by Jeremy Duns
Sitting at his kitchen table, Dark had stared at his radio set in wonder as Manning had explained to his earnest Swedish interviewer how he had gradually become disillusioned by the British government’s role in Africa and had resigned from the ‘Foreign Office’ in protest as a result. In 1970, he had moved to London and taken up with Biafran activists there, but he hadn’t lasted long – Dark presumed the Service had told him to clear out or they’d find a way to charge him under the Official Secrets Act. He had then moved to Johannesburg and become involved in the anti-apartheid movement, but the South African authorities had been about as welcoming as the British so he’d upped sticks for Paris, where he had worked for Amnesty’s press office. In 1972, he had left to set up his own organisation, Africa Truth, which campaigned ‘to end racist colonial rule in the continent’. It did this by publishing a newsletter of the same name, petitioning governments and mounting publicity stunts: ambushing delegates with photographs of massacred children at a conference in London, protests outside embassies, marches and sit-ins. Manning and his small team were forbidden from entering any of the countries they wrote about, but relied on insider sources, mostly liberal whites.
In late 1973, Manning had relocated again, this time to Brussels, where he had continued to run the organisation from this very flat and, the documentary had implied, regularly flew to African countries to meet with sources. Manning had boasted that he had a comprehensive database on Western subterfuge across the continent, and one of his cohorts had called him ‘the Simon Wiesenthal of Africa’, the thought of which had nearly put Dark into hysterics and had brought Claire running from the bedroom to see what had brought it on.
He felt like laughing again now, but this time out of despair. If he wasn’t mistaken, the vaunted database looked like it was the two filing cabinets in the corner of the room.
‘It played better on the radio, Geoffrey,’ he said, more to himself than Manning.
‘They blamed you for Wilson, you know.’
It took Dark a moment to catch up to what he was saying, and then the penny dropped.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘of course they did.’
‘That was where it all started for me. A couple of blighters from London barged into my office a few days after it happened. No signal, no call. Just turned up out of the blue and told me I’d seen Paul Dark with a sniper rifle, nobody else, just Dark.’ He looked up, anger blazing in the bloodshot eyes. ‘Told me, Head of Station! You were a traitor, they said, a Russian double. You’d been planning to kill our prime minister. They had a whole story worked out. But I’d been there. I’d been in that god-awful little room with you and seen it all with my own eyes, so I knew they were lying. Traitor you might well be, yes, but assassin you were certainly not. And if we were prepared to stitch someone up for that, where did that leave me? In the final analysis, who was I? The more I thought about it – and by Christ did I think about it – the more I realised that I didn’t really know the answer to that one. So I resolved to find out.’
Dark stared at him. Well I never, he thought. Manning had set out on his voyage of self-discovery as a result of what had happened in Nigeria. He would have called it shell shock, only it seemed to have woken the man up.
‘I take it they blocked your pension?’
Manning glared at him. It was an old Service aphorism that the few who left its ranks and then attacked it publicly were usually motivated less by a newfound conscience and more by revenge.
‘It’s not about my bloody pension. But yes, they took it away. I handed back the OBE before they could strip me of that. I didn’t deserve it anyway. “Other Buggers’ Efforts”.’
Dark nodded in pretended sympathy. ‘Are you alone here?’
Manning grunted, but Dark sensed a lie. He crossed the floor to the kitchen and looked out the window at a higgledy-piggledy landscape of back gardens, rooftops, washing lines and pylons. A set of double doors leading off to one side were half-open, and he walked through to find a young girl lying on her side on a mattress on the floor, sleeping. The coverlet was turned back and the imprint of Manning’s body was still visible on the sheets next to her. She was naked, and Dark winced at the sight of her pale ribcage. He leaned down to the mattress and shook her shoulder. She awoke, a startled look dawning in large grey eyes.
‘Time to leave,’ Dark said, and walked back to the living room. A minute later she emerged, now dressed in denim shorts and a T-shirt. Manning nodded at her in a silent signal, and she slipped out the front door without a word. Dark listened as she descended the staircase and, once he heard the front door shut, walked over to Manning. He crouched down and stared into his face.
‘I need you to tell me everything you know about Hope Charamba.’
Chapter 49
The embassy was cloaked in darkness by the time Weale reached it. He showed the sentry at the door his ‘Frederick Collins’ passport and was escorted up a narrow flight of stairs to the secure room, which was a sparse soundproofed space only slightly larger than a prison cell. Waiting for him behind the barrier was Sebastian Thorpe, a small, pink-faced man in his fifties wearing a ruffled shirt and a pale-blue suit that made him look like a villain in a light opera.
‘Welcome, Mr Collins. How was your flight? Did you fly direct from Stockholm?’
‘I need a gun,’ said Weale. ‘A semi-automatic if possible.’
Thorpe froze for a moment, then gave a steely smile. ‘I see. Delighted to meet you, too. Do you have a chit for it?’
Weale couldn’t tell whether he was being serious. They had to produce signed forms to gain access to weapons at Inkomo, of course, but this man had been given direct orders by his Chief. What the hell did he think he’d come here for?
‘I don’t have time for this crap. Our target might leave the country any moment. Call Harmigan – he told me to check in as soon as I got here.’
Thorpe stared at him for a moment, his arms folded. He’d received the Cat A flash that this man was due to arrive just a few hours earlier, and he hadn’t been pleased: it had essentially ordered him to act as his butler. The message had also indicated that Collins was an alongsider, a freelance operative working in tandem with the Service but not officially attached to it. Thorpe didn’t like alongsiders at the best of times, as they often had their own agendas and could muck things up as a result, but Collins made him feel especially uneasy. From the way he carried himself, he guessed he was a former soldier or mercenary, and he was perturbed by his casual use of the word ‘target’. But after a few moments he walked to his desk, connected to the secure line and dialled the number in London.
‘It’s Thorpe,’ he said, when he’d been put through. ‘Your Mr Collins has arrived.’
Chapter 50
Manning was refusing to co-operate. He looked like a bruised boxer, slouched back against the chair. Dark had tied him to it with the sheet from the mattress to stop him trying anything.
‘Torture me if you like, old horse,’ he said, jutting out his chin. ‘I’m not helping a traitor.’
Dark nodded. The old Manning was still in there somewhere. Dark didn’t have any scruples about torturing him if it would get him closer to finding Claire and Ben – but he thought he spied a quicker method.
‘How old was that girl I saw when I came in, Geoffrey? Thirteen, fourteen?’
Manning glared at him. ‘Elise is eighteen.’
‘Really? She looked a lot younger than that to me. I wonder if she’d be able to prove her age in a courtroom. Shall I call the news desk of Le Soir? Or perhaps Reuters?’ He walked over to the telephone and lifted the receiver. ‘There must be an enterprising journalist in this town who’d look into it if I gave them the nod. You’re a dab hand at this sort of thing nowadays, what do you think? “Former British Diplomat in Child Prostitute Disgrace – Sentencing Tomorrow”. Would that work as a headline?’
‘I’m fond of her. Leave her out of this.’
Dark ground his jaw. ‘I’m fond of my family, Geoffre
y. So enough of the bullshit and start talking. Hope Charamba.’
Manning looked up to the ceiling, his Adam’s apple bobbing frenetically in his throat. Then his shoulders abruptly sagged in defeat. ‘I’ve not heard of her, but I’d guess she’s related to Matthew Charamba.’
Dark replaced the receiver and walked back to the armchair.
‘Good. And who is Matthew Charamba, exactly?’
‘He’s a Rhodesian nationalist. Or Zimbabwean, I should say. He was a village school-teacher who rose through ZIPRA’s ranks and—’
‘I’m rusty on these acronyms, old horse.’
Manning nodded. ‘ZIPRA’s the military wing of ZAPU and ZANLA’s the equivalent for ZANU. There are also a couple of splinter groups. They’re all supposedly united now – there was an agreement in Lusaka last year – but there’s still a hell of a lot of tension below the surface.’
‘Main cause?’ Dark willed Manning to hurry along – his politics might have changed but his lugubrious way of speaking hadn’t.
‘Tribal differences, mainly. ZANLA are primarily Shona, while most of ZIPRA are Ndebele.’ Manning caught Dark’s look of impatience. ‘Charamba is Ndebele. A few years ago he was being tipped to take over as ZIPRA’s commander-in-chief but he was arrested before that happened.’
‘What was the charge?’
‘Oh, the usual – “conspiring against the state”. The trial was held in camera. He spent three years in prison but was released with a few other revolutionary leaders last year as part of Smith’s supposed softer approach. Within a few weeks he’d left ZIPRA and set up a new group, the Zimbabwean People’s Party.’
‘Moscow-backed?’
‘I doubt it. ZIPRA is heavily funded by the Kremlin, but Charamba seems to be independent of foreign influence. He’s managed to draw some people from ZIPRA and even a few from ZANLA, but otherwise it hasn’t really gone anywhere. Might not stay that way for long, mind. Our sources indicate it’s pretty much just him and a few aides working out of a heavily guarded villa in Lusaka. The Zambian government turn a blind eye to his presence there, as they do with ZIPRA. A lot of Zambians support ZIPRA, either tacitly or directly, and a few of them have aligned with Charamba’s group.’
Dark took this in, marvelling at how he had underestimated Manning all those years ago. He might not be the Wiesenthal of Africa, but his grasp of the politics was impressive. Dark would never have guessed the man had such talents, but even his unpredictability had a predictable side: once he’d persuaded himself he had no option but to co-operate, the expert’s zeal to share his knowledge had overtaken him and the information had started tumbling out. The trick now was to gather as much of it as he could in case he had second thoughts.
‘Why did Charamba leave ZIPRA?’ he asked. ‘And why didn’t he join the other lot, ZANLA?’
‘Oh, he has no truck with them, either. He came to the conclusion in prison that there’s no point in negotiating with the white regime in the way they’ve all been doing because it’s taking place entirely on the whites’ terms. He’s right – those bastards have no intention of ever letting go of power. Charamba’s position is that the starting point for them coming into talks should be setting a fixed date for majority rule. He argued that should be within a year – Mozambique’s just done it in nine months – but Ian Smith has repeatedly said he doesn’t believe majority rule is even possible in his lifetime, so the others rejected the idea. Unworkable.’
‘And now he’s in exile in Zambia and no longer at the top table, is that it?’
Manning pursed his lips. ‘For the time being, but I wouldn’t rule out his making a comeback, as turnarounds are very common in these movements. These new talks are unlikely to progress very far without him. I rather suspect that at some point they’ll get desperate and reconsider, especially as anything they agree at the negotiating table has to go to a national poll – that’s what went wrong last time. That gives Charamba a lot of power. His time in prison sealed his reputation as a revolutionary for a lot of people, and there are now songs about him sung in the villages.’
‘Hang on. Slow down. What new talks?’
Manning frowned. ‘I thought you knew. Smith is holding constitutional talks with ZANU and ZAPU on Monday. On Victoria Falls Bridge.’
‘Will Charamba be there?’
‘Not as far as I know. But I haven’t listened to the World Service yet. They were due to have a report on it later.’
Dark absorbed the information. It was too much of a coincidence not to be relevant. The talks had to be why they had taken Claire and Ben.
‘Does Charamba have any children?’
Manning peered at him, puzzled. ‘Not that I know of. I think he was briefly married, but his wife died in a raid by the authorities several years ago.’
Dark considered this. Either Manning’s expertise had its limits, or a gigantic set of coincidences had taken place. On balance, he decided it must be the former. He looked at the filing cabinets in the corner of the room. Both of them had locks on. He grabbed Manning by the chin and forced his head to face them.
‘I’m going to need your help opening those.’
Chapter 51
Diadov dropped his two sullen charges outside the Gare de Midi, and Cherneyev headed straight for the taxi rank. Once he had taken out his wallet, the drivers soon crowded around him. He showed each of them the photograph of Dark and asked in broken French if anyone recognised him. No one did. He turned back to Proshin.
‘Come,’ he said, as if addressing a pet dog who needed to be taken for a walk.
They climbed into one of the taxis and Cherneyev directed it to the Gare du Nord, where he repeated the procedure. Ten minutes and a thousand francs later, he had found Dark’s driver and they were in his car speeding towards Rue de Stassart.
Chapter 52
The photographs were spread across the desk: a few were in colour but most were black-and-white Xeroxes, or Xeroxes of Xeroxes, the features of the men – they were almost all men – lost in the contrast of deep shadows. Dark sifted through them, frustrated. There were a couple of images of Matthew Charamba, newspaper clippings at the time of his imprisonment, but they were too grainy to be any help, and there was no mention of his having a daughter.
Dark willed himself not to panic. He didn’t yet have enough to go on. It seemed pretty likely that Claire – Hope – was Matthew Charamba’s daughter, but he still had no idea who had kidnapped her, or why. There was a bewildering array of leaders in the guerrilla movement, and he had no idea how to navigate the spider’s web of their connections to Charamba to find who had the strongest motive.
‘Is this it?’ he asked Manning. ‘Is this all you have?’
‘On the Zimbabweans? Yes.’
Something stirred in Dark’s mind, phrasing Manning had used earlier. Dark turned to face him.
‘How about on the Rhodesians?’
Chapter 53
As Thorpe turned his white Sunbeam Rapier into a cobbled street, Weale caught the scent of grilled fish on the air. He peered out of the window: Africans, dozens of them, walking around like they owned the place.
He glanced down at the gun Thorpe had retrieved for him, after a great deal of tutting, from a safe in the Station. It was a Walther 7.65 automatic that looked as if it hadn’t been used this decade. But he’d checked the mechanism several times, and it would do the job.
‘Let me off on the corner,’ he said.
Chapter 54
Dark took a sharp breath when he found it. There were half a dozen men in the photograph. All had beards and wore ramshackle camouflage and caps, and all were holding rifles, leaning on them like Greek shepherds clutching their crooks. The man on the far left of the picture was a few years younger, but the nose – the skin a shade darker than the rest of his complexion – the shape of the face, the piggish little eyes . . . he was unmistakable. It was the birdwatcher from Haga Park.
Dark held the photograph up to Manning, stabbing a finger at
the man.
‘Who is this?’
Manning squinted at it. ‘I don’t know.’
Dark glanced meaningfully at the telephone on the desk.
‘I don’t, I swear! All I know is that they’re Selous Scouts.’
Dark’s head cocked. There had been a faint noise from the street, something out of place with the other sounds. He crossed to the window and drew the curtain to one side. A building at the next corner was lit by two spots of bright light. A car had just turned into the street and was inching along it. It was a taxi, and Dark could see part of the driver’s face in the windscreen. Grey hair, burly . . . it was the man who’d brought him here earlier.
Dark quickly walked through to the bedroom where he had found the girl earlier. He stepped over a pile of books and papers and opened the wardrobe. The trousers all looked far too big for him, but jackets were more forgiving. He picked one out and put it on over the Sabena overall. It looked incongruous up close, but it changed his outline. He placed the photograph in an inside pocket and went back into the living room.
‘What the hell are the Selous Scouts?’
Manning hesitated and Dark leaned in with his right hand and grabbed his throat. Manning’s eyeballs bulged, red veins scribbling across them, and he strained to breathe.
‘Rhodie . . . special forces,’ he whispered, and Dark relaxed his grip slightly. Manning’s head tottered forward in the chair and he gasped for breath.
‘I’ve never heard of them,’ said Dark. ‘A new outfit?’
Manning didn’t answer and Dark stepped forward.
‘Yes!’ he said, his voice a notch higher than it had been before. ‘Set up a couple of years ago. They turn Africans and use them back out in the field.’
Dark nodded. That fitted with Claire and Ben’s kidnappers. The birdwatcher – his accent had been Rhodesian, of course, not Dutch – had conducted the surveillance, then they’d carried out the actual snatch using black Africans, meaning nothing led back to them. Clever.