John Davis - Unofficial and Deniable

‘Back!’ Harker rasped. ‘Get the hell out of here!’

Spicer was desperately waiting for them, the explosives emplaced, the listening gear and the seized documents ready to go. Harker spoke into his radio to the getaway car: ‘Venus is rising!’

The men went racing up the dark track towards the tarred road. They were several miles away, speeding towards Manhattan, when the house disintegrated in a massive explosion, the bodies blown to tiny pieces.

It was always the same after an action. Before going into battle he was very tense but afterwards, when the dust had settled and the bodies had been counted, he slept as if he had been pole-axed even if he knew the action was to resume at dawn – he felt no remorse about the enemy, only grim satisfaction and relief to have survived. It was only the conscripts, the civilians in uniform, who sometimes felt remorse, but usually that didn’t last long either because few experiences are more antagonizing than having, some bastard trying to shoot the living shit out of you.

Harker woke up that Sunday afternoon rested for the first time in a week, permitting himself no feeling of guilt. The die was cast, nothing could change it. It had been a legitimate military operation and had saved civilian lives. It was front-page news in most of the papers: there were photographs of the area where the safe-house had stood, the earth and shrubbery blackened and blasted. There was one survivor in critical condition: an ‘adult male of African origin now in hospital, with multiple injuries, including loss of one eye and an arm so badly mutilated by gunfire that it had to be amputated below the elbow’. The FBI were investigating: they had no comment yet but the local sheriff, who was first on the scene, was moved to hint that this was ‘probably a gangland slaying, probably to do with drugs’. Investigations were continuing.

Harker felt a stab of guilt through a chink in his armour when he read about the mutilated survivor, as yet unidentified, but he thrust it aside – he had seen plenty of his soldiers mutilated over the years: if you play with fire you must expect to get your fingers burnt – the bastard had been plotting far worse, he was lucky to be alive and if he’d been caught in South Africa he would have been hanged after the police had wrung the truth out of him. Harker had no fear that the man could be dangerous: no ANC official would be so dumb as to tell the FBI he was meeting with Fidel Castro’s henchmen on holy American soil. Without much difficulty Harker parried the thrust of guilt as he encoded his report to Dupont that Sunday afternoon, and when his computer began to print out the information from Washington that the survivor was now positively identified by the CIA as Alexander Looksmart Kumalo, his remorse evaporated further. Looksmart Kumalo was well known to Military Intelligence as one of the ANC’s sabotage strategists.

That afternoon Harker took the shuttle flight to Washington to deliver to Dupont all the documents seized at the farmhouse. He had not read them; he had tried, he could read Spanish with difficulty but he could not concentrate; indeed he did not want to know any more than he had to about the misery of war and murderous skulduggeries in its name, and he wanted to forget his work of last night. But when he walked into the soundproof office behind the reception desk of the Royalton Hotel a happily drunk Dupont not only thrust a large whisky at him after pumping his hand in congratulation – ‘Jolly good show, fucking good show! Sanchez and Moreno!’ – but also insisted Harker give him a blow by blow account. And sitting in the corner was the CIA man whom Harker knew only by the codename ‘Fred’, the guy who was Dupont’s handler or contact with the United States’ ‘Dirty Tricks Bureau’ as he called it, and Fred wanted every detail on tape.

‘ Fucking good show …’ Dupont interjected frequently.

Neither Dupont nor Fred was unduly concerned about the survivor, Looksmart Kumalo. It was a pity, of course, that he had not perished with the rest of the blackguards but there was no danger of the bastard spilling the beans: he would be debriefed by the CIA and advised, ‘in the nicest possible way’, that not only was his liberty at stake because of the cocaine the FBI had planted on him, but his health was also because – if he didn’t have a mysterious fatal heart attack in hospital – he would be deported to South Africa where he belonged and where he would receive a warm welcome from the authorities if he opened his big mouth. And if he broke the bargain he was being so generously offered, the British MI5, France’s Sûreté and most of the civilized world’s secret services would have him prominently on their shit-list.

‘He won’t talk publicly,’ Froggy Fred croaked, ‘and if he does they’ll be the last words he utters.’

‘You planted cocaine on him?’ Harker frowned. ‘I thought the FBI were going to blame the whole thing on the Cuban exile community in Miami. Now you’re going to claim it was a drug-war assassination?’

‘Both,’ Fred rumbled. ‘We blame it on both, as alternative possibilities, to raise confusion.’

Dupont leered happily, stroking the pile of documents. ‘He’ll keep his mouth shut, don’t worry …’

It was after midnight when the debriefing was declared over and a taxi was summoned to take Harker back to the airport. Dupont offered him a room in the hotel –‘The presidential suite indeed’ – and Fred volunteered to throw in a good hooker ‘on Uncle Sam’ – ‘Or two!’ Dupont cried – but Harker just wanted to get the hell, away from yesterday, from these awful guys, from this hotel where they festered.

As he climbed into the taxi, Dupont breathed alcoholically through the window. ‘Fucking good show! Now you relax, disappear to the beach for a few days, then get on to the Bigmouth case …’

He did disappear to the coast, but not to enjoy himself – it was to brood. Ah yes, his soldier’s conscience was clear, more or less, but even soldiers sometimes want to be alone after they have done battle, spilt voluminous blood, mourn not for the enemy but the whole dreadful business of taking so much life. And he did not want to ‘get on to the Bigmouth case’ – he felt a fraud. He was a fraud. Jack Harker dearly wished he was not bound to take the beautiful Josephine Valentine to lunch next Saturday, he wanted to be alone, he dearly wished he did not have to pose fraudulently as her potential publisher in order to further the ends of apartheid. Josephine Valentine’s book was hardly a legitimate military target.

And he would not do so.

No, he would not do so. Jack Harker refused to defraud Josephine Valentine any further by pretending that he was interested in publishing her book. He would have to pay her the courtesy of reading her ten chapters, and he would give her his honest opinion, but he would tell her immediately thereafter that Harvest would not publish it. He was not going to give her false hope, and he certainly was not going to obey orders and bury her book, kill it by publishing it badly. Fuck you, Felix Dupont.

Having made that decision he felt better. On Saturday, when he drove back to Manhattan, he was again looking forward to having lunch with one of the best-looking women in New York.

When Josephine Valentine came sweeping into the yacht club dining room, clutching her file, beaming, hand extended, she was even lovelier than he remembered.

‘Hi!’ She pumped his hand energetically: hers was warm and both soft and strong. She was a little breathless, as if she had been hurrying. ‘Am I late?’

‘Indeed you’re two minutes early,’ Harker smiled. ‘You look beautiful.’