Gerald Seymour - A song in the morning

He had approved the bombing of the Air Force headquarters in Pretoria, and the attacks on the Sasol synthetic petrol refinery and on the Koeburg nuclear power plant and on the Voortrekkerhoogte military base. More recently he had sanctioned the laying of mines in the far north east of the Transvaal on roads that would be used by civilians, and the detonating of a shrapnel bomb in a Durban shopping mall crowded with Christmas custom. The long retaliatory arm of the security police and N.I.S. had swiped close to him.

His former wife had died, mutilated by a letter bomb in her office at the Centre for African Studies in the Mozambique capital.

The meeting was in a small air-conditioned office at the back of the A.N.C. compound on the outskirts of Lusaka.

Jacob Thiroko was not interrupted.

He stated his plan. Five men, Kalashnikovs, grenades, one hundred kilos of explosives, four cars for the run to the Botswana frontier, the skill of the White explosives expert now loose in South Africa. Thiroko had spoken of John Vorster Square, he had sung of the pedigree of the expert.

He had been heard out. He kept his high card for the end.

"I will lead the cadre."

Nothing astonished this White man. His eyebrows flickered a trace of surprise. He stayed silent.

"I will go back myself into South Africa, into my mother-land. I have not been there since I was a young man. Perhaps it is a hallucination. Perhaps it is my duty to the men who otherwise will hang. I have a responsibility for them, five times of responsibility. You gave the authorisation, I prepared the plan. I cannot escape my responsibility… The young man in Johannesburg is the son of James Carew, the driver. The son taught me about sacrifice, when I thought I had nothing to learn. For his father he is prepared to sacrifice his life. I should be prepared to make the same sacrifice. They are sons to me, Happy, Charlie, Percy and Tom. What did we do when Benjamin Moloise walked to the gallows? We issued statements… I don't want to issue a statement this time!"

"Tell me about London, Comrade."

"In London I went to see a physician."

"What were you told, Comrade Jacob?"

"To live each day of my life to the full, to enjoy each minute of each day."

"Is there pain?"

"The pain will be nothing to the joy if I can give life to my children."

"Is it possible, to bring them out?"

"I would have said it was impossible for a stranger to carry a bomb into John Vorster Square. I no longer know what is impossible."

The pain was deep in the lower bowel of Thiroko's stomach. He winced as he stood, as he shook hands with the man from Riga. He had chosen the four men who would go with him, who would return with him to South Africa.

The physician had not been specific, he had spoken only of the few months that remained.

Jack came back into his room, closed the door behind him, slipped on the security chain, checked the suitcase.

In the afternoon, after the experience in Soweto, he had had to force himself to go out into the city, to walk on the streets amongst Blacks, be a tourist. Be a tourist and also make some enquiries.

He had gone to a small engineering firm in the back streets^ down from Marshall. He had asked about the availability of a short length of 8" iron piping.

When he crossed the room he saw, lying on his dressing table, left there by the bellboy, a sealed envelope.

He saw the bold handwriting. He thought the envelope had been addressed by a girl.

When the colonel left the meeting he brought back to his office a copy of the initial forensic report.

Embedded in the walls of the hallway of John Vorster Square had been found the synthetic fibres of a cheap bag.

Blown clear through the doorway and into a flower-bed had been a piece of a metal can. This first examination stated that the fibres came from a little-used bag, and the fifty cent sized piece of metal from a clean painted can without corrosion or rust.

The colonel had given it as his opinion that both items had been bought specifically for the bombing, for the making up of the explosive device, for carrying it.

"I'm truly sorry, Carew."

"Thank you, sir."

"There's not a decent man I know who can get pleasure out of this moment."

"I'm sure there isn't, sir."

"For what we do in life… we have to take the consequences of our actions."

"Just so, sir."

"I take no delight in seeing a man go to his punishment, whatever he's done."

"I appreciate that, sir."

The governor stood ramrod straight in the doorway of the cell. Behind him, his message read, the deputy sheriff of Pretoria waited, his arms hanging, his hands clasped in front of his trouser flies. Jeez had the centre of the floor space, he was at attention, his thumbs on the seams of his trousers. He thought the sympathy was genuine. He thought the governor was an honest man. The governor didn't frighten Jeez, not so that he had to imagine him out of his tailored uniform, shorn of his medal ribbons, stripped to his underpants. The governor was nothing like the bastard who had run Spac, who had been Jeez's gaoler way back for so many long years.

"I like a man to go proudly. I like a man to behave like a man. I can tell you this, Carew, go like a man and it will be easier for you. A prisoner who makes difficulties hurts himself, not us."

"Thank you, sir."

"I'd bet money on you, Carew, that you'll go like a man who is proud."

"Yes, sir."

"I always tell a man at this time that he should think through his life, think about his affairs, and stay with the good times. We don't want any melancholy."

"No, sir."

"Carew, you wrote a letter a few weeks ago, I checked with Records and you've had no letter back. I'm sorry. Of course, you are permitted to write as many letters as you wish."

"There won't be any more letters, sir."

"Is there anyone we should contact, anyone you would like to be offered facilities for a visit?"

"No, sir. There's no one who should visit."

"I tell you frankly, I've never met a man who has been here, White, who has been as private as you. Nor of your bearing, if I may say so."

"Yes, sir."

"There's a point I would like to make to you, Carew. The State President has refused you clemency, he has named the date of your execution. There have come from abroad several representations to the State President urging him to think again. From His Holiness the Pope, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, many others. Carew, you should know that in these matters the State President will not alter his decision. I tell you that, man to man, because it is better that you prepare yourself without the distraction of false hope."

"Yes, sir."

"The decision that you hang next Thursday is irrevers-ible."

"I know that, sir."

"The colonel from the security police, he will come back and see you, Carew, if you care to reconsider his proposal."

"I have nothing to say to the colonel, sir."

He took a taxi from the hotel to the zoo gardens.

Jack had memorised his instructions and flushed the sheet of paper away down the lavatory.

The driver hissed against the wooden toothpick that was clamped in his teeth through each detail of the bland police statement of unrest overnight in the Cape and the East Rand on the early morning news. Two shot dead by the police in the Cape, and a Black woman burned to death in an East Rand township.

"Seems to be getting worse," Jack said.

The taxi driver looked over his shoulder. "You'd need to be smiling from your cheeks to your backside to think it's getting better."

"What has to happen for it to get better?"

The taxi driver settled comfortably in his seat, like the question was a box of chocolates, to be enjoyed.