by Wilbur Smith
Apart from the electronic surveillance equipment, Isabella now had a 7.62-millimetre Dragunov sniper’s rifle and a dart-gun aimed at her. The dart-gun was loaded with Tentanyl and would immobilize a human victim within two minutes. Ramón had two 10-milligram phials of Nalorphine on hand as an antidote. Even as a last resort, he did not want to risk losing such a potentially valuable operative as Red Rose.
Abruptly Isabella leapt to her feet and stared across the courtyard. Ramón glanced down. Directly below the tower Adra and Nicholas had appeared. He could see the tops of their heads.
With a supreme effort Isabella prevented herself from rushing across the lawn and sweeping her son into her arms. She knew intuitively that such an action on her part would confuse and distress the child. He was at the age when any boy hated to be treated like a baby. Isabella had studied her copy of Dr Spock until it was tired and dog-eared.
Slowly she removed her sunglasses and remained still. Nicholas hung on to Adra’s hand and studied his mother with great interest.
Isabella had thought she was prepared for his physical appearance. The last photograph she had of him was only two months old, but it was nothing like the reality. It could not capture his colouring, nor the texture of his skin, nor those curls – and those eyes. Oh, those eyes!
‘Oh God,’ she whispered. ‘He’s the loveliest child. There could never be another like this. Please, God, help him to like me.’
Adra tugged gently at Nicholas’s hand, urging him forward, and they skirted the swimming pool and stopped in front of her.
‘Buenos días, Señorita Bella,’ Adra said softly in Spanish. ‘Nicholas likes to swim. There is a costume for both you and Nicholas if you want to swim with him. They are in the cabaña.’ She pointed to the shuttered door of the bathhouse. ‘You may change in there.’
Then she looked down at Nicholas. ‘Greet the lady, your mother,’ she instructed him gently, and released his hand. She turned and hurried from the courtyard leaving them alone together.
Nicholas had not smiled or taken his eyes from Isabella’s face. Now he stepped forward dutifully and held out his right hand.
‘Good day, Mamma, my name is Nicholas Machado and I am pleased to meet you.’
Isabella wanted to drop on her knees and hug him with all her strength. The word ‘Mamma’ had stabbed through her heart like a bayonet. Instead she took his hand and shook it carefully.
‘You are a fine young man, Nicholas. I hear that you are doing very well at nursery school.’
‘Yes,’ Nicholas agreed. ‘And next year I am to join the young pioneers.’
‘That will be nice for you,’ Isabella nodded. ‘Who are the young pioneers, Nicholas?’
‘Everybody knows.’ He was obviously amused by her ignorance. ‘They are the sons and daughters of the revolution.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ Isabella went on hastily. ‘I have brought a present for you.’
‘Thank you, Mamma.’ Uncontrollably Nicholas’s eyes slid towards the package.
Isabella sat on the bench and handed him the gift, and Nicholas squatted in front of her and unwrapped it carefully. Then he was silent.
‘Do you like it?’ Isabella asked nervously.
‘It’s a soccer ball,’ Nicholas pronounced.
‘Yes. Do you like it?’
‘It’s the best gift anybody has ever given me,’ he said.
He looked up at her, and she saw in his eyes that despite his formal stilted speech he truly meant it. What a reserved self-possessed little old man he is, she thought. What terrible events and nightmares have made him like this?
‘I have never played soccer,’ Isabella told him. ‘Will you teach me?’
‘You’re a girl.’ Nicholas looked doubtful.
‘Still, I’d like to try.’
‘All right.’ He stood up with the ball under one arm. ‘But you’ll have to take your shoes off.’
Within minutes all the child’s reserves evaporated. He shrieked with excitement as he dribbled and darted after the ball. He was nimble as a field mouse, and Isabella raced after him, laughing with him, obeying his instructions and allowing him to score five goals between the legs of the bench.
When at last they both collapsed on the lawn, Nicholas informed her between gasps: ‘You are quite good – for a girl.’
They changed into swimming costumes, and Nicholas gave her an exhibition of his prowess. First he swam a length dogpaddle, and her praises were so fulsome that he declared: ‘I can do a width underwater. Watch me.’ He almost made it across, and surfaced just short of the bar, blowing and huffing and red-faced.
Sitting waist-deep on the shallow-end steps, Isabella felt a moment of physical revulsion as she remembered the last time she had seen her son immersed, but she managed to smile and sound enthusiastic.
‘Oh, well done, Nicholas.’
He came to her, still puffing for breath, and without warning climbed into her lap.
‘You are pretty,’ he said. ‘I like you.’
Carefully, as though he might shatter like a precious crystal, she wrapped her arms around him and held him. Through the cool water his body was warm and slippery and she could feel her heart twist and tear within her.
‘Nicholas,’ she mumbled. ‘Oh, my baby. How I love you. How I miss you.’
The afternoon passed like a flash of sheet-lightning in a summer sky and then Adra came to fetch him. ‘It is time for Nicholas’s dinner. Do you wish to eat with him, señorita?’
They ate al fresco, at a table that Adra set for them in the courtyard. They shared a baked besugo, a sea-bream from the Atlantic, and salads. There was a glass of fresh orange juice for Nicholas and a sherry for her. Isabella shredded the flesh of the bream to remove any bones, but Nicholas fed himself.
As Nicholas was finishing his ice-cream, Isabella’s vision began to swim. She heard a rushing in her ears and Nicholas’s face seemed to expand and blur.
Adra caught her before she slipped from the chair, and Ramón stepped into the courtyard from the doorway behind her. The two KGB women followed him.
‘You have been a good boy, Nicholas,’ Ramón said. ‘Now, go off to bed with Adra.’
‘What is wrong with the nice lady?’
‘There is nothing wrong,’ Ramón told him. ‘She is just very sleepy. You are sleepy, too, Nicholas.’
‘Yes, Padre.’ At the suggestion he yawned and rubbed his eyes with the backs of his fists. Adra led him away, and Ramón nodded at the waiting women.
‘Take her to the room.’
While they lifted Isabella out of the chair, Ramón picked up the empty sherry-glass from the dinner table and wiped out the last traces of the drug with his handkerchief.
Isabella woke in a strange bedroom. She felt rested and at peace. The early sun streamed in through the slats of the shuttered window. She blinked drowsily and pulled the single sheet up around her naked shoulders. She wondered without any real urgency where she was, but her memory was fuzzy.
She was suddenly aware that she was totally nude under the sheet. She lifted her head. Her clothing was neatly folded on the chair beside the open bathroom door. Her suitcase was on the luggage-rack.
Then out of the corner of her eye she caught a movement and she stiffened and came fully awake. There was a man in the bedroom with her. She opened her mouth to scream, but he signalled her urgently to silence.
‘Ram—’ she started to say his name, but with two rapid paces he reached the bedside and laid his open hand on her lips to keep her from speaking.
She stared at him, stunned and completely bemused. Ramón! Joy rose in her like a spring tide.
He left her and crossed quickly to the nearest wall of the bedroom. On it hung a dark oil painting in the style of Goya. Ramón swivelled the painting to one side to reveal a hidden microphone the size of a silver dollar attached to the wall.
Once again, he made a gesture to silence her and came back. He lifted the shade off the lamp on the bedside table
, and showed her the second microphone taped to the stand below the bulb.
Then he leant so close to her that his warm breath fanned her cheek.
‘Come.’ He touched her bare shoulder through the sheet. It had been so long that despite her happiness she felt strange and shy in his presence.
‘I will explain – come.’ His eyes were so full of pain and suffering that she felt her joy waver.
He took her hand that held the sheet to her chin and drew her, suddenly unresisting, from the bed. Still holding her hand, he led her, stark naked, to the bathroom. She was unaware of her nudity, and she staggered a little from the after-effects of the drug.
In the bathroom Ramón flushed the toilet, opened the taps in the handbasin and in the bath, and switched on the shower in the glass-walled cabinet.
Then he came back to her. She drew away from him, afraid to touch him. Her naked back was pressed to the cold tiles.
‘What is happening to us? Are you one of them, Ramón? I am so confused. Please tell me what is happening.’
His marvellous features contorted with agony. ‘I am like you. I have to cooperate, for Nicky’s sake. I can’t explain now – forces greater than we are. We have been caught up, all three of us. Oh, my darling, how I have wanted to hold you and explain it all to you, but I have so little time.’
‘Ramón, tell me you still love me,’ she whispered timidly.
‘Yes, my darling. More than I ever did. I know what hell you must have lived through. I have shared it with you, every moment of it. I know what you must have thought of me. One day you will understand that everything I have done has been for Nicky and for you.’
She wanted to believe him, desperately, wildly she wanted it to be true.
‘Soon,’ he whispered, taking her face between his cupped hands. ‘Soon we’ll be together, just the three of us – you and Nicky and me. You must trust me.’
‘Ramón!’ It came out as a choking sob, and she wound both arms around his neck and clung to him with all her strength. Against all reason or logic she believed him completely.
‘We have only a few minutes together. We dare not risk more. It is so dangerous. You can never know what terrible danger Nicky is in.’
‘And you also,’ her voice quavered.
‘My life does not matter. It’s Nicky . . .’
‘Both of you,’ she denied it. ‘You are both so precious.’
‘Promise me that you will do nothing to harm Nicky.’ He kissed her mouth. ‘Please do whatever they say. It will not be for much longer. I will get us free of this thing, if you will help me. But you must trust me.’
‘Oh, my love. Oh, my darling. I knew deep down. I knew there must be a reason. Of course, I trust you, my heart.’
‘Be strong for all of us.’
‘I swear it to you,’ she nodded violently, her face smeared with tears. ‘Oh God, how I love you. I have suppressed it so long.’
‘I know, my darling. I know.’
‘Please, please, make love to me, Ramón. I’ve been without you for so long. I have been withering away. Make love to me before you have to go.’
He took her quickly, and yet it crashed over her like the winds of a hurricane and left her shattered.
When he was gone, breaking away with a last long lingering kiss, her legs could no longer support her. She sank slowly down the tiled wall, and sat on the floor with her legs sprawled jointlessly under her. The taps roared and billows of steam filled the room. She didn’t understand it all. She didn’t have to and she didn’t care any more. All that mattered was Nicky and Ramón.
‘Oh, thank God,’ she whispered. ‘It wasn’t true. None of the horrors was true. Ramón loves me still. We will be all right, the three of us. We’ll come through this together. Somehow. Sometime.’
She dragged herself to her feet. ‘Now I must pull myself together. They mustn’t suspect. . . .’ She staggered to the shower.
She was still in bra and panties when, without a knock, the door opened and the large heavy-featured woman who had escorted her from the airport and had conducted that dreadful body-search entered the room. She looked at Isabella’s body in a way that made Isabella’s flesh crawl and she stepped hurriedly into the skirt of her grey suit.
‘What do you want?’
‘You leave in twenty minutes to airport.’
‘Where is Nicky? Where is my son?’
‘Child has gone.’
‘I want to see him, please.’
‘Is not possible. Child has gone.’
Isabella felt the ebullient mood of hope, which her brief interlude with Ramón had raised, begin to evaporate.
The nightmare begins again, she thought, and tried to steel herself against the creeping sense of despair.
‘I must trust Ramón. I must be strong.’
The woman sat beside Isabella in the back seat of the Cortina on the drive back to the airport. It was a hot morning, and the car was not air-conditioned. The woman’s body odour was rank as a man’s. Isabella felt she was going to be ill, and she opened the side-window and let the wind blow in her face.
The driver of the Cortina stopped outside the international departures terminal and, while he went to unlock the boot and lift out Isabella’s suitcase, the woman spoke for the first time since leaving the hacienda.
‘Is for you,’ she said, and handed over a sealed unaddressed envelope.
Isabella opened her handbag and secreted the envelope. The woman was staring straight ahead through the windscreen. She offered no word of farewell. Isabella stepped out of the Cortina and picked up her suitcase. The driver slammed the door and drove away.
Standing on the pavement, in the midst of the throng of package-tour travellers, Isabella felt alone, more alone and frightened than she had been before she had seen Nicky and Ramón again.
‘I must trust him,’ she repeated to herself as a litany of faith, and went to the Iberian check-in desk.
In the first-class lounge, she went to the women’s washroom and locked herself in one of the cubicles. She sat on the closed lid of the toilet and tore open the envelope.
Red Rose,
You will ascertain precisely what stage the development of a nuclear explosive device by Armscor and the nuclear research institute at Pelindaba has reached. You will report on the test site that has been selected and the date for the preliminary testing of the device.
On receipt of this data a further meeting with your son will be arranged. The duration of this meeting will depend on the depth and scope of information that you deliver.
There was, as usual, no signature, and the message was typed on a sheet of plain paper. She stared at it sightlessly. ‘Deeper and deeper,’ she whispered. ‘First the radar report.’ That had not seemed so bad. Radar was a defensive weapon – but this? An atomic bomb? Would there ever be an end to it?
She shook her head. ‘I can’t – I’ll tell them, I can’t.’ Her father had never even hinted at any interest in the Pelindaba Institute. She had never seen any file or even a single letter that addressed the subject of a nuclear explosive device. She had read in the press that the research at Pelindaba was directed towards refinement and processing of the country’s huge uranium production, and towards the development of a reactor for industrial and urban electrical power. The prime minister had given repeated assurances that South Africa was not developing the bomb.
Despite that, her instructions were not to ascertain if production were in progress. That was taken as a fact. She had been ordered to find out where and when the first device would be tested.
She began to shred the message between nervous fingers.
‘I can’t,’ she whispered. She stood up and raised the toilet seat. She dropped each tiny scrap of paper into the bowl separately, and then flushed them away.
‘I’ll tell them I can’t.’ But already her mind was busy.
I’ll have to work on Pater, she thought, and immediately began to plan it.
Isabella had bee
n out of the country on her visit to Spain for only five days. Nevertheless, Nana was angry, and sniffed at her weak excuse for leaving in the middle of her election campaign. The Friday before polling day, the prime minister, John Vorster, addressed a meeting in the Sea Point town hall in support of the National Party candidate.
It had taken all Centaine Courtney-Malcomess’s wiles and wit to get him to cancel two other important engagements to make the speech. The party machine realized that Sea Point was a safe opposition seat and that they were simply going through the motions. They were reluctant to wheel out their big gun; but Centaine prevailed, as she usually did.
With the promise of hearing the prime minister speak, the town hall was jam-packed. The meeting began with the usual heckling from the body of the hall, but it was fairly good-natured.
Isabella spoke first. She kept it short, ten minutes. It was her best speech of the entire campaign. She had gathered valuable experience and confidence over the preceding weeks, and her jaunt to Spain seemed to have revitalized her. Both Nana and Shasa had gone over the text with her, and she had rehearsed her delivery in front of them. These two shrewd old political warhorses had given her valuable tips and suggestions.
Standing on the platform in front of the crowded hall, Isabella cut a slim determined figure, and the heart of the audience seemed to go out to her youth and loveliness. They gave her a standing ovation at the end, while John Vorster stood beside her, red-faced and benign, nodding and clapping his approval.
The following Wednesday evening Shasa and Nana were standing on either side of Isabella, wearing huge party rosettes and straw boaters with the party colours, when the results of the polling were read out.
There were no upsets. The Progressive Party regained the seat, but Isabella had cut their majority to a mere twelve hundred votes. Her supporters chaired her shoulder-high from the hall as though she were the victor and not the vanquished.
A week later John Vorster invited her to a meeting in his office in the parliament building. Isabella knew the building intimately. When her father had been a cabinet minister in Hendrik Verwoerd’s government, his office had been on the same floor only a few doors down the corridor from the prime minister’s office.