'Why?'
Sergeant Oosthuizen snorted. 'You know I cannot tell you, man.'
The door closed. Oosthuizen turned the key. The corridor door opened. Oosthuizen had keys only for the cells, not for the door leading into the main corridor of C section. Of course Sergeant Oosthuizen could not tell Jeez why the Pritchard Five were to be together. Of course the prison officer couldn't chattily explain that for the final few hours it was more convenient to have all five men in one wing, one section, where the disruption to prison life would be minimised. Not an ordinary hanging because the five men were from Umkonto we Sizwe. A hanging that raised the tension pitch in the gaol. Jeez knew another reason that of course good Sergeant Oosthuizen could not explain to him.
Thursday morning, dawn on Thursday, and they wouldn't want to be bringing four men from B section and one man from C section, because they might not have their watches together, and one might walk too fast, and one might have to wait in preparation, and some might have to be scrambled down the corridors to the hanging shed. Get them all cosily together, separated from A section and B section, so that the rest of the gaol was less disturbed. Made sense to Jeez.
The door into the corridor of C section 2 was unlocked.
Jeez heard the singing.
'Rest in peace, Comrade Moloise… '
He heard the voices of Happy Zikala and Charlie Schoba and Percy Ngoye and Tom Mweshtu.
'Long live Comrade Mandela… '
Brilliant voices that were without fear.
'Long live the African National Congress… '
He shook his head. His chin was trembling. He felt the moisture welling in his eyes. He heard them all shout together, Happy and Charlie and Percy and Tom.
'Heh, Comrade Jeez, heh, Comrade – Amandla… Hear us Comrade Jeez, Amandla, Comrade Jeez… '
His voice was a quaver.
'Listen, you bastards. Don't you ever bloody listen to anything I bloody tell you? What did I tell you? Let's have a bit of dignity, lads, that's what I told you bastards, way back.'
He heard the shrieks of their laughter. He heard the orders of the duty major. He heard the driving shut of two cell doors. He heard the duty major demanding they should settle down for the night.
He heard the closing of the door into C section's main corridor.
They were still singing. Jeez thought his friends had found him. He called for Sergeant Oosthuizen. He saw the bulk of the man at the grille aperture on his cell door. He thought of the way they had laughed when he had called for a bit of dignity.
'Doesn't it frighten you, Sergeant Oosthuizen, that they aren't afraid?'
• • •
Jack parked the stolen car a hundred yards from the turning onto the Ben Schoeman Highway.
He switched off the lights. Eyes closed, he sagged back in his seat.
It was the inevitable moment he had come for.
He felt an awful tiredness through his body. He heard Ros bring her Beetle to a stop behind him. He stepped out of his car. It was a Renault, he thought it had a decent engine and could make some speed, he had filled the tank and had checked the oil himself.
He walked to the Beetle. Jan was in the back, half buried with equipment and the bags. He settled in beside Ros.
Stretching above them was the slope to the fort that Jan had said was called Skanskopfort. Ros drove away. She reversed sharply, swung and went back to the Ben Schoeman. She took them to the far side of Skanskop, to the road at the bottom of the valley between Skanskop and Magazine. She drove off the road and onto a stone chip track, and jolted them as she braked.
Jack was out fast.
Jan passed him the cumbersome shape of the metal tube that he had been cradling in his lap because the shaped charge was armed, then the bag that held the smaller charges and the lengths of Cordtex equivalent and safety fuse and the rope. He laid them on the stones, then took the shotgun that was loaded to capacity, and the opened box of cartridges that he stuffed into his anorak pocket. Last came the heavy wire cutters. Difficult in the dark, because Ros had cut the lights as soon as they had left the Ben Schoeman. He studied the luminous face of his watch. He called the time. The time was 9 o'clock and 32 minutes and 30 seconds, and he counted through to 9.32 and 45 seconds. Three watches synchronised. He had given himself one hour, less three minutes, before the decoying diversions. He slung the bag over his shoulder. He hooked the metal tube into the angle of his elbow, more than forty pounds weight of it, he pushed the wire cutters into his pocket with the shotgun ammunition. He reached his hand into the darkness of the back of the car, he felt Jan's two fists grip his hand. Next he leaned across the front passenger seat and his fingers found Ros's chin and drew it forward so that he could kiss her mouth. Brief, an instant.
'I'll wear it always.'
'My mother gave it me. If she knew you she'd like you to have it.'
He stepped back. He picked up the shotgun. He pushed the passenger door shut with the toe of his jogging shoe. He didn't know what was in her face, couldn't see her face.
The engine exploded to life, the wheels bit into the loose stones. The car pulled away. She did not turn on her lights until she was back at the main road.
Jack laid down the metal tube and the shotgun and took a handful of earth in his cupped hands and spat on it to make the soil moist and then smeared what was mud over the pale surfaces of his face. He looked into the distance, away to the main road. He saw a single set of headlights and then the red flash of tail lights, between trees and bushes.
He lifted the metal tube and the shotgun, one under each arm, and he started to walk away from the track and towards the start of the slope up Magazine Hill.
There was a sharp wind, small clouds, a half moon.
Enough light for him to move without lumbering into the thicker scrub bushes. He had thought when he had seen the slope in daylight that the ground had been cleared a dozen years or so before then allowed to grow again.
He madehimself pattern.
He climbed for a counted fifteen paces, then stopped to listen for ten seconds. When he stopped he could hear a radio playing music, ahead of him, where the prison service buildings were on top of Magazine. The stream of traffic on the Ben Schoeman was below him and away to the west, a ribbon of fast moving lights. As he climbed the sounds of the main road guttered, and he was alert to the new sounds of the hillside.
The radio playing music, the frantic wing clatter of a disturbed nesting bird, and a drum beat on planks. It took Jack the full ten seconds of a listening pause to identify the drum beat… He remembered that when he had stood with Jan at the Voortrekker Monument and looked across at the slope of Magazine that he had seen a low wooden watchtower half way up the hill, away to the east of where he climbed.
The tower had not been manned in daylight. He realised he had heard the sounds of booted feet stamping on a plank platform, perhaps for warmth, perhaps out of boredom. He couldn't see the tower, not high enough for it to be silhouetted against the grey blue faint light of the night sky. He could sense the general direction of the tower and he could picture what he had seen from the Voortrekker Monument.
He knew that the tower was set the far side of the wire fence that he had identified when he had stood with Jan on reconnaissance. He wondered if the bastard who stamped his feet on the plank platform would have a night sight on his rifle. Sod all use having the bastard there if he didn't have a night sight, because if he didn't have one then the bastard was as blind as Jack. Had to reckon that he had a night sight on his rifle, or infra-red binoculars, or an image intensifier spy glass. The reckoning pushed Jack down on his knees, had him crawling forward. The slope was a dark and indistinct mass above him. He could only see the trees and scrub bushes that were within three, four yards of his face, less when the clouds hid the moon.
The fence seemed to rush at him, to materialise above him when he was on the point of collision.
Very gently he laid down the metal tube and the shotgun.
He wriggled the bag on its strap over into the small of his back so that it would not impede him. His fingers
