The Angels Weep (73 page)

He was now chief co-ordinator for British intelligence
throughout the territory, and Doctor Leila St John was one of his
recruits. Naturally, she had no idea as to who was her ultimate
employer; any suggestion of military intelligence, no matter to
which country it belonged, would have sent her scampering up the
nearest tree like a frightened cat. Douglas grinned lazily at his
own imagery. Leila St John believed herself to be a member of a
small courageous group of left-wing guerrillas, intent on
wresting the land of her birth from its racialist fascist
conquerors and delivering it unto the joys of Marxist
communism.

On the other hand, the concern of Douglas Hunt-Jeffreys and
his government was to arrive at the swiftest settlement
acceptable to the United Nations and to the United States,
France, West Germany and their other Western allies, and to
withdraw from an embarrassing, untidy and costly situation with
what dignity and despatch they could still muster, preferably
leaving in charge the least objectionable of the African
guerrilla leaders.

British and American intelligence appraisals showed that
Josiah Inkunzi, despite all his extreme left-wing rhetoric and
the military assistance which he had solicited and received from
communist China and the Soviet bloc countries, was a pragmatist.
From the Western viewpoint, he was far and away the least of many
much greater evils; his elimination would clear the way for a
horde of truly vicious Marxist monsters to take over and lead the
nation-to-be Zimbabwe into the clutches of the big red bear.

A secondary consideration was that a successful Rhodesian
assassination coup on Inkunzi would bolster the slowly flagging
fighting resolve of the Rhodesian UDI government, and would
render Ian Smith and his gang of right-wing cabinet ministers
even less amenable to reason than they had been to date. No, it
was absolutely essential that Josiah Inkunzi’s life be
protected at all costs, and Douglas Hunt-Jeffreys tickled the
sleeping woman gently.

‘Wake up, pussy cat,’ he said. ‘It’s
time to talk.’

She sat up and stretched, and then groaned softly and touched
herself cautiously. ‘Ah!’ she murmured huskily.
‘I ache all over, inside and out, and it feels
good.’

‘Light each of us a cigarette,’ he ordered, and
she fitted one into his ivory holder with practised dexterity,
lit it and placed it between his lips.

‘When do you expect the next courier from Lusaka?’
He blew a spinning smoke-ring that broke on her bosom like mist
on a hilltop.

‘Overdue,’ she said. ‘I told you about the
Umlimo.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Douglas nodded. ‘The spirit
medium.’

‘The arrangements to move her are all in hand, and
Lusaka is sending a high party official, probably a commissar, to
take charge of the transfer. He will arrive at any
time.’

‘It seems a lot of trouble to go to for a senile old
witchdoctor.’

‘She is the spiritual leader of the Matabele
people,’ Leila told him fiercely, ‘her presence with
the guerrilla army would be of incalculable value to their
morale.’

‘Yes, I understand, you explained the superstitions to
me.’ Douglas stroked her cheek soothingly and she subsided
gradually. ‘So they are sending a commissar. That’s
good, though it always puzzles me how they move back and forth
across the border, in and out of the towns, and from one end of
the country to the other, with so little trouble.’

‘To the average white man, one black face looks the same
as every other,’ Leila explained. ‘There is no system
of passes or passports, every village is a base, nearly every
black person an ally. As long as they do not carry arms or
explosives, they can use the buses and railways, and pass through
the road-blocks with impunity.’

‘All right,’ Douglas agreed. ‘Just as long
as what I have for you gets back to Lusaka as soon as
possible.’

‘By next week at the latest,’ Leila promised.

‘The Ballantyne Scouts are setting up a full-scale
operation to cull Inkunzi and his staff at the safe house in
Lusaka.’

‘Oh my God, no!’ Leila gasped with shock.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so, unless we can warn him. Now here
are the details. Memorize them, please.’

T
he rackety old
bus came down the winding road through the hills, leaving behind
it a long greasy black smear of diesel fumes which drifted
sluggishly aside on the small breeze. The roof-racks were piled
with bundles tied with rope and pieces of string, with cardboard
boxes and cheap suitcases, with squawking chickens in cages of
plaited bark and bent green twigs, and with other less readily
identifiable packages.

The driver slammed on his brakes when he saw the road-block
ahead, and the chattering and laughter of his passengers died
into an uneasy silence. As soon as the bus stopped, the black
passengers poured out of the forward entrance, and under the
direction of the waiting armed police separated into groups
according to their sex, men to one side, women and their children
to the other. In the meantime, two black constables climbed
aboard to search the empty bus for fugitives hiding under the
seats or for hidden weapons.

Comrade Tungata Zebiwe was amongst the huddle of male
passengers. He was dressed in a floppy hat, a ragged shirt and
short khaki trousers, on his feet were filthy tennis shoes and
his big toes protruded through the stained canvas uppers. He
seemed typical of the unskilled itinerant labourers who made up
the great bulk of the country’s labour force; he was safe,
just as long as the police check was cursory, but he had every
reason to believe that this one would not be.

After crossing the Zambezi drifts in darkness, and negotiating
the
cordon sanitaire
, he had made his way south through
the abandoned strip and reached the main road near the collieries
at Wankie. He was travelling alone, and carrying forged
employment papers to show that he had been discharged two days
previously from employment as a labourer at the collieries. It
should have been enough to take him through any ordinary
road-block.

However, two hours after he had boarded the crowded bus and
when they were approaching the outskirts of Bulawayo, he realized
suddenly that there was another ZIPRA courier amongst the
passengers. She was a Matabele woman in her late twenties, who
had been in the training camp with him in Zambia. She was also
dressed like a peasant girl, and had an infant strapped upon her
back in the traditional fashion. Tungata studied her
surreptitiously as the bus roared southwards, hoping that she
might not be carrying incriminating material. If she was, and if
she was picked up at a road-block, then every other passenger in
the bus would be subjected to full security scrutiny, which
included fingerprints, and as a former Rhodesian government
employee, Tungata’s fingerprints were on the files.

The woman, although his ally and comrade, was a deadly danger
to him now. She was a totally unimportant pawn, a mere courier,
and she was expendable, but what was she carrying at the moment?
He watched her surreptitiously, looking for any indication of her
status, and then suddenly his attention focused on the infant
strapped to the girl’s back. With a swoop of dread in the
pit of his stomach, Tungata realized the worst. The woman was
active. If they took her, they would almost certainly take
Tungata also.

Now, he lined up with the other male passengers for the body
search by the black police members; on the far side of the bus
the women passengers were forming a separate line. Women police
would search them to the skin. The girl courier was in fifth
place in the line, she was joggling the sleeping infant on her
back, and its tiny head waggled from side to side. Tungata could
wait no longer.

Abruptly he pushed his way to the front of the queue, and
spoke urgently but quietly to the black sergeant in charge of the
search. Then Tungata pointed deliberately at the girl in the
women’s line. The girl saw the accuser’s finger
pointed at her, she looked about her, and then broke from the
line and started to run.

‘Stop her!’ the sergeant bellowed, and the running
girl loosed the strap of cloth that held the infant to her back
and let the tiny black body fall to the earth. Freed of her
burden, she raced for the line of thick thornbush along the verge
of the road. However, the road-block had been laid to prevent
just such an escape, and two police constables rose from
concealment at the edge of the bush. The girl doubled back, but
they had her trapped and a heavy blow with a gun-butt knocked her
sprawling in the grass. They dragged her back, struggling and
kicking, spitting and snarling, like a cat, and as she passed
Tungata, she shrieked at him.

‘Traitor, we will eat you! Jackal, you will
die—’

Tungata stared at her with bovine indifference.

One of the constables picked up the naked infant from where
the girl had abandoned it, and he exclaimed immediately.

‘It’s cold.’ He turned the body gingerly,
and the tiny limbs sprawled lifelessly. ‘It’s
dead!’ The constable’s voice was shocked, and then he
started again. ‘Look! Look at this!’

The child’s body had been gutted like that of a fish.
The cut ran upwards from its groin, across its stomach, through
the sternum of the chest to the base of the little throat and the
wound had been closed with sacking twine and crude cobbled
stitches. The white police captain, with a sickly expression on
his face, snipped the stitches and the body cavity bulged open.
It was packed with ropes of brown plastic explosive.

‘All right.’ The captain stood up. ‘Hold
them all. We will run a full check on every one of the
bastards.’

Then the captain came to Tungata. ‘Well done,
friend.’ He clapped Tungata’s shoulder. ‘You
can claim your reward from the main police station. Five thousand
dollars – that’s good, hey! You just give them
this.’ He scribbled on his notebook and tore off the sheet.
‘That’s my name and rank. I will witness your claim.
One of our Land-Rovers will be going into Bulawayo in a few
minutes – I’ll see you get a lift into
town.’

Tungata submitted docilely to the customary search by the
guards at the gates to Khami Mission Hospital. He was still
dressed in his labourer’s rags, and carrying the forged
discharge from the Wankie collieries.

One of the guards glanced at the work papers. ‘What is
wrong with you?’

‘I have a snake in my stomach.’

Tungata clasped his hands over the offending organ. A snake in
the stomach could mean anything from colic to duodenal
ulcers.

The guard laughed. ‘The doctors will cut out your mamba
for you, go to the out-patients department.’ He pointed out
the side entrance, and Tungata went up the driveway with an
ungainly sloppy gait.

The Matabele sister at the out-patient desk recognized him
with a flicker of surprise, then her expression went dead-pan and
she made out a card for him and waved him to one of the crowded
benches. A minute or two later the black sister rose from the
desk and crossed to the door marked ‘Duty Doctor’.
She went in and closed the door behind her.

When she came out again, she pointed at Tungata. ‘You
next!’ she said.

Tungata shambled across the hall and went in through the same
door. Leila St John came joyfully to meet him, as soon as he
closed the door behind him.

‘Comrade Commissar!’ she whispered, and embraced
him. ‘I was so worried!’ She kissed him on each
cheek, and as she stepped back, Tungata had changed character
from dull-witted peasant to deadly warrior, tall and dangerously
cold-faced.

‘You have clothes for me?’

Behind the movable screen, Tungata changed swiftly and stepped
out again buttoning the white laboratory-coat. On his lapel he
wore a plastic dog-tag that identified him as ‘DOCTOR G. J.
KUMALO’, which placed him immediately above idle
suspicion.

‘I would like to know what arrangements you have
made,’ he said, and seated himself facing Leila St John
across her desk.

‘I have had the Umlimo in our geriatric ward since she
was brought in by her followers from the Matopos Reservation
about six months ago.’

‘What is her physical condition?’

‘She is a very old lady – ancient, is perhaps the
better word. I see no reason to doubt her claim that she is 120
years old. She was already a young woman when Cecil Rhodes’
freebooters rode into Bulawayo and hunted King Lobengula to his
death.’

‘Her condition, please.’

‘She was suffering from malnutrition, but I have had her
on a nutritional drip and she is much stronger, though she cannot
walk, nor is she in control of her bowels and bladder. She is an
albino, and she suffers from a type of skin allergy, but I have
been able to prescribe an antihistamine ointment which has given
her a great deal of relief. Her hearing and eyesight are failing,
but her heart and other vital organs are remarkably strong for
her age. Moreover, her brain is sharp and clear. She appears to
be totally lucid.’

‘So she can travel?’ Tungata insisted.

‘She is eager to do so. It is her own prophecy that she
must cross the great waters before the spears of the nation
prevail.’

Tungata made an impatient gesture, and Leila St John
interpreted it.

‘You do not set any store by the Umlimo, and her
predictions, do you, Comrade?’

‘Do you, Doctor?’ he asked.

‘There are areas which our sciences have not yet
penetrated. She is an extraordinary woman. I don’t say I
believe everything about her, but I am aware of a force within
her.’

‘It is our estimate that she will be extremely valuable
as a propaganda weapon. The great majority of our people are
still uneducated and superstitious. You still have not answered
my question, Doctor. Can she travel?’