He looked at his wristwatch. A quarter past eleven. The first of the delegations would soon be landing in their jets. He had been told by radio that the Russian plane would be the last to come in at midday, and that the Russian Ambassador would be driving into the Square at about twelve twenty. Just over sixty minutes then to find and kill the Englishman.
Cuban activity in the streets had delayed him but the black smoke from the fire in the church later had given him cover as he moved from his own house across the rooftops. He had seen the Cubans organize a bucket chain, bringing water up from the harbour and then watched them scatter as the church roof collapsed in a ball of flame and the black smoke mushroomed into the air.
He looked around him. The Englishman was also somewhere in the Square, it was the only place he could have made for. The airport was too far out and anyway there was nowhere to hide there. He might try along the route but why would he go for a moving target, not knowing what car to hit until it was already past him? No. He would go for a stationary target, and it would have to be close. His Kalashnikov rifle was light, too light for accurate long-range fire and its standard sights were not good enough. The Englishman would have to go for a target stationary and close, and there was only one place he’d get that. Here, with the Russian sitting on the front row of the stage in the middle of the Square. But where was he, this man called Pilger whom he had once seen on his scruffy yacht pinning butterflies to a board, sitting there in his native cotton shirt and shorts, looking for all the world like Ernest Hemingway? Where had he gone to hide? Anywhere? By accident? Or was there one house he knew? Of all the dozens and dozens of houses around the Square, which one had he chosen?
He crawled to the edge of the roof. It was a street back from the Square, this side of the Governor’s Fort, but he could see the terraces of houses there well enough. The houses were on only two sides of the Square - the harbour and the Fort were on the others. Slowly he counted, fifty, sixty houses in the two terraces and there were hundreds of windows. Which house? Which window?
He could wait for one of those windows to open, except that there were plenty already open. That would make sense, though. The Englishman wouldn’t risk opening his during the day, he’d have done it while it was dark despite the cold night. So he counted the open windows. Fifteen on the left-hand terrace . . . another eighteen opposite.
Too many. He wouldn’t have time for them all. Except! Except the Englishman would only be in one of the top ones, the highest ones, one of those small attic rooms in the Mansard roofs. He wouldn’t hide on the ground floor, wouldn’t see a thing. Or the middle floor. No! He would want quick access, fire the shot and then go. Wasn’t that the golden rule? Always be close to your escape route?
And there was only one way for him now, out across the rooftops.
He began scanning the line of attic windows. Six open on the left . . . four on the far side. He looked at his watch again. Twenty past eleven. Just one hour left. Ten attic rooms, a couple of hundred yards apart, and he had to get across the roofs and not be seen by the Englishman or the Cubans. He couldn’t do it in time. Which one then? The terrace with four open windows or the terrace with six?
He moved again along the roof, dropping on to the narrow leaded rain gulley that ran between the rows of red pantiles. The breeze had dropped and the black smoke rose perpendicularly above the church. No cover now, but no diversion below either. So watch for Cubans. The nearer it got to the arrival of the delegates the more anxious they would become, and they might send their own sentries up on to the roofs.
He came to the end of the roof line and looked down into the alley ninety feet below. A horse was wandering slowly past, nudging front doors, limping, but otherwise the alley was empty. He crouched and then jumped the eight feet across to the next house and as he landed there was a shot, and he rolled over on to his side and waited. Another shot, then three more. He relaxed and sat up. Cuban fire, Kalashnikovs, but going away and going up. He looked above him and saw white birds scatter in the sky and the sun blinded him. Cubans were shooting the doves. Already they were losing their discipline as they always did once they were bored.
He closed his eyes to block out the glare and waited for the red ball in the blackness behind his eyelids to fade. When he opened them again he knew there was something important and in that same instant knew what. He had been blinded by the sun, shining from the far side of the Square directly over the roofs of the opposite terrace. From here, at the same level, he could see the attic rooms but anyone from the ground looking up would be dazzled by the sun. It would be hard for anyone to see the tops of the houses let alone the small windows behind the balustrades.
The Englishman was over there, perfectly placed, he knew it, less than a hundred yards away from the stage with the sun behind him, protecting him as he reached out to fire.
The South African knelt down on one knee and pulled the rucksack off his shoulders. He untied the canvas flap, pulled out the parts of his rifle, carefully unwrapped the cotton covers and began clipping the separate parts together. He locked the barrel to the stock, slid in the bolt, clipped on the telescopic sight and, holding it upright between his knees, he slowly screwed a long bulbous silencer on to the end of the barrel, careful not to cross the delicate thread.
Still on one knee, he pulled it up to his right shoulder, adjusted the sights by the slightest turn of the range-finder screw and began scanning slowly along the opposite terrace. He stopped at each of the open windows that were tucked into the roofs, and magnification of his sights took him through the gaps in the balustrade right into the room. At the third window he stopped and held his breath to keep the sight steady. Inside the room, as if he was only a dozen feet away, he saw a dressing-table with a small oval mirror above it and as the sight had moved to it he thought he saw something reflected, hardly a movement, just a change of shadow as if the light source from the window had been briefly obscured. The third window along, above an antique shop. It had to be. He stood up and moved quickly along the tiles, using the chimneys for cover, hesitating and then running to the next, careful to keep to the centre of the roof so that he wouldn’t be seen from below, keeping, whenever he could, to the leaded channel between the fall of the roofs.
And so he did not see the lorry stop over by the far terrace or the men unrolling the red carpet on to the pavement in front of the antique shop, below the open attic window.
19
The South African Press Association reporter shivered in the wind. He was cold, depressed and confused. There was something on, he knew that for certain. He hadn’t spent his life doing the rounds of the foreign embassies in Pretoria without picking up the signs. But for three hours now he had been from one embassy to the next, and all the leads brought him back to the Americans. It seemed to be happening at the American Embassy, but even here his usual source could not help because he knew nothing himself, he had said, except that something had gone dreadfully wrong.
The wind cut down the broad streets of Pretoria, South Africa’s Administrative Capital, chilling the bones of people, black and white, who normally took the warmth of the Southern sun so much for granted. There was snow high up on the Drakensberg mountains and the cold was sweeping off them and across the Lowveld and people in the white suburbs sat on their electric radiators to keep warm or coughed in the smoke of their coal and wood fires in the black townships.
The American Ambassador had sent his secretary out that morning to buy four fan heaters. His was now scorching his feet under the desk, the others were spread around the room. Three men sat watching him - the French Ambassador, the British Ambassador and a very senior officer of South Africa’s State Security Police.
‘We should have heard by now,’ the American Ambassador said, looking at the clock on his desk. ‘You’re sure there’s nothing wrong?’
‘No, Ambassador,’ said the security policeman, ‘our man radioed us as he was
leaving his house. He said there was a lot of activity in the streets, Cubans destroying the town’s monuments and things and he had been slightly delayed because of it.’
‘Nothing since?’
‘Only his progress signals in Morse. But he’ll come through the moment it’s done by radio again.’
‘Is that a good idea? Using the radio at such a time?’
‘As a precaution. Ambassador, he will continue signalling in Morse with a simple code.’
‘What is it. . . the code?’ asked the American.
The policeman hesitated. ‘Is that wise. Ambassador? Here?’
‘No problem my friend. The room is sealed, electromagnets my security people tell me, you needn’t worry. But I think we would all like to know how you are coding the good news. Assuming we are to get it, that is.’ He looked up at each man in turn and the ambassadors in the armchairs nodded back.
The security policeman stood up and walked to the centre of the room. He was tall and he stood like a military man with his feet wide apart, his hands together behind him straining his shoulders back. He looked immensely powerful, his neck bulged over the tight stiff shirt collar and his hair was short above his ears. He was well known to the ambassadors, who all agreed privately that only a blind man would fail to recognize him as a South African policeman. He looked directly at the American.
‘We have arranged that while our man is still searching for the Englishman, he will send us, every ten minutes, a short Morse transmission on the small transmitter-receiver he’s carrying with him. The signals are being picked up by our people in Beira and they’re relaying them on to us here by land. The signal will simply be: “JOKER RUNNING WILD”.’
‘Pilger the Joker, of course,’ said the American.
‘Yes.’
‘Odd sense of humour,’ said the British Ambassador from his chair.
‘And a bad card player,’ said the Frenchman.
‘And then?’ asked the American.
‘Once he has killed the Englishman, our man will signal in Morse again. Very short and simple. He’ll tap out: “RED JOKER DEAD”.’
‘Why red? Why Red Joker?’ asked the American. ‘Isn’t that confusing?’
‘On the contrary,’ said the policeman. ‘It’s standard Intelligence relay practice. In Morse code or by radio, you never begin your secondary or consequent messages with the same starter word. I suggested the prefix word. “Red” I thought was apt. Considering.’
The Frenchman suddenly coughed and cleared his throat of phlegm. He turned in his chair towards the policeman.
‘And what, my friend,’ he asked, ‘if he isn’t?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said the policeman. ‘I don’t understand you. If he isn’t what?’ But he refused to look at the Frenchman who was known by his department to be a sexual deviation- ist and, as a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, the policeman had a dreadful loathing of such things.
The Frenchman sat up erect in his armchair.
‘I mean what if the Red Joker isn’t dead? What if your man doesn’t signal you with your clever little prefix?’
‘Ambassador, he will,’ said the policeman, bracing himself tighter, stiffer. ‘They are his orders . . . to signal us immediately he . . .’
The American Ambassador held up his right hand.
‘I think what we are trying to establish, my friend,’ he said, ‘is this. Our Embassy in Lusaka has confirmed that the Russian plane took off on time and is due to arrive on Union at midday. The Russian delegation is expected in the Square where the celebrations are taking place approximately twenty minutes later. Now, the clock on my desk says it’s half past eleven and what the French Ambassador is getting at is that if by twenty minutes past midday the Red Joker is still alive, what then is our future? More to the point, will we have one?’
But none of them answered. For nearly a minute no one spoke. The silence was broken at last by the Frenchman coughing again. He pulled a small plastic container from his waistcoat pocket, took out a menthol lozenge and began noisily sucking it, and the tall policeman stood quite still in the centre of the carpet listening to him.
The British Ambassador smoothed back his grey hair and then his neat grey moustache, tapped his pipe in the ashtray on the arm-rest of his large comfortable floral patterned chair and began slowly to refill it from a yellow rubber tobacco pouch. He pressed it in firm with his forefinger and relit it.
‘May I ask,’ he said, ‘what your man will tap out if he fails? What is the code indicating the Russian has been killed?’
The three Ambassadors looked to the policeman.
‘We don’t have such a signal,’ he said.
‘You don’t?’ asked the British Ambassador. ‘And why not?’
‘It’s not a contingency we have planned for.’
‘Damn your confidence,’ said the American at the desk, slowly and quietly. ‘Damn your stupid confidence.’
‘Our man will not fail,’ said the policeman suddenly under attack from the three men. ‘His orders are to kill the Englishman and he will kill him . . . the Red Joker will die. You have my word on it.’
The American could feel the heat scorching his shoes but he didn’t care to shift the heater, the warmth was exactly right elsewhere.
‘Your faith in this man of yours is touching,’ he said. ‘But we are faced with the possibility he might fail. We must think of alternatives now. And quickly.’
Blue pipe smoke rose above the British Ambassador. The Frenchman, with exaggerated ceremony, pulled out a large white silk handkerchief, blew his long white nose
loudly and then tucked the handkerchief into the cuff of his sleeve again, careful that the embroidered family monogram was showing. ‘You could send your planes in early,’ he said to the American.
‘Without permission? And panic the Cubans. Have them blow our boys out of the sky? Do you know how many ground-to-air missiles they have there now? Forty, probably more. And they’d only need three.’
‘Out of the question,’ said the British Ambassador. ‘Quite right.’
‘So?’ asked the Frenchman.
‘So nothing,’ said the American, ‘but it is now eleven- forty. There are four of us here, gentlemen, but only one is confident of success. Only you are certain it’ll work,’ he said looking up at the policeman.
‘There is only one way to be certain,’ said the Frenchman.
‘Only one?’ asked the American.
‘Yes, only one and you are as aware of it as me.’
‘Yes, but I would like you to . . .’
‘We tell them.’
‘Tell the Russians?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell them what?’ asked the British Ambassador, looking down at his pipe.
‘Come, come. We play games,’ said the Frenchman peskily. ‘You know well enough.’
‘We tell them,’ said the American, ‘that there’s an Englishman waiting to shoot their Solodovnikov?’
‘And,’ said the British Ambassador, ‘that there is a South African trying to kill the Englishman. Then both ways we are covered. They’ll tear the island to pieces until they find them.’
The security policeman, who had been standing still all this time, suddenly rushed forward and grabbed the back of the Frenchman’s chair. The American Ambassador’s left foot moved quickly to the alarm bell beneath the carpet under his desk and stayed raised an inch above it.
‘No!’ shouted the policeman. ‘You are mad, all of you. You must be . . . you cannot give them our man . . . he’s the only one who can do it. The fact we haven’t heard from him must mean he is close to the Englishman . . . any minute now I know we shall receive the signal. You cannot expect me to agree to murder my own man.’
‘It’s unfortunate, most unfortunate, I agree,’ said the British Ambassador, drawing on his pipe agai
n. ‘But it is necessary. Really it is.’
The security policeman stood back from the Frenchman’s chair and the American’s foot went back to its warm spot by the fan heater. The policeman stood erect, clasped his hands behind his back and braced his shoulders again.
He was as aware as any, more aware than most after thirty years in South African Intelligence, that the ends and the means always justify each other and that unkind orders sometimes had to be given and the most unpleasant acts of treachery had frequently to be endorsed.
But not this. He would not agree to this. The man on Union was his favourite, an agent who had long been his protégé, for whom he had planned great things, whom he had personally guided through the swamps and quicksands of the Brutus syndrome of State Security for years now, since that first day he had seen him, the young man with blond hair and thighs like an ox, moving with the ball, with such grace and speed, down the wing in those Northern Transvaal matches.
He would not allow him, the flower of the South African Motherland, to be sacrificed to the idiotic panic of three old men, foreigners who knew nothing of the dedication and thoroughness of his country’s Intelligence Service.
He looked across to the British Ambassador.
‘Why don’t you,’ he said, slowly and so quietly the three other men had to lean forward in their chairs to hear, ‘why don’t you merely tell the Russians of your own man? Surely that would do. I can’t see why it’s necessary to tell them of mine.’
Another blue cloud rose above the armchair.
‘Can’t you?’ asked the very British upper-class voice. ‘Can’t you really? Then let me explain. Pilger is already in hiding, safely tucked away somewhere and God! if we only knew where. But we’ll consider him for the moment safe. Watching and waiting. Your man, though, is now on the move, dodging through the streets, climbing across the roofs probably, but certainly, most certainly, he’s broken cover. He is the one that’s now taking all the risks, he’s the most vulnerable. So you see that if we now alert the Russians to find a man who is going to kill their Ambassador, almost certainly they will find your man first. Not Pilger.
Red Joker Page 20