A SONG IN THE MORNING

by Gerald Seymour

  The detective inspector told the constable to take Major Swart to the cells.

  Down a white tiled corridor. A locked door ahead. The echo of the feet and the clanging of the keys.

  As if a calmness had come to the major now that he was freed from the sarcasm and goading of his interrogator.

  The door ahead was unlocked. They went through. The door was locked behind him.

  Closed in by the walls to the corridor, and by the bright ceiling lights, Major Swart understood.

  The cell door was open, waiting for him. Folded blankets on the bed, and a bucket and a roll of lavatory paper on the floor beside it.

  The door slammed behind him. He sagged onto the bed.

  He understood.

  He understood why he was refused normal diplomatic facilities, why immunity was denied him, why a telephone was kept from him, why a senior Special Branch officer had been brought late at night from London to this shit pit town. He had grasped the importance of James Carew. He understood that James Carew was their man . . .

  He ran the three steps to the door. He was beating with his fists at the steel facing, bruising his hands, bellowing his anger.

  "I know who your bloody Carew is. Heh, got it, I know.

  He's your bloody undercover man. I know he is. I demand a telephone. I demand access to my embassy .. ."

  His words rang around his head, beat at his ears.

  He knew that no bastard heard him.

  * * *

  It was a bleak little room. There were posters of the smiling leader on the walls and boxes of pamphlets piled on the bare floorboards.

  The Prime Minister's speech to the constituency workers had failed because, before it was delivered, the message had come through that the Director General was arriving for discussion on a matter of the utmost urgency.

  "They're incommunicado at the moment?"

  "Yes, Prime Minister. But Major Hannes Swart, an accredited diplomat, can, if he is released as diplomatic procedures require, furnish the security police authorities with information that in my opinion could lead them to judge that Jack Curwen will attack the Maximum Security section of Pretoria Central prison. If those authorities were to receive such information it would, in my judgement, considerably improve their chances of arresting or killing Curwen."

  There was a gleam of mischief in the Prime Minister's eye.

  "When would Curwen move?"

  "Tonight, perhaps tomorrow night. I doubt he'd leave it until darkness on Wednesday, too fine."

  "Does he stand any chance?"

  "Let me sidetrack . . . Recently a man called Jacob Thiroko visited London. He was a principal officer in the military wing of the African National Congress. The Special Branch officer controlling the business at Leatherhead has given us the basis of a connection between Curwen and Thiroko, albeit a fragile one. Last week Thiroko flew back to Lusaka, and immediately set off with a small team back across the South African border. He was ambushed and killed, with all the members of his group, in the northern Transvaal. I suggest Thiroko would only have ventured into his country to lead a major operation. A major operation could be interpreted as an attack on the Maximum Security gaol where four members of an A.N.C. cadre are held and who will be hanged on Thursday with Carew. Now Thiroko's dead. Very possibly young Curwen now stands alone."

  "No chance?"

  "In my opinion, no. Perhaps I exaggerate . . . "

  "Tell me."

  "A few years ago three men broke out of the White Political prison. That's about a quarter of a mile from where Carew is due to hang. In the annals of escapology it was pretty remarkable. Every time they saw a key on a warder's chain they memorised it, and when they were in the workshops they used those memories to make a key. Their collection opened just about every door in this very secure compound. At night they used to let themselves out of their cells, with their keys, so that they could try every route that was available to them, but each time they came up against high walls that were floodlit, overlooked by watch towers.

  They decided the only way out was through the front gate, and that's the way they w e n t . . . If you'd asked me, knowing what they planned to do, what were their chances, I'd have said one in two million."

  "If he were to succeed, if he were to bring his father home, I would face the collapse of this government's foreign policy in relation to South Africa. Our position of persuasion towards reform would become meaningless."

  "Pragmatic politics demand that they fail, Prime Minister, and die silent."

  "Emotion requires that they succeed, Director General

  . . . It is only for his father?"

  The Director General said, "I doubt that a month ago he'd ever given South Africa ten minutes' thought."

  The Prime Minister said, "I hope he succeeds . . .

  Hold them at Leatherhead, to give the boy his chance."

  "And after he's had his chance we have to face the music."

  "The man at Leatherhead, we'll shrug it off."

  The Director General left by a back exit, picking his way between the garbage bags.

  • * *

  It was past midnight. Ros and Jan still not back.

  Jack worked methodically.

  He was on the floor of the living room of the service flat.

  Ros had rented it, using Jack's money, paid over the odds in deposit and said she'd be back to sign the papers the next day.

  He had the tube on the floor. From a sheet of light aluminium he had cut a triangular shape that he had bent into a cone, a squat witch's hat. With pliers he had fastened steel wire at intervals along the cone and then secured the wire with heavy adhesive tape. George Hawkins had told him that the speed of the detonation would be 6,000 metres per second. The wire and the sticky tape would hold and do their job for the mini-fraction of time before the aluminium cone fused in white heat to become the boring projectile travelling ahead of the explosive force.

  He placed the cone into the metal tube, the open end leading, pushing it gently forward till his arm was lost in the tube. Cautiously he took the slabs of explosive and worked them, putty-like, down the long length of the tube, squeezing them with his finger tips first into the angle between the cone and the tube's sides, and then back to the central point of the cone . . . He knew that explosive without a firing agent was harmless, but it took some faith to believe it . . . The explosive was packed round the cone. He had used three and a half pounds. Working on with care, not hurrying, because the Hawkins method was care and never hurry. He packed a further eight and a half pounds of explosive, weighed meticulously, into the tube and behind the point of the cone. George had been very specific. The packing must be even, and firm.

  Jack worked long and hard at the packing, sweat sheening his forehead.

  George's lessons kept flickering into his head: three and three quarter pounds of explosive will punch 31 inches into sandstone with an entry hole a maximum of 12 inches wide.

  He had a tube that was nine inches in diameter. He had twelve pounds of explosive to use. Nine inches of diameter and twelve pounds of explosive were the only facts that mattered a damn to him.

  And he had no primer, no priming charge.

  George had talked to him of six ounces of priming charge to lie between the detonator and the Polar Ammon Gelignite for the high velocity trigger into the explosive. He didn't have a priming charge. Forget the bloody priming charge.

  He had three detonators.

  He taped two together. With his finger he worked a slim hole into the packed explosive in the tube. The two taped detonators into the slim hole, the beginning of the arming of the shaped charge bomb. With a sharp knife from the kitchen he cut a yard off the length of Cordtex equivalent.

  Very slowly, maximum care, he had eased the Cordtex equivalent into the protruding socket of one of the detonators. Making it live, powerful enough to explode him through the walls of the flat, to devastate that corner of the block. With pliers he crimped the socket of the det
onator to the Cordtex equivalent. Had to be two detonators because he had no priming charge.

  He made a sludge of ready mix concrete. He kneaded it against the explosive and around the detonators and around the length of Cordtex equivalent. Set concrete to make the block at one end of the tube to drive the explosive force forward, undiluted, against the cone at the other end of the tube.

  Later he would tie a length of safety fuse to the Cordtex, knot it and bind it.

  Jack had completed the shaped charge when they came hack.

  When they came through the door he was assembling the last of his explosive in a three pound charge linked by his last detonator to Cordtex equivalent and safety fuse.

  All clear in his mind. Where he would use the shaped charge, and where the smaller explosive charge, and where the Cordtex equivalent on the grilles because George had told him that Cordtex would blow away the grille bolts, slice them.

  He was on his knees on the carpet when they came back, and writing on a torn scrap of paper. He had written "rope"

  and "bent metal".

  "We took a car," Ros said.

  Jan said, "She didn't know it was so easy, to open a car up and drive it away."

  The two stared down at Jack's handiwork.

  A breathlessness in Ros's voice. "Is it going to do the job?"

  "If it doesn't I'll be giving hell to an old guy in England when I get back." Jack grinned.

  "How so?"

  Jack said, "This is the first time I've ever built anything like it."

  "The first time?"

  "But you're supposed to be . . ."

  "It's the first time," Jack said.

  Ros turned away. She was shaking her head, broad sweeps, and the red ribbon in her hair flowing. A crack in her voice. "And you haven't even thought how you'll get away in the car, where you'll go."

  "My father'll know."

  "I think it's pathetic."

  "I don't have the time, Ros It's way past midnight. I've only today, I don't have time time to go running around the getaway routes. And I'm bloody tired, and I don't need lecturing. If you want to give a lecture then bugger off out through the door first..."

  "I'll make a cup of tea," she said.

  Jan levered himself down onto the floor beside Jack. They studied the plan of Pretoria Central and Magazine Hill. Jan pointed to the place where the car would be waiting, shrugged away the distance between Pretoria Central and the car. Jack led Jan through the map points where the grenades would be thrown, where the pistol shots would be fired.

  " . . . And then you'll get the hell out. You have to give that promise. You do what you're going to do and you get clear. You don't stay about to see the show. You go home and you get into your beds, and you go to the university in the morning, and Ros goes to work. It never happened, you were never involved."

  He saw the struggle working at the face of Jan van Niekerk.

  Jack said, "I have to know that you're clear. That'll be a strength to me. You have to make me that promise."

  He saw the way that the crippled boy's fingers stroked the heavy arms of the wire cutter. Light, delicate fingers. He thought the boy should never have been there.

  Ros stood in the doorway. She held two mugs of tea.

  "To give you strength, we promise."

  "Never hesitate, turn your backs on me."

  "I promise," Jan said.

  Ros leaned forward with the mug of tea for Jack. Her eyes were misted. He thought she was at the limit.

  "When are you going to sleep, Jack?"

  He smiled. "I'll catnap when the old man's driving.

  Bloody old taxi driver can drive all n i g h t . . . "

  The smile swiped off his face.

  "Oh, Christ . . . " Furious concentrated anger spreading over him.

  "I missed a window," Jack hissed. The mug rocked in his hands. "I have the outer wall. I have the wall onto the exercise yard. I have the window onto the catwalk. I have the grille down into the cell . . . I've all of that accounted for . . . I don't have the window between the catwalk and the grille over the cell . . . "

  "You're going to kill yourself," Ros said.

  He didn't seem to have heard. He was ripping at the adhesive wrapping he had made around the three pound charge.

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Just hope that a pound and a half on each will do the two windows, and one without a detonator."

  They left him. They couldn't help him. They left him on the floor with the sweet almond smell of gelignite. They would sleep together on the one bed, dressed and in each other's arms. They would hold each other to shut out the certainty of their fear.

  * * •

  He lay on his bed. He could not sleep. He stared up at the frail light patterned by the grille wires.

  The trap had been tested during the afternoon, the trap falling under a weighted sack.

  There was a cool wind, and the cold came into Jeez's cell through the window between his cell and the catwalk, and the window between the catwalk and the night. He heard the shuffle of the feet of the guard on the catwalk above and the guttering cough as the man cleared his throat. He heard the snore of the prison officer who was locked into the corridor of C section 2. He heard the dribbling of the singing, muffled because the sound swam along the catwalks all the way from A section or B section. Keeping a poor bastard company, because there was a poor bastard who was going to hang in four hours' time. Jeez wondered if anyone slept when they were going to hang in four hours' time. Jeez had another fifty hours of living, and he couldn't sleep either.

  Tuesday already started. Wednesday tomorrow. Wednesday was library day. He'd hear the trap going on Wednesday, and the sack under the trap would be of his weight.

  He could end it all.

  Of course he could. He had it in his power to make an end of it.

  He could shout for the officer sleeping in the corridor.

  The officer would send for the duty major. The duty major would ring through to the night duty officer at John Vorster Square. The night duty officer at John Vorster Square would rouse the colonel. He had the promise of the colonel for his life if he coughed the details on the cadres and the safe houses and the arms caches . . . Just one shout. Fucking cruel . . . Typical of the pigs that they offered the Judas Kiss as the price for living.

  It had just been a job for him, watching over the African National Congress. Just an assignment from old Colonel Basil. Wasn't supposed to get involved, not physically and not with the heart. Just supposed to be bumming on the fringe, just supposed to be a listener, and a writer of reports.

  He'd hang with Happy and Charlie and Percy and Tom.

  Fucking cruel, that it was better to hang with them than to make the Judas Kiss, and live a life sentence in a Boer White gaol.

  Jeez reckoned to find friends where he was. Didn't go looking for them, found them when he needed them.

  There'd been a guy in Spac, good guy, teacher, they'd been friends for six years. Close enough to pick the lice from each other's heads. A good guy and a good friend, and he'd died in the snow with a bullet hole in his nape. His best friend in Spac and Jeez had been on the detail that pickaxed the grave out of the iron-frozen ground. He wouldn't have given that friend the Judas Kiss, not just for life.

  He would make new friends.

  He would be friends with Happy and Charlie and Percy and Tom in the corridor, going towards the door that was always closed. He'd be their friend in the preparation room, and when they went through the doorway and into the shed. He'd be their friend when it was the hood and when it was the noose. He'd not give them the bloody Judas Kiss.

  No way he would shout for the bastard sleeping in the corridor of C section 2.

  He did not understand why the arm of Century hadn't reached for him.

  Hurt, hurt hard, lying on his bed, gazing at the dull light bulb through the mesh of the grille, to think that Century had dropped him off the team. He had the proof that they had dropped him,
the proof was the bloody cell he was locked into, and the hours that were left to him.

  Couldn't think about it, because thinking of the team was fucking agony for Jeez. Think of some other bloody thing . . .

  Think of why Hilda hadn't written.

  Think of Hilda in a nice house with a nice husband with a nice life.

  Think of the boy who was his and who was Hilda's.

  Think of the boy who would be twenty-seven years old next birthday.

  Think of the boy Jack.

  Think of anything other than the trap hammering in practice on Wednesday afternoon, after library.

  He couldn't picture, now, what the boy, his son, looked like.

  * * *

  First thing in the morning, first thing at his desk, the colonel called London. The London embassy told him that Major Swart was not yet in his office.

  The colonel said that he would not be calling unless it was of great urgency. The London embassy told him that the major's home had already been contacted, that the major's wife had not seen him since the previous day.

  The colonel said that it was an outrage that they had no contact with their man. The London embassy told the colonel that as soon as they had contact with Major Swart they would pass on the message for him to call John Vorster Square, priority.

  As if a door slammed in the colonel's face. His investigation had been at a gallop. A name. An address overseas.

  A photo-fit likeness. Because the door had slammed, he did not know how to go forward. A piece of basic, beginner's school, detective work was all that was required from London, but Major Swart had gone walkabout and the door was slammed.

  He went down the stairs to the incident room.

  Expressionless, he reported that London had not yet been able to furnish the material necessary for short circuiting a lengthy investigation. He knew he had lost ground. He made a lame suggestion. He suggested that all the two and three star hotels in Johannesburg should be checked again.

  • * •

  "Is he standing firm, sir?"