“Pull him up!” Alberto screamed at the sailors on the tower. They were already pulling on the ropes and Mano’s head reappeared, his eyes bulging with fear. He coughed violently, sea water spewing out of his mouth as he gasped desperately to get some air into his lungs. He tried to grab the side of the dinghy, but it was bobbing about like a cork. Realising the impossibility of the task, he started swimming strongly towards the sub. The sailors helped, pulling him across, until he reached the metal hull. There was nothing Alberto could do to help, just watch, as Mano was pulled slowly up the side of the submarine. The deck suddenly slid away from him and he fell on his face, damaging his injured leg again. He reached out to cling onto the metal rail as a giant wave lifted the forward hull of the fishing boat up like a feather and pushed it towards the other vessel. The skipper desperately tried to turn the boat away, but the hull crashed down on the side of the sub and then slid back into the swell. The rope holding Mano was torn from the sailors’ grasp and he was pulled down into the sea.
The impact of the crash pushed the fishing boat away and the gap of boiling sea between the vessels was again visible. Alberto leaned over the side, peering desperately into the waves that crashed around the boat, screaming out Mano’s name. But there was no sign of the stocky man. He had disappeared from the surface of the ocean as if he had never been there.
He climbed back to his feet and scrambled across to the skipper’s cockpit. The seaman said, “There’s nothing you can do, Alberto. He’s gone, God rest his soul. And I’ve got to get out of here. My boat is going to break up if I don’t.”
The big man stood for a moment, wondering how he could tell Álvaro that Mano, his deputy, closest friend and ally for twenty-five years, a fellow prisoner in Peniche Prison for eleven of them, was gone. Captured by the waves of the Atlantic Ocean, just as his comrades had finally found freedom. He shook his head. There was no time to think about it now.
He took out a wad of banknotes in an oilskin pouch, handed it to the skipper and embraced him warmly. “Muito obrigado, camarada. Até logo, nós estaremos de volta. Thanks comrade. We’ll be back.”
The dinghy was still attached to the deck rail, but floating upside down, a ragged tear in its skin. He climbed onto the metal rail and, ignoring his wounded leg, leaped onto the dinghy, grabbing hold of the tie rope. Half swimming and half pulling on the rope, he hauled himself across to the sub and was pulled up to the conning tower. He shook hands with the two sailors and climbed down inside. The sailors cast off the ropes and the dinghy blew away on the wind. They turned and saluted the skipper, then scrambled back into the submarine.
The conning tower closed up and huge air bubbles broke the surface as the grey, tubular vessel sank below the waves. In the control room, the navigation officer set a course for Murmansk and the Captain ordered, “Engines full ahead.”
After eleven years in Peniche Prison, Álvaro Cunhal, the leader of the Portuguese Communist Party, was escaping to Russia. But it would be many years before the rest of the world would discover the reason for his escape.
BOOK ONE
PART ONE: 1973 - 1974
ONE
November, 1973
Johannesburg, South Africa
Rachel Harrington was sitting on the living room floor of her apartment in Clanwilliam Drive, Johannesburg, sobbing her heart out. The tears were running down her face and soaking into her yellow blouse. Her normally pretty Irish complexion was flushed and blotchy and her nose was red and swollen from constant blowing. She had been sitting like that for half an hour since Nick walked out the door. He had only a small case with him, but she knew he wasn’t coming back.
This last row made the others pale into insignificance. She’d called him names that could never be recalled. Said words she didn’t even know she knew. Nick was gone and she was alone. Ever since his promotion three months ago she’d known this might happen. He’d started to move in elevated circles, mixing with people that she didn’t know and didn’t want to know. Company executives that he went out boozing with or invited home. Bigoted people with attitudes that made her want to slap their faces. People who thought that she was worth talking to just because she was white. It didn’t matter whether she had anything to say or not, they would talk for both of them. It was just as well, she would soon have been classified as ‘nigger lover’. That’s what anyone who didn’t believe in apartheid was labelled by those people.
Rachel had moved in with Nick three months after they met at the Imperial Diamond Exploration Company’s Christmas dance. He had just obtained his BSc. in Mining Engineering at Wits, the University of the Witwatersrand. Already a certified diamond expert, he’d studied for his degree on a part-time evening course while working for Imperial Diamond as a mining engineer. After three years of studying almost every night he’d gone to the dance with two agendas. Get pissed, find a girl.
Thanks to his mates, who plied him with beers all night, he achieved the first objective before ten o’clock. Then he encountered a redheaded girl standing at the side of the dance floor. Taking her by the waist, he asked, “How would you like to dance with the best looking man in the room?”
Rachel gave him a withering look. “Just point him out and I’d be delighted.” She was not in a particularly good mood, having arrived with another chap who’d disappeared after half an hour.
“It’s Rod Stewart. Come on, everybody can dance to Maggie May.” He pushed her onto the floor and she managed to hold him up while he tried to dance to the jive beat. It was fortunate that Rachel was a nurse and had experience of holding up sick people. Although he wasn’t actually sick until they went outside into the steaming hot night. She found out where he lived, got him back to his flat and put him to bed. She thought he was rather good looking, but she didn’t approve of drunkenness.
She went back to her own place and decided to forget all about men for the foreseeable future. At the time she was on a two year leave of absence from her nursing job at the General Hospital in Durban, working on a cancer research project with the Faculty of Medicine at Craighall Clinic. When Nick walked into her office the next day, stone cold sober and with a box of chocolates, she happily went out for dinner with him and then one thing led to another.
When Nick asked her to marry him she was deliriously happy. She was twenty-seven, three years younger than him. They planned to wait eighteen months to save up some money. In June they’d gone down to meet her parents in Durban, then to see his divorced mother in Port Elizabeth. They rented the apartment on Clanwilliam Drive when they returned to Joburg and moved out of his flat where they’d lived for the last three months.
Craighall offered her another two year assignment at their Research Faculty, studying cancer causes, prevention and treatment. At that time the disease was still little understood, but since the mapping of DNA in 1953, research had begun, to understand the causes of cancer at a molecular level and to devise new treatments based on this knowledge.
Rachel was given access to information from other hospitals and research centres. Analysis of this data showed the background to genetic changes in cells destined to become cancerous. Studying the nature of the genetic damage and the affected genes revealed the consequences of those changes on the biology of the cell. This led to understanding the defining properties of a cancer cell and the additional genetic events which led to further progression of the cancer. All of this work provided vital data for remedial research.
Her research work was social as well as medical. She carried out studies into life style or dietary patterns which modified cancer-causing factors, collating the data and other input to assist in the creation of preventative programmes. As she became more involved in this research, she began to be known among her peers, both in South Africa and abroad.
She threw herself into her new role with passion and conviction. A challenging new man in her life and a challenging new job, marriage in view. Rachel was a happy, fulfilled woman.
It seemed to her such a
short time ago. What a record to be proud of. Meet a man, fall in love, live together, get engaged. Fall out of love, separate. All in less than twelve months! Oh God. What am I going to tell my parents?
Rachel pulled herself together, dried her eyes, stripped off and had a cold shower. But she was still thinking about the last few months. If only he hadn’t joined the bloody golf club at Hyde Park. It was full of those people.
Nick didn’t have a prejudiced bone in his body. At Wits, he’d been involved in their very active anti-apartheid movement. He didn’t notice whether someone was black or white. They were just people who were fun and interesting to be with, or not. Then three months ago he had been promoted to Director of Diamond Mining Operations. The money was good, the work was challenging, but the price in terms of compromise was exorbitant. He didn’t actually change his views, he pretended to change them, which to Rachel was even worse. It was pure hypocrisy. It was no longer Nick. It was someone she didn’t know.
He started making plans without consulting her, getting friendly with people for the wrong reasons, suppressing his better instincts so he could fit in with the big brass.
“Darling,” he’d say. “Just because the guy’s an apartheid supporter it doesn’t mean he’s a bad person. He has a point of view. We all have the right to our point of view.”
The business at the golf club was the last straw. In order to become a member he needed three sponsors. It so happened that the three members with whom he’d played several times were all from Imperial Diamond, all part of the drinks parties’ circuit and to Rachel they were all racial bigots. She pleaded with him not to ask them for their support.
“It’s only a golf club membership. My God, you’d think I was plotting the assassination of Mandela.” Nick was adamant. He wanted this membership and that was the price he was prepared to pay. So he had his way. From that day, Nick seemed to become a captive of these people. He spent more time with them, drinking and politicking, than he did with Rachel. She couldn’t speak out to them so she had to take it out on Nick and it was destroying their life together.
The previous month, he had sprung a surprise. “I’ve booked a long weekend at the Mount Nelson, in Cape Town, Thursday to Monday. Garden suite, champagne, the works!”
“Oh Nick, that’s a marvellous idea. Oh my God! To get away for a few days. That’s what we need, just the two of us, like before. You’re a genius.”
The weekend was a great success. The weather was warm and dry. They spent long lazy hours lying by the pool, sipping cool drinks and talking about nothing in particular. They took a taxi down to the harbour and had dinner at a bistro on the waterfront.
On the last day, Nick hired a dinghy with an outboard and they sailed down the coast to Clifton Beach. He made a barbecue on the beach from fish they caught on the way. He’d put two bottles of rosé wine in the dinghy, covered in ice under a tarpaulin, cold and delicious with the fish. They were both still tipsy when they got back to the hotel.
He carried her into their suite and laid her on the bed. “I love you so much Rachel. I’m sorry for being such an asshole. I’m sorry for everything.”
“Shut up and come here, you idiot.”
He gently removed her blue halter top and shorts. She had on only a flimsy pair of panties. He kissed her breasts, her stomach, between her legs. They made love as they had when they first met, tender and passionate.
Then Rachel climbed on top of him, her legs astride. She pushed herself onto him, thrusting herself against his body with a violent fury. As if to wipe out the memory of the last couple of months, the arguments, the scenes, the awful people, the breakdown of their relationship. She cried out and bit his neck as they both climaxed. Then she slid down to lie alongside him. Nick’s arms came around her and she fell into a deep sleep.
When she woke he was snoring gently. She sobbed quietly until he stirred and they went down for breakfast.
Nick didn’t return and she heard nothing further from him. He was gone from her life and she didn’t know where he was. He had always wanted to visit Europe and she wondered if he had decided to take this opportunity. He had withdrawn exactly half the money from their joint account. He won’t last long on that. She stayed in the apartment and continued with her work at the Faculty.
Nobody came to see her except Nick’s boss from Imperial Diamond. He looked at Rachel as if to say, I know whose fault this is!
After a few days, she called her mother. “We’re having a bit of a break, Nick’s got a job overseas and we’re going to see how things go. I’ll join him when he gets settled down.”
Her mother didn’t believe a word. “Why don’t you come up to stay with us at home? Daddy and I would love to have you with us, just until Nick decides what he’s going to do.”
But she stayed in Joburg. Partly to continue with her research work, which was becoming an all consuming passion, but also in the faint hope that Nick would walk back through the door. Not the man that she’d been living with for the last three months, but the old Nick, the man she’d first met and who’d taken her to Cape Town. But he never came.
The following week, her period was late. She was a nurse, she didn’t panic. Stress and trauma often manifested themselves in such ways. Two weeks later she woke up feeling nauseous, so she went to see her doctor. She couldn’t remember whether she’d taken her pill that day in Cape Town. She’d been too emotionally upset.
The baby was due in August. Rachel was a fine specimen of a pregnant twenty-seven year old with no vitamin or hormonal deficiencies. She fleetingly thought of suicide, then abortion. Finally she called her mother and just before Christmas she arrived back in Durban. The Faculty had been sad to see her go. Her parents were delighted to welcome her home.
They threw a big Irish Christmas Party for the family and some friends. Rachel had four brothers and a sister, and there were three sisters-in-law and three nephews and nieces and a dozen more guests. No one said anything about Nick. Her parents had obviously spread the word about their break-up, but not about the baby. It was to remain a closely guarded secret. No one except her parents and her sister would know of her condition.
After dinner she left the other guests at the big table and went up to sit on the terrace. Her sister, Josie, was sitting alone on the swing bed, smoking.
“Better give it up Josie.” She admonished. “It’s been medically proven that..”
“Doctor Rachel! For your information, I am absolutely convinced that you’re right, and that smoking causes cancer and if I continue I will suffer a long and lingering illness, followed by fatal death. However, I am definitively quitting for ever on New Year’s Eve. So, if it’s going to kill me, then it had better be quick. So there!”
Rachel laughed. “Well, you make it sound so harmless I’m tempted to have a smoke myself. Except that I’m equally convinced that smoking is a definite no-no for expectant mothers. Besides, I don’t think I want anything further to do with cancer research. That was chapter twenty-seven of my previous life and I’m starting chapter one of my new life.”
“What’s it like being pregnant, Rachel? Is it magic and fulfilling and all the wonderful things people say? Or are they all lying?”
Rachel sat down beside her sister. “It’s bloody terrifying, to tell you the truth. Especially when you haven’t a husband, and I haven’t even got a boy-friend any more. My life is not working out the way I expected. Not at all.”
Josie put her arm around her. “Everything will be just fine. You’ll see.”
Hanny Peterson was a friend of Rachel’s father. He had lost his wife two years before, giving birth to their third child, a girl, and was still only in his early thirties. Hanny owned three jewellery stores in the Durban area and lived in a villa overlooking the harbour, just a couple of miles from the Chukka Country Club. He had been invited to the Christmas Party with his children and had spent as much time as he decently could, talking to Rachel, watching Rachel and enquiring after her to her parents.
On January 11th, Hanny phoned and asked to speak to her. “I wondered if you’d like to join me for dinner at the Country Club, tomorrow night?”
Although she didn’t really know him, Rachel was too polite to refuse. They drove out to the club in a smart limousine. Hanny was good company, relaxed, considerate and interested in her. He asked about her work in cancer research. Her father, who was on the senior staff at the Royal Albert Hospital, had obviously been boasting of his daughter’s capabilities. He was impressed. “You must be proud to have done such ground-breaking work. There can’t be many young women who have become renowned cancer researchers.”
Hanny was descended from Norwegian stock. Baptised Johannes, he’d been Hanny since he was a child. He told her his grandfather had come to Durban on a steamer at the turn of the century. He’d fallen for a girl on the trip over and they decided to get married and settle there.
“He had an amazing life. Just went off and did his own thing. Can you imagine? A Norwegian, who couldn’t speak a word of any other language, gets off a ship in Durban and seventy years later, here we are, dining in a fancy country club, all because of what he did.”
Rachel encouraged him to recount the story. “He was lucky enough to be befriended by a very wealthy man, another Norwegian. He started as a truck driver then became his chauffeur and finally he looked after him when the old man was widowed and sick.
“He left my grandad a nice legacy, so he started up his first jewellery store with a partner, a Dutch gem expert. They did well when Durban was expanding and there was a lot of money around. Then he bought out the business when his partner went back to Europe.”
“And so it got handed down to you in due course?”
“I took it over when my dad passed away, four years ago.” Hanny looked a little sheepish. “That’s the Peterson saga, three generations of boring jewellers!”
[African Diamonds 01.0] The Angolan Clan Page 2