He dried his hands and seized Jakobus by the back of his shirt. He hauled him to his feet, dragged him through into the lounge and flung him into one of the armchairs.
Lourens and the forensic team were already working over the apartment.
'Did you get the photographs?' Lothar asked, and Lourens handed him a buff envelope.
Jakobus sat huddled in the chaii'. His shirt was fouled with vomit, and his nose and eyes were red and running. The corner of his mouth was torn where Lothar had forced it open, and he was trembling violently.
Lothar sorted through the contents of the envelope and then he laid a glossy black and white print on the coffee table in front of Jakobus.
Jakobus stared at it. It was a photograph of the truncated body of the child, nestled in a pool of her own blood with the lollipop in her hand. He began to weep. He sobbed and choked and turned his head away. Lothar moved around behind his chair and caught the back of his neck, forced his head back. 'Look at it!' he ordered.
'I didn't mean it,' Jakobus whispered brokenly. 'I didn't mean it to happen.' The cold white fury faded from Lothar's brain, and he releas Jakobus's head and stepped back from him uncertainly. Those we the words he had used. 'I didn't mean it to happen.' The exact war he had used as he had stood over the black boy with the dead gir head cradled in his lap and the raw wounds running red into tl dust of Sharpeville.
Suddenly Lothar felt weary and sickened. He wanted to go aw by himself. Lourens could take over from here, but he braced himself to fight off the despair.
He laid his hand on Jakobus's shoulder, and the touch wE strangely gentle and compassionate.
'Ja, Kobus, we never mean it to happen - but still they die. Now is your turn, Kobus, your turn to die. Come, let's go.' The arrest was made six hours after the bomb blast, and even th, English press was fulsome in its praise of the efficiency of the polic investigation. Every front page across the nation carried photograph, of Colonel Lothar De La Rey.
Six weeks later in the Johannesburg Supreme Court, Jakobus Stander pleaded guilty to the charge of murder and was sentenced to death. Two weeks later his appeal was denied by the Appellate Division in Bloemfontein and sentence of death was confirmed. Lothar De La Rey's promotion to brigadier was announced within days of the Appellate Division's decision.
Raleigh Tabaka arrived in Cape Town while the Stander trial was still in progress. He came back the way he had left, as a crewman on a Liberian-registered tramp steamer.
His papers, although issued in the name of Goodwill Mhlazini, were genuine and he passed quickly through customs and immigration-and with his bag over his shoulder walked up the foreshore to the main Cape Town railway station.
When he reached the Witwatersrand the following evening, he caught the bus out to Drake's Farm and went to the cottage where Victoria Gama was staying. Vicky opened the door and she had the child by the hand. There was the smell of cooking from the little kitchenette in the back.
She started violently as she saw him. alelgh, come in quickly.' 'R ' She drew him into the cottage and bolted the door.
'You shouldn't have come here. You know that I am banned.
They watch this place,' she told him as she went quickly to the windows and drew the curtains. Then she came back to where he stood in the centre of the room and studied him.
'You have changed,' she said softly. 'You are a man now.' The training and the discipline of the camps had left their mark. He stood straight and alert, and he seemed to exude an intensity and a force that reminded her of Moses Gama.
'He has become one of the lions,' she thought, and she asked, 'Why have you come here, Raleigh, and how can I help you?' 'I have come to free Moses Gama from the prison of the Boers and I will tell you how you can help me.' Victoria gave a little cry of joy, and clutched the child closer to her. 'Tell me what to do,' she pleaded.
He would not stay to eat the evening meal with Victoria, would not even sit down on one of the cheap deal chairs.
'When is your next visit to Moses?' he asked in a low but powerful voice.
'In eight days' time,' Victoria told him, and he nodded.
'Yes I knew it was soon. That was part of our planning. Now, here is what you must do --' When the prison launch ran out from Cape Town harbour, carrying Victoria and the child to exercise their six-monthly visiting rights, Raleigh Tabaka was on the deck of one of the crayfish trawlers that was moored alongside the repair wharf in the outer harbour. Raleigh was dressed like one of the trawlermen in a blue jersey, yellow plastic overalls and sea boots. He pretended to be working on the pile of crayfish pots on the foredeck, but he studied the ferry as it passed close alongside before it made the turn out through the entrance to the breakwater. He made out Victoria's regal figure in the stern. She was wearing her caftan in yellow, green and black, the colours of the ANC which always infuriated the jailers.
When the ferry had cleared the harbour and was set on course towards the low whale-backed profile of Robben Island far out in the bay, Raleigh walked back along the deck of the eighty-foot trawler to the wheelhouse.
The skipper of the trawler was a burly coloured man, dressed like Raleigh in jersey and waterproofs. Raleigh had met his son at the Lord Kitchener Hotel in London, an activist who had taken part in the Longa uprising and had fled the country immediately afterwards.
'Thank you, comrade,' Raleigh said, and the skipper came to the door of the wheelhouse and took the black pipe from between his even white teeth.
'Did you find out what you wanted?' 'Yes, comrade.' 'When will you need me for the next part?' 'Within ten days.' Raleigh replied.
'You must give me at least twenty-four hours' warning. I have t get a permit from the fisheries department to work in the bay.' Raleigh nodded. 'I have planned for that.' He turned his head t( look forward towards the trawler's bows. 'Is your boat stron enough?' he asked.
'You let me worry about that,' the skipper chuckled. 'A boat that can live in the South Atlantic winter gales is
