Rage (85 page)

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Authors: Wilbur Smith

BOOK: Rage
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‘Thank you, but I'll walk.'
She had tea alone at Fortnum & Masons and when she got back to the hotel Michael was frantic with worry.
‘For Heaven's sake, Mickey. I'm not a baby. I can look after myself. I just felt like exploring on my own.'
‘Mater is giving a party for us at the Lord Kitchener this evening. She wants us there before six.'
‘You mean Tara, not Mater – and the Lordy, not the Lord Kitchener. Don't be so bourgeois and colonial, Mickey darling.'
At least fifty people crowded into the residents' lounge of the Lordy for Tara's party, and she provided unlimited quantities of draught bitter and Spanish red wine to wash down the Irish cook's unforgettable snacks. Michael entered into the spirit of the occasion. He was at all times the centre of an arguing gesticulating group. Isabella backed herself into a corner of the lounge and with a remote and icy
hauteur
discouraged any familiar approach from the other guests, while at the same time memorizing their names and faces as Tara introduced them.
After the first hour the smoky claustrophobic atmosphere, and the volume of conversation lubricated by Tara's Spanish plonk, became oppressive and Isabella's eyes felt gritty and a dull ache started in her temples. Tara had disappeared and Michael was still enjoying himself.
‘That's my patriotic duty for tonight,' she decided, and sidled towards the door taking care not to alert Michael to her departure.
As she passed the deserted reception desk, she heard voices from behind the frosted glass door of Tara's tiny office, and she had an attack of conscience.
‘I can't just go off without thanking Mater,' she decided. ‘It was an awful party, but she went to a lot of trouble and I am one of the guests of honour.'
She slipped behind the desk, and was about to tap on the panel of the door when she heard her mother say, ‘But, comrade, I didn't expect you to arrive tonight.' The words were commonplace, but the tone in which Tara said them was not. She was more than agitated – she was afraid, deadly afraid.
A man's voice replied, but it was so low and hoarse that Isabella could not catch the words, and then Tara said, ‘But they are my own children. It's perfectly safe.'
This time the man's reply was sharper. ‘Nothing is ever safe,' he said. ‘They are also your husband's children, and your husband is a member of the Fascist racist regime. We will leave now and return later after they have gone.'
Isabella acted instinctively. She darted back into the lobby and out through the glass front doors of the hotel. The narrow street was lined with parked vehicles, one of them a dark delivery van tall enough to screen her. She hid behind it.
After a few minutes, two men followed her out of the front entrance of the hotel. They both wore dark raincoats but their heads were bare. They set off briskly, walking side by side towards the Cromwell Road and as they came level with where she leaned against the side of the van, the street light lit their faces.
The man nearest to her was black, with a strong, resolute face, broad nose and thick African lips. His companion was white and much older. His flesh was pale as putty and had the same soft amorphous look. His hair was black and lank and lifeless. It hung on to his forehead, and his eyes were dark and fathomless as pools of coal tar – and Isabella understood why her mother had been afraid. This was a man who inspired fear.
Colonel Van Vuuren sat beside her at his desk with the pile of albums in front of them. ‘He is a white man. That makes life a lot easier for all of us,' he said as he selected one of the albums.
‘These are all white,' he explained. ‘We have got them all in here. Even the ones safely behind bars, like Bram Fischer.'
She found his photograph on the third page.
‘That's the one.'
‘Are you surer Van Vuuren asked. ‘It's not a very good photo.'
It must have been taken as he was climbing into a vehicle, for the background was a city street. He was
glancing back, most of his body obscured by the open door of the vehicle, and movement had blurred his features slightly.
‘Yes. That's him all right,' Isabella repeated. ‘I could never mistake those eyes.'
Van Vuuren referred to the separate ledger. ‘The photograph was taken in East Berlin by the American CIA two years ago. He is a wily bird, that's the only picture we have. His name is Joe Cicero. He is the Secretary General of the South African Communist Party and a colonel in the Russian KGB. He is a chief of staff of the military wing of the banned ANC, the
Umkhonto we Sizwe.'
Van Vuuren smiled. ‘And so, my dear, the big fish has arrived. Now we must try and identify his companion. That will not be so easy.'
It took almost two hours. Isabella paged through the albums slowly. When she finished one pile, Van Vuuren's assistent brought in another armful of albums and she began again. Van Vuuren sat patiently beside her, sending out for coffee and encouraging her with a smile and a word when she flagged.
‘Yes.' Isabella straightened up at last. ‘This is the one.'
‘You have been wonderful. Thank you.' Van Vuuren reached for the ledger and turned to the
curriculum vitae of
the man in the photograph.
‘Raleigh Tabaka,' he read out. ‘Secretary of the Vaal branch of PAC and member of
Poqo
. Organizer of the attack on the Sharpeville police station. Disappeared three years ago, before he could be detained. Since then there have been rumours that he was seen in training camps in Morocco and East Germany. He is rated as a trained and dangerous terrorist. Two big fish together. Now, if we could just find what they are up to!'
T
ara Courtney waited up long after her party had broken up. The last guests had staggered through the glass doors, and Michael had kissed her goodnight and gone off to try and pick up a late cruising taxi in the Cromwell Road.
Since first she had met him, Joe Cicero had been associated with danger and suffering and loss. There was always an aura of mystery and a passionless evil surrounding him. He terrified her. The man with him she had met for the first time that night. Joe Cicero had introduced him only as Raleigh, but Tara's heart had gone out to him immediately. Although he was much younger, he reminded her so strongly of her own Moses. He had the same smouldering intensity and compelling presence, the same dark majesty of bearing and command.
They came back a little after two in the morning, and Tara let them in and led them through to her own bedroom in the back area of the hotel.
‘Raleigh will stay with you for the next two or three weeks. Then he will return to South Africa. You will provide everything he asks for, particularly the information.'
‘Yes, comrade,' Tara whispered. Although she was the registered owner and licensed proprietress of the hotel, the money for the purchase had been provided by Joe Cicero and she took her orders directly from him.
‘Raleigh is the nephew of Moses Gama,' Joe said, watching her carefully with those expressionless black eyes as she turned to the younger man.
‘Oh, Raleigh, I didn't realize. It is almost as though we are one family. Moses is the father of my son, Benjamin.'
‘Yes,' Raleigh, answered. ‘I know that. This is the reason that I am able to give you the object of my mission to South Africa. Your dedication is proven and unquestioned. I am going back to Africa to free your husband and my uncle, Moses Gama, from the prison of the Fascist racist
Verwoerd regime to lead the democratic revolution of our people.'
Her joy dawned slowly with her understanding. Then she went to Raleigh Tabaka and as she embraced him she was weeping with happiness.
‘I will give anything to help you succeed,' she whispered through her tears. ‘Even my life.'
J
akobus Stander had only two classes on a Friday morning, and the last one ended at 11.30. He left the grounds of the University of the Witwatersrand immediately afterwards and caught the bus down to Hillbrow. It was a ride of only fifteen minutes and he reached his flat a little after midday.
The suitcase was still on the low coffee table where he had placed it the night before, after he had finished working on it. It was a cheap brown case made of imitation leather with a pressed metal lock.
He stood staring at it with pale topaz-coloured eyes. Except for the eyes, he was an unremarkable young man. Although he was tall, he was too thin and the grey flannel trousers hung loosely around his waist. His hair was long, flecked with dandruff, hanging over the back of his collar, and the elbows of his baggy brown corduroy jacket were patched with leather. Rather than a tie he wore a turtleneck jersey with the collar rolled over. It was the self-consciously shabby uniform of the left-wing intellectual, adopted by even the Professor of the Department of Sociology in which Jakobus was a senior lecturer.
Without removing the jacket, he sat down on the narrow bed and stared at the suitcase.
‘I am one of the only ones left,' he thought. ‘It's all up to me now. They have taken Baruch and Randy and Berny I am all alone.'
There had been less than fifty of them even in the best times. A small band of true patriots, champions of the proletariat, almost all of them white and young, members of the young liberals or students and faculty members involved in radical student politics at the English-speaking universities of Cape Town and the Witwatersrand. Kobus had been the only Afrikaner in their ranks.
At first they had called themselves the National Committee of Liberation, and their methods had been more sophisticated than
Umkhonto we Sizwe
and the Rivonia group. They had used dynamite and electrical timing devices, and their successes had been many and heartening. They had destroyed power substations and railway switching systems, even a reservoir dam, and in the triumphant mood of those early days they had restyled themselves the African Resistance Movement.
In the end they had been destroyed in exactly the same manner as Mandela and his Rivonia group, by the inefficiency of their own security and the inability of the members who were captured by the security police to withstand interrogation.
He was one of the only ones left, but he knew that his hours of freedom were numbered. The security police had taken Berny two days ago and by now he would have talked. Berny was not made of heroic stuff, a small pale and nervous creature, too soft-hearted for the cause. Jakobus had argued against his recruitment, but that was too late now. The Bureau of State Security had Berny, and Berny knew his name. There was very little time left, but still he procrastinated. He looked at his wristwatch. It was almost one o'clock. His mother would be home by now, preparing his father's lunch. He lifted the telephone.
Sarah Stander stood over the kitchen stove. She felt tired and dispirited, but she seemed always to be tired these days. The telephone rang and she turned down the hot
plate of the stove, and wiped her hands on her apron as she went through to her husband's study.
The room was lined with shelves of dusty law books that had once been a promise of hope to her, a symbol of success and advancement, but now seemed rather to be the fetters that bound Roelf and her in penury and mediocrity.
She lifted the phone. ‘Hello. This is
Mevrou
Stander.'
‘Mama,' Jakobus replied, and she gave a little coo of joy.
‘My boy – where are you?' But at his reply her spirits plunged again.
‘In the flat in Johannesburg, Mama.' That was a thousand miles away, and her longing to see him devastated her.
‘I hoped you were—'
‘Mama,' he cut her off. ‘I had to speak to you. I had to explain. Something terrible is going to happen. I wanted to tell you — I don't want you to be angry with me, I don't want you to hate me.'
‘Never!' she cried. ‘I love you too much, my boy—'
‘I don't want Papa and you to feel bad. What I do is not your fault. Please understand and forgive me.'
‘Kobus, my son, what is it? I don't understand what you are saying.'
‘I can't tell you, Mama. Soon you will understand. I love you and Papa – please remember that.'
‘Kobus,' she cried. ‘Kobus!' but the earpiece clicked and then there was only the hum of a broken connection.
Frantically she rang the exchange and asked to be reconnected but it took fifteen minutes before the operator called her back.
‘There is no reply from your Johannesburg number.'
Sarah was distraught. She roamed around her kitchen, the midday meal forgotten, twisting her apron in her fingers, trying desperately to think of some way of reaching her son. When her husband came in through the front door
she rushed down the passageway and threw her arms around his neck, and she gabbled out her fears.
‘Manie!' Roelf said. ‘I will telephone him. He can send one of his men around to Kobus's flat.'
‘Why didn't I think of that?' Sarah sobbed.
The secretary in Manfred's. ministry told them he was not available and would not be in again until Monday morning.
‘What will we do now?' Roelf was as worried as she was.
‘Lothie.' Sarah brightened. ‘He is in the police in Johannesburg. Ring Lothie, he will know what to do.'

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