A SONG IN THE MORNING

by Gerald Seymour

  There was no further reason for the colonel to stay and watch the clerk. He went back to his own office.

  The sun was dipping between the mine waste mountains to the west. Far below him were the gaudy street lights and the ribbons of the headlamps of the homegoing traffic.

  There was a sheaf of telex messages on his deak. There was a photocopy of a report from Major Swart in London.

  The colonel thought that Pretoria overrated Swart.

  Darkness was falling on the city.

  He gutted Swart's telex. More failure. Buck passing and excuses. Failure to make the connection between Mrs Hilda Perry and James Carew. Failure to link one Douglas Arkwright, deceased, on a contact between a White male, unidentified, and Jacob Thiroko. Failure to maintain a tail on Jacob Thiroko.

  Categorised totally incompetent, that Swart. The one and only link to Carew's earlier life and Swart had failed to make anything of it. The report was soon pushed aside, categorised not useful, back in the tray beneath less intractable problems.

  The piece of paper that had failed, that he had reckoned a guarantee of success, the piece of paper that carried the minister's signature, lay in the colonel's personal safe. He would shred it on the morning of the execution. That failure would die with Carew.

  But failure it was. At the heart of the failure was the void that was Carew's past, exacerbated by the man's refusal to talk. The bachelor apartment in Hillbrow had been searched and searched again and revealed not a clue to the past. The drivers on the taxi ranks had been quizzed, interrogated even, and found to know nothing significant about the man at all. The bombing team had all said in their statements that they had never seen the man before he drove them away from Pritchard. The void spirited up the colonel's suspicions. No man could so effectively hide his past, unless he had deliberately hidden it, had a very good reason for hiding it . . .

  He consumed the paperwork on his desk. He had promised his wife that he would not be late home.

  * * •

  He had waited until the bus load of tourists filled the hotel lobby with their stacks of suitcases.

  He had taken the lift down twice before, holding the grip bag sagging close against his knee, and each time the lobby had been almost empty and he would have been noticed by the night porter and the bellboy and the luggage boys and the doorman. Twice he had gone back to his room to while away the minutes before trying again. Very tense, close in his thoughts. All his concentration was on the hulk that was John Vorster Square, and the fence around it, and the lights, and the armed police sentries, and on his father and on suppressing his fear. The plan called for him to expose himself to challenge and gunfire. He knew of no other way.

  He stepped into the lobby. The lift doors shut behind him. The bellboys and the luggage boys were marshalling a huge pile of suitcases, the doorman was loudly supervising their distribution. The reception was lost in a half moon of argument because there was a double booking problem. The night porter was doling out keys to those who had been checked in and who had allocated rooms. They were Americans, fresh f r o m safari.

  Jack crossed the lobby unnoticed. Unseen, he went out through the swing doors. Behind him rose a tumult of angry voices.

  Dark streets. Streets given up by the Whites. The Whites were powering home to the suburbs in their BMWs and Jaguars. Jack walked with a brisk purpose. He stayed far out on the pavement, close to the kerb and the cars' lights, avoiding the shadowed shop entrances from which spurted the flash of a match, the glow of a drawn cigarette. There was no reason that he should have attracted attention. He was a young White who was late, hurrying with a bag that might contain his sports kit, whose weight he struggled to disguise.

  He took the route that he knew, down Van Brandis, right onto Commissioner. Above him the lights were flickering out in the towers, the last workers leaving. The security guards with their polished staves patrolled the wide entrances.

  Jack saw the lights in John Vorster Square, an oasis of work as the rest of the city shut down for the night. He took from the bag a rough stone, picked from a street building site on Commissioner. The stone gripped in his left hand, the size of a cricket ball. At school, in the team, they'd played him for his fielding. He could certainly throw. The stone was now his weapon and his protection.

  * * *

  There was a constable guarding the back gate.

  A presentable young man, straight-backed, clean-shaven, and he wore his uniform and his Sam Browne well. He was often given the 6 pm to 10 pm shift on the rear entrance because his sergeant thought him the right sort of constable to open and close the gates on the comings and goings of the top brass. The constable sat in his box. His service revolver was holstered, the flap buttoned down because that was tidier. In the box was a loaded F.N. rifle, safety on, a gas mask, a telephone link to the operations room inside, and his personal radio.

  He saw the car approach. He saw the lights flash and the indicator wink to him. He saw the uniform of the driver, and the uniforms of the passengers.

  Behind him he heard the revving of an engine outside the gates, and he heard the shout for the gates to be opened.

  The constable had a car to let in and a car to let out.

  He went forward. He slipped the bolt that was accessible only from the inside. He swung the near gate back towards him, pushed away the further gate. He had to step back smartly to avoid the car coming from the outside, from Main Street.

  There was a moment when he was back at the edge of the driveway, readying himself to salute, and the gates were fully opened, and the cars were jockeying to pass through.

  There was a moment when he did not think to study the shadows across the road.

  He only saw the blur of a man running. He saw the figure coming fast across the road. He saw the low-slung bag trailing from the figure's arm. He stepped forward, picking at the flap of his holster. He hesitated. He turned back for his rifle. Whichever way he looked he was dazzled by the headlights. The figure ran past him on the far side of the incoming car. The constable was rooted to the concrete floor of his sentry box. The figure charged to the main doorway, pushed it, swung the bag inside. The constable saw the bag sailing into the rectangle of light, and lost sight of it.

  He was spinning, trying to get the lights from his eyes.

  He saw the figure for a moment more, seeming to fill the doorway into the hallway area. He reached again for his holster, then for his rifle, then for his radio, then for his telephone link. The constable had never before confronted an emergency, and nothing had ever happened at the back gates of John Vorster Square. And the bastards in the car hadn't reacted.

  He saw the shadowy shape of the figure turn and run back from the doorway. He hadn't the flap off his holster, nor the rifle in his hand, nor was he reaching for his radio, nor had he lifted his telephone.

  Everything too fast for the constable. The figure running to get by the car that was coming out. The driver of the car that was entering seeing a figure, no longer in shadow, bright in the headlights, swung the wheel to block the figure, run the figure down. The figure stumbling to a stop, backing away, into the courtyard, trapped. An anorak hood over the figure's upper head and a handkerchief knotted over the figure's lower face, and a dark slash where the eyes would be. So fast, too fast. The arm of the figure swinging back, whipping forward. The crack of the windscreen, like a bullet snap. The constable saw the windscreen freeze, shatter to opaque. The incoming car swerving. The outgoing car turning away from collision.

  He yelled, not into his radio, not into his telephone, out into the night air.

  "BOMB!"

  The presentable young constable ran from his box. The outgoing car careered from a side-on collision towards him.

  He was blinded by the lights. He ran for his life, and behind him his sentry box was taken down by the impact of the outgoing car's radiator and engine weight, squashed away through the shrubs, flattened against the low wall and the high railings.

  There was
the thud of running feet. He saw the figure come down the driveway, skip past the incoming car.

  He had the flap off his holster now. He had the pistol butt in his hand, lifting. The figure gone, out into the street. The pistol was in his hand, his thumb had taken across the safety.

  He had the running figure, seen between the railings, over the end of his barrel. Steady, squeeze . . .

  The constable was bowled over by the blast that erupted from behind the plate glass of the hallway area. And with the driven wind came the glass shards, and then the crimson and orange billowing of the flames. Before he lost conscious-

  ness he was aware of the glass splinters fragmenting around him, and of the heat of the spreading fire.

  Jack ran two hundred yards. He had pulled the handkerchief off his face, tugged the anorak hood down from his head. Up Main, cars overtaking him, up Market, into the narrow side street off Becker, no-one in sight, off with the anorak, dump it, a distant siren, along the lanes off Diagonal, two men sitting, their backs against the wall, neither moved, past the closed Stock Exchange, onto Bree. He was walking when he reached Bree. He controlled his speed, harder to control his breathing. He tried to window shop, to appear to be strolling away the evening.

  Two police trucks racing, sirens wailing, and the whine in the streets around him of approaching fire engines.

  From the far side of Bree he looked back towards John Vorster Square . . . a bloody lunatic plan . . . He saw the orange glow reaching for the night sky. He saw the dark climbing column of smoke. Can you see that, Mr Thiroko?

  He walked along Bree towards the Landdrost Hotel. He straightened his tie in a window, he casually wiped the sweat off his forehead. He knelt to wipe the earth from the gardens of John Vorster Square off his shoes. The last hundred yards, forcing himself not to look back. He steadied himself, and went inside. He stood in the lift with his back to a cluster of tourists. He went down his corridor, into his room.

  He went first to the cupboard. He saw that the packaged pile of explosives was undisturbed. Of the three slabs that had been delivered in the Checkers bags, two were still inside his suitcase. He might have failed. But now he thought he had enough dynamite still to blow his way into the hanging gaol.

  Jack dived onto his bed. His face was buried in his pillow, his legs shook without control.

  God, what had he done? For his father, what had he done?

  11

  Just before eight o'clock, Jack joined the office workers and the labourers and the vagrants at the junction of Market and Main and Commissioner to see the damage. Police with dogs and soldiers in full combat kit kept the watchers far back from the fire darkened building. There was little to see, but that was no discouragement to the crowd.

  Jack had already seen his morning Citizen with the special colour front page. The main photograph showed the orange flame ball alive inside the ground and first floor, billowing up the stairwell. He had read of the "miraculous escape" of the policeman on desk duty inside the door, how the heavy steel-panelled furniture had protected him from the immediate force of the fire and explosive blast. He had read that the offices above the hallway had been unoccupied, that had they not been the officers who worked there would have been killed when the floor above the hallway caved in. He had read that the steel and concrete construction of the block had prevented the spread of the fire, and that within 48

  minutes the fire service had brought the blaze under control.

  He had read that a single man was believed responsible, that there were reports that the man was a White, that the police were "keeping an open mind". The smell of a water-soaked fire is unlike any other. It was a familiar odour for Jack to sniff at as he stood with the crowd, and he thought of George Hawkins, pictured him beside him, remembered the demolition of a fire wrecked office in Guildford, and seemed to hear George's growl of approval. The newspaper said it had been the most dramatic attack against the country's security system since the car bombing of the Air Force headquarters in Pretoria and the rocket firing at the Voor-

  trekkerhoogte base of the South African Defence Forces All down to you, Mr Hawkins.

  He listened to the talk around him, mostly in English, a little in the Afrikaans language that he could not understand, all of it angry.

  He took a last look at his work, and at the fire engines far up the street, and the police wagons. It was the controlled anger on the policemen's faces that would stay with him.

  "You know what I heard?" A man with a loud voice said a florid face and a butcher's apron. "I heard that last the bandiete in the cells over there were shouting and singing, all the bastard politicals, cheering they were. Pity the scum didn't roast."

  John Vorster Square still stood, foursquare. But he had shown them, he had singed its beard.

  He walked down Commissioner to the junction of Harrison. Another thought as he walked. There had been Blacks among the sightseers, and he had not heard them Speak above a whisper. He had heard the vengeful fury of the Whites, but he knew nothing of the Blacks, whether cheered his attack, whether they feared the reprisals that would follow the violence he had directed against the principal police station in the city. He thought that in the world of Jack Curwen the Black man's opinion was irrelevant-Their fight was not his fight. His fight was family.

  He took a taxi to the railway station.

  • * *

  The colonel sat in on the conference. He was not himself responsible for the direct gathering of intelligence. Many times Intelligence knew of an impending attack. Not the exact location, nor the timing, but Intelligence generally knew of a major infiltration, of the movement of explosives, of an order from Gaberone or Lusaka. Intelligence had sources. There were covert watchers, small teams of Recce Commando operating deep inside Angola, observing the Umkonto we Sizwe camps, listening to their radios, hooked into remote telephone lines that served those camps. There were deep sleepers in the overseas offices of the African National Congress. There were traitors, arrested in great secrecy, interrogated, frightened, turned, released. There were men and women inside South Africa who were under constant surveillance, their names having been first revealed to Intelligence by the S.A.D.F. capture of documents from A.N.C. offices in Gaberone. A treasure chest.

  Intelligence had this time had no word.

  The conference was boring the colonel.

  For a while he endured in silence, then intervened.

  "Was it a White or was it not a White?"

  He could not be given an answer. The vehicle drivers had said they had seen the shape of a man, momentarily in the lights, nothing else. The gate sentry had been the only continuous eyewitness to the attack. The gate sentry had been concussed, was still sedated. The colonel was told that the gate sentry had rambled a description between reviving from concussion and being given sedation. A hood, a mask, eyes in shadow, always moving too fast.

  "I think he was a White," the colonel said. "If he had been Black then there would have been a fire support team.

  I think it was a White working alone. He ran away. There is no report of a pick-up vehicle. If this had been A.N.C.

  then there would most certainly have been a pick-up. This one man, one White man, is at best no more than on the fringe of the A.N.C. It is now more than thirteen hours since the explosion, and Lusaka has said nothing. How many times do they wait thirteen hours? By the news agencies they would have known of the explosion within thirteen minutes, and they have still said nothing. I believe they have made no claim because they do not know who is responsible. I suggest this is the work of an individual, not of a cadre of Umkonto we Sizwe. Gentlemen, we have a White, we have a male. He ran forward fast, he threw a bag or sack weighing perhaps five kilos, he threw a fist-sized stone accurately through a windscreen. In my submission, we have a White male who is athletic, reasonable to assume that he is aged between 18 years and 30 years. We should meet again when we have the forensics."

  • • *

  The fire service had mo
ved back from the hallway of the building.

  Detectives and scientists moved amongst the sodden debris searching and picking. What they had collected in this initial examination was placed in metal bins to be sifted and then carried to the laboratories. A slow process, one that no detective experienced in this work, nor any scientist, would rush.

  * * *

  Jack went to the Whites Only ticket office.

  He bought a day return ticket to Pretoria.

  He went down the Whites Only entrance to the Whites Only section of the platform, alongside which would stop the Whites Only carriages.

  Once the train had cleared the industrial and mining areas of Germiston and Edenvale and Kempton Park, it should have been a pleasant and picturesque journey. Past the factories and the gold waste mountains the train ran by the dry farm lands of the Witwatersrand. But Jack Curwen was not a tourist. He was an unidentified terrorist. He was on a journey to the city where his father was held, condemned to die. He thought it better to travel by train. No driving licence to be produced, no forms to be filled in at Avis or Hertz. In a train he was a lone microbe swimming in the vein of the state. He was in the heart kingdom of the Afrikaner regime. He was passing through the pretty satellite towns of Irene and Doornkloof and Verwoerdburg, rolling by the Johannesburg highway and the Fountain Valley Nature Reserve and the massive modern University of South Africa. He was coming to Pretoria, he was coming to his father.

  A moment of confusion when he stepped down from the train. Which way to go? Streams of men and women, White and Black, crossing the platform around him. Confusion until he realised that the Blacks went left, the Whites went straight ahead. "Separate development" for leaving a railway station. He went through the Whites Only exit, and out into the Whites Only hallway of the station. His ticket had been clipped by a White official. He knew the cause of his confusion. His was a fear of going through the wrong exit, sitting on the wrong seat, urinating in the wrong lavatory, and being shouted at, called back, by a man in uniform.