by Wilbur Smith
Joe Cicero hooded his eyes. They were as opaque as puddles of old engine oil, startlingly black against the pallor of his skin and the silver-white hair that hung limply over his ears and forehead.
‘Your orders were to make contact and to maintain it.’
‘With respect, Comrade Director, my orders were to inveigle myself into the woman’s confidence, not to rush at her barking like a mad dog.’
No, Joe Cicero did not like him. His attitude was offensive, but that was not the only reason. He was a foreigner. Joe Cicero considered any non-Russian a foreigner. No matter what the concept of international socialism dictated, East Germans, Yugoslavs, Hungarians, Cubans and Poles – they were all foreigners to him. It infuriated him to have to pass on responsibility for so much of the section that he had headed for almost thirty years to others. Especially people like this.
Not only was Machado a foreigner, but also his very roots and origins were corrupt. He was no scion of the proletariat, not even of the despised bourgeoisie, but was a full member of that hated and outdated system of class and privilege, an aristocrat.
True, Machado disparaged and despised his origins, and used his title now only to achieve his goals, but to Joe Cicero his blood-lines were tainted and his aristocratic manners and affectations were an insult to all he, Cicero, believed in.
Furthermore he had been born in Spain, a fascist country historically ruled by a Catholic monarchy which was the enemy of the people, even more so now under the monstrous Franco who had put down the communist revolution. He might call himself a Cuban socialist, but to Joe Cicero he stank of Spanish fascism and aristocracy.
‘You let her get away,’ he persisted. ‘After all this time and money wasted.’ He realized that he was being ponderous and heavy-handed, and he knew that his powers were failing. The sickness was already slowing his wits.
Ramón smiled, that condescending smile that Joe Cicero hated so well. ‘She is on the line, like a fish; she may swim and dive only until I am ready to reel her in.’
Again he had contradicted his superior, and Joe Cicero considered the last but the most poignant reason for his dislike of the man. His youth and comeliness and health. It made him painfully aware of his own mortality, for Joe Cicero was dying.
Since childhood he had chainsmoked these rank Turkish cigarettes, and on his last visit to Moscow the doctors had at last diagnosed the cancer in his lungs and offered him treatment in one of the sanatoria reserved for officers of his seniority. Instead Joe Cicero had elected to continue in service, to see his department securely handed over to his successor. He had not then known that this Spaniard was to be that successor. If he had known, perhaps he might have chosen the sanatorium.
He felt tired now and discouraged. His store of energy and enthusiasm was all used up, just as only a few years ago his hair had been jet black and dense, and now was white, tinged only with yellow like sun-dried seaweed, and he could not walk a dozen paces without wheezing and coughing like an asthmatic.
Recently he had been waking in the night, drenched with those terrible night-sweats, and when he fought for his breath he lay awake in the darkness and was assailed with terrible doubts. Had it been worth it, a lifetime of dedicated painstaking work? What did he have to show for it? What little solid success had he achieved?
For almost thirty years he had served in the African department of the fourth directorate of the KGB. For the last ten of those years, he had been head of station South, the division responsible for the African continent below the equator, and quite naturally most of his attention and that of his department had been devoted to the most developed and richest country in his region, the Republic of South Africa.
The other man at the table was a South African. Up until this time, he had remained silent, but now he said softly: ‘I do not understand why we are spending so much time discussing this woman. Explain it to me.’ Both the white men at the table diverted their attention to him. When Raleigh Tabaka spoke, other men usually listened. He had about him a peculiar intensity, a charged air of purpose that held the attention of others.
All his life, Joe Cicero had worked with black Africans, the nationalist leaders of the forces of liberation and the socialist struggle. He had known them all, Jomo Kenyatta and Kenneth Kaunda, Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere. Some of them he had come to know intimately: men like Moses Gama, who had been sent to a martyr’s death, and Nelson Mandela, who was still languishing in the prison of white racism.
Cicero placed Raleigh Tabaka in the forefront of that illustrious company. In fact Raleigh had been Moses Gama’s nephew, and Raleigh had been present the night the South African police murdered his uncle. He seemed to have inherited Moses Gama’s tremendous personality and force of character, and he had stepped squarely into the wide gap left by Gama. He was thirty years old, but already he was deputy director of Umkhonto we Sizwe, ‘The Spear of the Nation’, the military wing of the South African National Congress, and Joe Cicero knew that he had proved himself time and again in the field and in the councils of the ANC. He had the talent, the guts and the verve to rise as high as any other man in Africa.
Joe Cicero preferred him to the white Spanish aristocrat, but he recognized that despite their difference in colour and lineage they were men cast in the same mould. Hard and dangerous men, well versed in death and violence, adepts in the subtle shifting world of political power and intrigue. These were the men to whom Joe Cicero must hand over the reins, and he resented them and hated them for it.
‘The woman,’ he said heavily, ‘could be of extraordinary value, if she is controlled and developed to her full potential, but I will let the marqués explain that to you. It is his case, and he has studied the subject fully.’
Abruptly Ramón Machado’s smile thinned, and his eyes turned flat and hostile.
‘I would prefer the Comrade Director not to use that title,’ he said coldly. ‘Even in jest.’
Joe Cicero had learnt that it was probably the only way he could penetrate the Spaniard’s slick armour-plating.
‘I beg your pardon, comrade.’ Joe inclined his head in mock contrition. ‘But please do not let my little lapse interrupt your recitation.’
Ramón Machado opened the loose-leaf binder that lay on the table in front of him, but he did not even glance at it. He knew every word it contained by heart.
‘We have assigned the woman the case-name “Red Rose”, and we have had our psychiatrists develop a detailed profile of her. The evaluation is that she is highly susceptible to skilful recruitment. She is uniquely placed to become an extremely valuable field-operative.’
Raleigh Tabaka leant forward attentively. Ramón noted that he did not interject question or comment at this stage, and he approved of that restraint. They had not yet worked together extensively, this was only their third meeting, and both of them were still evaluating each other.
‘Red Rose can be placed in an emotional dilemma. On her father’s side she is a member of the white ruling class in South Africa. Her father is just finishing a term as his country’s ambassador to Britain, and he returns now to take up an appointment as the chairman of the national armaments industry. He has enormous holdings in mining, land and finance; after the Oppenheimers and their Anglo-American Company, the family is probably the most wealthy and influential in southern Africa. In addition, the father has conduits to the very highest levels of the ruling racist régime. Most important, however, is the fact that the father dotes on Red Rose. She is able to obtain from him, with little effort, anything she sets her heart upon. This would include an entrée to any level of government and any information of whatever classification, even that relating to his new appointment on the armaments corporation.’
Raleigh Tabaka nodded. He knew the Courtney family, and could find no fault with this assessment. ‘I have met Red Rose’s mother, but she is on our side of the political fence,’ he murmured, and Ramón nodded.
‘Precisely. Shasa Courtney has been divorced from h
is wife Tara for seven years. She was an accomplice of your uncle, Moses Gama, in his bomb attack on the white racist parliament, for which he was imprisoned and subsequently murdered. She was also Gama’s mistress and bore his bastard son. Tara Courtney fled from South Africa with Gama’s child after the failure of the bomb plot. She lives now in London where she is very active in the anti-apartheid movement. She is also a member of the ANC, but she is not considered sufficiently competent or emotionally stable for any but junior rank and routine assignments. At present she operates a safe house for ANC personnel here in London and occasionally undertakes courier work or assists in the organization of rallies and demonstrations. Her real potential value lies in her influence over Red Rose.’
‘Yes,’ Raleigh agreed impatiently. ‘I know all about this, especially about her relationship to my uncle, but does she in fact have any influence over her daughter? It appears that Red Rose’s sympathies lie heavily on her father’s side?’
Again Ramón nodded. ‘At present this is the case. But, apart from her mother, there is another member of the family who holds radical views: her brother Michael, who has a much greater influence on her. And there are other ways of turning her.’
‘What are those?’ Tabaka asked.
‘One of them is the honey trap,’ Joe Cicero said. ‘The marqués – forgive me – Comrade Machado has made the initial contact to that end. The honey trap is one of his many specialities.’
‘You will keep me informed of progress.’ Raleigh made a statement, and neither of them replied immediately. Although Raleigh Tabaka was an executive of the ANC and a member of the Communist Party, he was not, unlike the other two, an officer of the Russian KGB. Joe Cicero was, on the other hand, a KGB officer first and foremost, although his promotion from colonel to colonel-general had been confirmed only a month previously, at the same time that the Moscow clinic had diagnosed carcinoma of both his lungs. Joe Cicero suspected that the promotion had been given to him merely to allow him to retire at the higher pension, after a lifetime of loyal service to the department. Nevertheless, he was an officer in the ANC only after his loyalty to Mother Russia, his lines of allegiance were not diluted, and the ANC would receive only what information it was necessary for them to have.
Ramón Machado’s lines of allegiance were also clear-cut. He had been born in Spain, and his title of nobility was Spanish, but his mother had been a Cuban woman, sloe-eyed and raven-haired. She had met Ramón’s father when she was a young housekeeper on the Machado estates near Havana in Cuba. After the marriage, the marqués had taken his beautiful commoner bride back to Spain.
During the Spanish Civil War, the marqués had opposed General Francisco Franco’s Nationalists. Despite his noble background and inherited wealth, Ramón’s father had been an enlightened and liberal man. He joined the Republican army and commanded a battalion at the siege of Madrid where he was severely wounded. After the war, the Machado family found oppression and discrimination under the Franco régime intolerable. The marquesa prevailed on her husband to take her and her young son back to her native island in the Caribbean. Although they had been stripped of most of their Spanish property and possessions, the family still owned the Cuban estates. However, the Machado family found that life under the dictatorship of Batista was no great improvement on that under Francisco Franco.
Ramón’s mother was an aunt of the young left-wing student firebrand Fidel Castro and one of his avid admirers. She became active in the campaign of agitation and intrigue against the Batista régime, and young Ramón gleaned his own first political convictions from her and from her celebrated nephew.
After Fidel Castro was imprisoned for leading the gallant but abortive attack on the Santiago barracks on 26 July 1953, both Ramón’s father and mother were arrested along with the rebels.
Ramón’s mother died under interrogation in a police cell in Havana, and his father died in the same prison only a few weeks later of ill-treatment and a broken heart. Once again the family estates were confiscated, and Ramón’s only inheritance was the derelict title of marqués, void of all property or fortune. At the time he was fourteen years old. The Castro family took him in and cared for him.
When Fidel Castro was released from prison under amnesty, Ramón went with him to Mexico, and at sixteen years of age was one of the first recruits to the Cuban army of liberation in exile.
It was in Mexico that he first learnt how to exploit his extraordinary good looks and to develop his natural winning ways with women. By the age of seventeen his companions had nicknamed him El Zorro Dorado, ‘The Golden Fox’, and his reputation as an irresistible lover was established.
Up to the time of his father’s arrest and death in Batista’s prison, Ramón had been given the benefit of the finest education available to the only son of a wealthy aristocratic family. He had attended an exclusive preparatory school in England, and spent two years at Harrow, so he spoke English like a native, as well as his own Spanish. During his schooldays, he had demonstrated superior academic ability and had become proficient in the manners and pastimes of a young gentleman. He had a good seat on a horse, learnt to keep a straight bat and cast a salmon fly. He was also a phenomenal shot at Spanish red-legged partridge or Mexican white-winged dove. He could shoot and ride and dance and sing, and he was beautiful, and when he returned to Cuba with Fidel Castro and the eighty-two heroes on 2 December 1956, he proved his valour in the fighting which left most of the valiant band dead on the beaches.
He was with the survivors that escaped with Castro into the mountains. During the years of the guerrilla warfare that followed El Zorro was sent down into the towns and villages to practise his arts on scores of women, young and not so young, beautiful and plain. In Ramón’s arms they became enthusiastic daughters of the revolution. With every conquest he became more skilled and confident until his band of female recruits contributed significantly to the eventual triumph of the revolution and the overthrow of the Batista régime.
By this time, Castro was fully aware of the potential value of his young relative and protégé, and once in power he rewarded him by sending him to further his education on the American mainland. While he studied political history and social anthropology at the University of Florida, Ramón used his amatory skills to infiltrate the band of Cuban exiles who, with the collusion of the American CIA, were planning the counter-revolution and the invasion of the island.
It was largely Ramón’s intelligence that pinpointed the time and place of the Bay of Pigs landing, and resulted in the annihilation of the traitors. By this time, his extraordinary gifts had been recognized not only by his own countrymen but also by their allies.
When he graduated cum laude from the University of Florida and returned to Havana, the head of the KGB in Cuba prevailed upon Castro and the director of the DGA to send Ramón to Moscow for further training. While in Russia, Ramón exceeded the estimates that the KGB had made of his capabilities and his potential value. He was one of those remarkable creatures who could pass easily in any stratum of society, from the crude guerrilla-camps of the jungle to the drawing-rooms and private clubs of the most sophisticated capitals of the world.
With the knowledge and blessing of Fidel Castro, he was recruited into the KGB. Given his connections, it was only natural that he should be appointed director of the joint committee co-ordinating Russian and Cuban interests in Africa.
In this job, Ramón made a special study of the African socialist liberation movements and he was responsible for selecting those organizations that were to receive full Russian and Cuban backing. He initiated the policy under which Cuba came to act as a surrogate for Mother Russia in southern Africa, and he was soon responsible for the supply of arms and the training of African resistance groups. In that capacity, he became a member of the ANC.
In a very short time, he had visited all of the African countries under his jurisdiction, using his Spanish passport and his title, posing as a capitalist investor and merchant banker with cr
edentials supplied by the fourth directorate. He was accepted without reservation by the white colonial administrations, and was received cordially and entertained by everyone from the governors of Portuguese Angola and Mozambique to the British Governor-general of Rhodesia. He even dined with that notorious architect of apartheid, the South African leader, Hendrik Verwoerd.
When it became necessary to appoint a new station head for the African division to replace the ailing General Cicero, Ramón’s qualifications and experience made him the natural choice.
So as he sat now in the back room of the Russian consulate in Bayswater Road, with the man he was about to replace and this black African guerrilla leader, his loyalties were as clear-cut as those of his superior.
When Raleigh Tabaka said, ‘You will keep me informed of progress,’ he was being naïve. He would be informed only on a “need to know” basis. In Ramón’s view and that of his government, the installation of this man and the organization which he represented as the ruling élite in South Africa was merely a single step along the road to the eventual goal of universal socialism throughout the length and breadth of the African continent.
‘Naturally, you will be kept right up to date with this as with all other matters of joint interest,’ Ramón assured him in a tone of such total sincerity that the black man settled more comfortably in his chair and returned Ramón’s smile. Very few persons, male or female, were immune to his charms. It gave Ramón a solid sense of satisfaction to see the magic work on even such a tough and uncompromising subject as this one.
Raleigh Tabaka was fully aware of the white man’s smug self-satisfaction, although no sign of it showed on his face. There had been that flat spot in the Cuban’s otherwise clear green gaze. Only someone with Raleigh’s developed powers of observation would have noticed that. Raleigh had worked with these whites from Russia and Cuba for many years now, and he had come to understand that in dealing with them only one principle was fixed and certain. They were never to be trusted, not in any circumstances or in even the smallest detail.