why make the connection for him?
During our short talk, Ilona gave me the name of the hotel she'd be staying at in Salisbury. I assured her that I'd contact her there. I suppose she took it for granted that the contact had to do with S.M.U.T. I would have liked to ask her some questions then about Peter Highman, but there was no time. I barely made it back to my seat before my urinary tail was back on the job. Not long after that we set down in Salisbury.
We landed in the middle of quiet chaos. It was late in the evening of November 11, 1965 – the day Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian D. Smith declared the country's independence from Great Britain and subjected four million Africans to rule by a small voting minority of the country's 172,000 white Europeans. In the wake of this announcement, as I left the airport by cab with the man who'd been following me in another cab close behind, the Salisbury I found was a city of silence broken by the sound of sudden gunfire, a city under surveillance by patroling white soldiers trying to ferret out the secret meetings of liberty-minded black men risking their lives to plan for freedom in cellars and attics, a time-bomb of a city whose fuse was the policy of apartheid.
But there was another aspect to Salisbury which struck me as my cab crawled down the quiet streets, halted frequently by one of the patrols, then waved onward when it was determined that the driver and passenger were both white. This other aspect was of an extremely modern metropolis with a popultion of over 314,000 people, a population which had multiplied almost tenfold in less than thirty years. Yet the part of the city through which I was traveling showed no hint of the overcrowding which might have been expected to result from such a population increase. It was clean, with tall, white apartment buildings spaced well apart. Later I would learn that this view was typical only of the major portion of the city in which the white population lives. Like most modern African cities, Salisbuy has its slums. And like Johannesburg, the slums of Salisbury are set off by the invisible line of apartheid and house only non-whites.
But the section through which I was traveling said something important about both the city and the country. It said that where there is gold, people live well. It said that the living standard is the gold standard in Rhodesia.
Gold!
Even today it is still the chief resource of Rhodesia. Before the country had a recorded history, it contained what was probably the greatest gold field of the ancient world. The ancient shafts used to mine this gold back then are still to be seen today in the are of the gold fields, an area which measures rougly 400 miles by 500 miles. Estimates by archeologists are that some four hundred million dollars in gold was taken from these mines in ancient times.
Yet these ancient miners barely scratched the surface. For some reason, they stopped digging up the gold long before the white man came to Rhodesia. Perhaps it was so abundant that it no longer had any great value in their economy. Or perhaps they had arrived at a philosophical stage beyond that of civilized man today, a philosophy that turned its back on slaving and killing for precious metal and took refuge in a more naturalistic tribal culture, a culture based on survival rather than competition.
In any case, such was the culture that the white man found when he came to Rhodesia. And so he plundered the land of its gold and used as his justifiction the fact that the natives hadn't developed their natural resources. And by 'natural resources,' he meant gold.
With his arrival, the natives developed their natural resources, all right. Actual slavery and semi-slavery forced them back down into the ancient mine shafts to bring up still more of the inexhaustible supply of gold. At gunpoint they flushed the gold from the bowels of the earth for their white masters. And the masters grew fat on the gold, and built houses and then cities, the greatest of which is Salisbury. And now Salisbury ruled the golden land and defied the British Empire to give the native Rhodesians any share of the city of Gold.
My hotel was smack in the middle of this city. Two white Rhodesian soldiers guarded the entrance. They checked my passport and other credentials and then waved me on through. I had wired ahead from Johannesburg for reservations, and the desk clerk had a room waiting for me. It was a large room, well-furnished and luxurious, and the bed looked soft and comfortable. As soon as the bellhop left, I locked the door behind him and started undressing. Right now, all I wanted was to get into that bed and get some much-needed sleep.
I took off my pants and suit-jacket and arranged them on a hanger I took from my suitcase. Then I crossed over to the closet to hang them up. Yawning, I opened the closet door and reached inside with the hanger.
'Mr. Victor, you are stepping on my foot!'
I jumped back and opened my eyes very wide. At first they saw nothing. Then they dropped and my jaw dropped with them as I saw the speaker.
Standing against the rear wall of the closet was an African pigmy. He was dressed in a neat blue suit with a maroon tie and a stiffly starched white shirt. The neatly shaped beard he sported left no doubt that he was a man and not a child. Nor was it only his ebony complexion that led me immediately to think of him as a pigmy, rather than an ordinary midget. It was also the blowpipe he held in one hand grazing the clean-shaven cheek above his beard. I'd seen such weapons before. The darts they discharge are usually tipped with a deadly poison which kills on contact.
'What do you want?' After my initial jump, I wasn't about to make any more sudden moves. He looked as if he knew how to use that blowpipe.
'I wish to speak with you, Mr. Victor. Do not be afraid. I mean you no harm.' His English was Oxford- perfect.
'Oh, no?' I eyed the blowpipe with obvious suspicion.
'I am holding this at the ready to protect us both from the threat of intruders. It is not meant to threaten you. It is meant to protect you. There are dangers here of which you are not yet aware. Indeed, tonight Salisbury is a city fraught with danger for all. But the danger to you, Mr. Victor, is more specific and greater than to most.'
'How so?'
'Hang up your clothes, Mr. Victor, and sit down, and I will explain.'
I did as he said and then perched on the edge of the bed. He came out of the closet and took a chair opposite me. I noticed that he picked a chair against the wall which enabled him to keep an eye on both the window and the door. He continued to hold the blowpipe like a cigarette from which he was about to take a puff.
'Now, who are you and what do you want?' I asked.
'Call me Lagula. I'm an agent of British Intelligence.'
'Let me see your credentials.'
'Don't be foolish, Mr. Victor. I don't walk around carrying identification. Even before today, a British agent who did that would simply be asking to be shot.'
'Granted. But how can I be sure you are what you say you are?'
'Does the name Charles Putnam mean anything to you?'
'Yes, it does.'
'I was told to say that Charles Putnam said you should trust me. And I was told to identify myself further by delivering a rather peculiar message to you from Mr. Putnam.'
'What message?'
'I am to tell you that Gladys is on ice and the Beatle fans are waiting.'
I grinned. Occasional humor from the usually dour Putnam never failed to surprise me. And the message certainly seemed to vouch for the fact that Lagula was legit. I said as much by the way I untensed and relaxed against the pillows on the bed.
'What does the message mean?' Lagula asked.
'Nothing really. It's a private joke. But it says I should trust you. So go ahead and fill me in on the situation.'
'Very well, Mr. Victor. First of all, you were followed from the airport.'
'I know that,' I interrupted.
'Yes. But do you know who followed you?'
'Not really. I'd guess he's an agent of S.M.U.T. Or possibly of a New York vice ring out to get me because they think I'm an agent of S.M.U.T.' I decided against going into the tie-in between the vice ring and S.M.U.T. It was too complex, and I wasn't sure I understood it myself.
'Wrong on both guesses, Mr. Victor. The man following you is a Russian agent. His name is Vlankov. British Intelligence has a long dossier on him. But what we don't know is why he is following you. Have you any idea?'
'No,' I said noncommittally.
