The Harbinger

by Mark Graham

  Mansell studied the handsome profile, seemingly at ease, watching the silent tube. Mansell followed the line of his vision. A game show. People stomping their feet and screaming in the name of petty greed and eternal degradation. He pushed away from the sill, crossed the room, and punched the “off” button on the set.

  Finally, he put the gun back in the shoulder harness and laid it at the head of the bed. Joshua used the heel of his shoe to push a chair out for him. Memories of similar scenes swept over Mansell. He accepted the chair and the drink.

  “To Deacon Blue,” Joshua said, hoisting his glass. “Smoky bars, saxophones, naked women, and whiskey.”

  “How’d you find me, Joshua?”

  “I had a good teacher. Remember?” The detective tapped the lapels of his sports coat. He opened the jacket with two fingers. The shoulder harness was missing. “Inside pocket.”

  Mansell nodded, and three plastic film canisters materialized from the pocket. Joshua stacked them on the table, saying, “These were in my box at the station this morning.”

  Mansell checked the contents: 135-millimeter film, twenty-four shots per, all three rolls exposed. “Any indications?”

  “Express-mailed from downtown Jo’burg yesterday afternoon. The main annex. The prints on the envelope belong to the clerk at the post office. The prints on the canisters and the reels belong to Delaney Blackford. No others.”

  A rush of air escaped Mansell’s lungs. “Delaney didn’t mention anything about sending the film through the mail. I talked to her two hours before her plane was to leave.”

  “I don’t know.” Joshua shrugged, raising an eyebrow. “Maybe. . . . Do you know if she’s back in P.E. yet?”

  “She left a message on her answering machine this morning.”

  Joshua needn’t know about the Clavers. Not yet. “She didn’t mention the film. She’s waiting for my call.”

  “Then you haven’t talked to her?”

  “Not yet.” Whiskey provided a momentary diversion. On the one hand, Mansell thought, Joshua was as good a friend as he had; believing was easier than disbelieving. On the other hand, had Joshua strayed to the other side, it was a masterful stroke of insidiousness. And if he had strayed, then he wouldn’t come in here with guns blazing. Questions needed answering. Like, how much the fugitive had learned. Like, what was the fugitive planning? Mansell drained his glass. He changed the subject, asking, “How far has the federal warrant gotten, Joshua?”

  “Division was still sitting on it as of last night, but Terreblanche was getting nervous. District stations will have it by now. The locals, they might have it by tomorrow morning.” Joshua freshened their drinks. He pulled enthusiastically on his own, and said, “De Villiers wasn’t a pretty sight. He’d sustained multiple head injuries from a blunt instrument of some kind, but we still don’t know where the beating took place. Steenkamp has established that de Villiers was in a comatose state when the bullets from your gun were fired into the body. Time of death around one A.M. Tuesday morning. We found tire-tread and shoe prints. Both in mint condition. Security traced the car to a Budget Master in P.E. The car was rented in your name.”

  Mansell didn’t even wince. “Traces?”

  “Clean, except for the trunk. Blood, hair, tissue. All de Villiers’s.” Joshua touched whiskey to his lips. He glanced across the table. “And we found a ball-point pen. Your fingerprints. And the shoe prints at the scene came from running shoes, size 11D. Security checked your locker at the station. Your Nikes were missing. Worse, they were discovered in a trash bin at the Budget Master in Jo’burg where the car was returned on Tuesday, the fifteenth.”

  “The same day I happened to be in Johannesburg.” Mansell glared at two spent matches lying at his fingertips on the table. He lit a cigarette with a third. “Well done. Very well done.”

  “Yes, but there is this,” Joshua said directly. “The countergirl at the Budget Master in P.E. won’t identify you. She says the guy that rented the car was big. A hand taller than me and bulkier. That makes him nearly two meters tall. Okay? And second. Janis Warren? Know her?”

  “A policewoman from the Summerstrand district.”

  “That’s her. Well, Monday evening, the night de Villiers bought it, she sees this guy on the back stairs of the station house. Again, a big guy. He’s going up. Janis is heading down to the Pit with coffee in her hand. But she thinks he stops on the second floor. All right, a couple minutes later something clicks. She runs back up. The guy’s gone, of course. But her description and the counter-girl’s are just too similar to ignore.”

  “So this guy lifts a pen from my desk and running shoes from my locker. He breaks into my house. He knows about the gun case in my bedroom, and he takes Jennifer’s Colt .38 Special figuring that I’ll think she took it with her when she left.”

  “The point is, Wolfe has himself a pretty strong case. And he has a witness who swears he saw you talking to de Villiers on the docks the night of the murder. Anything to that?”

  “Delaney mentioned de Villiers a couple of times, but I never met him,” Mansell answered impassively. “Have you talked to this . . . witness?”

  Joshua shook his head. “I’m letting him have a taste of Security Branch for a while. Then we’ll see.”

  “Do me a favor. Don’t wait too long.” Mansell drank whiskey straight from the bottle, wincing. “I need some sleep. In the morning, you can see about that film while I have a talk with a friend of a friend.”

  “Of our distinguished minister?”

  Mansell didn’t reply. Instead, he made a magnanimous gesture toward the bed, wrapped himself in an extra blanket from the closet, and stretched out on the couch.

  Before long, Joshua was curled up in the bed, and his breathing deepened. Mansell watched his chest rise and fall in the steady rhythm of deep slumber.

  Sleep, Mansell told himself, a fool’s paradise, an unnecessary luxury. He didn’t remember dozing. Told himself he hadn’t. At dawn, he went into the bathroom, locked the door, and showered beneath a cold, hard spray.

  In the bedroom, Joshua tossed the covers off, rolled quietly out of bed, and pulled on his trousers. He moved swiftly to the door and outside. The police sedan was parked across the lot and the revolver and harness lay beneath the seat on the passenger side.

  In the motel room, he screwed the blunt-nosed silencer onto the end of the barrel and slipped the harness over his arm. The hit, he knew, was inevitable; Mansell had brought it on himself. It was a question of where. Joshua had made his presence known at the front desk, which made the motel room a bad choice. But it was still a possibility. When he heard the shower turn off in the bathroom, he crawled back beneath the covers.

  ****

  The pocket calendar next to his cot read, Saturday, July 19. Two words were handwritten in red ink under the date: “Day Four.”

  Jan Koster struggled to a sitting position, massaged bloodshot eyes and a two-day-old beard, and staggered over to the washbasin. Carefully, without looking too closely at the cadaverous reflection, he shaved. He splashed the last drops of aftershave into the palm of his hand, patting cheeks and neck, and welcoming the sting.

  Sighing, he tossed the empty bottle into the waste can and returned to his cot.

  He opened a small notebook that contained the letters he had begun the night before. The first of these was destined for the eyes of General Alexander Becker, the chief of South Africa’s National Intelligence Service.

  Sending the letter to Becker was the result of far more than a logical guess; “a sophisticated projection” described it better. For the last six months, Koster had composed a hundred different scenarios for these next four days. Each scenario, drawn to its most suitable conclusion, included Becker’s interaction. Yet drawing him into the action, Koster realized, would take inducement, convincing. As catalysts, he meant to rely on two disturbing elements from the general’s past. One being the unresolved controversy surrounding his father’s death in 1978, a prelude to the scan
dal that led to the resignation of then prime minister Vorster. The other being the NIS chief’s deep-seated and long-standing prejudice against the rival Security Branch .

  Koster labored over the letter for another thirty minutes, decided that a fictionalized signature would do more harm than no signature, and addressed the envelope to NIS headquarters in Pretoria.

  The second letter proved more formidable, the recipient, his wife, Julia, more vulnerable, more important. So many days, he thought, had slipped away from them, so many unspoken feelings. Over the last month Koster had written two other letters preparing her and the family. Still. . .

  Dear Julia, he thought, I’ve been working for the Soviet Union for the past seven years; to say nothing of the sixteen years that came before. Yes, treason. So sorry. Please forgive me. Very creative, very redeeming.

  He tore off the page, crumpled it, and tossed it toward the trash. Then he stared again at the red ink on his calendar, and the words he sought came at last.

  ****

  The name in Merry’s reference book read “Uzo Egonu.” The faded picture showed a thick man wearing a black beret. The physical description was not noticeably out of line. Still, the blue reflector badge on the back page of the work permit had proved the most essential commodity thus far.

  Merry Gosani was, as of 1:15 on the morning of the nineteenth, an official member of the Blue Strike Team.

  He’d been assigned a bunk in a cramped barrack and spent a sleepless night on a straw pallet. Breakfast, served cafeteria-style to shifts of a thousand men, consisted of powdered eggs, beans, hard rolls, and coffee.

  At seven, his unit received orders to attend a briefing session in a long low-lying warehouse known as the command center.

  Inside, the warehouse had been converted into a gigantic lecture hall. Row after row of folding chairs lay at the foot of a broad platform. A small podium stood at the center of the stage. A series of land and geological maps hung from wooden stands to the right of the podium, and a blank movie screen stood to the left.

  Merry chose a seat near the back. He fondled the real Uzo Egonu’s pocket knife and gnawed a toothpick. For thirty minutes, the warehouse filled. Conversation and expectation split the air.

  Eventually a tall man in full military dress approached the podium. He introduced himself as Colonel Rolf Lamouline. A moment later, another man, spry, slender, wearing thick eyeglasses and dressed in a brown business suit, mounted the stage. Uncontrollable cheering filled the hall. My God, Merry thought, Zuma. Christopher Zuma. The cheers amplified. Zuma bowed serenely to the audience. Merry found himself standing, applauding, heard his own voice joining the celebration.

  It could have lasted indefinitely, but in time, Zuma took a seat behind the podium, and Lamouline raised a hand. The hall fell silent. The lights were dimmed, and the briefing began. Spotlights illuminated maps of the East Rand and the Witwatersrand. Slides highlighted the plant facilities of Highland Vaal, the White Ridge mines, Brakpan Holdings, and Homestake Mining. In awe, Merry listened as seven years of planning and preparation unfolded before him.

  Lamouline gestured with a pointer toward one of the maps and a blue circle enclosing the Homestake property. He said, “Three days from today, on Tuesday the twenty-second at midnight, Blue Strike Team will be responsible for the initial thrust into this baby right here. Homestake Mining.”

  Then, jabbing the pointer at a cross-section rendering of the tunnel system beneath East Fields, he outlined the step-by-step process of underground infiltration; the supply centers, the primary tunnels, the connection tunnel, the dead access shaft below Homestake, the work station, and the eventual ascent by elevator into the deserted storage shed inside the plant itself.

  “At eleven-forty P. M. that night, you will begin your ascent. You will be well armed as you know, and you may well meet with some resistance, armed resistance. But understand this, gentlemen, our intent is not destruction. Nor death. Got it? Our intent is control, leverage. Bad blood has no place in this operation. Don’t forget it.”

  Merry stared at Christopher Zuma’s placid face. The dark eyes were closed, as if meditating, but his head nodded slowly in agreement. Despite himself, Merry thought of Nigel Mansell and Sylvia Mabasu, and from that point on, he seemed only to catch bits and pieces of the lecture.

  . . . At three Tuesday afternoon, Blue Strike Team will descend into the tunnels below East Fields for the last time . . .” he heard the colonel saying.

  “. . . You will enter the connection tunnel here by nine. Do not rush, gentlemen. . . . From there, you will proceed to the access shaft . . . and ladders here, here, and here which lead to this work station. Now, it’ll be crowded as hell in there, people, but cool and well lit, right? So do not panic.”

  The work station, Merry noted, was only thirty meters below the surface. It was impossible.

  “. . . The work station, the primary tunnel, and the surface elevator have all been reinforced, and . . .”

  Not impossible, he thought, fucking brilliant.

  . . . Eleven-forty, gentlemen. That’s our magic number. . . . “

  “. . . your objectives are. First, the control tower, here. Second, the refinery substation and the reduction plant substation here and here. Third . . .”

  It might actually work, Merry thought.

  . All positions inside the targets will be supported by infantry and artillery based here at East Fields. Radio contact will be maintained at all times. . . .”

  When Christopher Zuma stepped up to the microphone ten minutes later, a wave of electricity swept over the hall again. Merry welcomed the emotion.

  Zuma raised a hand into the air. In a clear voice, he said, “Do not forget the goals that we have set for ourselves. Do not forget the means we have chosen to achieve those goals. Enough people have been made to suffer. Do not forget that in all true causes there is hope, and in all just fights there is victory. . . .”

  Merry filed out of the warehouse with two concerns. He had anticipated the first: how to communicate with Nigel Mansell. But not the second: what to communicate once he did make contact. And more, how to accomplish both without dying in the process.

  ****

  With a last glance at Joshua’s inert form, Nigel Mansell closed the door to his room behind him and stepped gratefully into the face of a crisp morning breeze.

  The main street of Carnarvon was wide and freshly paved, the buildings staggered and square. Concrete walks with wooden park benches fronted cluttered storefronts. Parking meters stood guard over diagonal parking spaces.

  A block off the main drag, next to the Karoo National Monument, Mansell discovered The Breakfast Nook. A sward of browning grass with a banyan tree set at its heart formed an esplanade leading to a large log cabin. Smoke billowed invitingly from the chimney. WELCOME TO THE NOOK-BREAKFAST AND LUNCH-WHITE RACE ONLY, PLEASE.

  “Right,” Mansell muttered. “Prepared for your pleasure by our famous nigger chef and served by our sturdy coloured waitress.” He set out again.

  The smell of baking bread led him to a flat-roofed building that resembled a converted wheat shed. A sign out front read, THE SHIRE. Mansell ventured inside. The tiny restaurant was crowded, but Mansell found a stool at the end of an old-fashioned bar. A man in a white T-shirt, starched apron, and chef’s hat greeted him with tea and a single-page menu. Mansell asked for a telephone, and the proprietor pointed down the hall next to the rest rooms.

  Mansell stared at the phone thinking about the news Joshua had dropped in his lap the night before. Delaney and Leistner. But that was two years ago, he told himself. Yeah, and it was three days ago that someone nearly blew you off your own front porch, remember? Delaney was the one person he hadn’t suspected. She was the one person he couldn’t face suspecting.

  Mansell understood that by now either Security Branch or CIB was watching Delaney’s house, that her phone was also tapped. Why, he could only guess. He knew that suggesting a rendezvous made no sense. He also knew it did
n’t matter.

  He punched R3 worth of coins into the phone and dialed the Clavers’ number. After two rings, the answering machine took over. He said, “Delaney. Hello. It’s Nigel. I got your message, and. . . . Can we meet? Soon? Tonight, at the Clavers’? I know it’s dangerous. I know. . . .”

  Mansell explained about the guest entrance on the northeast corner of the house, and the key she would find above the gas meter next to the door. The inside stairway, he said, led to a small studio in the basement. Should he mention the film canisters? He didn’t. Should he mention the federal warrant? It wasn’t necessary, Mansell thought. She knows. Somehow, she knows.

  He rang off, deflated, alone. He slumped down in the phone booth for nearly a minute, stoking the low fires of adrenaline and resolve. Turning back entered his mind, but turning back was out of the question.

  ****

  Cecil Leistner returned Delaney’s call fifteen minutes later. “You’ve heard from the inspector.” His voice exuded the warmth of diplomacy, but the firmness of an expectant master.

  “This morning,” Delaney confided. Returning the cup of flour to her neighbor had provided Delaney with the perfect cover for dialing the Clavers’ message return again.

  “But not on your own telephone,” the minister commented.

  “No, not on my own telephone,” Delaney retaliated. “It’s tapped, in case you hadn’t heard. I know it, and so does he, evidently. And I don’t like it, Cecil. I’m not one of your second-class terrorists. And I don’t like your leisure-suit flunkies hanging around outside my house either. They give the neighborhood a bad name.”

  “They serve their purpose.”

  “And what would that be? The reinforcement of your personal insecurity? I offered you my help. Harassing my home life wasn’t part of the bargain.”

  “Delaney, please. We’re searching for a killer. A federal warrant is a serious matter. I know the leisure suits and the phone tap are an annoyance, but they’re not meant to be an embarrassment. And they’re certainly not measures taken against you. If anything, they’re meant for your own protection.”