Red Joker

by Michael Nicholson

  The party of gravediggers said Yes! They had seen tanks, parked in line with their backs to the mountain, facing across the island towards the sea. Thirty-four they had counted, with enormous guns, and the tank crews were sitting beside them in the shade of little khaki tents drinking tea and cooking sausages on paraffin stoves.

  The two priority signals, one sent by the American Ambassador, the other by the South African policeman, ran parallel on the land line from Pretoria to Maputo and then by radio transmissions to their separate destinations on Union.

  The Russian in Maputo, referred to as Soviet One by American Intelligence in Pretoria, delayed the onward transmission of his signal for as long as it took him to run from his office down the two flights of stairs to the radio room in the basement of the Embassy. He stood over the radio operator as she punched the keys that sent the Morse three hundred miles across the Mozambique Channel to the operations centre of the Cuban Command set up in tents around the damaged radio station on the slopes of La Souffrière.

  Within four minutes of the American Ambassador shouting into his scrambler telephone in Pretoria, the black guy in the red skullcap was giving his first order through his field radio to his patrol units. They were to begin a systematic house-to-house search along the route from the airport and the two terraces over-looking the Square. Any white man, wherever he was, whatever he was doing, was to be shot on sight. The six patrols he ordered into the Square were to carry with them extra belts of hand grenades and if there wasn’t the time for a search-in-person, the grenades were to be used to flush out and destroy.

  Another order went out to the patrol escorting the convoy of delegations from the airport. The officer in charge was told to drive in at half speed, not too slow to annoy the Russians or make them suspicious, but slow enough to delay their arrival in the Square by at least another ten minutes. It was now almost midday and the houses could be cleared in half an hour.

  Then the black guy walked to the jeep outside his tent, ordered the driver to get out and took his rifle from him with two extra magazines and his belt of special grenades. Then he jumped into the driver’s seat, shouted out his final order to them in Spanish and swung the jeep round. By the time the last of his orders had been repeated over the field radios, the jeep was a dot in the distance halfway along the coast road that led from the radio station to the harbour.

  The signal sent by the security policeman from his car in Pretoria took a little longer to relay because of a callback from the South African agent in Maputo querying the message and its authority. Still in his car and taking the biggest gamble of his career, the security policeman quoted the Director of the Department of National Security as the authority. Immediately the agent in Maputo began tapping out the message, and faintly, ever so faintly, it was picked up by the young South African sniper crouching on the rooftops overlooking the Square.

  The tiny transmitter-receiver was hidden in the rucksack but he heard the alert signal clearly, a low constant hum, fifteen seconds long. He pulled it out and held it to his ear. As he listened to the Morse, the heavy rifle resting across his thighs, the dots and dashes became words and the words an order and the order incomprehensible, ‘ABORT. RETURN TO COVER. EXIT WITH AMERICANS. LEAVE JOKER WILD. REPEAT ABORT.’

  Slowly he lifted the rifle and rested it against the chimney stack. He should immediately acknowledge the message by return Morse, simply three short and one long breaks in transmission. But he waited. The message would be repeated in another minute, and he was confused. There must have been a mistake, something dreadful had gone wrong, the wrong message had gone out. . . to the wrong person, somebody had got it wrong. But how? The signal had been properly prefixed with his own security call-sign, PROEABETA, and the end-out call-sign had been correct too.

  Below he could hear jeeps revving in the Square. Another panic. Cuban patrols on the move. Then came the hum again from the radio, the Morse, his call-sign repeated. God! It was the same. Abort. Out with the American planes, NO RED JOKER DEAD REPEAT, NO RED JOKER DEAD. The Englishman can live. But it was impossible. Not now, not when he knew where he was, not when he was less than two hundred yards away. Christ, if the bastard stood up now he could get him from here. He had already seen his head, just the top of the dark curly hair, but there wasn’t enough velocity, even in his gun, to kill him through the wall. But another hundred yards closer and he’d push the heavy bullets right through and blow the Englishman to pieces. Another five minutes and he could tear the entire room apart.

  And now they say abort? He looked at his rifle and ran his fingers up and down the barrel. He would have to acknowledge, this was the last signal, he would have to. His forefinger went to the little black transmission button just a simple dot-dot-dot-dash. The man in Maputo would be anxiously waiting for a reply.

  He raised himself slightly on his heels and looked across the rooftops. He could see the attic window clearly now. A few minutes ago, through the telescopic sight, he had seen everything inside it - a dressing-gown behind the door, a dressing-table on the far wall and in the small oval mirror the shadow of the Englishman, sitting on the floor, his back to the window. Just the shadow outline, waiting.

  Years of training, reflective to command and a loyalty to authority that came naturally to him, began to force his finger down on to the button. He also closed his eyes. ‘O God, wat ’n skande . . . wat ’n bleddie skande.’ He knew who had done it. The top people in the Department, those bastards who never moved out of Union Buildings. They had gone over the head of the man who knew he wouldn’t fail, the man who had looked after him from his last years at university, guiding him to become one of the top field men in the Service. He would never have agreed to this. From the start it had been his idea, it was his idea, it was his code name, ‘Red Joker’, to kill the Englishman.

  Damn them! He would not let him down, not him, not after so much. He hadn’t received the signal. Anything could have happened. The transmission had been too weak, it had been distorted, the radio was damaged, it was faulty, there were a thousand explanations. He couldn’t obey because he’d say he hadn’t received any new order. Two hours ago he had been told by the only man he trusted to kill the Englishman and that’s what he would do.

  There was more noise below, something big was on. The South African looked at his watch; just after midday. The Russian couldn’t have arrived in the Square yet. He had seen the plane banking over the mountain a few minutes ago, a big jet, silver, much larger than the rest, so it would be another fifteen, twenty minutes before he got here.

  He went down on his stomach and carefully eased himself forward to the edge of the roof. He saw below him jeeps full of Cubans, reversing and taking up positions around the Square. As they stopped, the soldiers ran to the houses and began kicking in the front doors and firing off the locks of those that wouldn’t open. He heard a grenade explosion below him and to the left and then more on the far side.

  He shifted himself back to the chimney, knelt, pulled the rifle to his shoulder and looked through the sights into the attic room. He was still there, standing to one side of the window now, watching the Cubans. He could see him so clearly in the reflection of the dressing-table mirror. Thank God for that mirror, without it he would never have seen him in the first place.

  There was a noise directly below him and he could feel vibrations on the roof. Doors banging, feet on stairs, men searching. For whom though? Not for him. For the Englishman? But how would they know about him? Had it . . . had it perhaps something to do with the order to abort?

  For an instant, confusion and doubt made him anxious and he thought back to the signal and the transmission button he hadn’t pressed. But just as quickly it passed as he heard a shot in the room below and then boots on the metal stairs that led to the roof. Silently he ran along the centre gulley and without looking down jumped on to the roof of the next house. He lay down flat behind the raised parapet and watched the C
ubans come out through the fanlight. Quickly they looked around and went back down without speaking a word to each other.

  They were searching and they were in a hurry. They were after the Englishman for sure, but they were too late. Another eighty yards, five more rooftops, and he would be within range. Just eighty yards, five more minutes, and he could begin firing.

  21

  The black guy in the red skullcap waited as they brought the charred and twisted body of the Cuban corporal out of the church past him on a stretcher. The heat of the fire had roasted the muscles and shrunk the sinews and the knees were locked tight under the black skull. The arms and hands, black bones also, were stuck in a knot around the head as if, in the last moments of his life, he had tried to protect his eyes and ears. Only the teeth were white and as the black skin of the face had stretched, they were bared and grinning. Many bits of coloured wired brocade from the flags that had cremated him were stuck to his charred shoulders and the effect reminded the black guy of Mother of Pearl. As they lifted the body, the stomach had burst open and fallen on to the stretcher, fresh and pink, like new sausages, and the air was full of the stench from his bowels.

  The black guy stepped forward and looked into the church from the front porch. It was gutted and still smoking and in the far right corner fallen roof timbers were still burning. But he saw that the spire was untouched. He walked further into the ruin, turned and looked up again. He knew the spire was the tallest building in the Square, possibly the highest in the town, certainly higher than the terraced houses surrounding it, the houses his patrols were in now, searching and gutting with grenades.

  If the Englishman was in one of them, and he must be, he would be forced up and out on to the roof, that was his only escape. The radio message from Maputo had said the South African was chasing and there was only one way for him to go. Also across the rooftops. It would be simple then. Both were up there, one searching, one waiting, both expecting to kill. So from the top of the spire he would look down on them, and if they moved he would see them.

  The spire was perched on top of a square tower. Until the lighthouse had been built on the Guano rocks fifty years ago, a grid of thirty candles, magnified inside a thick bevelled glass dome, had been secured to the top of the spire to warn sailors of danger and guide them to safety. The dome had long been taken down but the iron rungs that had taken the candle-lighters to the top were still there, secured to the rafters in the conical roof.

  The black guy looked at his wristwatch. Five minutes past twelve. He considered he had the option, though the radio message from Maputo had not meant it that way. The Russians had given an order, but in his own mind there was an alternative. There always was an alternative. That was their fault, the Russians. They were never capable of a manoeuvre, even their conspiracies ran in a straight line, there was never scope for sideways movement with them, no tangents. Their conspiracies succeeded because they were painstakingly planned, not because they were adventurous. That was why it was always so difficult working with them.

  The radio order had come directly from Arkadi Gloukov, the senior KGB man in Mozambique. ‘STOP THE CELEBRATIONS, RETURN THE SOVIET DELEGATION IMMEDIATELY TO LUSAKA, NO RISKS ARE TO BE TAKEN WHATSOEVER, NO RISKS.’

  But what revolution had been won without risks? Castro and Guevara had beaten Batista and marched down the Sierra Maestra into Havana because of the risks they had taken. Was revolution to be spread across Africa? Or was it to be halted every time a Russian was at risk?

  Moscow was getting too old for revolution, that’s why they were using others now. They won’t let their own die. They give their guns but they won’t risk their own men. They fly wounded Cubans to Moscow, amputate their legs, fill them with Russian blood, but in Africa their mechanical diggers are as close as they ever really get to death, burying Cubans in a thousand different graves from Angola to Ethiopia, young volunteers of the International Mission who had returned to the land of their forefathers to fight for justice through revolution.

  He ran back to the jeep for his rifle and the belt of grenades. From behind the front seat he picked up a short khaki cylinder with Russian code numbers stencilled in black which he stuffed into the front pocket of his tunic. He slung the rifle across one shoulder and the grenade belt across the other and pulled their straps tight.

  There would be no soft options, he’d not allow it. He would ignore Gloukov’s order. He was a Cuban, not a Russian, and Africa was his revolution. Hessians they had been called by the world, but they were revolutionaries first. There would be no cancellation, no halt to the celebrations, and Solodovnikov would announce the new Uzania as it had always been planned he would do and no mad dogs would stop it now. His own patrols would find the Englishman and flush him out like a fox. And he would take the South African.

  He ran back into the church and kicked away the debris in front of a small square wooden door on the right of the porch. It was locked but the wooden slats broke as he kicked them. A narrow stone spiral staircase turned tightly up, and as he began climbing the barrel of his rifle scraped against the wall.

  He went higher and the light was lost from below, the steps became slippery and the walls felt slimy. Something crunched under his feet, tiny brittle bones breaking, a dead bird or a bat suffocated and dried up in the spiral tomb. His right hand went to the wall for support and he saw the luminous dial of his watch reminding him. But no doubts. With fifteen minutes to go, and still no doubts.

  He remembered the last time he had crept through the darkness like this, on his knees along a low tunnel, the stone scuffing his back, coming into the slave pit. He had stood up but too quickly because the blood drained from his head and he felt dizzy. He had waited but the sensation wouldn’t go. It felt as if his mind had left his body and he couldn’t move without it. Suddenly he had smelt death, not the two bloated rats by the tunnel entrance crawling with ants, but a smell that erupted from inside him. He had looked up and saw the first sunlight bouncing off the overhang of granite, but he didn’t see the sleeping-bags, or the pile of blankets, or the empty food tins, or the orange box on its side with the radio and hurricane lamp and the tin of rat poison on top. He didn’t see the Englishman’s hide-away. As he had stood there alone, tall and black, the red skullcap the only bright thing, his arms went stiff by his sides and he saw the faces of Arab traders looking down, counting their catch. He touched the bodies of the blacks around him, felt the heat of them and the smell of their sweat, sweet and sticky. He heard the old men groaning, the young whimpering and the women sobbing between them, and the threat and smell of death came out of their pores, death here and beyond the island, beyond the beaches and the coral and the oceans beyond that. And the Arabs looked down grinning.

  And as the second Cuban soldier crawled out of the dark tunnel of the slave pit behind him he saw his Commander in the centre of the arena and he stopped and held his breath. The sunbeams had edged in between the top of the pit wall and perfectly spotlighted the skullcap. The black guy’s face was turned upwards to the rock, his eyes were closed and sweat blackened his tunic. There was spittle at the corners of his mouth and he was hitting the sides of his thighs with tight clenched fists in an odd irregular drumming and groaning strange words that were not Spanish with the rhythm.

  The black guy felt his right hand touch another door. He pushed hard against it but it was solid. He felt in the dark for the lock. It was large and mounted and although the key was in it, it wouldn’t turn. There was no room to kick it, so he would have to fire it off and risk a ricochet. He pulled his revolver from the webbing holster and, doing everything by feel, he placed the forefinger of his left hand on the key and straightened his arm so that the finger and arm made a straight line from the shoulder to the lock. Then he placed the revolver barrel hard against his bicep pointing down the line, pulled his arm clear and fired. In the flash of light he saw the lock disintegrate and the door swung open with the force
of the blast. He stepped out into the sunlight and on to the narrow parapet at the base of the spire and breathed in the fresh air smelling of brine.

  To the left was the sea and the harbour and the work-gangs who had almost finished unloading the freighters. The ships were high in the water now and he could see the Russian crews sunbathing on the upper decks, their white bodies sparking off the dull grey decks.

  He edged along to the iron rungs, spaced two feet apart running to the top. He pulled hard at the lowest one, flaked in rust, but it held firm. With the rifle and belt still across his back he began climbing, testing each rung in turn before he climbed on to it. He counted fifteen to the top, thirty feet to go and already he was level with the top floors of the terraced houses.

  The sun was hot on him now and he could feel the heat reflected from the green glazed tiles of the spire’s roof. Occasionally a sudden breeze from the sea would bring the smoke away from the church and tiny particles of charcoal would fill the air around him like black snow and fall on to his green uniform and mottle the shiny sweat on his purple- black arms. He reached for the next rung and his wristwatch reminded him again. Ten minutes. Still no doubts. No choice now anyway. He licked the sweat from his lips and wiped it out of his eyes with the back of his thumb. He felt the weight of the weapons as the straps dug into his shoulders and pulled his tunic under his armpits. He stopped. The spire shivered. A tremor. Then below to his left he saw the far wall of the church, the eastern altar end, buckle and then crumble and disappear in a commotion of dust. He waited. The dust billowed out and joined the smoke and rose straight up out of the ruin, and something glittered, something bright in the rubble, catching the sunlight. A large brass cross. It was all that could be seen now, the only thing of the church left, that simple emblem he had once adored, that had hung in miniature at the end of a thin gold chain around his mother’s neck, a tiny gold cross that would sometimes sink and be lost in the folds of her full brown breasts.