Spy Out the Land

by Jeremy Duns

  No, Campbell-Fraser thought, he no longer had any sense of loyalty to Ian Smith. His loyalty was to Rhodesia, and he would do whatever it took to ensure it remained under white rule – ‘in civilised hands’, as Smith himself had once put it. And Campbell-Fraser was prepared to work without Smith’s knowledge, or even against him, if he felt it was in Rhodesia’s best interests.

  Chapter 9

  Sunday, 13 July 1975, Haga Park, Stockholm, Sweden

  Paul Dark lit a cigarette and raised it to his mouth. The moment the tip glowed, he inhaled deeply and leaned back on his elbows. He squinted in the afternoon sunshine, taking in the view that stretched out before him. The hillside was dotted with squares of brightly coloured blankets, each of which was home to a Swedish family with young children – like small islands of social democratic prosperity, he thought. A few feet away, Ben was running around pretending to be an aeroplane with another boy, while Claire was seated cross-legged next to him on their blanket, one finger entwined in her hair as she browsed the arts section of Dagens Nyheter, a pair of sunglasses perched on her head. He leaned over and found his own pair, which he pushed tight against the bridge of his nose.

  So here it is, he thought. Fifty. Half a century.

  He realised with a start that he was now older than his father had been at the time of his death. He took another drag of the cigarette as he let the thought sink in.

  He didn’t deserve to have outlived him; indeed, he was lucky to be alive at all. If it hadn’t been for the Hanssons, he would have died out on the ice in the Finnish archipelago six years earlier. Even with Gunnar’s intervention, had the lighthouse happened to be just a few miles further out he would have lost too much blood by the time they’d reached it. It had been touch and go as it was: Gunnar had wanted to evacuate him to a hospital on the mainland, but Helena had persuaded him that it would take too long so they had instead called in a doctor from a nearby island, who had given him a strong shot of morphine and cleaned and dressed the wound. Eventually, he had set up a makeshift operating table on the ground floor of the lighthouse, and removed the bullet.

  Once Dark had regained consciousness, he had explained that he and Sarah were British diplomats who had escaped from imprisonment in Moscow, only to be chased by Soviet secret police across the border. They asked how it was that he spoke Swedish that sounded local to the region, and he told them his mother had been Erika Nordstedt of Åbo.

  They hadn’t questioned his story much further after that. He was one of them, a Swedish-speaking Finn, a Nordstedt no less, and Gunnar had seen the Russians try to kill him with his own eyes. That was enough. Dark had asked them not to inform the coastguard about him, because the presence of an unidentified foreigner might reach the ears of the Russian consulate in Mariehamn and renew the hunt for him, and they had agreed. For this, and much else, Dark would be forever grateful.

  It had taken him six weeks to recover. In the meantime, he had drunk Helena’s tea and her fish soup, and slept as much as possible, although he had often woken in the night, shaking and feverish. Gunnar discreetly arranged for Sarah to be buried in the island’s cemetery in an unmarked grave, and late one night Dark accompanied him there so he could pay his respects. Otherwise he had kept to the upper floors of the lighthouse: even on an island of forty inhabitants, it hadn’t been easy to keep his presence there a secret.

  As soon as he had regained some measure of fitness, he had offered to repay the couple’s kindness by helping out with the work around the lighthouse until he fully recovered, repairing broken machinery and lending a hand with the cooking and cleaning. They had agreed, and this arrangement had continued from one day to the next, until he had gradually become an integral part of their lives and nobody had mentioned that, physically at least, he was healed. They were a quiet, contemplative couple, and he’d sat in companionable silence with them through the long winter nights as the storms raged outside, playing backgammon and drinking rosehip tea or, when they had ordered it from the mainland, whisky.

  He’d spent nearly eight months on Utö before deciding it was time to leave. The Russians had evidently believed him dead when they had left him, and there had been no indication that they had revised that view. After so long undisturbed, it seemed likely that the Service would by now have come to the same conclusion. Although the Hanssons had protested at his announcement, he felt he was intruding too much and couldn’t offer them enough in return. He had no right to ask them to shelter him for the rest of their lives – they had done more than enough in saving it, in burying Sarah, and in looking after him for so long.

  He had weighed his options carefully. He wanted to live somewhere he wouldn’t be reliant on anyone else, and where he had a decent chance of never being discovered. After much deliberation, he’d decided that Stockholm would make a good starting point. He had visited it several times with his parents and knew it as a small and rather anonymous city, and as he spoke Swedish he felt he should be able to find some form of work there and carve out a quiet, unobserved existence.

  So early one June morning, Gunnar had taken him to the harbour in Mariehamn and bought him a ticket for the ferry across to Sweden. ‘You are welcome back any time, Englishman,’ he had said with a sardonic smile, before giving him the briefest of claps on the back and clambering down into his boat. Neither man had showed the other the tears welling in his eyes. And Dark would never know that Helena had woken to watch them leave from the lighthouse, but hadn’t been able to bear the idea of saying goodbye to him.

  Dark had found work within a few hours of the ferry arriving in Stockholm. On the crossing he had realised that some of the passengers were Swedish dock-hands heading home after a weekend cruise, and he’d approached their table and asked if they knew of any available casual work. They’d given him the name of a firm with offices in Värtahamnen, the city’s main port, and he had headed straight there from the ferry. By the end of the afternoon he’d been paid thirty kronor to carry some crates onto a tanker. Enough for a slice of bread, a cup of bitter coffee and a room for the night above a local bar.

  The next day he’d found similar work, and the day after that, but after a couple of weeks he had become anxious. Too many people came in and out of the bar and he felt exposed, so he’d moved to a basement squat in Södermalm populated by middle-class dropouts and artists, none of whom had been in the least interested in who he was or where he’d been.

  He soon realised that he hadn’t been alone in his assessment of Stockholm’s advantages as a hideout. As a result of a government prepared to look the other way, or at least not too closely, left-wing radicals from around the world had flocked to the city as a safe haven, attracted by the combination of a flexible attitude towards refugee status and a generous welfare system.

  After a few weeks, Dark discovered that there were also some more serious operators around, on both the left and right. In April 1971, a fascist Croatian group had strolled into the Yugoslavian embassy and assassinated the ambassador, and since then there had been a spate of hijackings and bank robberies across the city.

  For Dark, the fact such groups were living in Stockholm was an opportunity. Criminals and revolutionaries usually came with a retinue: couriers, explosives experts, forgers. After a few months of saving his wages, he set about trying to find documents in case he was ever discovered and had to escape in a hurry.

  It had been a delicate process, as it had involved dealing with people whose true agendas were difficult to determine. The Soviets indirectly sponsored several leftist groups in Europe, and the slightest of missteps might mean word getting back to Moscow that he was still alive. Dark had made cautious progress, frequenting a succession of grubby cellars and marijuana-laden parties to get the lie of the land, until eventually he had become an accepted part of the background in the underground scene.

  Towards the end of the year, he had heard whispers about a group of Palestinians who had set up base in an old villa in one of the quieter suburbs, where the
y were said to have an arsenal of explosives and sophisticated electronic equipment in the basement. These were the big boys: well-trained professional freedom fighters, or terrorists, depending on your particular ‘bag’. In the circles Dark was now hovering around, the Palestinians were most people’s bag.

  He had bided his time before approaching one of their acquaintances and mentioning that he was looking to obtain some supplies. Nothing big: just a couple of forged passports. He had felt his way forward until that winter he had finally been given – casually, a joint waved in the air by a sallow young man wearing a denim suit and pointed cowboy boots – the name of an elderly gentleman in Gamla Stan, who had given him a series of perfect documents in exchange for three weeks’ hard-earned wages. Dark had used one of them under the name of a Swedish-speaking Finn, Erik Johansson, to obtain from the tax authorities a person-nummer, the ten-digit identification number that was the key to living legally in Sweden.

  In the following months, he had supplemented these documents with other material, including a Zastava M57 pistol, the brutish-looking Yugoslavian copy of the Tokarev TT-33, and one of Husqvarna’s discontinued bolt-action rifles, both of which he’d bought through the Palestinians’ circle. Along with three more passports and a bundle of cash, he had buried it all in a hide in a cemetery on the outskirts of the city.

  Confident his counter-measures were as secure as he could make them, he had slowly slipped into a routine existence. The biting winter hadn’t helped – more than a few times, he found himself wondering why he hadn’t fled to the Bahamas or Monte Carlo, like the jewel thieves in Hollywood films. Stockholm was comfortable but conformist, and its long dark nights seemed to drain all meaning from life. He was finally free from the British and the Russians – but for what purpose?

  In the evenings, he’d wander around the city looking at people, trying to fathom what drove them, inspired them – what they were doing. Since the war, his life had been an unbroken sequence of deception, and it had been disorienting to let go of the daily machinery of the espionage world: the dead drops, assignations, photographed documents and intense internal manoeuvring that had accompanied it all. Over the years he had become accustomed to the pressure weighing down on him, the ever-present dread that at any moment he might be discovered – with it removed, he discovered that a part of him strangely missed it. All he had to contend with now were his memories, which weren’t pretty. In prison, he’d managed to stave them off with dreams of survival, escape, even revenge. Now he had nothing to focus on but a stretch of cold grey days in Sweden until death.

  And looming over everything was guilt: for the lives he had taken directly and for those that had been taken as a result of secrets he’d betrayed. One evening after work, he had found himself walking in the diplomatic quarter of the city and passed the British embassy. He’d been oddly gripped by the urge to walk in and give himself up. It would be so easy, and would solve so many problems. ‘My name is Paul Dark.’ And then it would all be out of his hands. A secret trial, a long sentence . . . well, so? He could cope. And it would be just: he’d be repaying his debt to society, as they said. He’d stood across the street for several minutes, on the verge of making a move, but in the end he’d turned away and taken the bus back to his tiny flat, and the soul-crushing despair that was weekday evening Swedish television.

  With the return of spring, he had found a way to keep his blackest thoughts at bay. He’d volunteered at a soup kitchen near Centralstation, and although he knew it was hardly a suitable penance there was some small comfort in seeing gratitude in the face of a hungry stranger. And it was there that he’d met Claire, the beautiful Zambian woman who now sat on the blanket beside him. Her passion for life had snapped him out of his limbo, and he’d been smitten. The city had thawed under her guidance, and life had begun for him again.

  That summer he had moved into her flat in the suburbs, and soon after she had raised the topic of children. The thought had terrified him: he was already anxious enough at the possibility of her being used as leverage if anyone were to discover him, and had transferred his emergency cache from the cemetery to below the floorboards of her building’s basement as a result. Sometimes it was her face he saw in his nightmares, the gun placed to the back of her head instead of Sarah’s.

  He had known that he owed her an explanation of his past so she could make her own choice about whether to stay, but he’d reasoned that simply telling her might itself put her at greater risk. And so he had said nothing, and then she had become pregnant and it had been too late. The whole world had changed, and sometimes he hardly recognised himself. Now he woke in the night, panicking that Ben might have unaccountably stopped breathing, only to pad over to look at him and see his soft pudgy cheeks squished up against the pillow, the gentle rise and fall of his chest, the tiny curled fingers, the sheer immense wonder of him – and the fact that he had brought this wonder into the world.

  He turned his face to the sky. A cloud had moved across the sun, throwing a shadow over their section of the park, and he suddenly felt very old and out of place, the winter feeling creeping over him again. Yes, he had survived, he had outlived Father, he had fallen in love and started a family. But he was still a man on the run, and he always would be. He had no right to smoke cigarettes in the sunshine, watching a boy who called him ‘Pappa’ and giggled when he rustled his head against his stomach. He should be dead, or rotting in a cell, or at the very least pissing his days away in a frozen little flat in Moscow. He remembered Donald Maclean’s sad long face, the expression of bitterness he’d had in his eyes . . .

  ‘Are you okay, darling?’

  He took Claire’s hand in his, intertwining their fingers. ‘Yes, fine. I was just thinking.’

  ‘About how decrepit you are, no doubt. Du gamla, du fria.’ He smiled. It was the opening line of the national anthem – ‘You ancient, you free’ – and she often used it to tease him. ‘Are you having a nice day?’

  ‘Lovely.’

  He took off the sunglasses, tossing them on the blanket, and glanced down at his wristwatch. It was five o’clock – soon time to start heading home. He looked over at Ben, who was now pretending to be a charging bull, and as he did he noticed a man on one of the benches a few yards away, holding up a camera in their direction. A thought hit him: Was he taking photographs of them? And then another followed: Or of Ben?

  Dark leaped to his feet, dropping his cigarette and stamping it out on the grass. The man was middle-aged: sturdy, with a reddish nose and sandy-coloured moustache, wearing a checked shirt, denim shorts and a large sunhat. He didn’t flinch when Dark approached, just kept pointing his zoom lens at Ben. Dark hovered over him.

  ‘Vad gör du?’

  The man looked up, a puzzled expression crossing his face. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand Swedish.’

  Dark couldn’t place the accent – Dutch, perhaps. ‘What are you doing? Why are you taking photographs of my son?’

  Puzzled turned to startled. ‘What do you mean? I was just trying to get a picture of the willow warblers.’ He pointed towards a group of tiny birds pecking at food a few yards from Ben. Dark glanced down at the bench: on it sat a rucksack and a small hardcover book bearing the title Birds of Europe.

  He nodded curtly, apologised for the trouble, and headed back to Claire, who was peering at him anxiously.

  ‘What was that about? You ran off very fast.’

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing. Just a misunderstanding.’ He pointed at the clouds. ‘The sun’s going in. Why don’t we head home?’

  She looked at him, her eyes searching his for trouble, then folded her newspaper and stood, propping her hands against her back and arching it. ‘If you like. Time for some coffee, perhaps.’

  Dark crouched down and started gathering up Ben’s toys. When they left the park a few minutes later he looked back and saw that the man had moved from the bench and was crouched on his haunches by the birds, still clicking away. Was it a ruse? It was po
ssible – it was an old surveillance trick to pose as an amateur snapper, and the book on the bench had seemed rather neat. Or was he overthinking, becoming paranoiac? Yes, he thought, it was surely nothing. Just a tourist photographing some birds.

  Chapter 10

  Thursday, 17 July 1975, Salisbury, Rhodesia

  In a suite on the first floor of the Meikles Hotel, Major Roy Campbell-Fraser listened as Pete Voers explained how he had conducted his surveillance on the woman and her child in Stockholm.

  ‘What about the boy’s father?’ he asked when Voers had finished. ‘Still in the picture? Another munt?’

  ‘No, a Swede. I got some of him as well.’ Voers removed several glossy black-and-white photographs from the briefcase on his lap and handed them to Campbell-Fraser, who held each up to the light in turn.

  ‘Looks like a hippy.’

  ‘An old one. He’s fifty. Name of Erik Johansson.’ Campbell-Fraser looked surprised and Voers gave a ferrety grin. ‘I made some enquiries about him through the tax office, posing as an accountant. It’s all public there, no questions asked. He works for a haulage firm in the centre of the city, and volunteers for a charity a few nights a week.’

  ‘Do you know which nights?’

  Voers took a small notebook from his trouser pocket and flicked through the pages.

  ‘Tuesdays and Fridays. He usually starts at five and comes home at around midnight.’