Janice and Lucille stared at the open office door.
Jack was on the phone. He had spun his chair round so that he could rummage into his filing cabinet as he talked.
He didn't see Duggie Arkwright. He was a disaster, wearing his oldest patched jeans and a scarlet t-shirt under a skimpy denim top. He saw Jack, and whistled. Jack spun, saw who it was, and with a brisk apology finished his phone call.
Jack stood and muttered something to the girls about being out for most of the day. He took his coat. He felt their questions on his back and ignored them.
They went out of the office and into the mild morning air.
When Jack looked back from the pavement at the office window he saw that Nicholas Villiers and the girls had their noses pressed to the panes.
"You said you were going to ring," Jack said.
"The kiddie was crying in the night. I got up, I was holding the kiddie near the window and I saw this guy on the far side of the road, covering our place. The kiddie had a bad night. I was up again a couple of hours later, he was still there. I didn't go back to bed, I just stayed in a chair. Each time I went to the window he was there."
"Have you ever been under surveillance before?"
"Not that I've known… " Duggie had a brittle, nervy laugh. "I went on the tube this morning, travelled a few stops. There was another guy in the carriage, he got up when I got up. I came right across London, did two changes, he was always in the same carriage. I fixed him with the old
'on-off. Stay on till the doors are closing, then you squeeze off. He went on down the line, he looked pretty pissed off.
He must have been a South African…"
Jack was sombre, chewing at his thumb nail. "Why not our police?"
"They don't have an underground railway in Johannesburg. 'On-off is the oldest one in the book, any London copper would know that one. Have to be a Boer not to know that one."
Jack felt sick. "Why follow you?"
"Perhaps they were there last night, saw us with the big fellow. Perhaps they're wondering who you are, perhaps they want a line into Thiroko. I don't know."
They were still watched from the window. Jack would have loved to have turned on his heel, walked back into the offices of D amp; C. He would have loved to have remarked easily to Nicholas Villiers that the distractions of the last days were a thing of the past.
The sneer came to Duggie's mouth. "Don't bloody whine.
You were the one whispering about explosives, you were the one wanting to meet the military wing of the A.N.C."
"Sorry."
"I couldn't ring you. I couldn't be sure you weren't tapped here."
"Thanks."
Duggie looked exhausted. "Let's go meet the big boy."
They drove into London.
•* •
Thiroko had come early. He was not a frequent visitor to London, but he was familiar enough with the British capital to be able to select his own rendezvous. He had chosen Lincoln's Inn Fields, a square of lawns and shrubs and tennis courts and flower beds and net ball courts. He liked open air meeting places where there were exits at all corners.
He was intrigued by the young man he had met the previous evening. And the young man was a distraction for his mind from the physician's message. He was sufficiently interested in the young man's brief explanation to him to have agreed to the meeting. And he knew, of course, of James Carew. He knew of the taxi driver who carried messages between dead letter drops, transported weapons between arms caches, could take photographs and draw maps.
A White had access to many target areas where it was not safe for a Black to go. He knew of the usefulness of the quiet-tongued taxi man.
Thiroko was forty-eight years old.
He had been out of South Africa since the military wing was formed, since the banned African National Congress had gone underground. He had never been back. His homes had been in Moscow and Dar in Tanzania and Luanda and Maputo and Gaberone and now Lusaka. Some months he dreamed of a triumphant return with the war won and the apartheid regime humbled and beaten. Most years he doggedly refused himself horizons of hope and struggled on, organising the infiltration of men and munitions into his former country.
Thiroko straddled two generations of the Movement. He was neither a part of the old political hierarchy who wanted the military wing to attack only hard targets where the gesture mattered more than the mayhem, nor was he among the ranks of the young hawks who demanded the right to hit the soft targets of the White supermarkets and railway carriages and resort hotels. To his colleagues he was dedicated, humourless and reliable. To the South African police he was a murderous enemy, one they would dearly love to have trapped when the Recce Commando went into Maputo and Maseru in Lesotho and Gaberone. He had been out of Maseru less than twenty-four hours when the Recce Commando stormed the A.N.C. base houses. He hated the White war machine. He knew of no sacrifice too great if the regime could be brought down.
He saw Jack come into the square. He watched him pass the office girls playing net ball in their morning break. He saw him look around and pass the gardener laying out the first trays of the year's bedding plants. He knew of the boy's hither. The Movement was peopled with men and women who could not keep their mouths tight shut. Carew had never been suspected of leaking information. A dozen years was a long, long time to have survived the resistance war in Johannesburg.
It had been Thiroko, from his office in Lusaka, who had suggested that Carew should drive the getaway.
He owed it to Carew that he should meet his son.
He watched Arkwright settle onto a bench close to the net ball pitch. He disliked the foreign Whites who lionised the Movement from t h e comfort of their European cities.
He watched to satisfy himself that there was no tail on the young man. The young man saw him, and Thiroko recognised the relief on Jack's face. The relief told him of the strain. The strain told him of the genuineness of Carew's boy. He presumed he was to be offered explosives, that he would have to explain gently that the Movement had all the explosives it could h a n d l e. He would do it in a kindly fashion.
•**
"I am sympathetic to you, as I am sympathetic to the families of Happy Zikala and Charlie Schoba and Percy Ngoye and Tom Mweshtu. To all of the families goes the very sincere sympathy of the Movement..
"And what should those families do about it?" A harshness in Jack's voice.
"They will pray, they will attend protest meetings, in South Africa they are going to make video cassettes that will be sent to every head of state represented at the General Assembly of the United Nations… "
"Prayers and protests and petitions, Mr Thiroko, are a great waste of time."
"Tell me what is not a waste of time."
"I am going to go to South Africa. To the gaol where my father is held. I am going to blow a hole in the wall, and I am going to take my father out."
"Should I laugh because you are so stupid, should I cry because you are so sincere?"
"It's not a joke to me."
Thiroko was hissing back at him. "You know what the gaol is, boy? The gaol is the peak of a security system. From every other gaol in the country men are escaping, and no man has escaped from that gaol for ten years. They are desperate men, they are going to hang, they are sitting in their cells for more than a year, most of them. They are thinking of escape, and for more than ten years none of them has managed it."
Jack on the offensive. He had the man arguing, not laughing. That was good.
"Anywhere that's maximum security is vulnerable.
Maximum security breeds complacency."
"The gaol isn't up against the street. The gaol is in the middle of a complex. You would be shot hundreds of yards short of the walls. If you are shot dead, how does that help your father?"
"How does it help him if I sit on my arse, and pray and shout outside their embassy and ask politicians to watch a video? That's doing fuck all to help him."