Gerald Seymour - A song in the morning

The numbers of bank accounts, and the addresses of those hanks. Accounts and banks where the A.N. C's money was lodged.

The Director General read through lists of intended targets. Police stations, power lines, railway track, a sewage filtration plant, a military recruiting office. A long list • • • There was a sketch plan of the approach route to be used for the rocket attack on the Sasolburg fuel storage tanks. There were the operational orders for the strike on the Voortrekkerhoogte army base. There were verbatim arguments between cadre cells on the priorities of attacks. Damned hard material to come by, no mistake.

The reports from years back had been worked over, he could see the pencil and ink ticks and underlinings that showed him that once these reports had been valued. Not the reports of the year before Carew's arrest. They were unmarked, and he thought they had gone unread into the file.

He was fitting together his picture of his man. He read that the S.I.S. officer attached to the British embassy in Pretoria used to come once a month to Johannesburg and go to a certain taxi rank at the South African Airways terminal and take a certain licensed taxi and pay for his fare and receive the latest Carew report with his change. All as amateurish as if his service had been playing boy scout pranks.

Carew had never come home. An addendum note stated

"Gone native". A note in Fordham's handwriting to the effect that Curwen wouldn't trust himself too close to his former wife and his grown-up son should he ever return to London.

All the time the poor devil was being paid. Last Friday of every month a pay cheque rolling into a bank account in Liechtenstein. Signatories to the account: James Curwen, Col. B. Fordham. Statements from accounts at Century concerning the amounts deducted from his salary to make allowance for monies earned from his taxi driving.

He had misjudged his man, but he still believed he was past saving. He rose from his desk.

Silently he paced his carpet.

Past saving?

He pondered the options.

He extended the forefinger of his right hand. They could come clean to the South African government and make an apology and plead for clemency. Second finger. They could scuffle around for sufficient leverage to ensure that Pretoria would respond to negotiation and spare his man and hold silence. Third finger. They could break the legman out from the hanging gaol.

He snapped his fist shut. Absolutely not on. Inconceivable in the time, and fantasy.

Past saving.

He had a meeting scheduled with the Permanent Under Secretary for the late afternoon. The P.U.S. outranked the Director General for all that the Director General was in a position to control the flow of information available to the P.U.S. In the matter of James Sandham, the flow would be dammed at once. He had set aside 45 minutes directly after lunch, for himself and his principal officials to discuss the Carew case. It was a gesture, the setting aside of senior men's time, and unless someone came up with something right out of the ordinary it was the last gesture the Service would and could make.

•* •

Major Swart had fretted through the morning. He had sat in his office at the end of a corridor behind an automatic locking steel-barred door, willing the telephone to shout for him.

The two warrant officers who did most of the footwork in his small empire had called earlier to report that they had lost Arkwright, been tricked by him on the underground.

Their second call had told Swart that they had picked him up again when he returned to his flat. Swart wanted badly to know the identity of the young man in the well-cut suit who had been huddled at the meeting with Thiroko. That young man was probably worth opening up, and Arkwright should have been the way to him.

There was a third call. Arkwright had just drawn the curtains to his room. From his state of undress it was to be assumed he was taking his slut to bed.

They sat in the kitchen. The sink and the stove needed three hours' work from a strong-willed woman. Jack doubted there had ever been a woman in George Hawkins' life, certainly no kids. The blaster never talked about a woman, talked mostly about his three cats. Big, confident brutes they seemed to Jack, sleeping on the kitchen table or striding over the stove or licking at used plates in the sink bowl. Jack sat on an old explosive box, upturned and covered by a grimed cushion. George was scooping cat food from a tin.

Jack thought the cats ate better than the old blaster.

"Was it just kiddie's bullshit?"

Jack said, "I've found the right man, probably."

"For trusting?"

"I have to."

"Genuine guy?"

"He's on the military side."

The cats were chewing fiercely. George put a page of newspaper over the tin, left it on the window ledge above the sink.

"The targets are in South Africa?"

"Yes."

"Do you have a bloody conscience?"

"I don't."

"It's explosives, lad. It's not just a firework show where everyone has a good laugh and hears a big bang. Explosives get to hurt people."

"I don't want to hurt people. I just want to get my father out of that place."

"That's a piss poor answer."

"I don't know where yet, the first target will be in Johannesburg."

"Good and big, where the whole city sees it. I'll rot in hell, certain. You're talking about an act of war. It's bloody Harrods, lad; it's the Grand Hotel, it's the bandstand in Regent's Park, it's the Household effing Cavalry you're talking about. Have you got the guts for that?"

"I have to, or he's going to hang."

"There was a bomb in Northern Ireland, the La Mon House hotel.. . "

George went to a drawer. He excavated among cartridge boxes and pamphlets and books and old newspapers and older bills. He took out a nearly clean sheet of blank paper.

He flicked his fingers for Jack to pass him a pen. He started to draw the diagram.

Firm and bold strokes of the pen.

"If they ever knew George Hawkins drew this for you then I'd be bloody lucky, Jack boy, if they just shot me."

"My father hasn't told them anything, I'm not intending to start."

"You take that away with you, and you learn it by heart, and you flush it away. Don't take that on your bloody aeroplane… What's the gaol?"

The marmalade cat had eaten too fast. It vomited on the linoleum. George seemed not to notice. Jack told him that Pretoria Central was a complex of five gaols. In the centre was the hanging gaol. He didn't know the lay out, didn't know where his father's cell was, didn't know the guard patterns. He didn't know any bloody thing.

"If I told you it was just daft."

"I'd say you should mind your own business, Mr Hawkins."

"By helping you, am I just getting you killed?"

"Without you, I'd help myself."

George turned over the sheet of paper.

"Is it an old gaol or a new one?"

"I think it's newish."

"It'll have a wall round it. If it were old it would be brick or stone. If it's less than twenty years then it'll be reinforced concrete… You'd be better off just getting pissed every night 'til they hang him… "

"How do I knock a hole in reinforced concrete?"

"We're not even talking about how you're going to get into a security area, up against the bloody wall… You're not going to be able to drill holes and use cartridges. You're not going to be able to use lay-on charges, because you'd need a dumper load of earth to cover them or you'd have to shift a ton of sandbags."

"Don't tell me what I can't do."

"Easy, lad… Professor Charles Monroe, Columbia University, way back before we were born. It's what's called the Monroe Effect. It's the principle of armour piercing, what they use against tanks. Shaped or hollow charge, it's what it's called. Jack, they'll shoot you dead… "