A SONG IN THE MORNING (36 page)

And then hastily back to his private lavatory, fumbling with his private key, to leak.

• * *

He came heavily down the staircase. A beautiful staircase, oak, probably Jacobean, he thought.

The hostility swarmed from the short, slight woman. The hostility was in the wrinkle lines at her throat, and in the flash of her eyes, and the curl of a tired mouth.

"I hope you're satisfied. I hope you understand why he couldn't come to London to see you."

Mrs Fordham had told the Director General over the telephone that the colonel was ill and could not take a train to London. He hadn't believed her.

They stood in the panelled hallway. He thought the house and its interior were magnificent. Perhaps she read him.

"It was all my money, my family's money. The colonel wasn't interested in material reward, all he cared about was the Service. The Service was his life. And how did the Service repay his dedication? There wasn't even a party for him. More than two decades of work and the Service simply discarded him. We've had just one visit from the Service since he was thrown out, and that was some grubby little man who came here to see that there weren't any classified documents in the house."

The Director General was still shaken by the sight of the shell of the man he had just seen in the large bedroom.

Colonel Fordham, curled in a wheelchair near the window, unable to move and unable to speak, had kicked the fight from the Director General.

"It's a great shame, Mrs Fordham, that you didn't feel able to alert us . . ."

"I wouldn't have had your people in the house."

They moved towards the front door. No way he was going to be offered a cup of tea. Of course they had retired the crass old fool, and years too late at that. A dinosaur, really, who believed the Service was still packing off agents to suborn the Bolshevik revolution or to run around the hillsides of Afghanistan.

"I came to ask for specific information."

"Then you wasted your journey."

"There was one man who was very close to your husband."

"I'm not a part of the Service, and at this time of the afternoon I have to bath Basil."

She dared him to stay. The Director General smiled. He fell back on his rarely used reservoir of charm. Outside his chauffeur and his bodyguard would be waiting for him, enjoying the thermos and a smoke. God, and he'd be glad to be back with them.

"The man who was close to your husband was called James Curwen. I understand he went by the nickname of

'Jeez'. I need your help, Mrs Fordham."

He saw the same short slight woman, but hurt. He saw her fingers make a tight fist, loosen, grip again.

"That's what did it to him," her voice quavered. "It wasn't long after he'd been dismissed."

"He read of the arrest in the papers?"

"He'd read
The Times.
He didn't finish his breakfast that morning. He walked out into the garden. It was about twenty minutes later that I went looking for him. He'd just collapsed, the dogs were with him. What you've just seen, he's been like that ever since."

"You didn't tell us."

"After what you'd done to him?"

"You knew Curwen?"

She shrugged. "He lived here when he came back from Albania, before he went to South Africa. He was a sort of batman to Basil, and he did jobs in the house and he drove the car and did things outside."

The Director General had to mask his disgust. The man had done ten years in an Albanian prison camp, and had come back to be patronised as a loyal serf. Lost his marriage and lost ten years of his life, but the kindly old colonel and his lady let him drive the car and change the fuses and make a rockery in the garden.

A desperation in her face. "Why haven't you brought Jeez out?"

"I am afraid it may not be in our power to save him."

"But you're trying?"

"Certainly we're trying," the Director General said. "Tell me about him."

"He's a wonderful man. He came back here, after the awfulness of what he'd been through, and he just seemed to put it behind him. I'd known him before, when he was a well built, strong man, and when he came back he was a skeleton, unrecognisable. Never a complaint, not in any way bitter. His attitude seemed to be that since he'd been sent into Albania by the Service his mission must have been justified, that it was simply the rub of the green that he had been caught. He had a marvellous stoicism, I think that kept him going. Sometimes, not often, he would talk about the bad times in the camp, when men from his hut were taken out and shot, when his companions died of malnutrition, when the camp guards were particularly brutal, when it was cold and there was no heating. When he talked about it there was always his humour, very dry. He was honoured to be a part of the Service, just as Basil was. The Service was Jeez's life, just as it was Basil's. Is that what you want to hear?"

"How resolute would he be, in his present situation?"

"You'd want to know whether he'd betray you, to save his neck?"

"That's very bluntly put, Mrs Fordham."

"It is insulting to Jeez that you even think of asking me the question. I just pray to God and thank Him that Basil cannot know what Jeez is going through now."

"It must be a very painful time for you, Mrs Fordham."

"His wife came here . . . God, I'm going back, more than twenty years ago. We were entertaining, a weekend lunch party. The poor woman came here to try and find out something about where Jeez was, what he'd done. He said afterwards to me that it was one of the worst days of his life, having to lie to her, telling her to put her husband out of her mind. Jeez understood. When he was down here Basil was very frank with him. He had to tell him that the marriage was just a casualty of life with the Service. He told Jeez that his wife had got a divorce and remarried, that it would be wrong of him to disturb her, that he should try not to make contact with his son, however hard that was going to be.

Jeez always did what Basil said. Just before he went to South Africa, Jeez went up to London and he must have gone out to where his wife and his son were living in their new home.

I think he saw her bringing the boy home from school. Jeez was quite bouncy at supper that evening, as if his mind was at rest.

"The Service did all that to the man, and now you're going to let him hang. Now all you care about it is whether
he'll
talk, whether
you'll
be sacked as a consequence. You disgust me . . . "

The Director General turned to the door.

" . . . I hope he talks. I hope he shouts his head off and destroys the lot of you, just as you destroyed Basil."

He let himself out.

He left her to bath her husband.

* * •

The man who had been a friend of Jimmy Sandham found a telephone kiosk in the centre of Leatherhead and rang in to Century.

Villiers had been helpful, he reported. He had posed as a policeman. He had said it often enough, that Curwen wasn't in trouble. He carried identification as a policeman; he rarely used the polaroid card but it was always with him. He had been told by the Director General that he must call in as soon as he had completed his interview. He knew on the grapevine that the big man was for Downing Street that evening.

When he had dictated his preliminary report, he mentioned to the personal assistant that he had been given the name of a fellow that Curwen often worked with, and the address. He said he'd get himself down there. He said that he'd telephone back in if anything worthwhile came up.

* • *

Major Swart drove an old Fiesta out of London. It was one of four cars available to him for clandestine work, and the least prepossessing of them in terms of the bodywork, but the engine was finely tuned. It was a slow journey, appalling traffic.

Erik sat beside the major. Piet shared the back seat with the canvas bag into which had been put the tools for the evening's work.

In the bag, along with the jemmy bar and the screwdrivers, were two balaclavas and two pairs of plastic gloves.

* * *

"I won't tell you anything," Hawkins said.

"Then you lose your licence as a blaster. Pity, that."

"Threats won't change me."

"Not a threat, Mr Hawkins, a promise, and I always keep promises. Anyway you've told me plenty."

"I've told you nothing."

He thought the place stank. He thought it was pitiful that a man should live in such conditions. Everything he saw was filthy, every surface was grimed. There was a cat mess under his chair. But he believed the old blaster. Threats wouldn't change him.

"I know he's your friend. If he wasn't your friend then you wouldn't be covering for him. I know he's in South Africa . . . "

He watched the old man closely. Hawkins looked away, picked his nose, but his eyes didn't come back. That was good enough, Curwen was in South Africa, confirmation.

"I know that you told him how to build the bomb that he carried into John Vorster Square police station. In the trade, I gather, it's called the La Mon Mark One. I don't think Curwen could have made that bomb without expert help."

"I won't tell you nothing."

"But he didn't go there just to blow a hole in a police station . . . What did he go there for, George?"

"Nothing."

"If John Vorster Square which is the most important police station in the country was just for starters, then he's aiming to follow it with something that's hells big. You following me, George?"

"Bugger off."

"I've just been cremating a friend of mine today, George. He was an awkward sod, but he was my friend. I told my friend about Jack's father, my friend told Jack. . . I'll deny I ever told you t h a t . . . It was my friend that told Jack the truth about his father. I expect Jack told you what the truth was."

No denial.

"Let me get back to where I was before. If it's something big, then it stands to reason that it's dangerous. You with me, George?"

Hawkins was with him. The old blaster was on the edge of his chair, hanging on the words.

"He must have been pretty lucky not to have got himself killed at John Vorster Square."

Hawkins bit. "Your friend that died, what happened to him?"

"Murdered . . . But that's not what I'm here for. I have to know the boy's next target. If I'm to help him I have to know."

"How can you help him?"

"Where I work we're like the priest's confessional. We're not interested in names, we don't care where the information comes from . . . This isn't a conversation that ever happened

. . . I can't tell you how we can help him. You have to believe me that it makes it easier for us to help the boy if we know what he's at."

"You're too late in the day to come bellyaching about help. You're talking shit, it's your lot that pissed on Jack's father."

"What's he going to do, George?"

"What would you do if it was your father?"

The gamble, the big throw. "Take him out."

Hawkins gazed down at the torn linoleum. Over his yellowed teeth his lips were tight closed.

"I'd try to take him out of Pretoria Central gaol, and I'd think I might know how to set about that because I'd talked to an explosives expert called George Hawkins."

"He's on the minimum. He's no chance."

"What sort of minimum, George?"

"Gelignite. He hasn't an ounce of margin."

"That's tough on the boy."

Hawkins said, "If you betray him then it'll go with you for the rest of your life. There'll be the time, the hour before your death, when you'll be bloody sorry you betrayed him.

You'll cry for his forgiveness. So help me, Christ, and you won't deserve to be heard."

"That's well put, George."

"I'm thought to be a hard, mean bugger. I cried when the lad went."

"Because he's going to try to blow his way into Pretoria Central, and take his father out."

"I'd be proud to call Jack Curwen my son."

The light was gone, the room in shadow. The man left Hawkins sitting in his chair. He could no longer clearly see the old blaster's face. He understood how Curwen had won over Jimmy Sandham, just as he had won over a hard, mean bugger who was an expert in explosives.

* * •

There was a light on in the hall of Sam Perry's house. The rest of the house was darkened.

Erik and Piet listened a long time at the back door before they were certain the house was empty. The major had told them there was no dog, he was sure of that from when he'd called. No alarm box on the outside walls.

They taped adhesive paper over the glass panel of the kitchen door, broke it, were able to reach inside and turn the key. It was better going in the back, always gave one a head start if the householder returned to the front door and could be heard messing for the key. The major had said they should take their time, so long as they weren't disturbed. It was a great bonus that they hadn't had to wait until the small hours to break in, hadn't had to wait until the householders were in bed and asleep.

Erik and Piet were experienced burglars. They'd seen the real thing frequently enough when they were young policemen, before their transfers to security.

They knew what they were looking for.

Three streets away, Major Swart dozed in his car, head back, snoring.

* * *

The friend of the late Jimmy Sandham stopped his car at the barrier across the entrance to Downing Street. He showed his identification. He was waved forward to park.

Inside the hushed, well-lit hallway, he asked to see his Director General.

i

17

The Prime Minister was irritable. The Prime Minister had that day coped with hospital funding, the price per barrel of crude oil, diplomatic manoeuvres on Falklands sovereignty, unemployment statistics, and security at the G.C.H.Q. Far East listening post. He had had lunch with the Venezuelan Ambassador. Finally questions in the House. When the Carew meeting was over there was scheduled a key note policy speech that would be carried on the late evening news broadcasts.

"It is purely conjecture that the son of James Carew has carried out a criminal and terrorist attack on the territory of South Africa," the Prime Minister said. "And I'm not going to give you a decision based on conjecture."