man who must give if he wishes to avoid total race war. Perhaps in your country it is different, but here-'
'It is different,' I interrupted him. 'But there are similarities as well. The problem isn't as clearcut, since non- whites are only ten percent of our population. The danger of forcing them into a rigid anti-white position may not be great, but it is present.'
'I should have warned you about Manzu,' Lagula said, laughing. 'He is a living discussion trap. Sometimes I think he would like to talk the white Rhodesians into giving back the country.'
'If only that were possible,' Manzu sighed.
'So young, and so serious.' Lagula laughed again.
'Freedom' – Manzu pointed to the book again – 'has always been a young man's battle throughout history.'
'And the young men of Rhodesia are engaged in it constantly,' Lagula said, turning to me. 'It is they who saved your life on two occasions, Mr. Victor. The first time it was Manzu himself.'
'What do you mean?'
'It was nothing.' Manzu looked embarrassed. 'I work as an attendant in the men's room of the hotel to which you came. Shortly before your arrival, I overheard two members of T.U.M.S. making plans to assassinate you in your bed. The Liberation Front for which I work still maintains some contacts with British agents. I alerted them, and they arranged for Lagula here to warn and protect you.'
'He also arranged to smuggle me into your room before you got there,' Lagula added. 'And the second time it was a confederate of Manzu's, a waiter at the hotel where Miss Tabori was staying, who eavesdropped on a conversation and learned that T.U.M.S. expected you to contact her and had a man waiting to throw a bomb into her room when he was sure that you were there.'
'Unfortunately,' Manzu said with genuine regret, 'we didn't find out that Lagula's house was to be a target until it was too late to save the lady.'
'How is it,' I wondered, 'that the T.U.M.S. people allow themselves to be heard in the presence of African natives? You'd think they'd be more cautious.'
'You have to understand their idiotic premises,' Manzu said. 'To the white man we are virtually invisible. He never looks at us, and so he never sees us. We are simply servants – no, less than servants – more a part of a decor. One doesn't hesitate to speak in the presence of a chair or a drapery. Not only has prejudice conditioned the white man to think of us as mindless, but as without senses, incapable of hearing, or at least of assimilating what we hear. It is a paradox. It is this very thing which we are fighting, and yet it is the same thing which is one of our greatest weapons in the fight. That a men's room attendant – a mere boy who will still be a boy when he is sixty – might have the mentality to even think of freedom is inconceivable to the self-brainwashed segregationists. That he might fight for it is completely beyond their ken. 'Good niggers' like that aren't the ones making the trouble, they say. It's only the savage, criminal types who dope themselves up and go berserk who cause the trouble.'
'And yet they are beginning to wake up,' Lagula pointed out. 'Recently, I begin to see fear in their eyes. A black man who walks six blocks in a white neighborhood will be stopped six times by six separate patrols and searched for weapons. And I have heard whites warning each other not to turn their backs on their houseboys.'
'Yes, that is true,' Manzu granted. 'It is a period of transition from the complete lack of awareness of contempt to fear. But the old habits are still strong with the whites. When they're not confronted by the situation directly, they forget themselves. They forget the threat. They forget us. And they speak freely when common sense ought to dictate otherwise because we are not yet really thinking human beings in their estimation.'
'And so Manzu is dedicated to opening their eyes,' Lagula told me. 'To a limited extent the British endorse his objectives, and-'
'It's far too limited an extent!' Manzu said with some anger. 'Why don't they send us guns? Why?'
'And so,' Lagula continued, smiling at Manzu fondly as he overrode his interruption, 'as a British agent, I frequently find Manzu's cooperation invaluable. His comrades are the source of much of my information.'
'Were they responsible for your timely arrival tonight?' I asked.
'No. That was sheer chance. I was in the area looking for you when I heard the gunshot. I arrived just in time to see your predicament and end it with my blowpipe.'
'Again, my thanks,' I said. 'To both of you,' I added.
'You are welcome, Mr. Victor.' Lagula glanced at his wristwatch. 'But it is time for us to end discussion and consider some information which should interest you, Mr. Victor. It concerns the Russian agent, Vlankov. An agent of British Intelligence has been keeping him under surveillance.'
'I should have guessed,' I laughed. So that was who the third man was in the espionage procession led by Highman when I spotted him leaving the art gallery.
'This afternoon Vlankov followed a man who was in the car that tried to kill us,' Lagula, continued, not knowing that I already knew this. 'Vlankov followed the man to his hotel. When the man went down to dinner, Vlankov sneaked into his room. He didn't stay too long, but when he came out he abandoned his watch on the man and went to an airline office where he purchased a ticket. British Intelligence believes that he found something in the man's room which pointed to the girl we are all seeking. They think there's a possibility that he may have stumbled on something telling him where the girl is. They thought you might want to follow up on this and be on the plane with Vlankov. And so they took the liberty of arranging it.' Lagula handed me an airline ticket.
I looked at it. It was for the weekly flight from Salisbury to Ankara, in Turkey. It was stamped for a twelve o'clock departure that night.
I remembered then how insistent Highman had been that the jeweled phallus go out on a midnight flight. It must be the same plane. But Vlankov wasn't interested in the phallus. What could he have discovered in Highman's room to make him take that plane? Might he really have found a hot lead to the whereabouts of Dr. Nyet?
'Yes,' I told Lagula. 'I definitely want to be on that plane.'
'I thought you would. But there are problems. The two men you fought with back at the art gallery are both staunch members of T.U.M.S. I recognized them. Our paths have crossed before. By now their organization must be scouring the town to find you – and probably me as well. And they've probably convinced the authorities that you're a murderer, so the police will be after us, too.' Lagula glanced at his watch again. 'We have an hour to get you to the airport. It's only a half-hour ride, but we have to allow for interference. However, I scheduled our departure for now so that you wouldn't get there too early. Hanging around there would only increase your chances of being picked up.'
While Lagula was speaking, Manzu had crossed the cellar to a window looking out on the street. Now he pulled aside the curtains and peered out, 'It is there,' he announced.
'Manzu arranged for a car for us,' Lagula told me.
'It is a stolen car,' Manzu apologized. 'But it's the best I could do on such short, notice and it shouldn't be missed before morning.'
I thanked Manzu once again for everything he had done, wished him luck, and followed Lagula out to the car. 'I'll drive,' he said, getting in behind the wheel. 'I know the back streets to take us into the vicinity of the airport. That way we'll avoid the highway patrols. If we're lucky, we may not run into any of the street patrols.'
We were lucky – right up until almost the end of our ride. Then, with the lights of the airport in sight, sirens sounded from an intersection ahead of us and two official-looking lorries pulled up in such a way as to block the road. As uniformed men poured out of the lorries, a third siren sounded from behind us.
Lagula hit the brake, and a moment later we were pedestrians again. Shouts to halt were followed by bullets as we plunged into the underbrush fringing the road. Lagula pulled me down behind some bushes almost immediately, and we stayed absolutely quiet as the searchers thrashed the brush around us.
After a while they moved off and Lagula whispered in my ear. 'They won't give up,' he said. 'They've got the area staked out now, probably cordoned off, and pretty soon they'll start a systematic search. We have to act before they do. And we have to act fast if you're going to catch that plane.'
'What should we do?' I whispered back.
'I'm going to draw them off. When I do, you climb over that fence across the road. There's a landing strip there, and if you follow it you'll come to the main part of the airfield.'
'But what about you?' I asked, genuinely concerned for this little man I'd come to like so much and value so highly.
'I'm going to lead them right back that way,' Lagula whispered, pointing behind him.
