A SONG IN THE MORNING (20 page)

He took the lift down to the lobby. He had wondered if he would be contacted on his first afternoon, first evening, in the hotel. He had lain on his bed, sometimes reading, sometimes asleep, and waited. He hadn't taken breakfast, couldn't face a meal.

Time to find the target on which he would prove himself.

He was crossing the lobby. He heard his name called. The Indian day porter was coming from behind his counter.

"You want a taxi, Mr Curwen?"

"No, thank you."

He saw the frown pucker the Indian's plump forehead.

"I'm going to walk," Jack said.

"Be careful where you walk, Mr Curwen. Some very bad things happen to tourists. Definitely, no walking after four o'clock, Mr Curwen. Please not, sir."

"I'm just going to walk around the main streets."

"Anywhere, sir, it is better by taxi."

He had seen the printed slip on the desk in his room.

"You are warned pickpockets have been known to assault tourists in Central Johannesburg." He walked outside into a bright sunshine.

Once he had turned the corner from the front of the hotel he lost the sun. Buildings too tall for the width of their streets. Into shadow. Into the grey of concrete buildings and cracked litter-strewn pavings where the grass sprouted. A dirty city. He passed two paint-peeling, dowdy-fronted escort agencies, then on to Bree Street. Clothes shops and dismal coffee shops. The few Whites went on their way and hesitated not at all, and the Blacks leaned in the doorways, tilted themselves against the lamp posts. A beggar pleaded to him, Black, squatting over a crippled left leg, and Jack flushed and hurried on. The Blacks seemed to watch him, size him, weigh him.

Back into the sunlight.

He had come off Jeppe and onto Van Brandis. A square opened in front of him. He felt the warmth of the sunlight.

Safety from the loiterers. He came past a high tower that gave way to a mock Gothic front, to a building of tall rectangular windows, and entrance steps leading to a wide portico. He saw the street sign ahead of him. Pritchard. He looked back across open lawns to the doorway and saw the spider web of scaffolding obscuring the black scorched stone work.

He gazed at the Rand Supreme Court.

He thought there must be a terrorist trial at the court.

Too many police, too many yellow police wagons parked on Pritchard. He looked at the policemen, White and Black, some in denim blue overalls and forage caps, some in trousers and tunics and caps. He saw the way their holsters were slung from their webbing belts, slapping their thighs. There were high fire stains around the doorway. He wondered where his father had sat in the van. He wondered from which direction the four had approached with their bomb.

He saw some flowers lying at the side of the steps leading up to the court. He wondered who in South Africa would want to put out flowers all those months later for his father, if he hanged . . .

Bullshit. Bullshit, because Jeez Curwen wasn't going to hang.

. . . He was standing on the pavement beside the path to the front entrance. A Mercedes pulled up beside him. A policeman saluted. The chauffeur sprang out to open the passenger's door. Jack watched the small and unremarkable man go slowly up the path between the lawns. Shrunken by age, his suit now a size too large for him, a judge going to work. A judge like another judge. A judge like the judge who had sentenced his father.

Not enough of a target.

He heard a faraway siren. He saw the police stiffen to alert, then move to cordon the pavement, to shepherd the drifting Blacks back from the kerb. A policeman standing in the junction of Van Brandis and Pritchard, beside his motorcycle, had his arm raised to halt the oncoming vehicles, leaving the road clear for the siren. Two cars, coming fast, and sandwiched between them a yellow van with tight mesh over the side window. Jack saw the blur of a Black face. He thought he saw the momentary image of a clenched fist, couldn't be sure.

A Black, a dozen yards from Jack, roared out loud the one word.

"Amandla."

Jack thought he heard an answer shout from the speeding van. The convoy turned along the front of the court, down the far side of the building. A policeman, Black, truncheon drawn, stalked the man who had shouted.

He walked away. He had said that maximum security was the breeding place for complacency, but there was no complacency at the Rand Supreme Court. Strong enough for a target, but not Jack's because he would fail.

He looked at his map. He cut across Pritchard and President and Market. He had gone from the sunlight. He had returned to the gaudy world of fashion clothes and patent shoes. A Black man at a bus stop eyed him, head to toe, then turned his head and spat into the rubbish filled gutter.

He walked onto Commissioner.

He stopped to stare into a gun shop window. In the window were targets. Not rabbits, nor squirrels, nor pheasants, nor duck. The silhouettes were of men. The size of men. Black men. White background. Jack could buy himself a life-size target of a Black man to pump away at, and it would cost him 50 cents. There was a poster on the outside of the shop door. Omar or Yousuf or Moosa Latib offered the Dunduff Shooting Range along with the slogan

"Defence with an unknown Firearm is Meaningless".

Nothing about game. Learn how to shoot a Black man. He went inside. He had no reason to explore this shop, but it fascinated him. He had never used a firearm, not even an air pistol on an empty tin. He went down into the basement.

The customers were two deep and stretched the length of a long counter. Men and women, all Whites, were handling pistols and revolvers in the front rank, while those behind waited for them to make their choice, pay their money, get the hell out of the way. There, were two young men behind the counter. No big deal for them that men and women, all Whites, were crowded in their shop to buy pistols and revolvers for personal protection, to blow away Blacks. Such difficult choices to make, between Smith & Wesson and Browning and Beretta and Colt and Heckler & Koch and Steyr and Walther. The men wanted to know about range, and the women wanted to see whether it would slip in their handbag. The men argued about cost, because up to 1,000

rand was a hell of a sum to pay for stopping a Black man.

The women wanted to be shown mother of pearl in the weapon's handle. The counter men said the supplies were short, that they didn't know when they'd be topping up on stock, that was what they had. Jack saw they wore waist holsters, filled, strapped in their trousers belts. He saw that no customer wanted more time to think about a purchase.

Everyone ended up producing a firearms licence and writing a cheque.

Jack spoke to the man standing in front of him, queuing.

"Is it easy to get a licence?"

"Not the year before last. Pretty simple last year. Dead easy this year." He was a soft spoken man, could have been a schoolmaster. "Just a formality now. You a visitor here?

If you've got a good property, if you're a city centre trader, if you're living on your own, if you have to put your takings in a bank night safe, if you have to go home regularly after dark - that's just about everyone. You're English?"

"Yes."

"I came out eleven years ago, from Weston-super-Mare.

You know that place? I'm getting a gun for my wife, she's nervous on her own. We've a Doberman, but my wife says it's too easy on Blacks . . . "

"Perhaps you should have stayed in Weston-super-Mare,"

Jack said mildly.

"I pay my taxes, every last rand of them, I pay for the police, but the police are all out in the townships . . . "

He was still talking as Jack turned away.

He went out of the shop. He pocketed his map. He went west down Commissioner.

He saw the building ahead of him. It seemed to block his path, far ahead. He was going towards John Vorster Square.

He had read in the first clipping in the newspaper office library that his father had been taken to John Vorster Square.

Thiroko had told him about John Vorster Square.

Not really a square, a wedge of ground between Commissioner and Main, curtailed at the far end by the raised De Villiers Graaf motor link.

John Vorster Square was nothing more than a police station. Jack grinned to himself. The toughest, most feared police station in the country named after a Prime Minister and State President.

John Vorster Square was their power. Where the guns were, where the uniforms were, where the interrogation rooms were, where the cells were, where Jeez had been held.

He couldn't know what had been done to his father in John Vorster Square. He could remember what Thiroko had told him. Rivers of pain. The helicopter. The screams. If his father had been there why should it have been different for him?

John Vorster Square was the place for the proving target.

It was out of sight of the offices of the multinational corporations. It was far from the tourist routes. He thought it was where the real business of the State was done.

There was a central block of brilliant sky blue panels topped by layers of plate-glass windows. There were three wings. He walked past the door that led into the charge office, and then past the security check and the heavy metal turnstile. He saw the armed police guard, languid, bored.

He walked round the back of the buildings where there were tended gardens and the wide sweep of a driveway for staff cars. He saw the ten foot high railing fence, and at the Commissioner Street end a long brick wall set with small barred windows. He retraced his steps, went around the building again, seeming to have lost his way. He would come back in the afternoon. When he came back in the afternoon he would wear different clothes.

• • •

It was his way. It was why he was useful to the Umkonto we Sizwe. He had been given those instructions the previous evening.

He disliked being given jobs for the daytime. Daytime jobs broke the routine of his studies and he believed that his routine at Wits was his best defence against suspicion. In common with most White comrades he found it hard to consider the possibility of arrest. Arrest was what happened to Black comrades. The Whites, graduates, were too bright to be caught out by the Boer security police.

He rode his Suzuki towards the Alexandra township, but before reaching it he turned north into the industrial estates of Wynberg. He found the rubbish heap where he had been told it would be, close to the corner of 6th Street and 2nd Avenue. There was a dirty plastic bag on the edge of the rubbish heap. No-one was in sight. He picked it up, twenty pounds, more. It was an effort for Jan van Niekerk. He carried it to his moped. He put his face close to look into the bag and sneezed. The irritation welled in his nostrils, the sneezing convulsed him. He knew then that he carried explosives. Pepper was always strewn over explosives and between the wrappings of foil and plastic to throw the police dogs. He put the package into two new shopping bags from the Checkers store group, first one, tied it with string, and then into the second. He strapped it to the back seat of his moped.

He rode carefully, avoiding the pot holes. He knew nothing of the volatility of explosives, and he presumed that if there were explosives then there would also be detonators.

He came back into Johannesburg, making for the Landdrost Hotel.

* * *

It was the smartest hotel he'd ever booked into. Overnighting for D & C would never be the same.

A soft knock at his door. He sat up.

"Come in." He thought it might be the maid to turn down his bed.

There was a second knock. He padded across the room in his socks. He recognised the bellboy.

"Your shopping, sir. Very heavy, sir."

He had it on his tongue to say there was no shopping to be delivered. The heavy parcel was bending the kid's shoulder. He bit off the denial. He gave the bellboy a tip.

He closed the door. He carried the Checkers bag to his bed, laid it down. He lifted out the second bag that was inside, that stank. He carried a chair to the door and lodged it under the doorknob. He opened the window wider.

He opened the second bag.

He sneezed.

His head rocked back, couldn't help himself. He lifted the shopping bag into the bathroom and spread out yesterday's
Star
on the floor, and gently opened the black plastic.

He stripped off a cooking foil wrap.

The explosive was in three piles, layer upon layer of half inch thick quarter pound slabs. He could tell it was fresh, the greasepaper on each slab was firm. He thought it would be plaster gelatine, couldn't tell from the print on the wraps.

The writing was in Cyrillic . . .

He had liked Thiroko, but he hadn't known how much he trusted him. I love you, Jacob Thiroko. Listen to your radio. Wherever you are, keep your finger on the tuner button, keep following the news bulletins. Keep your ear to the seat, Mr Thiroko.

. . . There was a small jiffy bag, cut off and the top stapled down to half size. Gently, he pulled it open. He found four small pinched bundles of cottonwool with Sellotape binding. He prised one open. He extracted the gleaming detonator. There were lengths of wire. One roll would be the Russian-made equivalent of Cordtex, and the other their own safety fuse. From the thickness he thought he could tell which.

He could smell the explosive. The sickly scent of almond sweets. Like the marzipan under the icing on his mother's Christmas cake, and on the cakes she made for his birthdays, when there was just the two of them, when she had been without a husband and he without a father. He replaced each layer of wrapping as neatly as he could, then brought out his underarm deodorant canister. He sprayed over the package, then opened the bathroom windows to let in the sounds of the traffic below, to let out the scent of his spray and the scent of almonds. He put the package into his suitcase, locked it, returned it to the bottom of the hanging cupboard.

Jack sat on his bed and drew up a shopping list.

A grip bag, a ten-litre can, a roll of heavy adhesive tape, a pair of washing-up gloves, a packet of 1.5 volt torch batteries, electrical flex, a watch, a litre of two stroke oil, nine litres of petrol.