Jack cut in. 'I told you I don't have time to be pissed about. I can tell you how you are different from these creeps round you. Different face, different eyes, different hands.'
'How different?'
'Different because they are a soldier's.'
'Perhaps you are mistaken.'
From behind Jack there was a burst of applause. He turned to see the stage filling.
'In this room you are the only man who is a soldier.'
'Who are you, Mr Jack Curwen?'
'My father is going to hang in South Africa in three weeks. My father is an activist of the A.N.C.'
The mask fell. Astonishment flooded Thiroko's face.
'Jeez Carew is my father.'
The applause grew. The audience stamped their feet as they stood and clapped the principal speakers of the evening as they climbed onto the stage. Major Swart could no longer look behind him. He had seen the young man and Thiroko deep in talk. He had to stand with the rest and beat his palms together. He heard the chairwoman of the meeting coo her gratitude that their meeting was honoured by the presence of a distinguished guest from the A.N.C. headquarters whose name for security reasons could not be given out. He saw Thiroko going forward. The bastard didn't look a fit man. When the audience settled down, Swart looked behind him.
There was no sign of the young stranger.
His eyes darted to the door. He saw the back of Douglas Arkwright's duffel coat disappearing.
He sat with his mother in the living room. Sam was upstairs, in bed before Jack had returned. He held cupped in his two hands the mug of coffee she had made for him. His hands were rock still.
'My mind's made up. I'm going to South Africa.'
'To see your Dad?'
'Yes.'
'I've told you, Sam'll help you with the airfare.'
'Not his business, it's mine.'
'What does he mean to you?'
'As much as if I'd known him all my life.'
His mother held a square of lace, dabbed it into her eyes.
'Will you have the strength when you go to see him, when you have to say goodbye to him?'
'It's not just to see him, Mum. I'm going there to bring my father home.'
7
Janice and Lucille stared at the open office door.
Jack was on the phone. He had spun his chair round so that he could rummage into his filing cabinet as he talked.
He didn't see Duggie Arkwright. He was a disaster, wearing his oldest patched jeans and a scarlet t-shirt under a skimpy denim top. He saw Jack, and whistled. Jack spun, saw who it was, and with a brisk apology finished his phone call.
Jack stood and muttered something to the girls about being out for most of the day. He took his coat. He felt their questions on his back and ignored them.
They went out of the office and into the mild morning air.
When Jack looked back from the pavement at the office window he saw that Nicholas Villiers and the girls had their noses pressed to the panes.
'You said you were going to ring,' Jack said.
'The kiddie was crying in the night. I got up, I was holding the kiddie near the window and I saw this guy on the far side of the road, covering our place. The kiddie had a bad night. I was up again a couple of hours later, he was still there. I didn't go back to bed, I just stayed in a chair. Each time I went to the window he was there.'
'Have you ever been under surveillance before?'
'Not that I've known… ' Duggie had a brittle, nervy laugh. 'I went on the tube this morning, travelled a few stops. There was another guy in the carriage, he got up when I got up. I came right across London, did two changes, he was always in the same carriage. I fixed him with the old
'on-off. Stay on till the doors are closing, then you squeeze off. He went on down the line, he looked pretty pissed off.
He must have been a South African…'
Jack was sombre, chewing at his thumb nail. 'Why not our police?'
'They don't have an underground railway in Johannesburg. 'On-off is the oldest one in the book, any London copper would know that one. Have to be a Boer not to know that one.'
Jack felt sick. 'Why follow you?'
'Perhaps they were there last night, saw us with the big fellow. Perhaps they're wondering who you are, perhaps they want a line into Thiroko. I don't know.'
They were still watched from the window. Jack would have loved to have turned on his heel, walked back into the offices of D amp; C. He would have loved to have remarked easily to Nicholas Villiers that the distractions of the last days were a thing of the past.
The sneer came to Duggie's mouth. 'Don't bloody whine.
You were the one whispering about explosives, you were the one wanting to meet the military wing of the A.N.C.'
'Sorry.'
'I couldn't ring you. I couldn't be sure you weren't tapped here.'
'Thanks.'
Duggie looked exhausted. 'Let's go meet the big boy.'
They drove into London.
•* •
Thiroko had come early. He was not a frequent visitor to London, but he was familiar enough with the British capital to be able to select his own rendezvous. He had chosen Lincoln's Inn Fields, a square of lawns and shrubs and tennis courts and flower beds and net ball courts. He liked open air meeting places where there were exits at all corners.
He was intrigued by the young man he had met the previous evening. And the young man was a distraction for his mind from the physician's message. He was sufficiently interested in the young man's brief explanation to him to have agreed to the meeting. And he knew, of course, of James Carew. He knew of the taxi driver who carried messages between dead letter drops, transported weapons between arms caches, could take photographs and draw maps.
A White had access to many target areas where it was not safe for a Black to go. He knew of the usefulness of the quiet-tongued taxi man.
Thiroko was forty-eight years old.
He had been out of South Africa since the military wing was formed, since the banned African National Congress had gone underground. He had never been back. His homes had been in Moscow and Dar in Tanzania and Luanda and Maputo and Gaberone and now Lusaka. Some months he dreamed of a triumphant return with the war won and the apartheid regime humbled and beaten. Most years he doggedly refused himself horizons of hope and struggled on, organising the infiltration of men and munitions into his former country.
