mm recoilless anti-tank. They'd be needing that knowledge, the little sods. Their country was going into automatic rifles and armoured personnel carriers and White conscripts in the townships, and by the time these kids were fattened up then it might have come down to tanks and artillery. It was a bad image for Jack. His thoughts ran fast to Potgieterstraat and Defence Headquarters and the guns of the sentries and the fire slits on the walls of Local. A bad awful bloody express train of thought because he had never believed that Beverly Hills could be so well protected…
If he had known it would be that well protected then Jimmy Sandham would be alive, and Duggie would be alive, and Jack Curwen would be in his office, at his desk, on the north side of Leatherhead.
Bit bloody late, Jack.
He sat on a bench. He waited.
Jan and Ros had argued half the night away. They had argued in the car on the way to the zoo. The argument had continued as they tracked the Englishman.
'Violence doesn't change anything.'
'The Boers listen to violence, they don't listen to debate.'
'Blowing people up, killing and maiming people, won't change the government.'
'Change will only come when control of the townships is lost.'
'The state is committed to real change, all that's needed is a breathing space for the moderates on all sides to come forward and negotiate.'
'The moderates? What do they want to talk about? About opening up Whites beaches for non-segregated bathing? Do you think they care in the townships, where they're queuing up for charity food parcels, about a nice little swim on a Whites Only beach? The moderates aren't relevant, might have been twenty years ago, not now. It's about power, not about which beach you're allowed to swim on. Anyone who has power will never hand it over voluntarily. The Boers'll have to be burned out of power.'
'Your way, Jan, only slows the pace of change.'
'They're playing with reform, Ros. They want to get the Americans off their backs, so they can go back to living the way they've always lived, the White boot on the Black throat.'
'Are you ashamed of being White?'
'I've no shame, because I'm fighting against a White evil.
I didn't ask you to spy in my room. You can get out of my life.'
'I'm stuck with your bloody life. I'm your sister. On your own you're dead or you're locked up. I won't turn away from you. I wish I could, and I can't.'
For half an hour they watched the Englishman move through the zoo's gardens. At the sea lions and the compound for the big cats they had split and gone in opposite ways so that each of them could be sure they were free of a tail. Jan thought that his sister learned fast. If there had been a tail he believed they would have seen it.
For Jan there was the fascination of seeing the clean shouldered back of the man who had achieved the remarkable, and carried a bomb into John Vorster Square. For Ros there was the fascination of seeing the man who had come as an activist to their country, who was capable of murder.
For what he had achieved, Jan thought the stranger was a hero. For involving her brother, Ros thought him an enemy.
They came into the military museum.
Through the heads and shoulders of the schoolchildren, between the snub barrels of the artillery pieces, they saw him. They were a boy and a girl out walking, there was nothing about them to excite suspicion. They looked at the man who sat hunched on the bench.
Ros said, 'Once you've spoken to him then you're more deeply involved than ever before. You could turn round, you could go home. Father would get you a ticket, you could fly out of the country tonight. You could be safe.'
Jan said, 'I don't run away.'
'You don't run away because you can't run…' She hated herself.
'They don't listen to reason. Last year when they hanged Ben Moloise they had petitions from all over the world.
They didn't give a shit. They strung him up because what the rest of the world says doesn't c o u n t… '
'He was convicted of killing a policeman.'
'Now they're going to hang five men, and again the rest of the world's pleading for mercy. They don't give a shit.
This man knows it, fight force with force. Fight the force of John Vorster Square with the force of a fire bomb.'
'And Pretoria Central?'
'I don't know,' Jan said.
He had the diagrams of the gaol in the inner pocket of his windcheater jacket.
'You're getting to be a real creep, Jan.'
They went forward, Jan limping and ahead, and Ros trailing him.
* *
He turned when he heard the voice. The voice spoke his name.
Jack saw the boy. He saw the shallow body and the thin face. He saw the way the shoulder drooped. He saw that the boy was crippled. The boy was behind the bench, trying to smile a greeting.
He looked the other way. The girl was standing back two more paces than the boy. A nice looking girl, and older than the boy, and she wore a summer skirt and a blouse buttoned to the throat. He could see the lines at her mouth, tension lines.
'I'm Jack Curwen.'
'I was ordered to contact you. You followed the instructions, thank you.'
They stared at each other. As if neither had quite believed the ordinariness of the other.
Jack smiled, the boy grinned. Jack wondered why the girl didn't smile.
'I'm Jan, this is my sister. You don't need any more names.'
Strangely formal. Jack shook hands with them.
A shyness in Jan's voice. 'What you did at John Vorster Square was incredible.'
Again the silence. None of them knowing what to say.
Out of earshot the schoolchildren were spidering over the hulk of the museum's largest tank.
Jan drew the envelope from his pocket. He passed it to Jack. Jack ripped open the fold. He saw the diagrams. He leafed quickly through the sheets of paper, the frown settling sharp cut on his forehead. He knew the girl's eyes never left his. The school teacher's voice carried gently to him. She had raised her voice because she was describing to her class the cyclic rate of fire of a heavy machine gun from the Great War. He saw that the diagrams were detail of Pretoria Central. He saw the positioning of Beverly Hills, he understood why he had not seen the walls when he had walked on Potgieterstraat.
'What happens now?'
Jan said, 'I have to take you into the north of the Transvaal. There is a rendezvous there for you, close to a town called Warmbaths. It is a spa town about a hundred kilometres from Pretoria. You should go back to your hotel, and you should check out of your hotel, then we drive to Warmbaths.'
'Do you know why I have come to South Africa?'
'No.'
Ros snapped, 'And he doesn't need to know.'
Jack saw the anger on the boy's face.
