A SONG IN THE MORNING (31 page)

"Doesn't do to let it get the better of you, Carew,"

Oosthuizen said quietly.

"No, Sergeant."

"Believe me, man, you have to keep your standards up from the first day you come here, right up to the last day."

"Thank you, Sergeant."

"That's solid advice. You have to find something to think about. Whatever's going to happen to you, you have to keep going, keep those standards . . . Have you got no visits coming?"

"No."

"All those other fellows you were with, they've all got their families coming."

"No one's coming."

"I never saw a man who was so really alone, Carew."

"No one."

Oosthuizen looked once, almost furtively, over his shoulder and up to the empty catwalk window. He dropped his voice. "I'm only supposed to make little talk with you.

I'm out of order, but there's something I should like you to know, Carew. I'm retiring next week. Wednesday's my birthday. I should have retired on the coming Tuesday evening. They have a party all lined for me . . . "

"Will they give you a gold watch?"

"I don't think so, I think it'll be a decanter and some crystal glasses . . . But I've said to the governor that I don't want the party on Tuesday, nor on Wednesday. Our governor's a real gentleman, he said that I could have the party on Thursday. You understand me, Carew?"

"You're going to be here on Thursday morning. Thank you, Sergeant."

Jeez looked up. He followed the flight of a grey wagtail to the catwalk window.

Oosthuizen said simply, "It's because you don't have any visits, Carew."

He saw the wagtail start away from the narrow ledge below the window.

There was a face at the window, a pale face against the darkness behind. He saw the collar of a suit jacket and the brilliance of a white shirt. He knew who he had seen. He knew who would wish to look over him while he was at exercise.

* * *

It was two hours past the time of the rendezvous.

Thiroko had started to ponder what he should do if Jack Curwen had not arrived within an hour, when the next transport was due to pick them up. He could think of many reasons why Jack should be delayed, but as the minutes slipped to hours each reason had grown less credible. He knew the boys were on edge, strained, because they talked more, because it was harder for him each time to quiet them.

"JACOB THIROKO, YOU ARE SURROUNDED BY

UNITS OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN DEFENCE

FORCE . . . "

It came as an amplified bellow. The noise of the magnified voice swept through the half opened door of the shed and coursed round the four walls. They were all frozen. They were all rigid. They were held in their postures of sitting, lying, squatting, crouching, standing.

"YOU SHOULD SURRENDER IMMEDIATELY.

YOU SHOULD THROW YOUR WEAPONS O U T

THROUGH THE DOOR, THEN YOU SHOULD COME

OUT WITH YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEADS . . ."

Movements now. Each man's hand moving stutteringly towards the stock of his Kalashnikov. Frightened little movements, as if the voice that overwhelmed them had an eye to see them.

". . . YOU HAVE ONE MINUTE TO COME OUT. IF

YOU COME OUT WITHIN THE ONE MINUTE T H E N

YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED IN ANY WAY . . . "

The four boys looking at him, broken hope in their faces.

He saw the accusation of betrayal. He could have cried.

They all looked to him. He was their commander. He had told them of a great strike against the Boer regime, and they were in a cow shed and amongst cow dirt and they were surrounded by their enemy.

" . . . WE ARE STARTING THE ONE MINUTE, FROM NOW . . . "

Thiroko crawled to the doorway. He hugged the shadow.

He looked out. He could hear the drone of insects and the cry of birds and the whispering of the afternoon wind in the dry loose grass. He could not see his enemy.

"Are we the heroes of our revolution, or are we the frightened children that the Boers think us?"

None of the boys had voices in their throats. They nodded dumbly to Thiroko.

"Their promise of no harm is twenty years in their gaols."

One boy cocked his rifle. The chain was started. The rattling of the weapons being armed rung inside the shed.

"I have to win time, time for a young friend who is braver than I."

He saw the chins jut, and the eyes blaze, and the hands were steady on the rifles. He saw the trembling pass.

" . . . THIRTY SECONDS. YOU THROW YOUR

WEAPONS OUT. YOU COME OUT WITH YOUR

HANDS ON YOUR HEADS. YOU HAVE A GUARAN-

TEE O F SAFETY . . . "

They shouted together, the four boys and Jacob Thiroko.

The word in their shout was
Amandla,
the word ballooned inside the tin walls.

He waved them to the sides of the shed, each to a firing position. He stripped from his rucksack a khaki pouch. He tore a wad of papers from the pouch and ripped at them and made a cairn of them. He lit the heap of papers. His boys began to shoot. The smoke eddied through the shed, and with the smell of the burning paper was the stench of the cordite. Incoming fire, punching, ricocheting, into the shed.

He lay on the straw and the manure and he drew the air down into his lungs and breathed so that he could fan the small flames licking into the papers. He saw his notes curling.

He saw names blackening, the coded plans flaking.

So little time, and the boy against the back wall was whimpering, hit in the buttocks and the stomach. He blew again on the papers and prayed in anger for the fire to be fiercer. The boy close to the front door was coughing mouthfuls of blood onto his chest. He shouted for the two boys at the side walls to keep firing. No reply. He could see the clumsy postures in which they had died. The boy at the back wall no longer whimpered. The boy at the door toppled suddenly out of the door frame into the sunlight, and was hit and hit before he fell into the dry hard dirt.

Jacob Thiroko summoned a prayer for the comrades around him and reached for his rifle.

• * *

The men of the Recce Commando had come and gone.

They had come by police truck, and then run to a helicopter with their arms held over their faces to save their features from snapping cameras. The crowd could hardly have seen them but had cheered their every stride. It was an all White crowd outside the single storey brick police station, a crowd grimly satisfied.

Ros never showed her emotions. Jack didn't know what she felt.

They stood jand they watched as the bodies were lifted from a van and laid out in the forecourt, between two low sand-bagged emplacements, for the police photographer.

There were four young Blacks. They were laid on the dirt, their clothing and the bodies torn, shredded. Last to come was the corpse of Jacob Thiroko. His face was intact, recognisable to Jack. He blinked, felt a sickness in his gut.

The back of Thiroko's head was gone, a mushy wet crater.

He thought Thiroko must have put the barrel of his weapon into his mouth. His talk had brought Thiroko back to South Africa, and killed him. They dropped the body, like it was a meat carcase.

Jan was cold faced. Jack short punched him in the kidneys.

Jan had tried to look as though he enjoyed what he saw, and made a piss poor job of it.

The green saloon car drove to the police station steps.

Jack half remembered the front passenger of the car, who had worn a red shirt when he was parked off the road against the trees. A man in a red shirt carried from the car five A.K.

47 rifles, each sealed in a separate cellophane bag.

He watched a detective wash his stained hands in a fire bucket. He saw the driver of the green saloon car walk to the doorway, tight in his fist was a clear plastic sack. Jack saw that it was filled with charred paper. He felt the weakness sinking through his knees, into his legs.

* * *

The colonel hadn't lowered his blinds, hadn't switched on his strip light. He had sat unmoving, nursing his frustration, since the news had been relayed to him from Warmbaths.

His aides had abandoned him. Now, in the outer office, they warned the detective of his mood. The detective had shrugged, knocked and gone in.

"I thought you should know, sir, of the developments in connection with the bomb investigation. A youngish man, English accent, purchased a similar bag and a similar can of petrol in the city centre on the day of the bomb. The description given by the two sales points is pretty much the same. We're working on a photo-fit likeness, sir. I'll have a copy of the full statements for you first thing."

15

Ros took charge.

Someone had to. Her brother couldn't speak, was utterly drained. Jack was black in his mood, brooding. While her brother and Jack floundered, Ros assumed the decision taking. Into the car. Away down the long road and back towards Pretoria and Johannesburg. She wondered whether they were already compromised, all three of them. She anticipated that the security police would be waiting for the van Niekerk kids when they reached their home city, the Beetle having been traced. She didn't air her fears.

She asked clipped questions of Jack. She ignored her brother.

"Do you want to fly out tonight?"

"No."

"There's a British Airways every night after the S.A.A.

flight, there's Lufthansa and Alitalia. What's the point in staying?"

"I'm not flying."

"You don't have a group, you're one person. Do you have any other contacts to get help?"

"I don't."

"It's idiocy to think of anything but getting yourself out.

Don't you see that?"

"I've no choice."

"Then you've got a death wish."

He told her about Sandham. He told her about Duggie.

"I've debts that have to be paid off. They helped me and they were both killed. They were murdered because I involved them. Do you think, because it's getting hot, I can just pack up and go home? 'Sorry you got chopped, chaps, but it's getting too difficult for me, I'm not going to risk
my
skin . . .' Ros, it can't be done."

"Suicide."

"I'll tell you about suicide. The old one amongst the bodies was called Jacob Thiroko. I don't know what was in his mind about coming here, but he hadn't been in South Africa for more than twenty years. And inside his own country the last thing he did was to blow his own brains away.

That was suicide. That was so he couldn't be made to talk.

And before he blew his mind out he burned his papers. He stayed alive long enough to burn his papers and then he killed himself. He can't tell them my name, or any name, or what was the target. That's a hell of a debt to be paid off. I can't walk away, not from them, and not from my father."

"On your own you won't even get to see the gaol."

"Then in Beverly Hills they'll all hear the gunfire. The plans told me that they'll hear it. They have high windows into the catwalks, and up in the catwalk space there are more windows that look down into the cells. Those windows are always open. My father will hear the gunfire. Everyone in that bastard place will know that someone came, someone tried."

She couldn't look at him. She didn't dare to see his face.

"It's madness."

"If I walked away I'd have to live with next Thursday morning. I could be back in London. I could be sitting and filling my gut with booze, and I could take all the tablets that get you to sleep. Wouldn't matter. I'd be in that cell, wondering whether he was scared, what he was thinking.

I'd hear them come for him. I'd see them walk him along the corridors. What do you want me to bloody well do, Ros, go to sleep, set the alarm for five in the morning, wake up to know that my father's being pitched off a trap? What do I do then? Turn over and go back to sleep?"

Jan had leaned forward. Pushing his head between the high seat backs.

"It's to break out one person?"

Jack said, "Yes."

"It is to save
one
of them?"

"Yes."

"There are five that are going to hang."

"The one is my father."

"And you don't give a shit for the other four?"

Jack dropped his head. "Jan, believe me, I'm not interested in five, I'm going to break out one."

"He's like every other White," Jan shouted. "He's a racist."

Ros snapped, "Grow up, for Christ's sake, he doesn't give a fuck for your grubby little Movement."

"To leave four Blacks to hang, and to try to save one White, that's racism."

"They're killers, those four murdering swine."

"You're a racist, too, Ros."

They were both yelling. Jack's hands went up, palms open, on either side of his head.

"I'm not proud of what I've decided but it's my decision, alone."

"It's all horseshit about you being alone," Jan said.

"If you were alone you wouldn't be in my bloody car,"

Ros said.

Jack leaned across and kissed her on the cheek, and she didn't pull away. He took Jan's hand and shook it fervently.

Christ, what a bloody awful army.

Ros said she was going to Hillbrow. She said there was a studio flat there that belonged to a friend from school. Her friend always gave her the keys when she took her small son back to Durban and her parents. Ros said that there wasn't a husband, nor a live-in man. Ros said that her friend liked to know that someone came to keep an eye on the flat when she was away. Ros said that Hillbrow was the home of the drifters in Johannesburg, where Blacks and Asians and Coloureds and Whites lived alongside each other in tower blocks without being constantly harrassed by the police for violating the residential codes. Ros said he wouldn't be noticed in Hillbrow.

It was dark when they reached Johannesburg.

And he needed to think, because the days were slipping away, Thursday was rushing to him.

The studio flat, fifth floor, was an untidy mess.

They'd come in the back way. The car parked at the rear, so that they could all climb the five flights of the concrete steps of the fire escape. Heavy going for Jan, and Ros and Jack had their hands full. Ros had the key, took a bit of finding in her handbag.