Deaken was still at the breakfast table, set out on the wide, sweeping verandah overlooking the gardens. The water sprinklers were already revolving over the grasses and shrubbery to beat the cooking heat of midday. Deaken noted that the arbour was still as colourful and as carefully kept as he remembered it. He could see four Africans working in the grounds but knew there would be more. The maintenance staff had been twenty strong when he had lived there. His mother had always insisted on neatness and efficiency. He was glad he didn’t look such a mess this morning. Whoever had cleaned, pressed and mended his suit had made an excellent job of it.
His father, who had remained standing after returning to report the telephone call, sat down again and gestured for the waiting houseboy to clear the breakfast debris. Deaken saw that the serving staff still wore white gloves.
“I’m sorry about last night,” said the older man unexpectedly.
Deaken shrugged. “1 suppose she’d reason enough.”
“It was still rude… unnecessary. She was very hurt by what happened last time.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Your mother was always ambitious. She thinks if I’d got the original appointment, I could be premier now.”
“Couldn’t you still?”
“I’ve got to make a success of the Interior Ministry first.”
Deaken looked back at the garden and the working Africans. His father epitomized the Boer: member of the Broederbond, the closed, secret society of ruling class, always a participant in the Voortrekker marches, which commemorated the occupation of the country and their subsequent fight against the British. There was everything he hated in the man he loved so much.
“Do you believe Swart… that this country wasn’t involved?”
“My appointment has been rumoured for some time,” said the older man. “They wouldn’t lie to me, knowing that I can find out easily enough.”
“Then I won’t do anything to embarrass you,” promised Deaken. “I intended to. The threat of publicity was the only weapon I had to protect Karen. But not now.”
The old man nodded.
“Do you believe me?”
“It’s difficult to.”
“I’m not mad.”
“I don’t think you are.”
“What do you think then?” demanded Deaken.
“That it’s going to be difficult to convince anyone else.”
Deaken caught a movement from the French windows. It was one of the house servants. Seeing his expectation, his father said, “She won’t be coming out.”
“Oh,” said Deaken. He supposed half a reconciliation was better than none. Was this really a reconciliation with his father? Or the action of a man who had lost one opportunity and was trying to minimize the risk of losing another? It really wasn’t important. Deciding what to do next was important and he realized, emptily, that he didn’t know.
“We’d better go,” said his father. “They said noon.”
The limousine which had brought them from Johannesburg was waiting, with the uniformed driver at the wheel; it had been washed and polished and gleamed in the sun. They moved off along the broad residential roads, between landscaped gardens jewelled by mansions and villas and beneath the purple and violet jacaranda trees. Deaken was surprised to feel a certain nostalgia.
The Department of National Security was a modern, tall, tinted-glass building and the office of its Director, Brigadier Heinrich Muller, was on the top floor, occupying a corner with a panoramic view over Pretoria. Deaken followed his father into the room and closed the door behind them. Muller was a large, heavy-bodied man, fullfeatured and with thick, heavy hands. Like Swart, who stood alongside and was the only other man in the room, he wore plain clothes. In fact Swart didn’t appear to have changed since the previous night. Deaken saw that the expressions weren’t as sceptical as he had expected, just blank. His father made the introductions and Muller offered his hand. Deaken took it, surprised.
“I’m sorry for the delay,” said Muller, gesturing to chairs. “Things took longer than we thought.”
“What things?” said Deaken.
“Checking that a yacht owned by a man called Adnan Azziz, who has a son in a Swiss school, was in harbour at Monte Carlo,” elaborated Muller. “That there was an unexplained and so far unsolved assault upon a holiday villa near a small French town called Rixheim. And that a freighter named the Bellicose, owned by the Levcos shipping company, sailed from Marseilles over a week ago and made a call within the last two days at Dakar.”
Deaken experienced the sensation of being in a lift that suddenly descends faster than expected.
“Thank you,” he said, soft-voiced. “For believing me… for bothering to make the inquiries.”
“It wasn’t altruism,” said Muller. “We’ve an interest in stopping major campaigns in Namibia.” He hesitated. “Which remains a problem.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Deaken’s father.
Muller looked at Swart. The stocky man cleared his throat and said, “According to what you told me last night, Azziz has ordered the Bellicose to return for a rendezvous off Algiers.”
The falling sensation hit Deaken again, but this time it was a result of fear-fear and blinding anger. “Don’t say the bastard has-!”
“Lloyds report a northerly course,” said Swart. “The last report put the freighter forty miles off the Mauritanian coast, making twelve knots in a medium swell.”
Deaken frowned at the man. “So he is doing what he said?”
“We’ve long-range reconnaissance aircraft,” interrupted Muller. “We ordered a check, initially little more than a precaution. At dawn this morning a freighter, later identified from aerial photographs to be the Bellicose, was proceeding southwards towards Angola.”
There was a protracted silence in the room. Deaken’s father broke it. “That doesn’t make sense,” he said.
“Only if there are two ships,” said the security chief. “And we know there aren’t. That’s why we delayed this meeting. We overflew the Mauritanian position two hours ago-a supposed Air Force training flight to the Azores. We’ve swept the area. There are ships certainly. But none of them is the Bellicose. ”
“So Underberg…” said Deaken, beginning to understand, “or whoever he is will think we’re keeping to the arrangement,” he said. “He is getting his information from Lloyds.”
It made sense of what had happened in Dakar. Azziz was the bwana mkubwa, the big man who had wanted to keep him off the Bellicose, so that he wouldn’t discover that a change of course was never intended for the freighter.
“I understand your reaction,” said Muller. “Of more concern to us is that whoever bought all the weaponry appears to be getting delivery as planned.”
“It has to be SWAPO surely?” said Deaken.
“That’s the obvious conclusion,” said Muller. “But there are still too many uncertainties about this business.”
He looked at Swart again. The man took from Muller’s desk two photographs and showed them to Deaken. “Do you recognize either of these two men?”
They were official pictures, both men staring directly and self-consciously at the camera. “No” said Deaken. “I’ve never seen either of them before.”
“I’m glad,” said Muller.
“Who are they?” said Deaken.
“Marius Underberg and Jan Underberg,” said the Director.
“So who’s the man I saw in Geneva?”
“Will you do something for us?” asked Muller.
“Of course,” said Deaken. As he spoke, he realized the final irony. He was cooperating, even seeking the assistance, of an organization which he had criticized and fought all his life. But there was no choice. “What do you want?” he said.
