76 (1962) Section 21, also five years to death – the Internal Security Act, No. 79 (1976) giving the power of preventive detention and banning orders. There were not many prisoners, politicals, who did not feel the sliding bowel weakness and the tickle of terror when they stood in the presence of the colonel.
He would have described himself as a patriot. He would have said that every action he undertook in John Vorster Square was for the benefit of his beloved South Africa. He would have said that he stood in the front line of the battle against the contagion of communism and the drift to anarchy.
On that everyday afternoon, the colonel watched with grudging satisfaction as a full time clerk of F.O.S.A.T.U. made a voluntary statement. Small beer, a Coloured, an insignificant creature, admitting to handing out leaflets demanding the release of political prisoners. With the vermin's own guilt tied down, the work might begin of extracting information from him on more senior members of the Federation of South African Trade Unions. He would be charged under the Terrorism Act. They could do for the clerk under 'activities likely to endanger the maintenance of law and order', or they could do for him under 'activities likely to cause embarrassment to the administration of the affairs of state'. They had him by the throat, they had his confession, and now they could bargain the length of his sentence against the incrimination of the leaders of F.O.S.A.T.U. It was the leaders that the colonel wanted, not this rodent.
The clerk sat at the table and dictated a stuttering statement to a White corporal. He was watched by the colonel who stood in the doorway.
The journey to Pretoria was a sore in the colonel's mind.
He did not comprehend how a White preferred to hang rather than to come clean about the Blacks with whom he had collaborated. The visit to Beverly Hills had been a failure. He would happily have hanged James Carew himself to have expurgated that failure. He was no fool, he could rationalise his failure. He supposed that he had failed with Carew because he was unaccustomed to interrogating White politicals. One or two a year came into his domain on the top floors of John Vorster Square. Some he categorised as dedicated communists, some were gripped with the martyr wish, some he regarded as mentally deranged, some were all three. All of them he thought stupid. To suffer in the cause of Black freedom was idiotic. Carew was outside his categories, a mystery. He thought he hated the man which was why in this same room he had lost his temper, shouted.
There was no further reason for the colonel to stay and watch the clerk. He went back to his own office.
The sun was dipping between the mine waste mountains to the west. Far below him were the gaudy street lights and the ribbons of the headlamps of the homegoing traffic.
There was a sheaf of telex messages on his deak. There was a photocopy of a report from Major Swart in London.
The colonel thought that Pretoria overrated Swart.
Darkness was falling on the city.
He gutted Swart's telex. More failure. Buck passing and excuses. Failure to make the connection between Mrs Hilda Perry and James Carew. Failure to link one Douglas Arkwright, deceased, on a contact between a White male, unidentified, and Jacob Thiroko. Failure to maintain a tail on Jacob Thiroko.
Categorised totally incompetent, that Swart. The one and only link to Carew's earlier life and Swart had failed to make anything of it. The report was soon pushed aside, categorised not useful, back in the tray beneath less intractable problems.
The piece of paper that had failed, that he had reckoned a guarantee of success, the piece of paper that carried the minister's signature, lay in the colonel's personal safe. He would shred it on the morning of the execution. That failure would die with Carew.
But failure it was. At the heart of the failure was the void that was Carew's past, exacerbated by the man's refusal to talk. The bachelor apartment in Hillbrow had been searched and searched again and revealed not a clue to the past. The drivers on the taxi ranks had been quizzed, interrogated even, and found to know nothing significant about the man at all. The bombing team had all said in their statements that they had never seen the man before he drove them away from Pritchard. The void spirited up the colonel's suspicions. No man could so effectively hide his past, unless he had deliberately hidden it, had a very good reason for hiding it…
He consumed the paperwork on his desk. He had promised his wife that he would not be late home.
**
He had waited until the bus load of tourists filled the hotel lobby with their stacks of suitcases.
He had taken the lift down twice before, holding the grip bag sagging close against his knee, and each time the lobby had been almost empty and he would have been noticed by the night porter and the bellboy and the luggage boys and the doorman. Twice he had gone back to his room to while away the minutes before trying again. Very tense, close in his thoughts. All his concentration was on the hulk that was John Vorster Square, and the fence around it, and the lights, and the armed police sentries, and on his father and on suppressing his fear. The plan called for him to expose himself to challenge and gunfire. He knew of no other way.
He stepped into the lobby. The lift doors shut behind him. The bellboys and the luggage boys were marshalling a huge pile of suitcases, the doorman was loudly supervising their distribution. The reception was lost in a half moon of argument because there was a double booking problem. The night porter was doling out keys to those who had been checked in and who had allocated rooms. They were Americans, fresh f r o m safari.
Jack crossed the lobby unnoticed. Unseen, he went out through the swing doors. Behind him rose a tumult of angry voices.
Dark streets. Streets given up by the Whites. The Whites were powering home to the suburbs in their BMWs and Jaguars. Jack walked with a brisk purpose. He stayed far out on the pavement, close to the kerb and the cars' lights, avoiding the shadowed shop entrances from which spurted the flash of a match, the glow of a drawn cigarette. There was no reason that he should have attracted attention. He was a young White who was late, hurrying with a bag that might contain his sports kit, whose weight he struggled to disguise.
He took the route that he knew, down Van Brandis, right onto Commissioner. Above him the lights were flickering out in the towers, the last workers leaving. The security guards with their polished staves patrolled the wide entrances.
Jack saw the lights in John Vorster Square, an oasis of work as the rest of the city shut down for the night. He took from the bag a rough stone, picked from a street building site on Commissioner. The stone gripped in his left hand, the size of a cricket ball. At school, in the team, they'd played him for his fielding. He could certainly throw. The stone was now his weapon and his protection.
There was a constable guarding the back gate.
A presentable young man, straight-backed, clean-shaven, and he wore his uniform and his Sam Browne well. He was often given the 6 pm to 10 pm shift on the rear entrance because his sergeant thought him the right sort of constable to open and close the gates on the comings and goings of the top brass. The constable sat in his box. His service revolver was holstered, the flap buttoned down because that was tidier. In the box was a loaded F.N. rifle, safety on, a gas mask, a telephone link to the operations room inside, and his personal radio.
He saw the car approach. He saw the lights flash and the indicator wink to him. He saw the uniform of the driver, and the uniforms of the passengers.
Behind him he heard the revving of an engine outside the gates, and he heard the shout for the gates to be opened.
The constable had a car to let in and a car to let out.
He went forward. He slipped the bolt that was accessible only from the inside. He swung the near gate back towards him, pushed away the further gate. He had to step back smartly to avoid the car coming from the outside, from Main Street.
There was a moment when he was back at the edge of the driveway, readying himself to salute, and the gates were fully opened, and the cars were jockeying to pass through.
There was a moment when he did not think to study the shadows across the road.
