by Wilbur Smith
He had learnt to fake his acceptance, to give them false signals of compliance, such as the deliberate physical relaxation and the frank trusting smile. However, he never forgot for one instant that they were white. Like most Africans, Raleigh was a natural racist and a tribalist. He hated these white men who patronized and condescended to him across the conference-table with the same passion as he hated the white policemen who had fired the bullets at Sharpeville.
He had never forgotten for a single waking minute that dreadful day when under a blue African sky he had held in his arms the girl he loved, the lovely black maiden who was to be his wife. He had held her and watched her die, and then before her flesh cooled he had thrust his fingers deep into the bullet wounds in her chest and made his vow of vengeance.
The vow had been made not only against the assassins but against them all, every white face and every bloody white hand that had forced slavery and subjugation upon his tribe down the centuries. Hatred was the fuel on which Raleigh Tabaka’s life ran.
He watched the white faces across the table and smiled and drew strength and resolve from his hatred. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you will take care of the woman, it is agreed. Now let us move on . . .’
‘A moment.’ Ramón lifted his hand to restrain him and turned back to Joe Cicero. ‘If I am to proceed with Red Rose, then there is the matter of the budget for the operation.’
‘We have already allocated two thousand British sterling—’ General Cicero protested.
‘Just sufficient for the preliminary stage. The budget will have to be upgraded. Red Rose is the daughter of a wealthy capitalist, and to impress her I will have to maintain my rôle as a Spanish grandee.’
They argued for a few minutes more, while Raleigh Tabaka tapped his pencil impatiently on the table-top. The African division was the Cinderella of the fourth directorate, and every rouble had to be counted.
It was degrading, Raleigh thought, as he listened to them haggle. They were more like a pair of old women selling pumpkins beside a dusty African road than two men planning the overthrow of an evil empire and the liberation of fifteen million oppressed black souls.
At last they agreed, and Raleigh found it difficult to conceal his disgust as he repeated: ‘Can we move on to discuss my itinerary for the African tour?’ He had believed that this was the reason for today’s meeting. ‘Has the authorization been received from Moscow?’
The discussions went on into the afternoon. They ate a frugal lunch sent up from the consulate canteen as they worked, and the fog of Joe Cicero’s cigarette smoke dulled the shaft of sunlight through the single high window. The room was a high-security unit on the top floor, regularly swept for electronic listening devices and safe from outside surveillance.
At last Joe Cicero closed the file in front of him and looked up. His dark eyes were bloodshot from the smoke and the strain. ‘I think that covers all points for discussion, unless there is anything new?’
They shook their heads.
‘As usual Comrade Machado will leave first,’ said Joe Cicero. It was an elementary rule of procedure that they should never be seen in public in each other’s company.
Ramón left the consulate by the entrance to the visa section, the busiest part of the building where he would be less noticeable in the crowd of students and others applying for travel documents to the Soviet Union.
There was a bus-stop directly outside the walled consulate. He took a number 88 bus but left it at the next stop and hurried through the Lancaster Gate entrance to Kensington Gardens. He lingered in the rose garden until he was certain he was not being followed, and then crossed the park.
His flat was in a narrow side-street off Kensington High Street. It had been rented specifically for the Red Rose operation and, although it contained only a single bedroom, the living-room was spacious and the locality was fashionable.
During the two weeks that he had been in residence, Ramón had managed to create an air of permanence. His personal chests had come from Cuba in the diplomatic bag. They had contained the few good pictures his father had left him and other small items of furnishing, including family photographs in silver frames of his parents and the family castle and estates in Andalusia when these had been in their heyday. The glassware and porcelain were incomplete sets, but they bore the Machado coat of arms: the stag and the boar rampant on either side of the quartered shield. His golf-clubs were displayed casually in the corner of the tiny entrance-hall, the plain leather Hermès bag well used, the discreetly embossed coat of arms almost obscured by wear. From what he had learnt about Red Rose, he knew that she would have an eye for such detail.
He glanced at the venerable gold Cartier, another family heirloom, that felt unfamiliar on his wrist. He would have to hurry. His growth of beard was heavy and dark. He shaved it off quickly but carefully and then showered and washed the stink of Joe Cicero’s Turkish cigarettes out of his hair.
He checked himself automatically in the mirror as he went through to the bedroom. He had been in peak physical condition when he had returned from Russia three weeks previously. The refresher course for senior officers at the KGB training college on the shores of the Black Sea had honed his body and, although he had managed to take little physical exercise since then, the lack was not yet apparent. His body was still sleek and hard, his belly flat and his body hair crisp and curly black. The scrutiny he directed at his image was completely without vanity. Face and body were simply implements, tools to be used to accomplish the tasks that he was set. He had no illusions about the fleeting nature of his physical attributes, but he worked to prolong it in the same way that a warrior cared for his weapons.
‘Gym tomorrow,’ he promised himself. Ramón had the use of a martial arts studio in Bloomsbury run by a Hungarian refugee. Two hours of hard work a couple of times a week would maintain him in fit condition for the Red Rose operation.
His riding-breeches were cavalry whipcord, and he wore a sage-coloured Trevira woollen shirt with a green tie under his tweed hacking-jacket. His riding-boots fitted him like a second skin, with a supple gloss of dubbined leather that flexed into perfect creases over his ankles as he moved. No amount of craftsmanship or money, only years of loving attention, could achieve that effect.
He knew that Red Rose was a horsewoman; in her world horses were a major part of existence. She would recognize those boots as a badge of membership of the same exclusive and élite group to which she belonged.
He checked his watch again; he had timed it nicely.
He locked the flat and went down into the street. The rain-clouds that had threatened earlier in the afternoon had dispersed, and it had turned into a glorious summer evening. Even the elements seemed to conspire to assist him.
The riding-stables were in a narrow mews behind the Guards barracks. The stable-manager recognized him. As Ramón signed the register he ran his eye down the immediately preceding entries, and saw that his good fortune was persisting. Red Rose had signed for her mount twenty minutes previously.
He went down to the stalls, and the groom had the saddle on his mount. She was a bay filly that Ramón had chosen with care and for which he had paid five hundred pounds from his expense budget. However, she had been a bargain, and he knew that he would recoup the cost and probably make some profit whenever he chose to sell her on. He checked the girth and harness, speaking softly to the filly, soothing her with hands and voice, and then thanked the groom with a nod and went up into the saddle.
On an evening like this there were fifty or so other riders out in Rotten Row. Ramón walked the filly under the oaks, while groups of horsemen cantered past him in both directions. The girl was not amongst them.
As soon as she had warmed a little, he pressed the filly with his toes and she moved up into a trot. She had an elegant action, and he rode her like a centaur, his superior horsemanship obvious even in that expert company. They made a striking pair, and more than a few of the women they passed turned in the saddle to look back after
them.
At the Park Lane end of the Row, Ramón turned and moved the filly up into an easy canter; galloping was forbidden. A hundred yards ahead, a group of four riders were coming towards him, two couples, young people well mounted and turned out, but the girl stood out amongst them like a sunbird in a flock of sparrows.
From under her riding-hat her hair undulated like the wing of a bird in flight, and glistened in the buttery sunshine. When she laughed her teeth were very white, and her colour was vivid from the exercise and the wind in her face.
Ramón recognized the man riding beside her. He had been her companion on most occasions that he had observed Red Rose over the previous two weeks. Ramón had requested information on him from records. He was the second son of an extremely wealthy family of brewers, an effete upper-class playboy of the type known in London society as a ‘Deb’s Delight’ or ‘Hooray Henry’, and he had been with her at the Rolling Stones concert four days ago. Since then Red Rose had spent two evenings in his company, party-hopping around Knightsbridge and Chelsea. Ramón had noticed that she treated him with a type of amused condescension, as though he were an over-affectionate St Bernard puppy, and that on no occasion that he had followed them had she been alone in his company except when he drove her in his MG from one party to the next. Ramón was almost certain that they were not sleeping with each other, which was unusual in this summer of 1969 when sexual licence was a raging epidemic.
He knew also that Isabella Courtney was not a simpering virgin. In the three years that she had been living at Highveld, it was documented that she had indulged in at least three explosive, if short-lived, liaisons.
As the gap between them closed, Ramón transferred his attention to the horse under him and leant forward to pat her neck. ‘There, my darling.’ He spoke to her in Spanish, while from the corner of his eye he was watching the girl. It was a trick that he had of deflecting his gaze so that he seemed not to be looking while he missed not the smallest detail.
They were almost past each other when he saw the girl’s chin snap up and her eyes fly wide open, but he ignored her and rode on.
‘Ramón!’ Her cry was high and imperative. ‘Wait!’
He checked the filly, and glanced back with a little frown of annoyance. She had wheeled her own mount and was riding after him, and he let his expression remain reserved and slightly frosty as though he resented her scraping acquaintance.
She drew up beside him, reining her horse down to a walk. ‘Don’t you remember me? Isabella Courtney. You were my saviour.’ Her smile was uncertain and awkward. Men always recognized her, no matter how fleeting or distant their last meeting. ‘At the concert in the park,’ she ended lamely.
‘Ah!’ Ramón allowed his smile to bloom at last. ‘The motorcycle mascot. Forgive me. You were dressed rather differently then.’
‘You didn’t wait for me to thank you,’ she accused him. She suppressed the urge to laugh out loud with relief that he had recognized her at last.
‘No thanks were necessary. Besides which you had rather urgent business elsewhere, as I recall.’
‘Are you on your own?’ She changed the subject quickly. ‘Why don’t you join us? Let me introduce you to my friends.’
‘Oh, I don’t want to impose myself.’
‘Please,’ she insisted. ‘You’ll enjoy them; they are good fun.’ And Ramón bowed slightly in the saddle.
‘How can I refuse such a kind invitation from such a lovely lady?’ he agreed, and Isabella felt as though her chest was in a vice. She had difficulty breathing as she looked into those green eyes in the face of a dark angel.
The other three had reined in and were waiting for them. Even before she came up to him, she saw that Roger was already sulking, and it gave her a vindictive little pleasure to say: ‘Roger, may I introduce the Marqués de Santiago y Machado? Ramón, this is Roger Coates-Grainger.’
She noticed Ramón glance at her quizzically and only then realized that she had made a gaffe by using his title; he had not mentioned it at their first meeting.
However, her momentary discomfort was forgotten when she introduced Ramón to Harriet Beauchamp and saw how Harriet reacted to him. She actually licked her lips like the cat in the television advertisement for pet food. Harriet was Isabella’s best friend in London, more out of symbiotic consideration than out of genuine mutual affection. Lady Harriet was Isabella’s entrance-ticket to the inner circles of London society. As the daughter of a belted earl, she was welcome where Isabella despite her looks and family wealth would have been considered a nouveau riche interloper with a funny accent. Harriet on the other hand had found that wherever Isabella Courtney was there swiftly assembled a superabundance of males. Beneath Harriet’s plump, bland and colourless blonde exterior flourished a ravenously amorous nature, and Isabella was happy to pass on her rejects to her.
Usually the arrangement worked perfectly, but Ramón was definitely no reject, not yet anyway, and smoothly Isabella interposed her horse between them and flashed a silent warning at Harriet. Harriet was enormously flattered. She knew that she could never aspire to become Isabella’s rival, but it was gratifying to be treated like one.
‘Marqués?’ Ramón murmured as they rode on. ‘You know considerably more about me than I do about you.’
‘Oh, I must have seen your photo in one of the slosh columns,’ Isabella suggested airily as she thought: God, don’t let him think I have been that interested.
‘Ah, the Tatler of course . . .’ Ramón nodded. His photograph had never appeared anywhere, except possibly in the files of the CIA and a few other intelligence agencies around the world.
‘Yes, the Tatler, that’s it.’ Gratefully Isabella jumped at the escape he offered her, and then set herself out to captivate him, without making her interest too obvious or oppressive. It was easier than she had anticipated. Ramón had a relaxed charm, a savoir-faire that fitted in with their group. Soon all of them, except Roger who was still sulking monumentally, were chatting and laughing together as though they were old chums.
As the dusk gathered and they turned back towards the stables, Isabella kneed her mount closer to Harriet’s and hissed at her: ‘Invite him to the party tonight!’
‘Who?’ Harriet opened her vacuous pansy eyes in feigned incomprehension.
‘You know damned well who, you randy little witch. You’ve been rolling your eyes and ovaries at him for the last hour!’
Lady Harriet Beauchamp had the run of the family house in Belgravia during the week when her parents were in the country. She put together some of the best bashes in town.
Tonight most of the cast of Hair, the current musical hit, pitched up after the show. They were still in costume and stage make-up, and the four-piece Jamaican band that Harriet had hired burst into a calypso version of ‘Aquarius’ to welcome them.
It bode fair to becoming one of Harriet’s more memorable parties. It was so crowded that those couples with serious business in mind took up to twenty minutes to get from the ballroom up the staircase to the bedrooms; even there they were forced to wait their turn. Isabella wondered sourly what Harriet’s papa, the tenth Earl, would think if he knew of the flow of traffic through his four-poster bed.
In the midst of all the gaiety and laughter, Isabella was determinedly insular. She had found a perch halfway up the sweeping marble staircase from which she could keep an eye on all arrivals at the front door, as well as on the action in the ballroom and the front drawing-room into which the dancing had overflowed.
She steadfastly refused to dance herself, despite an incessant string of invitations to do so. She had been so icily dismissive of Roger Coates-Grainger’s ponderous attention and callow humour that, discouraged, he had wandered away to the champagne-bar on the terrace. By now he was probably pissed out of his gourd, she thought with gloomy relish.
Such was the success of the evening that none of the guests could tear themselves away to move on to any other venue. All the traffic through the teak double
front doors from the square was one-way, and the noise and crush increased with every passing minute.
Another group arrived squealing and shouting tipsy greetings, and Isabella felt a fleeting lift of her spirits as she saw amongst them a head of dark wavy hair, but almost immediately she realized that the man was too short, and when he turned so she could see his face, he was sallow and jowly. She actively hated him, whoever he was.
As a kind of masochistic penance she had made her single glass of champagne last all evening, and now the wine was flat and warm from her fingers on the stem. She looked around to find Roger and send him for another glass but saw that he was dancing with a tall thin girl with false eyelashes and a high penetrating giggle that carried even to where Isabella sat.
God, she’s awful, Isabella thought. And Roger looks such a ponce, slobbering all over her like that.
She glanced at the ormolu and porcelain French clock above the door to the drawing-room. The time was twenty minutes to one, and she sighed.
At half-past noon today, Daddy was having an important lunch for a group of influential Conservative Members of Parliament and their wives. As usual Isabella was to be hostess. She should get some sleep to be at her best, but still she lingered.
Where the hell is he? she thought bitterly. He promised he’d come, damn him. (Actually, he had said that he would try to drop in later.) But we were getting on so well, it was as good as a promise.
She dismissed another invitation to dance without even looking up, and tasted the champagne. It was awful.
‘I’m not going to wait a minute after one o’clock,’ she promised herself firmly. ‘And that is absolutely final.’
Then abruptly her pulse checked and then raced away again. In her ears the music took on a sweeter, more cheerful note, the oppressive crowds and the noise seemed to recede, her dark mood evaporated miraculously, and she was borne up on a wave of excitement and wild anticipation.