to the airport where they had booked flights for the Congo which was due to erupt at any moment, others back to their hotels, but most drifting into the bar, that haunt of all good newsmen, to swap lies and steal stories from each other.

  But for Joan I would have joined them; South African barrooms were for men only.

  The next item on the program was for Vervoerd to come down into the arena and inspect the cattle. ‘A lousy speech,’ Hurst commented. ‘Nothing in it for me. I’m going home; maybe I’ll take a nap.’ He looked at Vervoerd who was chatting with Alec Gorshell, the Mayor of Johannesburg. ‘Are you covering the cattle?’

  I shook my head. ‘I leave that to Terence Clarkson.’ Clarkson was an elderly reporter on the Rand Daily Mail; he knew less about cattle than I did, but he could disguise his ignorance better. I grinned. ‘He’ll look up what he wrote last year and rejig it.’ I checked the time. ‘I promised to meet Joan in the Members’ Pavilion after the speech.’

  Stan nodded. ‘Okay; I’ll see you in the office tonight.’

  He went away, and 1 walked towards the Members’ Pavilion which looked out on to the arena. The only newspaperman left was the photographer from the Farmer’s Weekly who was stuck with the job of following the Prime Minister as he inspected the bovine regiment in a timeless ritual of South African life.

  Joan was lucky enough to have found a table in the crowded Pavilion so I ordered strawberries and cream, dropped a few acid words about Vervoerd’s speech, and then we got down to figuring the work plan for the rest of the day.

  Less than five minutes later there was a slight disturbance in the arena, merely a couple of shouts and nothing more. None of us heard the gun. A man at the next table stood up and craned his neck, then sat down again. ‘Nothing much,’ he said. ‘I think a bull got loose.’

  The thought struck me that a bull loose in the same arena as a Prime Minister might prove interesting and, after all, I was a reporter. ‘I’ll be back in a couple of minutes,’ I said to Joan.

  I got into the arena by showing my press tag and headed towards the VIP box fifty yards away. There was a small crowd of perhaps a dozen men at the bottom of the stairs and the people who should have been seated around the box were standing and staring. There was not much noise; just a hum of conversation and the lowing of cattle from the arena.

  As I got closer a struggling man was hauled away by two policemen. He was not being handled gently. Another man, a stranger, was lying on the steps, dead or unconscious, with someone bending over him. I touched the elbow of an onlooker. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘He shot him!’

  ‘Who shot who?’

  ‘The bastard shot Vervoerd.’ The man’s tone was incredulous.

 
There wasn’t another reporter in sight. ’Who shot Vervoerd?’

  ‘Someone called Spratt.’

  ‘Where is Vervoerd now?’

  ‘Lying on the bottom of the box there.’

  The photographer from the Farmer’s Weekly was busy taking pictures. He had problems—three of them. The first was his camera. It was an elderly Speed Graphic five-by-four, cut-film camera, a type I thought was obsolete in the 1930s. Slow to load and heavy to hold. His second problem was that the VIP box was too high for him to see into. He was holding his camera above his head with stiffened arms, leaping into the air, and opening the shutter at the top of each leap in the dim hope of getting a useable picture.

  His last problem was the Mayor of Johannesburg who hit him on the head with a rolled-up newspaper every time he leaped up.

  I turned and ran back to the Members’ Pavilion and unceremoniously scooped up Joan from her table. I said in a low voice, ‘Vervoerd’s been shot; we’ve got to move fast.’

  She got the point. ‘Where to?’

  ‘The press room.’

  The press room at Milner Park offered jaillike accommodation for frequently protesting reporters. There were a few battered and ink-stained deal tables, a few rickety chairs—and four telephones. In the bar of the Members’ Pavilion were half a hundred news-hungry reporters, each of whom would cheerfully give his arm for a telephone in the next fifteen minutes, and I was determined to get mine first.

  The press room was empty. I said, ‘Ring Sunday Times editorial and tell them Vervoerd’s been shot by a man probably called Spratt. There’ll be more to follow as soon as I can find an eyewitness. And don’t let go of that bloody telephone no matter who wants it.’

  On the way back to the arena I passed the door to the Members’ Bar and hesitated. Maybe I’m not competitive enough and maybe I’m a damned fool but I pushed open the door and went in. There, bellied up against the bar counter, were the Fourth Estate’s finest—the international team. Now, because I have a stammer, journalistic legend in Johannesburg has it that I went into the bar and shouted, ‘Ver-Ver-Ver-Ver-voerd’s b-b-b-been sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-shot!’