All these things he had seen from this tiny attic room, her room, three storeys up.
How often together from here, his arms around her soft brown and scented body, had they watched the sunrise? How often had they knelt at the window and looked out to see families stroll in casual procession to their evening promenade along the Boulevard Dr Clobert.
He leant his head back against the window frame. The room was still full of her, her silks and scents, the dressing table crowded with jars of vividly coloured lotions and the pretty oval mirror above it, another of his presents to her. Her hair-brush was still there, the silver one he had bought her at half the tourist price, delicate and finely patterned, a present from the antique shop below. Strands of her long black hair were still caught in the bristles. Behind the door was her green and black silk Chinese brocade dressing- gown with the long drooping sleeves and the orange dragon on the back, and on the small bamboo bedside table with the album of photographs of her, taken twenty years ago when she was the young, spoilt and willing mistress of a generous and adoring Governor.
He heard a lorry stop in the street below, and men shouting. He eased himself round and peered over the sill and his heart began thumping. There below him, ninety feet down, he saw them, guarded by Cubans, as they began to slowly unroll a length of red carpet from the edge of the pavement towards the stage. He saw what it was and suddenly knew how easy it would be now. He had expected the target to be on the stage, a hundred yards from him, half sheltered by the awning, a difficult target with the high probability of missing. . . even on automatic fire. But the men below were unrolling the red carpet route for the foreign delegations, their cars were going to stop directly below him at the edge of the carpet. It was a thirty-yard aim. He couldn’t miss.
17
‘Where has he gone?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘He’s taken the gun for a reason.’
‘Perhaps to protect himself.’
‘You don’t believe that, do you?’
‘No.’
Faraday stood at one end of the bed and Elizabeth was at the other. He was shaving Prentice from a small plastic bowl of warm water. Elizabeth had washed the shattered foot and was now binding it tight again with strips of sheeting. It had swollen dreadfully and was twisted, and little splinters of white bone still showed through the tom and bruised flesh. They had asked Doubleday to tear the sheets into bandages, but that was over an hour ago and he hadn’t moved since. He hardly moved at all and hadn’t spoken a word for hours. He just sat in the corner and might have been asleep except that he gave an occasional sigh and clasped and unclasped his hands as if he was trying to wash them.
Prentice knew the signs and told everyone to leave him be, especially Protheroe who kept tugging his sleeve to make him look up and acknowledge them.
Prentice was also very quiet now. He had just about managed to cope with the pain when Faraday and Elizabeth arrived and she told him that the dressings had to be changed otherwise the foot would turn septic. She was right of course, but once she began to unbind the foot, pulling off the hard-caked scabs of dried blood, shifting the bones so that they gnawed into every nerve, he began shouting at her to stop, and Faraday and Protheroe had to hold him down and watch the sweat run into his eyes. He would rather have lost his foot than take this new pain all over again.
He felt himself falling like Alice down the tunnel and as he fell he saw the most absurd fantasies, sometimes so vivid he would forget his pain, feel he was no longer part of his body, as if pain had been gouged out of him so that suddenly there was nothing, no foot, no pain, no body. Then another nerve would grind him and he would have to grip the sides of the bed to stop himself turning and falling out.
He had never been wounded before in all the years covering wars. Except that one occasion in Portugal, during an anti-Communist riot when some fool let off a shotgun and pellets had lodged in his neck, just above his Adam’s apple. They were still there; weren’t meant for him either. He had been lucky, the policeman a yard in front had been blinded in both eyes.
He heard the voices around him, felt their hands on him, the wetness on his face and the scraping at his beard. He couldn’t make out the words, but they were soothing, comforting, other people were there to help him, protect him. How strange it was. He had never been helpless before. Never.
‘Is he asleep?’ asked Elizabeth.
‘Yes. I think so,’ said Faraday.
‘He’s trying to be very brave.’
‘He is brave, and he’s very lucky. We’d have been lost without you.’
‘If every man could heal a man the world would soon be mended,’ she said.
‘That’s nice.’
‘I wish it was true.’
‘You’re the bravest of us all, Elizabeth. Don’t lose courage now, we’ll soon be out of it. . . you’ll see.’
‘The Americans must come soon, William, he must get treatment. Do you feel how hot he is? He’s beginning to get a fever, the sepsis has gone into his blood, it’s beginning to poison him.’
Faraday put his palm on Prentice’s forehead. It was hot and sticky with sweat. ‘The radio said today or tomorrow. The Americans are just waiting for the celebrations to finish. How marvellous to see them fly overhead and then home.’
‘Home?’
‘Well Nairobi first stop, anywhere will be home after this.’
‘I remember you saying once, William, that you’d never catch a plane if it meant leaving me.’
‘But I won’t be leaving you, we’ll all be out.’
‘I’m not leaving without Daddy.’
‘But he’ll be with us . . . he’ll have to be.’
‘If we find him.’
‘Elizabeth, whether you want to or not, whether you find him or not, you, us, will not be allowed to stay here. They will take us all to the planes with him or without him, and that’ll be the end of it.’
She made one last knot in the bandage and Faraday lifted Prentice’s foot as gently as he could as she pushed two pillows under it. Her hands were smeared in blood and her white cotton shirt was also specked with it. Together they gathered up the bloody bandages in newspapers and stuffed them into a plastic bucket. Then they washed their hands in the small plastic shaving bowl with water from the bath.
Elizabeth walked to the window and looked down into the cobbled courtyard. The flowers in the window boxes were wilting and on the sill she saw a little ball of skin and bone, the part-digested remains of some tiny animal regurgitated by an owl. How desolate it all was. Silent and grey, despite the sunbeams. Her father had always said places were better without people, but she wouldn’t agree. People were the soul of houses, and there was no spirit there without them.
‘I’m going out to find him,’ she said.
Faraday dipped a clean piece of sheeting into the water- glass on the bedside table and began dabbing Prentice’s head.
‘I had an idea you might. But you won’t. We won’t let you. I’ve already told my crew and Protheroe not to let you out of the hotel. Please understand, Elizabeth. If they find you out there, there’s no knowing what they’ll do.’
‘I can guess. At least the preliminaries.’ She began to bite her thumbnail. ‘William, he’s going to do something against them, something terrible and I have to stop him. I have to find him before they do.’
‘It’s too late, Elizabeth, it’s much, much too late. He left last night because he wanted you, us, out of it. Didn’t want us involved. He doesn’t mean to be found. Especially by you.’
But she didn’t seem to hear. ‘I watched him last night,’ she went on, ‘when he had the rifle and I realized I didn’t know him, didn’t really know what he was capable of. He’d always been so kind to me, everything he did when I came down from Scotland was for me. But I hardly know him. I’ve no idea what he’s done all his lif
e, where he’s been, who he’s been. I thought we had so much time ahead that I didn’t ever push him. I knew he would tell me in the end. But we’re still strangers and we didn’t even say goodbye.’
Faraday went over to her and put his arm around her but she was stiff and didn’t respond. Still he held her.
‘I would do everything to help you, so would we all. But there’s nothing to do. You’ve no idea where he is.’ He paused. ‘You don’t know, do you?’
Still she wouldn’t look at him.
‘No,’ she said, ‘No, I don’t know where.’
But she was lying. She knew where he would be, the only place he could go now, the only place he knew well enough to be safe. She knew it the moment they had woken up and saw him gone, she knew it all the way down the mountains through the vineyards and the back alleys and past the dead budgerigar in the cage. But she had been afraid to admit it, praying that she was wrong, that suddenly he would turn up.
He had gone to the room above the antique shop in the Square, the woman’s room, the room that had been his secret until that day she had seen him, quite by accident, buy a small silver hair-brush. She had thought it was for her, a surprise, and she had waited days to be given it. But he never did and then she realized it wasn’t meant for her. He had bought it for another woman. For a week she kept her curiosity to herself but it was too much and that evening, when he had kissed her goodnight and left the yacht wearing new sandals and smelling of after-shave, she had followed him.
She followed him from the harbour into the Square, past the church and cafes and saw him go into a side-door in the alley next to the antique shop. She had read the neatly- printed name next to the doorbell and had felt the anger and the jealousy. Then she had laughed and had the oddest sense of pride, and ran back to the George and pretended not to hear him when he came back aboard many hours later, humming softly to himself as the first light of dawn reflected on the water.
Suddenly she turned and kissed Faraday lightly on the cheek. ‘Yes, you’re right, of course you are. Rape and then a bayonet, and for what? I suppose I just sit it out and wait for the Americans to find us . . . and him.’
‘Good girl. I’ll go and make some tea,’ Faraday said, ‘and I’ll burn this.’ He picked up the bucket full of soiled dressings. ‘Don’t change your mind Elizabeth, don’t do anything silly, remember you’re locked in.’ He blew her a kiss, opened the bedroom door and closed it quietly. She heard the key turn.
She looked down into the courtyard again. She knew it ran sideways to the Boulevard and its side-door led on to an alley that ran directly to the Square’. It was the route she had used the day she and William had gone up the mountain to the slave pit. But now there were too many Cubans coming and going, and the only safe way was the wrong way, the long way, in a wide circle, through the network of alleys she knew so well. She would be safe, with most of the Cubans working in the Square or lining the route to the airport and she would get to the antique shop from behind and into the side-door quickly.
It was at least a twenty-foot drop into the courtyard. She looked around the bedroom. Doubleday was there in the corner, sitting quite still, awake but unaware, staring into his lap. She opened the wardrobe. That was a start, three ties, a pair of trousers, would give her a few feet, a shirt, that would be strong enough twisted, then the bath-towel. . . all tied together would shorten the drop a little. But not enough. She began hitting her knuckles together anxiously. William would be back any minute with the tea. Just another couple of feet and she could manage it, anything would . . .
‘You can have the cord off my dressing-gown, love, if you promise to come back.’ It was Prentice.
She turned, surprised. ‘You heard everything.’
‘Sure. You’re determined aren’t you - hook or by crook?’ ‘Yes, Alf. I’ve got to find him, I’ve got to know what’s happened. I can’t leave on the plane and never know.’
‘I understand, Liz. We’ve only one father once. You know what he’s going to do as well, don’t you?’
She nodded. ‘That’s why I must try and stop him.’ ‘That’s right, love. And that’s why I’m not going to holler for the lads when you go out through the window. He’s got to be stopped. If he clobbers the Russian we’ll all be finished, they’ll kill the lot of us . . . and I mean the lot. You know how to get to him?’
She nodded again.
He raised himself slightly off the bed, gasping with the pain. ‘Quick,’ he said, ‘take the cord out. . . for God’s sake quickly.’ Sweat suddenly glistened on his forehead.
Liz ran to the bed and pulled the cord out from under him. Then she tied it to the makeshift line and wrapped one end around the hot water pipes that ran up the wall at the side of the window and threw the end out of the window. She put one leg up on to the sill, turned and then came quickly back to the bed. She kissed Prentice on the cheek. ‘God Bless, Alf.’
‘God Bless you too, love. Keep your head down, and for Christ’s sake, promise me when you see those American planes, you’ll come back here, whatever you’re doing.’
But already she was sliding down into the courtyard and out through the side-door as Faraday came back with the mugs of tea to find Prentice still asleep and Doubleday clasping and unclasping his hands in the corner.
18
The South African watched the black guy in the red skullcap standing alone in the Square below him as the people were pushed into line. There were fifty of them, possibly more, one behind the other in single file, their hands tied together by a rope that ran the entire length of their column. He knew they were the hostages, men and women taken at random from the work-gangs, to be publicly executed once the Independence celebrations were over, shot one by one every hour until the Cuban’s killer surrendered himself.
The South African knew the black guy well enough, had met him several times on the international spy circuit that poses as Foreign Trade Missions. The last time was at a cocktail party given by a Korean in Washington and his own Intelligence people in Pretoria had a dossier on him inches thick. He was an American-Cuban, his black father came from Key Biscane in Florida and his black mother from Havana. She had been accidentally killed by a stray CIA bullet during the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. He had adored his mother and her death gave him a loathing of America and all things American which grew like a fungus culture. This hatred was recognized and further nurtured by the Cuban military during his National Service training and correctly judging his potential, they arranged that he should be reconciled with his father in Miami. The Americans not only granted him citizenship but later, realizing he was a bright boy and an exceptional footballer, gave him a bursary to study politics, economics and international relations at the University of Idaho in a town named, oddly enough, Moscow, which many years later was to cause much amusement. Within three years he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree and was offered a contract to play quarter-back for the Miami Dolphins. He preferred instead to work for the State Department, and within a very short time, by aptitude and hard work, both rare qualities he realized in his particular department of the American Administration, he eventually became one of the team of advisers to, first President Nixon’s and then President Ford’s, Foreign Service Committee on Cuba. He was considered a rare find and a confirmation of that frequently re-stated American ideal that there is no pinnacle in the United States, however high, that cannot be conquered by perseverance and dedication. He was highly regarded by the Administration at a time when most people in it, from the President down, regarded the employment of Blacks as a conciliatory gesture.
The Cuban High Command, chaired by Dr Fidel Castro, thought just as highly of him too, for from that very first morning on the quay at Fort Lauderdale when he’d been hugged and kissed by his ailing American father, the young Cuban protégé began faithfully to relay back to Havana everything and anything he thought might be useful to his mother
-country’s Intelligence Service. At the beginning it was worthless and irrelevant information, but the reports became more readable once the protégé began at Harvard, fascinating once he had started on Capitol Hill and then vital once he had entered the confidences of the President of the United States.
It promised to be a long and successful career for the tall, charming and athletic Black who could talk so easily about international affairs in four languages. By now he might well have been working for President Carter had it not been for Watergate and a Cuban double-agent who confessed, quite incidentally, the protégé’s identity and true loyalties during a prolonged and rather brutal interrogation session with a squad of American questioners. After two years in prison he was exchanged for an American agent held by the Cubans.
The abrupt end of one career in a country like Cuba, where such talent is scarce, meant his immediate launching into a new one and he became a senior planner and a most active member of Castro’s Soviet Liaison staff.
In 1975 he helped pioneer Cuban involvement in the Angolan War, helping to organize the massive airlift of troops and equipment from Havana to Luanda, and helped plan the final push south once the South African army had retreated. Simultaneously he established camps in Zambia, Angola and Mozambique, training the Nationalist guerrilla armies of SWAPO’s Sam Nujoma, Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU and Robert Mugabe’s ZANU. Finally, and following the directives of the Russian Ambassador to Zambia whose disciple he had now become, he helped organize and then launch the invasion of Union.
The South African felt the weight of the canvas rucksack on his shoulders that carried the heavy sniper’s rifle and he wished the red skullcap below him was his target and not an eccentric Englishman.
Red Joker Page 19