He sat cross-legged, his back against the bed, and gazed down at the gaol. A long time he sat, unmoving, searching for the plan, worrying for the route. He sat in the half light, only the light beside the bed on. Searching and worrying.
Jack stood. He went to the kitchenette area of the room and rifled the drawers and cupboards until he found a set of cooking scales. From his suitcase he lifted out the package of explosives. He didn't think the wrapping would weigh much, not enough to confuse his calculations. He weighed the explosives.
He had fifteen pounds and four ounces of plaster gelignite.
He replaced the gelignite in the suitcase, laid it beside the wrapped detonators and the firing wire.
There was a telephone beside the bed.
It was an impulse, born of aloneness. It was eight minutes to three in the morning, Sunday morning.
Below the flat, Hillbrow slept. The streets had at last quietened.
He wondered if his father slept.
Jack knew that if he did not make the call then he might just as well take a taxi to the airport in a dozen hours' time and book a flight and fly out.
He found a book with the code and dialled. He had made up his mind.
The ringing of the telephone scattered the cats.
The bell drove them from the newspaper covering the kitchen table, and from the cushioned chair beside the stove, sent them scurrying to the dark corners.
George Hawkins blundered into the kitchen, groping for the light switch, reaching for the telephone. He heard the distant voice. No rambling small talk, no crap about the weather, nor about the time in the morning.
The wall was twenty feet high, it was eighteen inches thick. What was the minimum explosive required with a conical shaped charge of nine inches in diameter to knock a man-sized hole at ground level?
'Bugger… '
George needed paper and pencil. Couldn't find them.
Didn't know where he'd last put them. Had to do the calculation in his head. And he was half asleep.
'Shit…'
And the boy was talking about minimums. If he was on about minimums, then the boy was in trouble, deep bloody trouble.
'Twelve pounds is absolute bloody minimum. Problem with the minimum is that the concrete on the far side of the reinforcing mesh may not be broken clear. Ideal would be fifteen to eighteen.'
The minimum?
'That's twelve pounds.'
How could the reverse end of the firing tube be blocked?
'Concrete mix.'
Could the conical shaping be lightweight, aluminium?
'Not important that it's heavy. It's good if it's lightweight.'
How much stand off should there be from the firing end of the metal tubing to the wall?
'For a man-sized hole you should have six to nine inches
… Twelve pounds of explosive, that's the absolute bloody bottom line… '
The telephone purred in his ear.
For a full minute George Hawkins held the receiver against his face, shivered in his pyjamas. He put the telephone down and went and sat in his chair and he called for the cats and rubbed the warmth into his bare skinny feet. George Hawkins shook his head, slowly, sadly. He had been asked for the minimum. He had answered the question. Twelve pounds was the bloody border line. The boy was in trouble.
He sat for an hour with his cats on his lap before he eased them off and went back to his cold bed.
As the city slept late on Sunday the colonel worked at his desk.
He had excused himself from taking tea with Aunt Annie's relations after church. He had told his wife to offer his apologies to the minister.
He read the reports that had come in late the previous evening. He couldn't have waited for them the previous evening, because the loss of Thiroko had been too great a blow. It should never have been left in the hands of Recce Commando, that he was certain of. He had been sure of it all through the late hours at home as he had listened to his wife, sniffling and talking of Aunt Annie.
Another day, another opportunity.
He gutted the reports.
A White male. Age between middle twenties and thirty years. Grey trousers and a green sports shirt and a mauve sweater. Common to both sales.
An English accent.
The reports were specific. Not an English accent that was South African. Not the accent of a long term English immigrant… and they were pigs who should never have been let into the country, hanging on to their British passports, shovelling money out of the country, sending their kids away to avoid army service, sneering at the Afrikaners who had made the country… The accent of an English Englishman.
The purchases had been made within one hour of each other on the day the bomb exploded.
Under the reports he had two photo-fit portraits. They had been built as mosaics from the descriptions of the two shopkeepers. The hair style, the deep set eyes, the strong nose, the jutting chin.
It was the colonel's belief that he stared at the two faces of one man. They were the faces of the man who had destroyed the back hallway of John Vorster Square. And his mind could wander. If he had been consulted he would have argued strongly against the use of Recce Commando in the tracking and failed capture of Jacob Thiroko. He had not been consulted and as a result he had been denied the chance of extracting information from one of the best sources he'd ever been close to. He had scarcely slept for rage.
He went down the stairs to the incident room. He let it be known, that in his opinion, from the weight of his experience, the bomb was not the work of Umkonto we Sizwe.
'I believe it was thrown by an individual who arrived recently from England, otherwise more care would have been taken in the purchase of the materials. It should be assumed that he came to South Africa very shortly before the attack. The airports should be checked. You should look for a flight from Europe because the shop men have given him a pale complexion, he hasn't been in the sun. You should also check every one of the city's hotels. That is my suggestion.'
He knew his suggestion would be taken as an order.
•**
'You'slept on it?' Jan asked.
'My decision, yes.'
'No flight?'
'No,' Jack said.
A pointless question. Jan could see beside the unmade bed the toy building that was Pretoria Central.
'I don't want to…'
Jack cut in. 'You don't want to get shot.'
'I don't want to start something that is impossible.'
'It's an over-used word.'
'You don't have explosives and you don't have weapons.'
Jack waved him quiet. He told Jan about the fifteen pounds of gelignite, saved from the John Vorster Square bomb. He told him about the detonators and the firing fuse.
He saw the surprise growing on the boy's face.
'Didn't you trust us?'
'Nor myself.'
