The Harbinger

by Mark Graham

Delaney felt the chief engineer’s eyes on her, and she recovered, saying, “I’m famished, aren’t you?”

  The food arrived. “The steak sauce is homemade,” the hogger said. “Try some.”

  The steak was cooked to perfection. “It’s delicious,” Delaney said, thinking, He’s the escort, of course.

  “It’s the same old story,” Smit was saying. “It’s not the vote that’s important. They’re not ready for that, yet. Education’s the bloody answer. We think they’re stupid. Hell, they’re stifled, not stupid.”

  Delaney listened to the engineer with one part of her brain while theorizing with the other. The smugglers wouldn’t leave the guns unattended, she thought. That’s just common sense. But why was he in the stationmaster’s office in Cradock?

  The waitress refilled their mugs and left a check.

  Delaney watched as Boy Sixpence lumbered past the boxcar, his head pivoting, eyes searching. He doesn’t know, she thought. She considered the pros and cons of informing Boy of their uninvited guest and decided almost at once against it.

  Captain Smit continued to talk. Delaney regretted having lost the thread of his conversation.

  “I was in love with a black woman once,” he said. Delaney caught the sweet and sorrowful glint in his eyes. “She was a smart, funny woman. A wonderful storyteller. She spoke three languages without a hitch. We lived together for seventeen months before Security Branch found out her work permit was invalid. They relocated her one day without so much as a word to me. That was ten years ago.”

  Smit lit a cigar and grunted. Delaney saw a shadow materialize next to the boxcar. A crack appeared in the door, and the escort scrambled in. A second set of hands closed the door behind him.

  “The watchdog!” The words escaped Delaney’s mouth in a diluted whisper, and the engineer peered intently across the table.

  “Pardon me, miss?”

  “I’m sorry,” Delaney replied shyly. “Thinking out loud.”

  Grunting again, Smit excused himself. Delaney searched her purse until she found a bottle of aspirin. She swallowed three with water. Then, staring out the window, following the line of a sparrow-hawk as it soared ever higher into the air, she decided on a course of action.

  ****

  Outside of Springs, Mansell fell in behind a convoy of migrant workers, panel trucks and flatbeds overflowing with shivering kids and dogged parents. At a crossroads two kilometers out of town, Mansell pulled alongside one of the trucks. He passed the plums and the club crackers out the window to one of the women. He tossed a pack of cigarettes and matches to an old man.

  He drove ahead. Wild grass and sage covered the hills of the East Rand. Farmhouses and low-lying barns huddled in broad valleys. Lazy cattle grazed in the company of tall horses in the vales of unseen streams.

  Mansell watched as gray thunderheads rumbled toward him from the north, becoming ever darker with their passage. At a junction off R555, a large signpost on the left read, HOMESTAKE MINING INCORPORATED. PRIVATE PROPERTY. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

  Barbed-wire fence enclosed the property.

  Mansell parked on the soft shoulder next to the sign. According to the geological map he had acquired in Springs, East Fields lay northeast of Homestake 4.5 kilometers.

  He put the car in gear and drove on. A light drizzle sprinkled the windshield. Mansell rolled down his window. The grass shimmered. The air smelled of honeydew.

  Three kilometers further on, he turned left onto a narrow dirt road. The road meandered between two plots of fenced land, that on the left, according to a large sign, belonging to Highland Vaal Mining.

  Similar No Trespassing signs assaulted him from both properties.

  The road ascended a steep grade, dropping, in turn, into a lush valley. Ore dumps appeared on either side. Plumes of smoke drifted into the air. At the base of the valley, the road forked. Mansell parked here. He changed hurriedly into the work clothes he’d bought. He hung the binoculars and a thirty-five-millimeter camera around his neck and forced an opening between the barbed wire.

  A stand of evergreens covered the crest of the first hill. Mansell sought shelter here as the drizzle gained strength. The hill tapered off into a broad plateau broken only by symmetrical mountains of dump tailings. To his left, four kilometers away, loomed the facilities of Homestake Mining, and with the aid of the binoculars, he focused on a plant of breathtaking dimensions. Smoke belched from the stacks of the reduction plant. Steam seethed from the ducts of the refinery. Blue flames licked at the sky from gas portals. A dozen mineral cars waited on railroad tracks alongside conveying platforms. Flat warehouses and brick dormitories extended over acres.

  Highland Vaal, further off to Mansell’s right, was obscured in some measure by ridges of ore, but directly in front of him, dwarfed by its neighbors, lay East Fields. A working farm surrounded the facility; tractors plowed, dairy cows grazed, and workers painted an old barn white.

  Stretching out on a dry spot beneath the trees, Mansell used his arms to form a stand for the binoculars. At the heart of the complex was Central Access. Beyond were barracks and warehouses. There were no flames, no steam, and no smoke. Lines of black men, the first signs of life at the mine, carried backpacks and pushed dollies from the warehouses to Central Access, while flatbed trucks and forklifts performed the same function with pallets of cardboard boxes and wooden crates. Mansell kept expecting to see grubby faces, miners’ hats, and work belts, but there were none.

  Then he saw signs of a military presence. The group was twenty-five or thirty strong. Running between the barracks and the largest of the warehouses, they carried automatic rifles over their shoulders. They wore black windbreakers over olive green camouflage fatigues slashed with brown, paramilitary jackboots on their feet, and camouflage berets on their heads. Mansell switched to his camera in time to flash a half dozen pictures with an inadequate zoom.

  Then he returned to the binoculars and studied the warehouse again. A similarly dressed pair, fingering holstered sidearms, stood in the doorway, smoking, peering beneath combat helmets that shook with the rhythm of their conversation.

  He surveyed the perimeter of the warehouse and found, within a fenced enclosure, two satellite dishes, each pointing in an opposite direction. At the peak of a tall radio tower, he saw a radar screen, air-to-surface, scanning the horizon, and thirty meters further on, atop a steel derrick, a second screen, larger and slower in its rotation. The discoveries, he decided, warranted a return to his camera.

  Frustrated by the lack of people, Mansell scribbled notes and focused again on a silolike structure, fifty meters high, located directly behind the warehouse. Descending a circular staircase were four men, dressed as the others had been and carrying the same make of weapons. Mansell snapped a single picture. Then he raised the camera to the top of the silo, only to find sheets of olive green canvas covering the entire surface.

  Drizzle turned to rain. A clap of thunder echoed to the north. Mansell looked for lightning but saw none. He took up the binoculars again. Behind Central Access lay idle conveyors and a shipping yard, equally idle. A long ridge of dump tailings separated these from a field of storage cylinders and a generating station. Mansell zeroed in on one of the storage tanks. He noticed a circular opening at the top. A crane, stationed behind the tank, centered its boom above the opening. Cables were dropped into the tank’s belly. A white man in a billed cap stood on a flatcar giving hand signals to the operator. A crew of black workers huddled around eight wooden crates.

  These Mansell studied in earnest. They were similar, he told himself. Larger than those he and Delaney had opened, yes, but similar in construction. And though the distance was too great for positive identification, he snapped two pictures. Another crate emerged from the tank. The crane maneuvered it gracefully onto the train car. And when the supervisor removed his cap, Mansell ripped off two more shots—one profile, one straight on.

  He studied the face. The supervisor wiped his brow. He lit a cigarette, c
upping the match against the rain. His shoulders sagged. In time, he replaced the cap, and Mansell looked elsewhere.

  Far across the compound, a convoy of trucks entered the main gate and stopped. Workers piled out. Mansell focused the camera. Behind him, he heard the crack of a rifle bolt as a bullet fell into the chamber, wondering how he could have missed the footsteps.

  “Good day to you, sir.” The accent was British, cockney. Mansell lowered the camera. “Turn over very, very slowly, if you would.”

  Mansell turned, head and shoulders, and began to stand. The barrel of the gun, a service carbine of some type, pressed in on him. “Don’t get up, sir. Not at all. I said, roll over. Legs and arms spread, right? Like an eager maiden on her weddin’ night.”

  This time, Mansell followed the instructions, and the man withdrew, saying, “You, sir, are trespassing on the private property of the Homestake Mining company. It may well be that your reading skills aren’t what they should be. And it may well be that you’re going to regret that educational deficiency, sir.”

  “And perhaps you’d better check my identification before you get too free with your threats, guv’ner.”

  “That a fact, sir?”

  He towered above Mansell, grinning. A red handlebar moustache bobbed against a background of weatherbeaten skin. A cue-ball-smooth head glistened with water, and a rain-soaked T-shirt stretched across a thick torso.

  “I’m Chief Homicide Inspector Mansell. Criminal Investigation Bureau.” Mansell gestured toward his back pocket, and the barrel closed in on him again.

  “Slow, laddie. Slow like molasses oozing from a stiff prick. Hear?” Mansell touched an empty pocket. Bloody hell, he thought. “My I. D.’s in my other clothes. In the car at the bottom—”

  “Sure thing, laddie. Sure thing. And my dear old mum’s still a virgin. No, sir, you’ll come with me now, I think.”

  “Do yourself a favor and listen. CIB is investigating the murder of a mining-union official. The case has been deemed a matter of particular importance by the minister of justice, and your interference will not be taken lightly. Does this make any sense to you?” The tree above Mansell no longer sheltered him from the rain. His pants and shirt absorbed water like a sponge. “You’re an employee of Homestake. True?”

  “True enough, sir,” he answered, enjoying himself. “A caretaker of sorts, you might say. Guardian of the jade gate, if you get my drift. And on their land, I’m the law.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  “Stand up real slowlike, laddie.”

  Mansell did so. He said, “Let’s walk down to my car and finish this, can we?”

  Suddenly, the caretaker lunged forward, and the rifle butt landed squarely in Mansell’s abdomen. He doubled over. A second blow penetrated his rib cage. And a third his sternum. Pain, like splintering glass, rippled through his upper body. He collapsed.

  “That’s just what I had in mind,” the man said, frisking Mansell while he was down. With his free hand, he grasped the back of Mansell’s shirt, lifting him with ease, and propelling him with a shove down the hill. Mansell stumbled. He slipped on the wet grass. His feet gave way. He tumbled, half skidding, half rolling. The pain in his chest caused him to cry out. He heard laughter.

  At the bottom of the hill, the caretaker separated the barbed wire with the barrel of the carbine. He shoved Mansell through, and Mansell’s shirt snagged on a barb. The material ripped. He felt burning and sudden wetness along his ribs.

  “Spread ‘em laddie,” the man ordered, pressing Mansell against the front bumper of the Cressida.

  Breathing shallowly, Mansell uttered, “In my jacket. In the back-seat. “

  The caretaker snorted. The back door was locked, so he leveled the carbine at Mansell’s chest and leaned into the car through the window. When he glanced away, Mansell reared up. He leapt forward, swept aside the gun barrel, and brought an elbow down into the caretaker’s kidney. The gun discharged, echoing like the bellow of an angry moose throughout the valley. The man’s knees buckled. From behind, Mansell drove a toe heavily into his groin.

  The caretaker slumped forward in the mud. The rifle fell from his grip, and Mansell snapped it up. With an angry swing, he propelled it far into the brush. Then he clambered into the front seat. His shoulder harness was on the floor, and he loosened the strap just as the caretaker was struggling to his feet.

  Mansell scrambled out of the car. He leveled the gun at the man’s head.

  “Very professional, guv’ner.” Mansell winced, tasting blood in his mouth. He picked through his sports coat until he found his wallet. He flashed his badge. “Very stylish.”

  The man groaned. “You’d a done the same thing as me, Inspector. My job is my job, and you were the one trespassing.”

  “A serious threat lying up there under a tree, wasn’t I?” Mansell pointed with the gun toward the east fork in the road. “Start walking.”

  When the caretaker was fifty meters away, Mansell fished out a cigarette. He smoked until he felt dizzy. The pain subsided some. He retrieved his camera and struggled into the Cressida.

  He drove back to Springs, bought aspirin and Suprine, swallowed two of each, and then a third aspirin. He sat in the car waiting to be sick. He ran the heater and toyed with the radio dial. He fashioned an image of Delaney Blackford in his brain, the subtle curve of her hips, the dark pools in her eyes, and suddenly, the nausea passed.

  In a gas-station rest room, Mansell washed and changed out of his wet clothes. In the mirror, he studied the gross discoloration along his stomach and the bluish swelling around his rib cage. The cut from the barbed wire oozed blood.

  He stopped at a liquor store. A pint of cheap brandy cost R5.50. Mansell sipped the elixir until he made it back to the airport.

  It wasn’t until he was sitting in the airplane awaiting takeoff that he began to question the significance of his findings. Questions gave rise to doubt, but he couldn’t think. The Suprine and brandy took hold. He slumped back in his seat and dozed.

  ****

  Train number 407 crossed into the Orange Free State at 10:05 Wednesday morning.

  To the unobservant eye, Delaney imagined, the southern part of the Great Plateau, known as the highveld, no doubt represented a monotonous expanse of flat, barren land, in which wide, dry river valleys and the occasional outcropping of dolerite provided the only variation. She fancied it a rugged terrain of simple elegance, uncompromised space, and loneliness.

  The dual locomotives sped across this empty prairie through Trompsburg and Edenburg, picking up as many cars as it dispensed, and arrived in Bloemfontein at 4:01 P. M., twelve minutes ahead of schedule.

  Delaney discovered a phone booth at the end of the passenger loading platform amid gift shops, restaurants, and newsstands. She dialed the number Mansell had given her at the Port Elizabeth Police Station, and Joshua Brungle answered on the second ring.

  “It’s Delaney Blackford.”

  “Are we still on schedule?”

  “Yes. I’m in Bloemfontein.”

  “You sound tired, lady.”

  “Exhausted.” The very word sent shock waves through her entire system. “The cargo is still on board, but it weighs slightly more than when it was loaded.”

  “Meaning?”

  Andrew Van der Merve followed the woman with the cane across the tracks to a loading platform filled with milling crowds and harried travelers. Two Blue Trains had just entered the station, and the flood of disembarking tourists, farmers, and businessmen provided him with perfect cover.

  She walked at a steady pace, dodging a baby carriage here, a baggage cart there. The cane providing balance and support. She was a shapely woman, dark and mysterious. She reminded Van der Merve of his own Valeria and so many winter nights huddled beside a blazing fire drinking peppered vodka and making love until exhaustion and alcohol led to deep slumber. Four months, he thought, watching the swaying hips and imagining the scent of her long black hair.

  If this
one knows, he thought, she will have to die. Such a pity; such a sweet pleasure.

  He would see it in her face.

  When she entered the telephone booth, Van der Merve bought a copy of Die Transvaaler. He stood with his back to the newsstand. She talked for sixty seconds. When she turned aside, he folded the paper, slipped it under his arm, and started for the telephone booth.

  “We should have anticipated that. Damn it,” Joshua said following Delaney’s explanation. “Does he know you’re with the train?” “He must. I’ve made my presence known.”

  “Good. Good. That’s to your advantage, I think, but he mustn’t suspect that you know anything about the arms.”

  “I agree, believe me.”

  “It could be bloody dangerous if he does.”

  Delaney expelled a heavy sigh. Her ankle throbbed. She leaned heavily on her walking stick, turning as she did so. And when she looked up, the escort was outside the door, his face inches from the glass, dark eyes staring straight into hers. Delaney froze.

  “Joshua, he’s standing right outside the booth,” she whispered.

  “Smile. Smile,” he shouted. Delaney forced a brief grin through clenched jaws. “Hold up two fingers. Fast. Tell him you’ll be right out.”

  Delaney placed a damp palm over the mouth of the receiver. She held up her hand. “I won’t be long,” she said, surprised at her own equanimity.

  She nodded. The smile came easier this time. The escort looked away.

  “My God,” she said into the phone.

  “You did good,” Joshua said. “What’s he doing now?” “Pacing. Reading a newspaper.”

  “When you walk out, say, ‘It’s all yours,’ or, ‘Sorry it took so long.’ Something clever like that.” Joshua heard the squeal of train brakes, the tension in Delaney’s breathing. “Your next major stop is Kroonstad. Check in from there. Please.”

  Delaney replaced the phone. Brandishing her walking stick, she stepped out of the booth. A folded newspaper obscured the escort’s face, and she hurried away.

  The newspaper dropped. Van der Merve studied the exaggerated gait as the woman scurried across the platform.