Gerald Seymour - A song in the morning

The Prime Minister's speech to the constituency workers had failed because, before it was delivered, the message had come through that the Director General was arriving for discussion on a matter of the utmost urgency.

"They're incommunicado at the moment?"

"Yes, Prime Minister. But Major Hannes Swart, an accredited diplomat, can, if he is released as diplomatic procedures require, furnish the security police authorities with information that in my opinion could lead them to judge that Jack Curwen will attack the Maximum Security section of Pretoria Central prison. If those authorities were to receive such information it would, in my judgement, considerably improve their chances of arresting or killing Curwen."

There was a gleam of mischief in the Prime Minister's eye.

"When would Curwen move?"

"Tonight, perhaps tomorrow night. I doubt he'd leave it until darkness on Wednesday, too fine."

"Does he stand any chance?"

"Let me sidetrack… Recently a man called Jacob Thiroko visited London. He was a principal officer in the military wing of the African National Congress. The Special Branch officer controlling the business at Leatherhead has given us the basis of a connection between Curwen and Thiroko, albeit a fragile one. Last week Thiroko flew back to Lusaka, and immediately set off with a small team back across the South African border. He was ambushed and killed, with all the members of his group, in the northern Transvaal. I suggest Thiroko would only have ventured into his country to lead a major operation. A major operation could be interpreted as an attack on the Maximum Security gaol where four members of an A.N.C. cadre are held and who will be hanged on Thursday with Carew. Now Thiroko's dead. Very possibly young Curwen now stands alone."

"No chance?"

"In my opinion, no. Perhaps I exaggerate… "

"Tell me."

"A few years ago three men broke out of the White Political prison. That's about a quarter of a mile from where Carew is due to hang. In the annals of escapology it was pretty remarkable. Every time they saw a key on a warder's chain they memorised it, and when they were in the workshops they used those memories to make a key. Their collection opened just about every door in this very secure compound. At night they used to let themselves out of their cells, with their keys, so that they could try every route that was available to them, but each time they came up against high walls that were floodlit, overlooked by watch towers.

They decided the only way out was through the front gate, and that's the way they w e n t… If you'd asked me, knowing what they planned to do, what were their chances, I'd have said one in two million."

"If he were to succeed, if he were to bring his father home, I would face the collapse of this government's foreign policy in relation to South Africa. Our position of persuasion towards reform would become meaningless."

"Pragmatic politics demand that they fail, Prime Minister, and die silent."

"Emotion requires that they succeed, Director General

… It is only for his father?"

The Director General said, "I doubt that a month ago he'd ever given South Africa ten minutes' thought."

The Prime Minister said, "I hope he succeeds…

Hold them at Leatherhead, to give the boy his chance."

"And after he's had his chance we have to face the music."

"The man at Leatherhead, we'll shrug it off."

The Director General left by a back exit, picking his way between the garbage bags.

•**

It was past midnight. Ros and Jan still not back.

Jack worked methodically.

He was on the floor of the living room of the service flat.

Ros had rented it, using Jack's money, paid over the odds in deposit and said she'd be back to sign the papers the next day.

He had the tube on the floor. From a sheet of light aluminium he had cut a triangular shape that he had bent into a cone, a squat witch's hat. With pliers he had fastened steel wire at intervals along the cone and then secured the wire with heavy adhesive tape. George Hawkins had told him that the speed of the detonation would be 6,000 metres per second. The wire and the sticky tape would hold and do their job for the mini-fraction of time before the aluminium cone fused in white heat to become the boring projectile travelling ahead of the explosive force.

He placed the cone into the metal tube, the open end leading, pushing it gently forward till his arm was lost in the tube. Cautiously he took the slabs of explosive and worked them, putty-like, down the long length of the tube, squeezing them with his finger tips first into the angle between the cone and the tube's sides, and then back to the central point of the cone… He knew that explosive without a firing agent was harmless, but it took some faith to believe it… The explosive was packed round the cone. He had used three and a half pounds. Working on with care, not hurrying, because the Hawkins method was care and never hurry. He packed a further eight and a half pounds of explosive, weighed meticulously, into the tube and behind the point of the cone. George had been very specific. The packing must be even, and firm.

Jack worked long and hard at the packing, sweat sheening his forehead.

George's lessons kept flickering into his head: three and three quarter pounds of explosive will punch 31 inches into sandstone with an entry hole a maximum of 12 inches wide.

He had a tube that was nine inches in diameter. He had twelve pounds of explosive to use. Nine inches of diameter and twelve pounds of explosive were the only facts that mattered a damn to him.

And he had no primer, no priming charge.

George had talked to him of six ounces of priming charge to lie between the detonator and the Polar Ammon Gelignite for the high velocity trigger into the explosive. He didn't have a priming charge. Forget the bloody priming charge.

He had three detonators.

He taped two together. With his finger he worked a slim hole into the packed explosive in the tube. The two taped detonators into the slim hole, the beginning of the arming of the shaped charge bomb. With a sharp knife from the kitchen he cut a yard off the length of Cordtex equivalent.

Very slowly, maximum care, he had eased the Cordtex equivalent into the protruding socket of one of the detonators. Making it live, powerful enough to explode him through the walls of the flat, to devastate that corner of the block. With pliers he crimped the socket of the detonator to the Cordtex equivalent. Had to be two detonators because he had no priming charge.

He made a sludge of ready mix concrete. He kneaded it against the explosive and around the detonators and around the length of Cordtex equivalent. Set concrete to make the block at one end of the tube to drive the explosive force forward, undiluted, against the cone at the other end of the tube.

Later he would tie a length of safety fuse to the Cordtex, knot it and bind it.

Jack had completed the shaped charge when they came hack.

When they came through the door he was assembling the last of his explosive in a three pound charge linked by his last detonator to Cordtex equivalent and safety fuse.

All clear in his mind. Where he would use the shaped charge, and where the smaller explosive charge, and where the Cordtex equivalent on the grilles because George had told him that Cordtex would blow away the grille bolts, slice them.

He was on his knees on the carpet when they came back, and writing on a torn scrap of paper. He had written "rope" and "bent metal".

"We took a car," Ros said.

Jan said, "She didn't know it was so easy, to open a car up and drive it away."

The two stared down at Jack's handiwork.

A breathlessness in Ros's voice. "Is it going to do the job?"