A SONG IN THE MORNING

by Gerald Seymour

  Jan spoke to Ros in Afrikaans. She nodded. Jack sensed they were close to the drop point.

  Jan switched to English.

  "We're hardly stopping for you. You can see the place from the road, that's what my message said. It's a place where they can keep cattle if the weather's bad. You'll have to carry it all yourself, your bag and the tube things."

  "That's fine."

  The sun was high. The light bathed them through the car windows. Ros wound her window down, Jack followed her.

  There was the rush of air on his face, her hair streamed across her cheeks and nose and mouth.

  "There it is."

  Jan was leaning forward between their shoulders. He pointed ahead, through the windscreen, under the central mirror. For a moment the sun had caught the roof of a building that was set back from the road. Beyond the place was a clump of tall trees. For only a moment the light hit at that particular angle and reflected from the tin roof.

  "We'll put you down by those trees. Wait until we are gone ten minutes before you move."

  "Goodbye, and again, thank you," Jack said softiy.

  "Good luck, Jack. I hope you pull it off," a fierceness from Jan.

  "I'll put you down in those trees," Ros said.

  Jack grinned. "Not a chance that we won't."

  The last of the big boasts. They had lost sight of the shed.

  The big boasts were all right for his mother and fine for George Hawkins, great for Duggie, brilliant for these kids.

  Ros was braking. The big boasts would stop when he joined Thiroko's men. Jack thought they were familiar trees, peeled bark trunks, but he couldn't put a name to them.

  There was a car parked off the road and in the shade of the trees.

  Jack saw two in the front and two in the back of the saloon car.

  "I can't put you down next to them," Ros said.

  They were passing the car.

  As a flash, Jack saw the front seat passenger hunched forward, something in his hand, and his hand close to his ear. As a flash, Jack heard the distorted snatch of a radio transmission. Just a flash . . .

  He had heard a radio transmission.

  He swung to Ros.

  His voice was a whisper. "Just keep going."

  She turned to him, mouth sagging open.

  "No sudden movements. Don't slow, don't accelerate."

  Her face was washed with questions.

  "Just drive as if it's normal, like nothing's important to us here."

  Jack could hear her breath spurting.

  "Don't turn round, don't look back."

  God, and he wanted to look back. He wanted to look back and into the parked green saloon car and see whether the attention of the men inside was on the Beetle that had sidled past.

  "Just drive on, as if it's natural."

  Past the trees, he saw a cattle track leading from an iron gate away across a crudely fenced field, uphill towards a cow shed. He could see no movement at the shed. Above the engine were the crisp calls of the birds. He felt Jan's fingers on his shoulder.

  "Don't stop, drive on," Jack snapped at Ros.

  Christ, the girl was good, didn't argue, didn't talk back.

  "Keep driving," a rasp in Jack's voice.

  They went on up the slow incline. Jack pulled the map from the glove compartment. He unfolded it over his knees.

  His finger was searching for Warmbaths.

  The girl was great, the girl was driving with her eyes on the road like it was a Sunday outing.

  "When we went past the parked car, as we passed it, did you hear anything?"

  "I hardly saw the car."

  "It was taking a radio message."

  "So what?" Jan spoke before he had thought.

  "There's not going to be a taxi out here. It was taking a radio message which means it's a police car. Cop on, kid."

  "Christ . . . "

  "Which means that the drop is under observation."

  "Shit . . ."

  Ros was expressionless. Jan sagged back into his narrow space alongside the metal tubes. Jack went back to the map.

  He was a long time poring over it. He traced a route on to Mabula, and then a secondary road to Rooiberg, and then on until the turn off to Rankin's Pass through the mountains, and a crossing of the Mogol river and back to Nylstroom that was twenty miles north of Warmbaths. Without measuring the distance with his finger, he thought that the whole journey was more than a hundred and fifty kilometres, and that was the most direct route to Warmbaths without going again down the road past the cow shed and past the parked green saloon car.

  "If they're there, in the shed, and the police move in on them, what would they do with them?" Jack asked.

  A dulled reponse from Jan. "They'd take them to the police station at Warmbaths. From there they'd probably helicopter them out to Pretoria or Johannesburg."

  "I have to know, what happens to them."

  Jan flared. "It wasn't us that was followed."

  "Pretty bloody irrelevant right now."

  "I have to see what happens."

  He gave Ros the route that he wanted her to take. She nodded, she was impassive.

  "Is that all right?" Jack asked.

  "I'm just your chauffeur," Ros said.

  * * *

  "You know what's there, Carew, and you know it's something that I never thought you'd let me see, too right."

  "What's there, Sergeant Oosthuizen?"

  "Can't you see what's there for yourself, Carew?"

  Sergeant Oosthuizen liked a little game. He liked a child's riddle. Mostly Jeez humoured him. Most times in the last thirteen months Jeez had played along with him. Buggered if he wanted a joke that afternoon.

  "I can't see that anything's there, Sergeant."

  Jeez was pacing the concrete of the exercise yard. Sometimes the yard seemed large enough for him to stroll in. That afternoon he was constricted within the walls, caged by the roof grill shadows on the ground. Oosthuizen stood beside the locked door that led into the corridor and Jeez's cell.

  His arms were folded. The great jowls of his chin were spread with his smile.

  "Now, come on, Carew. You're not trying for me."

  Jeez thought Oosthuizen so thick-skinned, and yet so innately kind, that he could rarely be sharp with the man.

  Truthfully, Jeez thought it would be cheap to squash Oosthuizen. Nothing to do with the disciplinary measures that queued up behind Oosthuizen, not many privileges they could take away from a man when they were scheduled to take away his life within a week. He would hate himself if he put down Sergeant Oosthuizen. But buggered if that day he wanted to play a game, and buggered if he knew how to tell the old fool to shut his mouth.

  Perhaps Oosthuizen knew of Jeez's wish for quiet. Perhaps he was determined to deny it.

  "You've got to try for me, Carew, like a good man."

  Jeez surrendered, as he usually did. "Where am I supposed to be looking, Sergeant?"

  "I'm giving you a good hint, you're supposed to be looking at the flower bed, Carew."

  Jeez stared down at the flower bed. Most of the geranium blooms were over, should have been pinched off. The lobelia was straggling, should have been pulled.

  "I'm looking at the flower bed, Sergeant."

  "And there's something in the flower bed that I never thought you'd let me see."

  "I don't know what it is, Sergeant."

  "You're not trying for me, Carew."

  "Please, Sergeant, what is it that's in the flower bed?"

  Oosthuizen tugged at his moustache. He stood at his full height and dragged in his belly so that his belt buckle sagged.

  He was hugely satisfied.

  "There's a weed."

  "A fucking what?"

  "Watch your language Carew . . . You've allowed a dandelion to grow in your flower bed."

  Jeez saw the dandelion. It had no flower. It was half concealed by a geranium plant.

  "Yes, you can see it now, but you hadn't noticed it
before.

  I'd never have thought you would let me find a weed in your garden, Carew."

  Jeez wondered what would happen if he smashed Oosthuizen with his fist. He thought the man might burst.

  Jeez knelt on the concrete.

  The concrete was not warmed by the sun, the grilled shadows kept the heat off the concrete. He hadn't noticed the weed because he hadn't watered his garden for two days.

  He could see that the geranium leaves were dropping and that the lobelia was parched. He pushed his fingers into the earth, he tugged at the dandelion root. He felt the root snap under the earth. The weed would grow again. He smoothed the earth over. The weed would grow again, but not surface before the following Thursday morning. He carried the dandelion to the plastic bag in the corner of the yard, where the dirt sweepings were left for a trustie to take away.

  "Doesn't do to let it get the better of you, Carew,"

  Oosthuizen said quietly.

  "No, Sergeant."

  "Believe me, man, you have to keep your standards up from the first day you come here, right up to the last day."

  "Thank you, Sergeant."

  "That's solid advice. You have to find something to think about. Whatever's going to happen to you, you have to keep going, keep those standards . . . Have you got no visits coming?"

  "No."

  "All those other fellows you were with, they've all got their families coming."

  "No one's coming."

  "I never saw a man who was so really alone, Carew."

  "No one."

  Oosthuizen looked once, almost furtively, over his shoulder and up to the empty catwalk window. He dropped his voice. "I'm only supposed to make little talk with you.

  I'm out of order, but there's something I should like you to know, Carew. I'm retiring next week. Wednesday's my birthday. I should have retired on the coming Tuesday evening. They have a party all lined for me . . . "

  "Will they give you a gold watch?"

  "I don't think so, I think it'll be a decanter and some crystal glasses . . . But I've said to the governor that I don't want the party on Tuesday, nor on Wednesday. Our governor's a real gentleman, he said that I could have the party on Thursday. You understand me, Carew?"

  "You're going to be here on Thursday morning. Thank you, Sergeant."

  Jeez looked up. He followed the flight of a grey wagtail to the catwalk window.

  Oosthuizen said simply, "It's because you don't have any visits, Carew."

  He saw the wagtail start away from the narrow ledge below the window.

  There was a face at the window, a pale face against the darkness behind. He saw the collar of a suit jacket and the brilliance of a white shirt. He knew who he had seen. He knew who would wish to look over him while he was at exercise.

  * * *

  Their nerves were raw because the rendezvous had not been kept.

  It was two hours past the time of the rendezvous.

  Thiroko had started to ponder what he should do if Jack Curwen had not arrived within an hour, when the next transport was due to pick them up. He could think of many reasons why Jack should be delayed, but as the minutes slipped to hours each reason had grown less credible. He knew the boys were on edge, strained, because they talked more, because it was harder for him each time to quiet them.

  "JACOB THIROKO, YOU ARE SURROUNDED BY

  UNITS OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN DEFENCE

  FORCE . . . "

  It came as an amplified bellow. The noise of the magnified voice swept through the half opened door of the shed and coursed round the four walls. They were all frozen. They were all rigid. They were held in their postures of sitting, lying, squatting, crouching, standing.

  "YOU SHOULD SURRENDER IMMEDIATELY.

  YOU SHOULD THROW YOUR WEAPONS O U T

  THROUGH THE DOOR, THEN YOU SHOULD COME

  OUT WITH YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEADS . . ."

  Movements now. Each man's hand moving stutteringly towards the stock of his Kalashnikov. Frightened little movements, as if the voice that overwhelmed them had an eye to see them.

  ". . . YOU HAVE ONE MINUTE TO COME OUT. IF

  YOU COME OUT WITHIN THE ONE MINUTE T H E N

  YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED IN ANY WAY . . . "

  The four boys looking at him, broken hope in their faces.

  He saw the accusation of betrayal. He could have cried.

  They all looked to him. He was their commander. He had told them of a great strike against the Boer regime, and they were in a cow shed and amongst cow dirt and they were surrounded by their enemy.

  " . . . WE ARE STARTING THE ONE MINUTE, FROM NOW . . . "

  Thiroko crawled to the doorway. He hugged the shadow.

  He looked out. He could hear the drone of insects and the cry of birds and the whispering of the afternoon wind in the dry loose grass. He could not see his enemy.

  "Are we the heroes of our revolution, or are we the frightened children that the Boers think us?"

  None of the boys had voices in their throats. They nodded dumbly to Thiroko.

  "Their promise of no harm is twenty years in their gaols."

  One boy cocked his rifle. The chain was started. The rattling of the weapons being armed rung inside the shed.

  "I have to win time, time for a young friend who is braver than I."

  He saw the chins jut, and the eyes blaze, and the hands were steady on the rifles. He saw the trembling pass.

  " . . . THIRTY SECONDS. YOU THROW YOUR

  WEAPONS OUT. YOU COME OUT WITH YOUR

  HANDS ON YOUR HEADS. YOU HAVE A GUARAN-

  TEE O F SAFETY . . . "

  They shouted together, the four boys and Jacob Thiroko.

  The word in their shout was Amandla, the word ballooned inside the tin walls.

  He waved them to the sides of the shed, each to a firing position. He stripped from his rucksack a khaki pouch. He tore a wad of papers from the pouch and ripped at them and made a cairn of them. He lit the heap of papers. His boys began to shoot. The smoke eddied through the shed, and with the smell of the burning paper was the stench of the cordite. Incoming fire, punching, ricocheting, into the shed.

  He lay on the straw and the manure and he drew the air down into his lungs and breathed so that he could fan the small flames licking into the papers. He saw his notes curling.

  He saw names blackening, the coded plans flaking.

  So little time, and the boy against the back wall was whimpering, hit in the buttocks and the stomach. He blew again on the papers and prayed in anger for the fire to be fiercer. The boy close to the front door was coughing mouthfuls of blood onto his chest. He shouted for the two boys at the side walls to keep firing. No reply. He could see the clumsy postures in which they had died. The boy at the back wall no longer whimpered. The boy at the door toppled suddenly out of the door frame into the sunlight, and was hit and hit before he fell into the dry hard dirt.

  Jacob Thiroko summoned a prayer for the comrades around him and reached for his rifle.

  • * *

  They stood in the crowd outside the police station in Warmbaths.

  The men of the Recce Commando had come and gone.

  They had come by police truck, and then run to a helicopter with their arms held over their faces to save their features from snapping cameras. The crowd could hardly have seen them but had cheered their every stride. It was an all White crowd outside the single storey brick police station, a crowd grimly satisfied.

  Ros never showed her emotions. Jack didn't know what she felt.

  They stood jand they watched as the bodies were lifted from a van and laid out in the forecourt, between two low sand-bagged emplacements, for the police photographer.

  There were four young Blacks. They were laid on the dirt, their clothing and the bodies torn, shredded. Last to come was the corpse of Jacob Thiroko. His face was intact, recognisable to Jack. He blinked, felt a sickness in his gut.

  The back of Thiroko's head was gone, a mushy wet crater.
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  He thought Thiroko must have put the barrel of his weapon into his mouth. His talk had brought Thiroko back to South Africa, and killed him. They dropped the body, like it was a meat carcase.

  Jan was cold faced. Jack short punched him in the kidneys.

  Jan had tried to look as though he enjoyed what he saw, and made a piss poor job of it.

  The green saloon car drove to the police station steps.

  Jack half remembered the front passenger of the car, who had worn a red shirt when he was parked off the road against the trees. A man in a red shirt carried from the car five A.K.

  47 rifles, each sealed in a separate cellophane bag.

  He watched a detective wash his stained hands in a fire bucket. He saw the driver of the green saloon car walk to the doorway, tight in his fist was a clear plastic sack. Jack saw that it was filled with charred paper. He felt the weakness sinking through his knees, into his legs.

  * * *

  The light was going over Johannesburg.

  The colonel hadn't lowered his blinds, hadn't switched on his strip light. He had sat unmoving, nursing his frustration, since the news had been relayed to him from Warmbaths.

  His aides had abandoned him. Now, in the outer office, they warned the detective of his mood. The detective had shrugged, knocked and gone in.

  "I thought you should know, sir, of the developments in connection with the bomb investigation. A youngish man, English accent, purchased a similar bag and a similar can of petrol in the city centre on the day of the bomb. The description given by the two sales points is pretty much the same. We're working on a photo-fit likeness, sir. I'll have a copy of the full statements for you first thing."