'It is my right to make a telephone call.'
'So it can all go on the encoder and hum back home?'
'I can establish my identity. You have no right to hold me.
'Major Swart, this isn't parking a C.D. car on a double yellow outside Harrods.'
Major Swart stared at the photograph of Jack Curwen.
He no longer listened to the detective inspector. His eyes flickered on, up to the table, up to the opened envelope and the spider writing that addressed the envelope to Mrs Hilda Perry. He was a trained policeman, excellent on faces. He remembered the photograph of James Carew. He looked at the face of Jack Curwen, the son.
'Shit… '
'I demand the right to make a telephone call.'
'They all say that, every piss-arsed, common thief, they all want to telephone their embassies… '
'I claim diplomatic immunity.'
'I must be getting hard of hearing in my old age.'
Major Swart smiled. He thought it was his winning smile.
He chuckled. He beamed up at Detective Inspector Cooper.
There was a fractional wink.
'Heh, man, we're all policemen together. I'm security police, you're Special Branch. Same job, same problems.
Both fighting the same enemy. We're on the same side, man.
We have to help each other. If you had a problem in the North of Ireland and we could help, of course we'd help.
Just a telephone call, man. What do you say?'
'I'd say you are a common burglar, and I'd say you are pissing in the wind, Major Swart.'
The detective inspector told the constable to take Major Swart to the cells.
Down a white tiled corridor. A locked door ahead. The echo of the feet and the clanging of the keys.
As if a calmness had come to the major now that he was freed from the sarcasm and goading of his interrogator.
The door ahead was unlocked. They went through. The door was locked behind him.
Closed in by the walls to the corridor, and by the bright ceiling lights, Major Swart understood.
The cell door was open, waiting for him. Folded blankets on the bed, and a bucket and a roll of lavatory paper on the floor beside it.
The door slammed behind him. He sagged onto the bed.
He understood.
He understood why he was refused normal diplomatic facilities, why immunity was denied him, why a telephone was kept from him, why a senior Special Branch officer had been brought late at night from London to this shit pit town. He had grasped the importance of James Carew. He understood that James Carew was their man…
He ran the three steps to the door. He was beating with his fists at the steel facing, bruising his hands, bellowing his anger.
'I know who your bloody Carew is. Heh, got it, I know.
He's your bloody undercover man. I know he is. I demand a telephone. I demand access to my embassy…'
His words rang around his head, beat at his ears.
He knew that no bastard heard him.
It was a bleak little room. There were posters of the smiling leader on the walls and boxes of pamphlets piled on the bare floorboards.
The Prime Minister's speech to the constituency workers had failed because, before it was delivered, the message had come through that the Director General was arriving for discussion on a matter of the utmost urgency.
'They're incommunicado at the moment?'
'Yes, Prime Minister. But Major Hannes Swart, an accredited diplomat, can, if he is released as diplomatic procedures require, furnish the security police authorities with information that in my opinion could lead them to judge that Jack Curwen will attack the Maximum Security section of Pretoria Central prison. If those authorities were to receive such information it would, in my judgement, considerably improve their chances of arresting or killing Curwen.'
There was a gleam of mischief in the Prime Minister's eye.
'When would Curwen move?'
'Tonight, perhaps tomorrow night. I doubt he'd leave it until darkness on Wednesday, too fine.'
'Does he stand any chance?'
'Let me sidetrack… Recently a man called Jacob Thiroko visited London. He was a principal officer in the military wing of the African National Congress. The Special Branch officer controlling the business at Leatherhead has given us the basis of a connection between Curwen and Thiroko, albeit a fragile one. Last week Thiroko flew back to Lusaka, and immediately set off with a small team back across the South African border. He was ambushed and killed, with all the members of his group, in the northern Transvaal. I suggest Thiroko would only have ventured into his country to lead a major operation. A major operation could be interpreted as an attack on the Maximum Security gaol where four members of an A.N.C. cadre are held and who will be hanged on Thursday with Carew. Now Thiroko's dead. Very possibly young Curwen now stands alone.'
'No chance?'
'In my opinion, no. Perhaps I exaggerate… '
'Tell me.'
'A few years ago three men broke out of the White Political prison. That's about a quarter of a mile from where Carew is due to hang. In the annals of escapology it was pretty remarkable. Every time they saw a key on a warder's chain they memorised it, and when they were in the workshops they used those memories to make a key. Their collection opened just about every door in this very secure compound. At night they used to let themselves out of their cells, with their keys, so that they could try every route that was available to them, but each time they came up against high walls that were floodlit, overlooked by watch towers.
They decided the only way out was through the front gate, and that's the way they w e n t… If you'd asked me, knowing what they planned to do, what were their chances, I'd have said one in two million.'
'If he were to succeed, if he were to bring his father home, I would face the collapse of this government's foreign policy in relation to South Africa. Our position of persuasion towards reform would become meaningless.'
'Pragmatic politics demand that they fail, Prime Minister, and die silent.'
'Emotion requires that they succeed, Director General
… It is only for his father?'
The Director General said, 'I doubt that a month ago he'd ever given South Africa ten minutes' thought.'
The Prime Minister said, 'I hope he succeeds…
Hold them at Leatherhead, to give the boy his chance.'
'And after he's had his chance we have to face the music.'
'The man at Leatherhead, we'll shrug it off.'
The Director General left by a back exit, picking his way between the garbage bags.
•**
It was past midnight. Ros and Jan still not back.
Jack worked methodically.
He was on the floor of the living room of the service flat.
