by Wilbur Smith
In the glare of the headlights and the roar of the crowd, Roland Ballantyne simply burned off the bigger stronger man and left him floundering half a dozen yards behind him as he leaped up the stairs, crashed through the mess doors and dropped Janine onto the bar-top.
His face was swollen and ugly red as he thrust it inches from hers. "I told you to do something," he snarled hoarsely. "Don't you ever disobey me again, ever!" And in that moment she was truly afraid of him.
Then he went to Esau Gondele and the two of them threw their arms around each other and sobbed with laughter and exhaustion and staggered in a circle trying to lift each other off their feet. The adjutant thrust a roll of bank-notes into Roland's hand. "Your winnings, sir," he said, and Roland slapped it onto the bar counter. "Come on, lads, help me drink it up," he wheezed, still fighting for breath.
Esau Gondele took one sip of his beer and then poured the rest over Roland's head.
"Sorry, Nkosi," he roared. "But I've always wanted to do that."
"This is, my dear, just a typical homely evening with Ballantyne's Scouts." Janine looked around to find Douglas Hunt-Jeffreys beside her, with the ivory cigarette-holder between his teeth. "Some time when the varsity tugger club atmosphere palls, and your intended is away in the bush, you might find a little civilized company makes a pleasant change." "The only thing about you that interests me is what makes you think I might be interested." "It takes one to recognize one, darling."
"You are impertinent. I could tell Roland." "You could," he agreed.
"But then I always like to live dangerously. Goodnight, Doctor Carpenter, I hope we meet again." They left the mess after two in the morning. Despite the alcohol he had taken, Roland drove as he always did, very fast and well. When they reached her apartment, he carried her up the stairs, despite her muted protests. "You will wake everybody in the building!" "If they sleep so lightly just wait until I get you upstairs. They will be sending you lawyers" letters, or get-well cards. " After he had made love to her, he fell instantly asleep.
She lay next to him and watched his face in the orange and red flashes of the neon sign on the roof of the service station across the street. In relaxation he was even more beautiful than awake, but she found herself thinking suddenly of Craig Mellow, of his funniness and his gentleness.
"They are so different," she thought. "And yet I love them both now, each in a different way." It troubled her so that she fell asleep only as the dawn swamped the neon flashes on the bedroom curtains.
Roland seemed to waken her immediately. "Breakfast, wench," he ordered. "I've got a meeting at nine o'clock at Combined Ops." They sat on her balcony, amongst her miniature forest of pot plants, and ate scrambled eggs and wild mushrooms.
"I know it's usually the bride's prerogative, Bugsy, but can we set a date for around the end of next month?" "So soon? Can you tell me why?" "Not all of it but after that we will be going into quarantine, and I might be out of circulation for a while!
"Quarantine?" She laid down her fork.
"When we start planning and training for a special operation we go into total isolation. There have been too many security leaks lately.
Too often our boys have walked into a sucker punch. We have got a big one coming up, and the whole group will be quarantined in a special camp, nobody, not even myself, will be allowed outside contact, not even with parents or wives, until after the operation." "Where is this camp?"."I cannot tell you, but if we spend the honeymoon at Victoria Falls as you wanted, it will suit me just fine. You can fly back here afterwards and I can go straight into quarantine." "Oh, darling, it's so soon. There will be so many arrangements to make. I don't know if Mummy and Daddy can get out here by then." "Telephone them." "All right," she agreed. "But I hate the thought of you having to leave so soon afterwards." "I know. It won't always be that way." He looked at his watch. "Time to go. I'll be a little late this evening, I want to talk to Sonny. I hear he's living in that boat of his again." She tried to cover her shock.
"Sonny? Craig, why do you want to see him?" When Roland told her why, she could think of nothing to say. She went on staring at him in appalled silence.
Janine telephoned him at the police armoury as soon as she reached the museum.
"Craig, I have to see you." "Wonderful, I'll make the dinner."
"No, no immediately. You must get away." He laughed. "I've only had this job a few months. Even for me it will be a record." "Tell them your mother is sick." "I'm an orphan." "I know, darling, but this is life and death." "What did you call me?" "It slipped out." "Say it again." "Craig, don't be an idiot." "Say it." "Darling." "Where and when?" "Half an hour at the bandstand in the gardens, and Craig it's bad news." She hung up without letting him talk again. She saw him first. He came at a lope, like a Saint Bernard puppy, with legs too long and his hair sticking out under the peak of his cap, a frown of worry crumpling up his face, but when he saw her sitting on the steps of the white, painted bandstand, the frown smoothed and his eyes lit with that special soft look that today she found too painful to bear.
"God," he said. "I had forgotten how lovely you are." "Let's walk." She couldn't look at him, but when he took her hand, she could not bring herself to pull her fingers out of his.
Neither of them spoke again until they reached the river.
They stood on the bank and watched a little girl in a white dress and pink ribbons feeding breadcrumbs to the ducks.
"I had to tell you first," she said. "I owed you that at least."
She felt him go very still beside her, but still she could not look at him, yet she could not withdraw her hand from his.
"Before you say anything, I want to tell you again what I told you before. I love you, Jan." "Oh, Craig." "Do you believe me?" She nodded and swallowed.
"All right, then, now you tell me what you called me to hear."
"Roland has asked me to marry him." His hand began to tremble.
"And I said yes." "Why, Jan?" She jerked her hand away at last.
"Damn you, why do you always have to do it?" "Why?" he persisted. "I know you love me. Why are you going to do it?" "Because I love him more," she said, still angry. "If you were me, who would you marry?"
"When you put it that way," he agreed. "I suppose you are right."
Now at last she looked at him. He was very pale. "Roly always was the winner. I hope you will be very happy, Jan.) "Oh, Craig, I'm so sorry." "Yes, I know. So am I. Can we just leave it now, Jan. There is nothing more to say." "Yes, there is. Roland is coming to see you this evening. He is going to ask you to be his best man." Roland Ballantyne perched on the edge of the operations table. It was an enormous relief map of RMatabeleland. The disposition of the security force elements was shown by small movable counters and their strength by a numbered card set into each counter like a menu-holder. Every branch of the force had its own colour the Ballantyne Scouts were maroon. They were shown as 250 in Thabas Indunas barracks, but there was still a patrol of fifty near the Gwaai, involved in the hot pursuit of the survivors of the previous day's contact.
On the opposite side of the operations table Wing Commander Douglas Hunt-Jeffreys slapped the wooden pointer into the palm of the other hand. "All right," he nodded. "This is for heads of staff only. Let's go over it from the beginning, please." There were just the two of them in the operations room, and the red security light above the steel door was burning.
"Code name Buffalo," Roland said. "The object of operation is the elimination of Josiah Inkunzi and/or one or all of his chiefs of staff. - Tebe, Chitepo and Tungata." "Tungata?"Hunt-Jeffreys asked. "A new one, "Roland explained. "Go on, please." "We will cut them at the safe house in Lusaka, at some date after the fifteenth of November when we expect Inkunzi to return from a visit to Hungary and East Germany."
"You will be able to get intelligence of his return?" Douglas asked, and when Roland nodded, "Can you let me know your source?" "That is not even for you, Dougie, my boy." "Very well, as long as you will be certain that Inkunzi
is in residence before you move." "From now on let's call him Buffalo." "How will you go in?" "We will go in overland.
A column of Land-rovers with Zambian police markings and all personnel will wear Zambian police uniforms." Douglas raised an eyebrow. "Geneva Convention?" "Legitimate ruse of war," Roland countered. "They'll shoot you if they catch you." "They would do that anyway, uniforms or not. The answer will be not to let any of our lads get caught." "All right, you go in by road which one?" "Livingstone to Lusaka." "A long haul through hostile territory, and our air force has blown the bridges at Kaleya." "There is an alternative route upstream, there will be a guide waiting to take us through the bush to reach it." "So you have covered that bridge, but how do you cross the Zambezi?" "There is a drift below Kazungula." "Which you have checked, of course?" "On a dummy run. We took a vehicle across, using winch and floats, in nine minutes flat. We will have the entire task force across in under two hours. There is a track that will take us out onto the great north road fifty K's north of Livingstone." "What about re-supply?" "The guide at Kaleya is a white maize farmer, he has fuel on his farm, and we will back up with helicopters." "I take it you will use the helicopters to evacuate if you are forced to abort the operation?" Roland nodded. "That's it, Dougie old bean. Pray it's not necessary." "Let's go on to personnel then. How many will you use?"
"Forty-five Scouts, that includes S'am-Major and myself, and ten specialists." "Specialists?" "We expect to find a pile of documents in Buffalo's HQ. Probably so much that we will not be able to bring it all back. We need at least four intelligence experts to evaluate on the spot, what to keep and what to burn. You pick them for us." "The other specialists?" "Medicos, two of them. Henderson and his aide. We have used them before." "Good, who else?" "Blast bunnies, to clear the house of booby-traps, to set our own when we leave, and to blow the bridges behind us on our way home." "Armourers from Salisbury?" "I can get two good lads here in Bulawayo, one is a cousin of mine." "Fine, let me have a list of names." Douglas carefully withdrew the stub of his cigarette from the ivory holder, crushed it out, and replaced it-with a fresh tube from the packet of Gold Leaf.
"What about a site for the quarantine camp?" he asked. "Have you given it some thought?" "There is the Wankie Safari Lodge on the Dett vlei. It's two hours" drive from the Zambezi, and it has been on a caretaker basis since the Wankie strip was abandoned." "Five-star comfort the Scouts are getting soft." Douglas grinned mockingly.
"Okay, I'll see that you get it." Douglas made a note and then looked up. "Now let's go over the dates. How soon can you be ready to go?"
"Fifteenth of November. That gives us eight weeks to assemble the equipment, and rehearse the raid-".
"It probably also fits in rather well with the date of your wedding, doesn't it?" Douglas tapped the ivory holder against his teeth, and delighted in Roland Bailantyne's quick flare of temper.
"The timing of the raid has nothing to do with my private affairs, it will be dictated entirely by Buffalo's movements. In any event, my wedding will take place a week before the start of quarantine. Janine and I will spend our honeymoon at the Victoria Falls Hotel which is only two hours" drive from the camp at Wankie Safari Lodge. She will fly back to Bulawayo on the airway's scheduled flight, and I will go into quarantine directly from Vic Falls." Douglas lifted a defensive hand and grinned mockingly. "I say, do keep your hair on, old man. just a civil enquiry, that's all. By the way, I think my wedding invitation must have been lost in the post.-" But Roland had returned to his list, and was studying it with all his attention.
Douglas Hunt-Jeffreys lay on the ample bed in the cool shuttered bedroom, and examined the naked woman who slept beside him. At first she had seemed a most unpromising subject, with her pale acne-scarred face and disconcerting staring eyes behind horn-rimmed spectacles, her abrupt, aggressive, almost mannish manner, and the smouldering intensity of the political militant. But stripped of her shapeless sweater and baggy skirts, of her thick woollen socks and crude leather sandals, she had a slim pale, almost girlish, body, with fine small breasts that Douglas found very much to his taste. When she removed the spectacles, her staring eyes softened into appealing unfocused myopia, and under Douglas" skilful lips and fingers, she unloosed a tumultuous physical response which had at first astonished and then delighted him. He found he could induce in her an epileptic passion, a state in which she was almost catatonic and totally susceptible to his will, her depravity limited only by the range of Douglas" fertile imagination.
"A murrain on beautiful women," he smiled contentedly to himself.
"It's the ugly little ducklings who are the absolute ravers!" They had met in the middle of the morning, and now it was careful not to disturb her, Douglas checked his gold Rolex it was two o'clock in the afternoon. Even for Douglas, a marathon performance.
"Poor lamb is exhausted." He craved a cigarette, but decided to give her ten minutes more. There was no hurry. He could afford to lie a little longer and leisurely review this case.
Like many good controllers, Douglas had found that a sexual relationship with his female agents, and occasionally even With some of his male agents, was an effective tool of manipulation, a short-cut to the dependencies and loyalties that were so desirable in his trade.
This case was a perfect example. Without the physical lever Doctor Leila St. John would be a difficult and unpredictable subject, whereas with it she had become one of his best agents ever.
Douglas Hunt-Jeffreys by a fluke of war was a born Rhodesian. His father had come out to Africa at the beginning of Hitler's war to command the Royal Air Force training station at Gwelo. He had met and married a local girl, and Douglas had been delivered in 1941 by the Air Force doctor. The family had returned to England at the end of his father's tour of duty, and Douglas had followed the well-worn family path to Eton, and then on to the Royal Air Force.
After that there had been an unusual diversion in his" career, and he found himself in British military intelligence. Back in 1964, when Ian Smith came to power in Rhodesia, and started making the first threatening noises about breaking with Britain in a unilateral declaration of independence, Douglas Hunt-Jeffreys had been the perfect choice of an agent to place in the field. He had returned to Rhodesia, taking up his Rhodesian nationality, joined the Rhodesian Air Force and began immediately to mole his way up the ladder of command.
He was now chief co-ordinator for British intelligence throughout the territory, and Doctor Leila St. John was one of his recruits.
Naturally, she had no idea as to who was her ultimate employer, any suggestion of military intelligence, no matter to which country it belonged, would have sent her scampering up the nearest tree like a frightened cat. Douglas grinned lazily at his own imagery. Leila St. John believed herself to be a member of a small courageous group of left-wing guerrillas, intent on wresting the land of her birth from its racialist fascist conquerors and delivering it unto the joys of Marxist communism.
On the other hand, the concern of Douglas Hunt-Jeffreys and his government was to arrive at the swiftest settlement acceptable to the United Nations and to the United States, France, West Germany and their other Western allies, and to withdraw from an embarrassing, untidy and costly situation with what dignity and despatch they could still muster, preferably leaving in charge the least objectionable of the African guerrilla leaders.
British and American intelligence appraisals showed that Josiah Inkunzi, despite all his extreme left-wing rhetoric and the military assistance which he had solicited and received from communist China and the Soviet bloc countries, was a pragmatist. From the Western viewpoint, he was far and away the least of many much greater evils, his elimination would clear the way for a horde of truly vicious Marxist monsters to take over and lead the nation-to-be Zimbabwe into the clutches of the big red bear.
A secondary consideration was that a successful Rhodesian assassination coup on Inkunzi would bolster the slowly flagging fighting resolve of the Rhodesian UDI government, and would re
nder Ian Smith and his gang of right-wing cabinet ministers even less amenable to reason than they had been to date. No, it was absolutely essential that Josiah Inkunzi's life be protected at all costs, and Douglas Hunt Jeffreys tickled the sleeping woman gently.