by Wilbur Smith
They embraced. Isabella recalled how her mother had smelled, it was one of her pleasant childhood memories, but this woman smelled of some cheap and flowery perfume, of cigarette smoke and boiled cabbage, and – Isabella could barely credit her own senses – of underclothing that had been worn too long without changing.
She broke off the embrace, but Tara kept hold of her arm, and with Michael on the other side of her led them into the Lord Kitchener Hotel. The receptionist was a black lad, and Isabella recognized his voice as the one who had answered her phone call.
‘Phineas is from Cape Town also,’ Tara introduced them. ‘He is one of our other runaways. He left after the troubles in ’61 and, like the rest of us, he won’t be going home yet. Now let me show you around the Lordy—’ She laughed. ‘That’s what my permanent guests call it, the Lordy. I thought of changing the name, it’s so colonial and Empire—’
Tara chattered on happily as she led them around the hotel. The carpets in the passages were threadbare, and the rooms had washbasins, but shared the toilet and bathroom at the end of each passage.
Tara introduced them to any of her guests they met in the corridors or public rooms. ‘These are my son and daughter from Cape Town,’ and they shook hands with German and French tourists who spoke no English, Pakistanis and Chinese, black Kenyans and coloured South Africans.
‘Where are you staying?’ Tara wanted to know.
‘At the Dorchester.’
‘Of course.’ Tara rolled her eyes. ‘Fifty guineas a day, paid for by the sweat of the workers in the Courtney mines. That is what your father would have chosen. Why don’t you and Mickey move in here? I have two nice rooms on the top floor free at the moment. You would meet so many interesing people, and we’d see so much more of each other.’
Isabella shuddered at the thought of sharing the toilet at the end of the passage and jumped in before Michael could agree.
‘Daddy would be furious, he has prepaid for us – and now we know our way, it’s only a short taxi ride.’
‘Taxis,’ Tara sniffed. ‘Why not take the bus or the underground like any ordinary person?’
Isabella stared at her speechlessly. Didn’t she understand that they weren’t ordinary people? They were Courtneys. She was about to say so, when Michael sensed her intention and intervened smoothly.
‘Of course you are quite right. You’ll have to tell us what number bus to take and where to get off, Mater.’
‘Mickey, darling, please don’t call me Mater any longer. It’s so terribly bourgeois. Call me either Mummy or Tara, but not that.’
‘All right. It will be a little bit strange at first, but OK. I’ll call you Tara.’
‘It’s almost lunch time,’ Tara announced blithely. ‘I asked cook to make a bread-and-butter pudding, I know it’s one of your favourites, Mickey.’
‘I’m not awfully hungry, Mater – Tara,’ Isabella announced. ‘And it must be jet-lag or something, but—’
Michael pinched her sharply. ‘That’s lovely, Tara. We’d love to stay for lunch.’
‘I just have to look into the kitchen – make sure it’s all under control – come along.’
As they entered the kitchen a child came running to Tara. He must have been helping the Irish cook, for his hands were white with flour to the elbows. Tara hugged him, happily heedless of the flour that rubbed off on her sweater.
A mat of short woolly curls covered his pate, and his skin was a clear light toffee colour. His eyes were huge and dark, and he had appealing gamin features. He reminded Isabella of any one of the dozens of children of the estate workers on Weltevreden. She smiled at him, and he gave back a cocky but friendly grin.
‘This is Benjamin,’ Tara said. ‘And these, Benjamin, are your brother and sister – Mickey and Isabella.’
Isabella stared at the child. She had tried to discount and forget all that Lothar had told her, and in some measure she had succeeded. But now it all came rushing back, the words roaring in her ears like flood waters.
‘Your half-brother is an attractive coffee colour,’ Lothar had told her and she wanted to scream, ‘How could you, Mater, how could you do this to us?’ But Michael had recovered from his obvious surprise, and now he held out his hand towards the child and said,
‘Hi there, Ben. It’s fine that we are brothers – but how about you and me being friends also?’
‘Hey, man – I like that,’ Benjamin agreed instantly. To add to Isabella’s dismay and confusion, he spoke in a broad South London accent.
Isabella spoke barely a dozen words during lunch. The pea soup was thickened with flour that had not cooked through and it stuck to the roof of her mouth. The boiled silverside lay limply in its own watery gravy, and the cabbage was cooked pink.
They sat at the table with Phineas, the receptionist, and five other of Tara’s guests, all black South African expatriates, and the boisterous conversation was almost entirely conducted in left-wing jargon. The government of which Isabella’s beloved father was a minister was always referred to as the ‘racist regime’ and Michael joined cheerfully in the discussion about the redistribution of wealth and the return of the land to those who worked it after the revolution had succeeded and the People’s Democratic Republic of Azania had been established. Isabella wanted to scream at him, ‘Damn you, Mickey, they are talking about Weltevreden and the Silver River Mine. These are terrorists and revolutionaries – and their sole purpose is to destroy us and our world.’
When the bread-and-butter pudding was served, she could take it no longer.
‘I’m sorry, Tara,’ she whispered. ‘I have a splitting headache, and I simply have to get back to the Dorchester and lie down.’ She was so pale and discomforted that Tara made only a token protest and genuine noises of concern. Isabella refused to let Michael escort her. ‘I won’t spoil your fun. You haven’t seen Mater – Tara – in ages. I’ll just grab a taxi.’
Perhaps it really was fatigue that had weakened her, but in the cab she found herself weeping with chagrin and shame and fury.
‘Damn her! Damn her to hell,’ she whispered. ‘She has disgraced and dishonoured all of us, Daddy and Nana and me and all the family.’
As soon as she reached her room she locked her door, threw herself on the bed and reached for the telephone.
‘Exchange, I want to put a call through to Johannesburg in South Africa—’ She read the number out of her address book.
The delay was less than half an hour and then a marvellously homey Afrikaans accent said, ‘This is Police Headquarters, Bureau of State Security.’
‘I want to speak to Colonel Lothar De La Rey.’
‘De La Rey.’
Despite the thousands of miles that separated them, his voice was crisp and clear, and in her imagination she saw him again naked on the beach in the dawn, like a statue of a Greek athlete but with those glowing golden eyes, and she whispered, ‘Oh, God, Lothie, I’ve missed you. I want to come home. I hate it here.’
He spoke quietly, reassuring and consoling her, and when she had calmed he ordered her, ‘Tell me about it.’
‘You were right. Everything you said was true – even to her little brown bastard, and the people are all revolutionaries and terrorists. What do you want me to do, Lothie? I’ll do anything you tell me.’
‘I want you to stay there, and stick it out for the full two weeks. You can telephone me every day, but you must stay on. Promise me, Bella.’
‘All right – but, God, I miss you and home.’
‘Listen, Bella. I want you to go to South Africa House the first opportunity you have. Don’t let anybody know, not even your brother Michael. Ask for Colonel Van Vuuren, the military attaché. He will show you photographs and ask you to identify the people you meet.’
‘All right, Lothie – but I’ve told you twice already how much I miss you, while you, you swine, haven’t said a word.’
‘I have thought about you every day since you left,’ Lothar said. ‘You’re beautiful a
nd funny and you make me laugh.’
‘Don’t stop,’ Isabella pleaded. ‘Just keep talking like that.’
Adrian Van Vuuren was a burly avuncular man, who looked more like a friendly Free State farmer than a Secret Service man. He took her up to the ambassador’s office and introduced her to His Excellency, who knew Shasa well, and they chatted for a few minutes. His Excellency invited Isabella to the races at Ascot the coming Saturday but Colonel Van Vuuren intervened apologetically.
‘Miss Courtney is doing a little job for us at present, Your Excellency. It might not be wise to make too much public display of her connections to the embassy.’
‘Very well,’ the ambassador agreed reluctantly. ‘But you will come to lunch with us, Miss Courtney – not often we have such a pretty girl at our gatherings.’
Van Vuuren gave her the short tour of the embassy and its art treasures, which ended in his office on the third floor.
‘Now, my dear, we have some work for you.’
A pile of albums was stacked on his desk, each full of head-and-shoulder photographs of men and women. They sat side by side and Van Vuuren flicked through the pages, picking out the mug shots of the people she had met at the Lord Kitchener Hotel.
‘You make it easier for us by knowing their names,’ Van Vuuren remarked, and turned to a photograph of Phineas, the hotel receptionist.
‘Yes, that’s him,’ Isabella confirmed, and Van Vuuren looked up his details in a separate ledger. ‘Phineas Mophoso. Born 1941. Member of PAC. Convicted of public violence 16 May 1961. Violated bail conditions. Illegal emigration late 1961. Present location believed UK.’
‘Small fry,’ Van Vuuren grunted, ‘but small fry often shoal with big fish.’ He offered to provide an embassy car to drive Isabella back to the Dorchester.
‘Thank you, but I’ll walk.’
She had tea alone at Fortnum & Masons and when she got back to the hotel Michael was frantic with worry.
‘For Heaven’s sake, Mickey. I’m not a baby. I can look after myself. I just felt like exploring on my own.’
‘Mater is giving a party for us at the Lord Kitchener this evening. She wants us there before six.’
‘You mean Tara, not Mater – and the Lordy, not the Lord Kitchener. Don’t be so bourgeois and colonial, Mickey darling.’
At least fifty people crowded into the residents’ lounge of the Lordy for Tara’s party, and she provided unlimited quantities of draught bitter and Spanish red wine to wash down the Irish cook’s unforgettable snacks. Michael entered into the spirit of the occasion. He was at all times the centre of an arguing gesticulating group. Isabella backed herself into a corner of the lounge and with a remote and icy hauteur discouraged any familiar approach from the other guests, while at the same time memorizing their names and faces as Tara introduced them.
After the first hour the smoky claustrophobic atmosphere, and the volume of conversation lubricated by Tara’s Spanish plonk, became oppressive and Isabella’s eyes felt gritty and a dull ache started in her temples. Tara had disappeared and Michael was still enjoying himself.
‘That’s my patriotic duty for tonight,’ she decided, and sidled towards the door taking care not to alert Michael to her departure.
As she passed the deserted reception desk, she heard voices from behind the frosted glass door of Tara’s tiny office, and she had an attack of conscience.
‘I can’t just go off without thanking Mater,’ she decided. ‘It was an awful party, but she went to a lot of trouble and I am one of the guests of honour.’
She slipped behind the desk, and was about to tap on the panel of the door when she heard her mother say, ‘But, comrade, I didn’t expect you to arrive tonight.’ The words were commonplace, but the tone in which Tara said them was not. She was more than agitated – she was afraid, deadly afraid.
A man’s voice replied, but it was so low and hoarse that Isabella could not catch the words, and then Tara said, ‘But they are my own children. It’s perfectly safe.’
This time the man’s reply was sharper. ‘Nothing is ever safe,’ he said. ‘They are also your husband’s children, and your husband is a member of the Fascist racist regime. We will leave now and return later after they have gone.’
Isabella acted instinctively. She darted back into the lobby and out through the glass front doors of the hotel. The narrow street was lined with parked vehicles, one of them a dark delivery van tall enough to screen her. She hid behind it.
After a few minutes, two men followed her out of the front entrance of the hotel. They both wore dark raincoats but their heads were bare. They set off briskly, walking side by side towards the Cromwell Road and as they came level with where she leaned against the side of the van, the street light lit their faces.
The man nearest to her was black, with a strong, resolute face, broad nose and thick African lips. His companion was white and much older. His flesh was pale as putty and had the same soft amorphous look. His hair was black and lank and lifeless. It hung on to his forehead, and his eyes were dark and fathomless as pools of coal tar – and Isabella understood why her mother had been afraid. This was a man who inspired fear.
Colonel Van Vuuren sat beside her at his desk with the pile of albums in front of them. ‘He is a white man. That makes life a lot easier for all of us,’ he said as he selected one of the albums.
‘These are all white,’ he explained. ‘We have got them all in here. Even the ones safely behind bars, like Bram Fischer.’
She found his photograph on the third page.
‘That’s the one.’
‘Are you surer Van Vuuren asked. ‘It’s not a very good photo.’
It must have been taken as he was climbing into a vehicle, for the background was a city street. He was glancing back, most of his body obscured by the open door of the vehicle, and movement had blurred his features slightly.
‘Yes. That’s him all right,’ Isabella repeated. ‘I could never mistake those eyes.’
Van Vuuren referred to the separate ledger. ‘The photograph was taken in East Berlin by the American CIA two years ago. He is a wily bird, that’s the only picture we have. His name is Joe Cicero. He is the Secretary General of the South African Communist Party and a colonel in the Russian KGB. He is a chief of staff of the military wing of the banned ANC, the Umkhonto we Sizwe.’ Van Vuuren smiled. ‘And so, my dear, the big fish has arrived. Now we must try and identify his companion. That will not be so easy.’
It took almost two hours. Isabella paged through the albums slowly. When she finished one pile, Van Vuuren’s assistent brought in another armful of albums and she began again. Van Vuuren sat patiently beside her, sending out for coffee and encouraging her with a smile and a word when she flagged.
‘Yes.’ Isabella straightened up at last. ‘This is the one.’
‘You have been wonderful. Thank you.’ Van Vuuren reached for the ledger and turned to the curriculum vitae of the man in the photograph.
‘Raleigh Tabaka,’ he read out. ‘Secretary of the Vaal branch of PAC and member of Poqo. Organizer of the attack on the Sharpeville police station. Disappeared three years ago, before he could be detained. Since then there have been rumours that he was seen in training camps in Morocco and East Germany. He is rated as a trained and dangerous terrorist. Two big fish together. Now, if we could just find what they are up to!’
Tara Courtney waited up long after her party had broken up. The last guests had staggered through the glass doors, and Michael had kissed her goodnight and gone off to try and pick up a late cruising taxi in the Cromwell Road.
Since first she had met him, Joe Cicero had been associated with danger and suffering and loss. There was always an aura of mystery and a passionless evil surrounding him. He terrified her. The man with him she had met for the first time that night. Joe Cicero had introduced him only as Raleigh, but Tara’s heart had gone out to him immediately. Although he was much younger, he reminded her so strongly of her own Moses. He had the sam
e smouldering intensity and compelling presence, the same dark majesty of bearing and command.
They came back a little after two in the morning, and Tara let them in and led them through to her own bedroom in the back area of the hotel.
‘Raleigh will stay with you for the next two or three weeks. Then he will return to South Africa. You will provide everything he asks for, particularly the information.’
‘Yes, comrade,’ Tara whispered. Although she was the registered owner and licensed proprietress of the hotel, the money for the purchase had been provided by Joe Cicero and she took her orders directly from him.
‘Raleigh is the nephew of Moses Gama,’ Joe said, watching her carefully with those expressionless black eyes as she turned to the younger man.
‘Oh, Raleigh, I didn’t realize. It is almost as though we are one family. Moses is the father of my son, Benjamin.’
‘Yes,’ Raleigh, answered. ‘I know that. This is the reason that I am able to give you the object of my mission to South Africa. Your dedication is proven and unquestioned. I am going back to Africa to free your husband and my uncle, Moses Gama, from the prison of the Fascist racist Verwoerd regime to lead the democratic revolution of our people.’
Her joy dawned slowly with her understanding. Then she went to Raleigh Tabaka and as she embraced him she was weeping with happiness.
‘I will give anything to help you succeed,’ she whispered through her tears. ‘Even my life.’
Jakobus Stander had only two classes on a Friday morning, and the last one ended at 11.30. He left the grounds of the University of the Witwatersrand immediately afterwards and caught the bus down to Hillbrow. It was a ride of only fifteen minutes and he reached his flat a little after midday.
The suitcase was still on the low coffee table where he had placed it the night before, after he had finished working on it. It was a cheap brown case made of imitation leather with a pressed metal lock.
He stood staring at it with pale topaz-coloured eyes. Except for the eyes, he was an unremarkable young man. Although he was tall, he was too thin and the grey flannel trousers hung loosely around his waist. His hair was long, flecked with dandruff, hanging over the back of his collar, and the elbows of his baggy brown corduroy jacket were patched with leather. Rather than a tie he wore a turtleneck jersey with the collar rolled over. It was the self-consciously shabby uniform of the left-wing intellectual, adopted by even the Professor of the Department of Sociology in which Jakobus was a senior lecturer.