Kitabı oku: «Unofficial and Deniable»

JOHN GORDON DAVIS

UNOFFICIAL & DENIABLE

COPYRIGHT

HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2000

Copyright © John Gordon Davis 2000

Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers

John Gordon Davis asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780007574407

Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780008119348

Version: 2014-12-15

DEDICATION

To Tana and David Hilton-Barber

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

PROLOGUE

PART I

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

PART II

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

PART III

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

PART IV

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

PART V

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

PART VI

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 49

CHAPTER 50

CHAPTER 51

PART VII

CHAPTER 52

CHAPTER 53

CHAPTER 54

CHAPTER 55

CHAPTER 56

KEEP READING

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

PROLOGUE

Andy Meyer, the junior officer on watch in the US Coast Guard station, remembered the yacht dropping anchor in the open channel of St Thomas, American Virgin Islands, in the small hours of that September morning in 1996 because it was not flying a flag. Four hours later, just before dawn, he noticed the yacht steaming out of the channel towards the nearby British Virgin Islands. Meyer hoped the skipper knew what he was doing – there were rocky waters ahead, best navigated in daylight, and technically he should have registered his arrival in American waters before departing. Meyer decided to make an entry in the Log, just to show he had done some work.

The sun was up when the yacht, Rosemary, anchored in the big open bay of Road Town, Tortola, the sleepy little capital of the nearby British Virgin Islands, but it is established by Immigration Department records that it was not until three o’clock that afternoon that the skipper, Sinclair Jonathan Harker, reported his arrival. He appeared, according to Mrs Doris Johnston, the chief immigration officer, to have been drinking; he was nervous, unshaven, wild-looking. He gave his last port of call as Nassau, Bahamas, and produced a crew list certifying that only he and his wife Josephine were aboard. He presented Josephine’s passport, along with his own, but Mrs Johnston told him that Josephine had to report in person. Mrs Johnston then demanded his Nassau port clearance certificate: Harker said he had not known he needed such a document before leaving the Bahamas. Mrs Johnston told him in no uncertain terms that he would have to return to Nassau to get it.

Harker then left Mrs Johnston’s indignant presence, went to the American Express office and telephoned Josephine’s insurance company in New York advising them of her death and asking what procedures he had to follow. He then sent a fax to her attorney, asking the same question, then another to her father, Denys Valentine, in Boston, reporting his daughter’s death, saying he would telephone as soon as he had composed himself. Then, instead of heading to the police station to report her death, he returned to his boat and proceeded to drink a bottle of rum.

At noon the next day a police party went out to his boat, alerted by Mrs Doris Johnston who had complained to them that Josephine Harker still had not reported to Immigration Department. The Commissioner of Police, Joshua Humphrey, found Harker sitting in the saloon of his yacht, ashen, starting on a new bottle of rum. Harker looked up and said:

‘I want to report a person missing on the high seas …

Joshua Humphrey, portly, black, with forty years’ experience, suspected immediately that Sinclair Jonathan Harker was guilty as sin; ‘Sin-clear Harker the sinful sailor,’ he dubbed him. And when he went into Jack Harker’s history and learned that he had been a career officer in the Rhodesian army battling freedom-fighters until the bitter end of that long, nasty, bush war, he was sure. But when he learned that, at the end of that war, Harker had been snapped up by the South African Defence Force to fight in their bush war in Angola against the ANC guerrillas and the Cuban army, Commissioner Joshua Humphrey, a devout Africanist, was downright convinced of his guilt.

‘An’ what you bin doin’ since you stopped being a soldier for apartheid, Major Harker?’

‘A publisher. And I was never a soldier for apartheid – I was a soldier against communism.’

Joshua Humphrey found the distinction a metaphysical one but decided not to argue. ‘A publisher? How does a military man become a publisher, sir? Where?’

‘In New York. Commissioner, I’m very traumatized and I feel your attitude is persecutory.’

‘In New York, huh?’

The Commissioner was smart enough to know his lack of real experience. It was a relief to share responsibility and telephone the US Coast Guard in St Thomas and ask, as a favour, whether an officer experienced in investigations on the high seas would come over to take a look at this case.

The Virgin Islands, with balmy turquoise bays and white beaches, interlaced with exotic coral reefs, are very beautiful, possibly the best real estate in the world, but commercially they are good for little more than offshore banking and tourism. Named for their unspoilt beauty, they were colonized by Great Britain and Denmark as bases from which to battle the Spaniards and the pirates who plagued the merchantmen carrying the spoils of the New World back to Europe. Sugar plantations were developed, but the problem was labour: the tropical heat made the cane fields unworkable by white men; they simply did not have the sweat-glands for hard work in such a climate. The solution was black labour – for over two hundred years British and American slaving ships sailed to West Africa and brought back their cargoes of human beings to be sold as slaves to the plantation owners. The Virgins, like all the islands arcing across the Caribbean Sea, prospered, despite a series of rebellions by slaves which were ruthlessly suppressed. But then came the Abolition of Slavery Act in Great Britain which decreed that all slaves throughout the British Empire be freed at midnight on 31 December 1834.

Thus the basic economy of the Caribbean was dislocated: the plantation owners returned to Europe, the cane fields went to ruin, the erstwhile slaves scratched a subsistence living. Denmark sold her share of the Virgin Islands to the United States of America; the British hung on to their share of the islands until the Wind of Change swept Africa, whereupon she granted independence to all her colonies. But, unlike the newly independent African states, the Caribbean islanders spoke no African language, the only culture they knew was that of their colonial masters and they clung to that. Joshua Humphrey, Commissioner of Police, great grandson of slaves, was proud of his British heritage. He had something very important in common with Lieutenant-Commander Albert Smith of the US Coast Guard: both were proud to be black descendants of slaves, determined to show they could do their jobs as well as any white man, and both deeply resented South Africans because of their former politics. And now here sat a South African, a former senior officer in the South African army, with a story of his American wife’s mysterious disappearance.

‘Where exactly did this take place, Major?’ Smith asked, his pen poised.

Harker took a note from his pocket with trembly fingers. He handed it across the desk. ‘Those are the coordinates I got from my satellite-navigator when I woke up and found Josephine missing.’

Smith consulted a chart on the desk. He carefully marked in the coordinates with a parallel ruler.

‘But,’ he said, ‘that means she disappeared south east of Florida, in American waters.’

‘I thought they were international waters.’

Smith smiled. ‘Come on, Major, you’re a military man who can read maps, you know enough law to know where’s “high seas” and where’s territorial waters.’ He paused for a response, then continued: ‘But no matter what you thought, why didn’t you sail back to Florida, back to Miami or Key West to report to the police? They were less than two hundred miles away, and the winds would have been in your favour. Why did you go a thousand miles or more, against the wind, into the Atlantic, all the way to the Virgin Islands to report?’

Harker wiped a hand down his gaunt face. ‘I just didn’t think of it. I was distraught. Exhausted … We were heading for the Virgin Islands when this accident happened and I just carried on.’

Smith sat back. ‘So seven days later you arrived here. What time was that?’

‘About eight o’clock in the morning.’

‘And this was your first stop in the Virgins?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well,’ Smith said with satisfaction, ‘it was recorded by our Coast Guard station that you stopped in the American Virgins for several hours the night before last.’

‘Oh,’ Harker said, ‘that. But I only anchored, I didn’t go ashore.’

‘But you “stopped”,’ Humphrey insisted. ‘Why did you not go ashore, to the police, to report Josephine’s disappearance?’

Harker closed his eyes. ‘Because,’ he said tensely, ‘I needed to sleep.’

‘So why didn’t you go ashore to report after you slept?’

‘Because it was still dark. I thought it better to wait until daylight when senior police officers would be at work, not juniors on night duty.’

Humphrey smirked. Smith said: ‘Not because you thought the US Virgins police might be more efficient and therefore more dangerous to you? Seeing Josephine was American and she disappeared in American waters off an American boat.’

Harker’s nerves were ragged. ‘No. And I’ve told you I thought she’d been lost in international waters.’

Both officials smirked. ‘But you reached Tortola at about eight o’clock that morning,’ Smith said. ‘Yet you didn’t report to this police station at all – they came to your boat, the next day. Only then did you report anything.’ Smith looked at him. ‘How come, Major?’

‘Because I was exhausted after my ordeal – seven days at sea alone. I needed to sleep some more.’

‘But,’ Smith said, ‘Mr Humphrey says you had been drinking when he went out to your boat.’

‘When I woke up I had a few drinks. To pull myself together before reporting.’

‘But what did you do yesterday, when you arrived?’

Harker closed his eyes. ‘I sent a fax to Josephine’s father from the American Express office, informing him of her death.’

‘Why didn’t you telephone?’

‘Because,’ Harker said tensely, ‘of the emotion. I wanted him to be informed before I telephoned and we all burst into tears.’

‘I see …’ Smith nodded. ‘Not because you didn’t want to answer awkward questions? And then you returned to your boat to rest?’

Harker hesitated an instant. ‘Yes.’

Smith smiled. ‘Not so, Major. You made another phone call. American Express gave us the number. Who to?’

Harker closed his eyes again, sick in his guts. ‘I forgot. To Josephine’s insurance company.’

Humphrey’s face creased in theatrical wonder: ‘But how can you forget? And why, Major? What was the hurry? Why was that more important than reporting her death to me, the police?’

‘I was in the American Express offices, I had the facilities available, I simply took the opportunity to do the responsible thing.’

Humphrey snorted. ‘An’ what did you ask the insurance company?’

‘I simply reported Josephine’s death.’

‘You didn’t ask how to collect the insurance?’

Harker hesitated. ‘No. I mean I simply asked what formalities were required of me generally.’

‘Formalities? For what?’

Harker sighed.

‘Formalities to wind up her estate. Affidavits, death certificates, police reports and so on?’ Smith suggested.

Harker hesitated, then sighed. ‘Yes.’

‘In other words,’ Humphrey said, ‘how to satisfy the insurance company that they had to pay up.’

‘And how much insurance did you have on Josephine, Major?’ Smith asked.

‘None,’ Harker said shakily. ‘She insured her own life. She paid the premiums.’

‘And who was the beneficiary?’

‘Her estate.’

‘And who was the beneficiary of her estate under her will?’

Harker took a deep breath. ‘As far as I know, some of her relations, and her father. And me. Mostly me, but I don’t know the amounts.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘A will is a private matter, isn’t it?’ Harker rasped angrily.

Silence. Then: ‘And you? Who is the beneficiary under your will?’

‘Josephine. She gets everything.’

‘Did she know?’

Harker closed his eyes. ‘Yes. When we got married and decided to do this trip around the world we both made new wills in each other’s favour.’

‘And where is her will?’

‘With her attorney, in New York. As is mine.’

‘And did you advise her attorney of her death when you were at American Express?’

Harker sighed. ‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us earlier?’

‘I forgot that detail.’

‘Oh, you forgot. Like you forgot to mention that you advised her insurance company?’ Smith smiled. ‘And how long have you and Josephine been together?’

‘Over seven years.’

‘And did she work?’

‘She was a writer. She published under her maiden name, Josephine Valentine.’

Smith looked at Humphrey. ‘You mean the Josephine Valentine? Who wrote that book about South Africa: Outrage?’

‘Right.’

Smith and Humphrey glared at each other. ‘So your wife was a wealthy woman?’ Smith asked.

Harker shifted. ‘Well off, yes.’

‘And you, Major?’

‘I published her books, or rather my company did, Harvest House. So I’m well off too.’ He added shakily: ‘So why the hell am I suspected of murdering her? Why would I kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?’

Smith smiled grimly. ‘Nobody’s accusing you yet, Major. And we will ask the questions, if you please. But tell me – was your relationship happy?’

‘Very.’

Smith frowned. ‘But how did she feel about your military history? Fighting fox apartheid, against the freedom forces of Nelson Mandela – she was very anti-South Africa in her books.’

‘She understood that I never regarded myself as fighting for apartheid. I was a professional soldier fighting against the Cuban army, Russia’s surrogates in Africa who were helping the illegal communist regime of Angola fight the Angola freedom forces. The South African army was supporting those freedom fighters, and so was America, because it was no secret that the Cubans also intended to overrun South Africa and turn it into another communist state. That’s what I was fighting against.’

‘But,’ Humphrey said, ‘that also meant you were fighting for apartheid. And against the ANC who had bases in Angola.’

Harker dragged his hand down his face. ‘I knew apartheid was going to collapse soon. The greater evil was if the Cubans and Russians overran South Africa, taking the Cape Sea Route. The communists could already control Suez any time they wanted. Next to go would have been the Panama Canal. Then the communists would have had the whole world sewn up. So the important thing was to defeat the Cuban army in Angola, drive them out of Africa.’

‘But you and your famous wife never quarrelled about this?’

‘No.’

‘So when did you settle in America?’

Harker said tensely: ‘In 1986 I was wounded, and invalided out of the army. First I went to England and became involved in publishing. I came to America in 1987 and took over Harvest House. In 1988 I met Josephine and later started publishing her books. And we’ve lived happily ever after. Okay?’ He closed his eyes. ‘And now I want to go back to my boat and sleep.’

Humphrey said, ‘No, we’ve impounded your boat, Major, while the forensic scientist examines it, takes photographs and so on. You’ll have to sleep in a hotel tonight. So please tell us again what happened that night Josephine disappeared.’

Harker opened his eyes. ‘Jesus. I’ve told you twice.’

‘Again, please.’

‘Look, evidently you suspect me. So I want a lawyer.’

Smith smiled. ‘Why do you want a lawyer if you’re innocent, Major? Why are you scared of just telling us again what happened, if you’re telling the truth?’

Harker took a deep, tense breath. ‘You can’t put me to the expense of a hotel when I have my own boat.’

‘Okay,’ Humphrey smiled, ‘so I offer you a bed in the cells instead. It’s up to you. But I would be grateful if you came back here at noon tomorrow to resume our discussion. And I would be grateful for your passport, please …’

Harker had left his boat at anchor in the bay: now, on emerging from the police station, he found it chained to the government jetty, under guard. Policemen were aboard. He collected some things and checked into the Ambrosia boarding house.

At ten o’clock the next morning Jack Harker was arrested at the aerodrome attempting to board a flight to the French island of Guadeloupe. In his baggage was a .25 Browning pistol. His South African passport had been surrendered to Humphrey: he was using an expired passport which the police had not known he possessed. On his return to the police station he was further interrogated; finally he was formally charged with the murder of Josephine Valentine Harker.

A week later he was extradited to Florida to face trial.

PART I

The Back-story

1

In those days of apartheid many accidental deaths occurred in police custody – black suspects fell down stairs and cracked their skulls, or slipped on soap in the showers, or sometimes even threw themselves out of upper windows in a reckless attempt to escape. There was always an official inquest, as the law required, but the magistrate very seldom found anything suspicious, anything indicating reprehensible interrogation techniques by the police. The inquest into the death of Steve Biko, for example, evoked no judicial censure even though Biko was driven naked through the night, a thousand miles, in the back of an open truck, to a police hospital after he had sustained a fractured skull when he fell against a wall whilst irrationally attacking his police interrogators. In those days these accidental deaths were attributed by most of the white public to a few ‘bad apples’ in the police, though the frequency suggested that there must be a lot of them, but not too many questions were asked and there were no hard facts to gainsay police explanations.

Then deaths began to befall the apartheid government’s enemies outside the country, which were clearly not accidental: Professor Ruth First, wife of the leader of the South African Communist Party, was killed by a parcel bomb in Mozambique; Jeanette Schoon, wife of an anti-apartheid activist, was blown to bits, together with her little daughter, by another parcel bomb in Angola; Dulcie September died in a hail of bullets in Paris as she opened the offices of the African National Congress; Dr Albie Sachs, anti-apartheid activist, had his arm blown off by a car-bomb in Mozambique; Advocate Anton Lubowski, another anti-apartheid politician, was gunned down outside his home in Namibia on the eve of his country’s independence from South Africa. The press, particularly the international press, argued that the pattern of these murders suggested they were the work of the South African government, but this was hotly denied. But then there were a number of explosions: at the London headquarters of the African National Congress, and at Cosatu House in Johannesburg, headquarters of the Congress of South African Trade Unions. Khotso House, also in Johannesburg, the headquarters of the South African Council of Churches, was bombed; Khanya House, headquarters of the South African Bishops’ Conference in Pretoria, was set on fire. Who were the people committing all these crimes? The government blamed it all on black political rivalry and ‘Godless communists’; others blamed it on those bad apples in the police; only a few believed it was government policy to murder and destroy its enemies and their property, and they largely kept their mouths shut because of the security police. For those were the days of the Brezhnev Doctrine, the Cold War in which Africa was the major battleground, most of Africa being communist-sponsored one-party dictatorships, the era of the Total Onslaught Total Strategy, the total strategy to combat the total onslaught of the ungodly communist forces of darkness bent on overthrowing Western democracy and the Godly principles of apartheid. The security police could detain anyone for 180 days without trial, and then another 180 days immediately afterwards, and then another, and so on until, in the words of the Minister of Justice, ‘the far side of eternity’. There was freedom of speech in parliament but precious little outside; radio and television were government-controlled, the press had to watch its step and foreign journalists who wrote unkindly about apartheid were unceremoniously deported.

And one of those deported was the beautiful Josephine Valentine.

Major Jack Harker had heard of her for years – the legendary heart-throb Josephine Valentine, the long-legged American blonde with the dazzling smile who collected wars and war heroes, the beautiful busty photo-journalist in sweat-stained khaki who always managed to wangle a helicopter ride into battle-zones denied to others by using charms pressmen don’t possess. She had a formidable and exotic reputation which lost nothing in the telling: while it was not true that she had been a high-priced hooker in New York, as alleged by certain members of the press, it was probably true that she always managed to be in the right place at the right time to get her spectacular pictures by screwing the right officer. It was said of her that she collected war heroes – but ‘warriors’ would have been a better word. She never had a lengthy relationship with her conquests: she used them, thanked them and left them with a broken heart.

Her war photographs made her famous: Harker had seen her name in many magazines over the years, read many a piece by her, seen many of her hair-raising pictures. Ms Valentine had shown up in Rhodesia during the long bush war, leaping out of helicopters with her cameras into operational zones, ‘screwing her way into the front lines’ to get her photographs; then she had been seen on the other side of the Zambezi amongst the black terrorists; and she was always popping up in the Middle East in the Arab–Israeli conflict. It seemed that wherever there was a war Josephine Valentine was there, charming her way into more stories; she was big buddies with the heavyweights of both sides. Military men all over the world knew about her, particularly in Africa; many had seen her, met her, entertained her, fantasized about her. Jack Harker was intrigued by what he knew of her and not a little frustrated that he seemed to be one of the few military men who had never set eyes on her. A dozen times she had left the bar, mess, bunker, trench, helicopter moments before he arrived.

And then, in 1986, when he finally encountered her in the Battle of Bassinga she was covered in blood, half naked, her teeth bared as she furiously tried to fire an AK47 automatic rifle at him.

The Battle of Bassinga in Angola was Jack Harker’s ‘century’, the hundredth battle of his military career, the hundredth time he had leapt into action, heart pounding, to do or die. It was also one of the worst battles: a parachute jump at a dangerously low level, at night, right over the target area, which was a camp holding thousands of terrorists and their Cuban advisors, all armed with billions of dollars worth of the latest Russian military hardware with which to liberate southern Africa from the capitalist yoke. The aircraft came in low in the hopes of avoiding the terrorists’ radar but the groundfire started up before they were over the drop-zone. Harker led from the front and he was first out of the aircraft, plummeting through thin air with his heart in his mouth, and he was the first casualty of the operation – a bullet got him through the shoulder as he pulled his parachute’s rip-cord: he was covered in blood by the time he crash-landed in a tree on the wrong side of the river. He extricated himself with great difficulty and strong language, stuffed a wad of emergency dressing deep into the wound and forded the river with more strong language.

All battles are bad but this seemed Jack Harker’s worst ever. He was awarded a medal for it, but he did not have coherent memories of it. He remembered the cacophony, the screams and the gunfire, the flames leaping, the shadows racing, remembered stumbling, lurching, the bullets whistling about him, blood flooding down his chest into his trousers no matter how deep into the wound he rammed the wad of cotton wool with his finger; he remembered storming the water tower, staggering up the ladder to destroy the machine-gun nest that was causing so much havoc, storming a Russian tank and throwing a hand-grenade down the hatch, he remembered the sun coming up on the cacophony of gunfire and smoke and flames and the stink of blood and cordite; he remembered being pinned down for a long time by a barrage of automatic fire coming from a concrete building on the edge of the parade ground, two of his men being mowed down as they tried to storm the building; he remembered scrambling up and running at the doorway.

The battle had been going on for an hour, the sun was up now, the camp strewn with bodies, the earth muddy with blood. Harker lurched across the parade ground, doubled up, rasping, trying to run flat out but finding he could only stagger, and he crashed against the wall beside the door. He leant there a moment, gasping, trying to get his breath, to clear his head, and he was about to burst through the doorway, gun blazing, when he heard a woman cry in English, ‘You bastards …’ Harker lurched into the room, his rifle at his hip – and stared.

Josephine Valentine was clad only in white panties; she had her back to him, her blonde hair in a ponytail, crouched at the window, wrestling with the jammed mechanism of an AK47, sobbing, ‘You bastards …’ On the floor behind her sprawled the half naked body of a Cuban officer, blood flooding from his back. Beside him crouched a black soldier, holding a rifle in one hand, shaking the body with the other; then he saw Harker, his eyes widened in terror, he raised his gun and Harker shot him. The soldier crashed against the wall, dead, and Josephine turned wildly and saw Harker. Her beautiful face was creased in anguish, her wild blue eyes widened in terror at seeing him; she flung the useless rifle aside, collapsed on to her knees beside the dead black soldier and screamed: ‘He’s only a boy!’ She snatched up his weapon, ‘Only a toy gun, he carved it!’ She flung it at Harker, then she scrambled frantically to the dead Cuban and grabbed at his pistol holster.

‘Leave that gun!’ Harker shouted.

‘You killed my man!’ she shrieked and swung the big pistol on Harker and pulled the trigger. There was a deafening bang and the force of the bullet knocked him backwards across the room, his thigh shattered. He crashed into the wall, shocked, and then saw her turn the pistol on herself. In a wild dramatic movement she thrust the muzzle against her naked left breast, her mouth contorted in anguish as she howled, ‘You killed him …’ She pulled the trigger and the blow of it knocked her off her knees, on to her back.

2

‘Publishing,’ said General Tanner, head of Military Intelligence, when he visited Harker in hospital on the South West African border, ‘is excellent cover for an espionage agent.’

Harker frowned. ‘Are you saying she was a spy?’

The general smiled. ‘I’ve changed the subject, I’m talking about you now. But yes, Josephine Valentine is a spy of a kind, fraternizing with the enemy. All photo-journalists are spies because they sneak up on you, take their forbidden pictures and flog them to the highest bidder.’

‘You’re talking about me? Sorry, General, you’ll have to explain – we were talking about Josephine Valentine. The bullet missed her heart, then?’

‘Made a bit of a mess of some ribs but the doc says it’ll hardly leave a scar. Pity, she’s been a pain in the arse for years. Like her to have a nice scar to remind her to stay out of our business, goddam drama queen. Pity we didn’t catch her boyfriend alive, he could have given us some useful information.’

‘She didn’t talk at all?’

‘Wouldn’t tell us a damn thing, just demanded to see the American consul. But we developed eighteen rolls of her film and we got some good intelligence on enemy hardware – and saw a few familiar faces. She’s threatened to sue us, of course.’ He smiled.

‘Where is she now?’

‘In Pretoria; we’re getting rid of her next week when she’s fit enough to travel. Daddy is coming out to take care of his darling wayward daughter. Anyway …’ the general plucked a grape off the bunch he had brought Harker, ‘… as I was saying: publishing is ideal cover for an espionage agent.’ He looked solemn.

Harker smiled. ‘As you were saying. But I’m afraid you’re going to have to explain that too.’

Tanner smiled. ‘Or there’s the import-export business – but it’s rather dull. Running a restaurant or a small hotel might be okay but it can be hard work – and putting you in charge of a bar would be like putting a rabbit in charge of a lettuce patch, aha-ha-ha!’ The general popped the grape into his mouth. ‘Whereas publishing,’ he chewed, ‘would be fun, particularly in an exciting place like New York. Respectability, lots of long lunches and cocktail parties, plenty of intellectual people to stimulate you.’ He shrugged. ‘However, if you don’t fancy that, I can offer you a whole range of jobs. Running a clothing store in Brussels, for example.’

Harker grinned. ‘I’m afraid you’ll still have to explain.’

The general picked another grape off the bunch. ‘You’re finished, Jack. You’ll never fight another battle. Half of one lung gone, one thigh-bone fucked. It’s HQ for you now, old man, fighting a desk. Or you can work for me in Military Intelligence. So I’m offering you a job as a publisher.’

‘You own a publishing house, General? In New York?’

The general smiled. ‘The only house I own is in Pretoria where my wife and children live. And that’s mortgaged.’ He looked at Harker. ‘But I control businesses all over the world, Jack.’ He smiled. ‘Ever heard of the CCB? The Civil Cooperation Bureau?’

Harker was mystified. ‘No.’

‘Good. And if you repeat this conversation to anybody you’ll be in breach of the Defence Act, the Official Secrets Act, and Christ knows what else. You’ll be court-martialled.’ He smiled again. ‘Got that, Jack?’

Jesus. ‘Yes.’

The general sat back. ‘Well, the CCB is the new covert arm of Military Intelligence. The new civilian espionage arm of our army. Very new. In short, the top brass has made a study of the CIA, the KGB, Mossad and MI6, and the Civil Cooperation Bureau is the result. Emphasis on the civil. Our civilian agents operate all over the world, in particular in those countries where South Africa is not allowed to have embassies or consulates or trade offices because of apartheid. As you know, every embassy of every country has an intelligence officer who works in the guise of “cultural attaché” or something like that. Well, because we have so few embassies, we have created the CCB instead. Our CCB agent is set up in a suitable business to make him look kosher. He recruits suitable local sub-agents, spies, to gather information about our enemies – just like every government does. Our agent sends the information back to me. I then do whatever is necessary to spike our enemies’ guns – just like I do when I get information from our attachés in our official embassies.’ He paused. ‘I must add that our CCB businesses are usually profitable. Our agents make good money.’ He smiled. ‘Much better than a major’s pay.’ He paused again. ‘I’m offering you a job in the CCB, Jack. I suggest publishing because of your English name, and accent – and you’re an intellectual sort of chap. You will draw a good salary – and, of course, you will be pensionable when you eventually retire. You’ll have a share of the publishing profits. We’ll provide you with an apartment in New York, as well as the actual offices – and a cost-of-living allowance, a car and an entertainment allowance. And we’ll pay your membership fees of all the necessary clubs – the yacht club; and so forth.’ General Tanner looked at him. ‘Sounds pretty good to me, Jack. Bit of a sinecure. Much better than selling life insurance, which is about all an ex-soldier can do.’

It sounded pretty good to Harker, too. ‘But what do I know about publishing?’

‘You’re smart. You’re one of the few intellectuals this army’s got – apart from me, of course.’ He grinned. ‘We’ve got another small publishing house in London. We’ll send you there for a few months for some high-density, high-tech literary training. But it really doesn’t matter because the editors you hire will know the ropes and you’ll learn on the job.’

‘But espionage? What do I know about that? And how do I recruit my agents?’

‘All will be explained. You’ll recruit men yourself when necessary, but your immediate boss, the guy you’ll report to, is stationed in Washington and he has already set up the network which you will inherit. He ran the whole show from Washington but it’s too much work now, so you’ll be responsible for New York and Florida via your publishing house.’

Harker was bemused. ‘It’s just information you want?’

General Tanner said: ‘New York is an important listening post. The United Nations is there – all those black communist countries shouting about us, plotting mayhem, harbouring ANC and SWAPO terrorists. And down in Florida there are all those Cuban exiles with all kinds of information about Castro’s army. You’ll be responsible for all that intelligence.’

Harker looked at the older man. He really liked him. That was mutual. ‘But I’m a soldier, not a spy.’

‘Military intelligence is a very important part of soldiering.’

‘Of course. But I mean I’m a soldier, not a hit-man. I don’t want to have to kill anybody.’

‘You won’t have to get your hands bloody, Jack.’ General Tanner smiled. ‘You’ll be told all you need to know when you have agreed and signed up. But let me say this much: any actions will be military ones – against the sort of people you’ve killed plenty of on the battlefield, and who’ve tried to kill you. That’s a soldier’s job, to kill as many of the enemy as possible, isn’t it? But the responsibility will be entirely mine as head of Military Intelligence.’ He ended: ‘We are fighting a total onslaught by the communist forces of darkness, Jack. That’s why America is helping us. Openly. And Britain, secretly. To fight this total onslaught we need a total strategy. And the CCB is an important part of that total strategy …’

3

Harvest House was a nice old brownstone overlooking Gramercy Park on New York’s East Side. Harker bought it for the CCB in his first month in town, having found out how expensive conventional office space is. It was easily big enough for the staff he hired: one editor, two personal assistants, a sales director who doubled as publicity director, and a general clerk. He found these people, all experienced in publishing, quickly because he advertised salaries above the average. The building was a big old nineteenth-century house: the numerous bedrooms became offices, the dining room became the conference room – there was space to spare. Harker, as managing director, had the best office: the large living room with its old marble fireplace and bay window overlooking the park.

When the building was remodelled, his staff in place, he hired a few of the catering trade’s leggiest waitresses and threw a large cocktail party for all the literary agents in New York to announce his start in business. ‘Why have we called ourselves Harvest?’ he said in his welcoming speech. ‘Because we want to gather up the bountiful talent that lies neglected by the other brainier-than-thou publishing houses …’ The literary agents responded: in the first year of business Harvest published eleven books, all by first-time authors, and made a respectable profit – partly because the production was done economically by another CCB enterprise, a printing works in Ottawa – enough to pay all salaries and overheads with some left over for reinvestment. Harker had a flair for publishing, a nose for a profitable book. And it was fun: there were boozy lunches with agents and authors, lots of interesting, intelligent people to meet. It seemed an easy living, the authors, agents and editors doing most of the work. It sure beat getting the shit shot out of you on the battlefields of Angola.

And his covert work for the Civil Cooperation Bureau was not difficult either.

‘The CCB divides the world into regions,’ General Tanner had explained. ‘America is Region One, England Region Two, and so on. America itself is divided: Head Office is in Washington, Region One A, where Felix Dupont is the overall Regional Director – he’s your boss. New York, where you’ll be, is Region One B – your title is Regional Manager. You will also be responsible for our CCB business in Miami, Region One C, where a guy called Ricardo Diego is the Regional Sub-manager – he’s a South African Spaniard. His front-business is a bar in the Cuban exile community, which is very valuable to us. He has agents planted in Cuba itself, who give us a lot of information on military matters. You’ll remember a number of occasions in Angola where we suddenly knew exactly about Cuban reinforcements?’

Harker nodded.

‘A lot of that was thanks to the CIA, of course, but also to Ricardo’s agents in Havana – who have agents in Luanda. Ricardo is very valuable. Trouble is, he’s not real management material. You’ll have to keep a close eye on him – Felix Dupont is too busy now, monitoring the Capitol scene and the rest of America. So Ricardo will report to you, and you report to Dupont. My orders will come to you through Dupont. As I said before, Dupont has a network of agents in place in New York, so you’ll inherit a going concern. Most of them don’t know each other, and only the “senior salesmen” will know you; you’ll probably never see the “juniors” – most of them don’t even know they’re working for us. Some think they’re working for the CIA, or for a European government, or for a firm of detectives. In fact, one of our senior salesmen is a private investigator, chap called Trengrove. We need all kinds of information about those United Nations nincompoops, not just hard military facts – who’s sleeping with who, who’s a homosexual, who’s got gambling debts, et cetera, so we can squeeze them. Another salesman has a very good whorehouse – one of the best in New York, I’m told. Anyway, as soon as you leave hospital you go to training school to learn all the general principles, then to London to get the hang of the publishing business, then you fly to Washington to stay with Felix Dupont for a few weeks, getting the nitty-gritty – he’s got a nice hotel. Did you ever meet Felix in the army?’

‘No.’

‘Remarkable man in martial arts. Took a bullet through the knee. However, after a few weeks with Felix you’ll spend a week in Miami with Ricardo, getting his picture. Nice bar he’s got – and lovely strippers, those Cuban girls sure are well-nourished. And Ricardo serves the best steaks in town.’

‘What about weapons?’ Harker said. ‘I presume I can’t take my own.’

‘Certainly not. No, Felix will supply all the hardware. You’ll have one or two licensed firearms, but most of the hardware will be unlicensed and untraceable. If you ever have to use a gun, dump it in the river straight afterwards. And if anybody ever shoots you, you tell the cops it was just another robbery. But you’ll learn all this at training school.’

‘Shoot me? I thought I was through with all that strong-arm stuff.’

‘You are, you’re a Regional Manager, not a salesman.’ The general hurried over that one. ‘Anyway, after a week with Ricardo you go to New York, move into the apartment Felix’s got for you, and set up Harvest House, get yourself a girlfriend, and settle into the role of the shit-hot, wing-ding new publisher in town.’ He smiled. ‘Easy. Wish I were you.’ He added: ‘I’ve never seen so many beautiful girls as in New York. And they outnumber the men six to one.’ He grinned. ‘You’re going to have a good time, Jack …’

Yes, the CCB work was easy enough. The reports trickled in from his senior salesmen, by telephone, encoded fax, scrambled e-mail, dead-letter box, undercover meetings: Harker digested it, collated it, gave any instructions, re-encoded it and sent it on to Felix Dupont in Washington. The information was a mish-mash of facts and conjecture, but Dupont made sense of it all in his jigsaw of espionage – and so too, after a while, did Harker: the pieces fell into place, the gaps becoming clear, the necessary instructions to the salesmen becoming self-evident. Once a month, sometimes twice, he went to Washington for a conference with Dupont. He usually combined these trips with an onward journey to Miami to check on Ricardo. This was always fun: whereas Dupont was a self-satisfied, detribalized Englishman with a painful body who thoroughly detested his enemies, Ricardo exuberantly enjoyed life and only really hated Fidel Castro. He loved South Africans and Americans who were giving the bastard a hard time in Angola. The clientele of his bar-ristorante felt the same way: anybody who took a swipe at Castro, the robber of their plantations and businesses, was okay with Ricardo and his customers at Bar Casa Blanca in Little Havana. None of Ricardo’s noisy patrons, nor his silent salesmen, knew who Harker was, but there was never a shortage of the senoritas in his hotel bedroom at the end of the day spent debriefing Ricardo, trying to make sure he had understood all his communications in Spanglish.

‘Ricardo, do us all a favour – buy a good Spanish-English dictionary, to check your spelling, we’ll pay for it. And take some English lessons, because when encoded your information can be misleading if you misspell or get the idiom wrong.’

‘So we confuse the enemy too, huh, compadre! But enough of work now –’ he waggled his dark eyebrows – ‘we go back to Casa Blanca to las senoritas? Or maybe I send one up here to you, jefe?’ He thumped his hand on his chest: ‘Clean! Garantizada …’

Yes, as General Tanner had promised, it was an easy job, and even satisfying once the jigsaw began to make sense. However, Harker’s jigsaw was usually incomplete because Dupont received information from the CIA direct and he only told Harker as much as he needed to know. Equally valuable was the detail coming out of the United Nations. Several of the delegations from African countries leaked information copiously to Harker’s salesmen, as a result of either blackmail or greed, but it was often only gossip about other delegates’ weaknesses or bad behaviour. Nonetheless, from time to time, important intelligence emerged about ANC bases in Angola, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, about scandals and rivalries within the exiled hierarchy. Dupont and General Tanner – the ‘Chairman’ – prized these snippets highly. And it was Harker’s United Nations salesman who first learned about atrocities committed in the ANC’s military camps in Angola, torture of their own soldiers by Mbokodo, the ANC’s security police, apparently condoned by the top leadership, which resulted in two full-blown mutinies: Dupont and the Chairman were cock-a-hoop about that intelligence. When the story was broken in the international press it did the ANC considerable harm.

It was interesting, if often frustrating, and it certainly beat working in Military Intelligence headquarters in Pretoria. But Harker did not enjoy his work involving the anti-apartheid movement: keeping track of their plans, compiling dossiers on their activists, looking for ways to discredit them or minimize their impact. During the time Harker spent in Washington learning the ropes, Dupont ordered him to organize a burglary of the Anti-Apartheid League’s offices in New York, as a training exercise. The salesmen copied every computer disk, thus getting a mountain of information, then wiped the original disks clean, leaving the League’s administration and financial affairs in a shambles. Dupont and the Chairman were delighted with the information they got, but Harker studied it and couldn’t see what the excitement was about: sure, the burglary produced thousands of names of members, their addresses and telephone numbers, much correspondence between branches about fund-raising plans, proposed protest marches, lobbying of congressmen, reams of bank statements – but so what? There wasn’t mention of one spy, one arms cache, one target, one battle, let alone one revolution. Harker considered the Anti-Apartheid Leaguers a harmless bunch: they made a lot of noise but it was mostly a case of thundering to the converted. Indeed Harker sympathized with them – he didn’t approve of apartheid either. However, when he settled down in New York he studied the many dossiers on activists that Felix Dupont had compiled, updated them with new information received from his salesmen and passed it all back to Washington. He considered it a waste of effort, and found it distasteful to be prying into people’s private lives looking for peccadilloes with which to haunt them; but Dupont was very strict about keeping the files up to date. Dupont supported apartheid as vehemently as he hated communism and scorned blacks.

‘No, I don’t hate blacks,’ he once said, ‘I just have contempt for their politics and government. They cannot govern – look at the mess the rest of Africa is. Why? Three reasons. One, their culture – it’s totally different to ours, they see the civil service as an opportunity for power and enriching themselves – an opportunity for corruption. Two, Affirmative Action – they want to put black faces behind every desk to give jobs to their own race, so corporals become colonels overnight, constables become commissioners, clerks become magistrates. Stupid black pride makes them insist that black upstarts can do any job as well as any experienced white man. The result – shambles and corruption. And three: they then fuck up the entire economy by turning the country into a Marxist one-party dictatorship.’ Dupont snorted. ‘No black is ever going to rule me. And that’s what makes the anti-apartheid activists so important to us – they want the blacks to rule South Africa, which means that they are supporting the communists who want to ride to power on the backs of the blacks. Over my dead body! So keep those files strictly up to date, please.’

So Harker did. And it was through this diligence that he again encounered Josephine Valentine.

Security is always a problem for the spymaster: where does he keep the secret files so that nobody will find them or even suspect they exist? In his own country his office is in some government building, in foreign lands it is deep in the innards of his country’s embassy or consular office; but in the case of the Civil Cooperation Bureau no South African ambassador, consul or clerk even knew of its existence. So Harker’s spymaster office was off the basement boiler-room of Harvest House in Gramercy Park. On Dupont’s instructions Harker had installed a brand-new boiler that would not require attention for years and he hired a different company to install a steel door leading off it to a ‘storage room’. From that room another steel door, behind shelves of odds and ends, led to the Civil Cooperation Bureau’s New York espionage centre. Here Harker had a desk, a computer, filing cabinets, a telephone and fax line in the name of a fictitious insurance broker, and a shredding machine. There was no window: the walls were raw stone, the floor plain concrete. Standing orders required Harker to be in this neon-lit subterranean cell at seven o’clock every morning, before Harvest opened for business, to receive NTKs (Need-to-know Situation reports), to transmit SEEMs (Scrambled Encoded E-Mail reports), and to make any RTCs (Restricted Telephonic Communications) using codes or a litany of ENAVs (encoded nouns, adjectives and verbs) to report what the dark world of espionage had come up with in the last twenty-four hours.

Harker found this regime no hardship: his military training caused him to wake naturally at five a.m. no matter how late he went to bed; he pulled on a tracksuit and for the next hour he jogged through the dark concrete canyons of Manhattan, taking it gently so as not to strain his damaged leg; six o’clock saw him having breakfast at his favourite ‘all-nite dinette’ off Union Square, seven saw him showered and besuited at his desk in his bleak cell ready to put in a couple of hours’ work for the South African Defence Force, even if it only meant ploughing through reams of boring and insignificant detail about the private lives of members of the devilish Anti-Apartheid League.

But Harker did not find the fat dossier that Dupont had compiled over the years on Josephine Franklin Valentine boring. On the contrary, he found it fascinating, exotic. He felt as if he knew her personally. And hadn’t he saved her life? He had survived her furious attempted murder of him, had seen her thrust the pistol at her beautiful breast, seen the shocking splotch of blood, seen her blown backwards, arms outflung as if crucified. He had dragged himself over to her, blood pumping from his shoulder and thigh, put his ear to her bloody breast, heard her heart still beating; he had stuffed his field emergency dressing into her shocking wound, then plunged his mouth on to hers to force some air into her lungs – it was he who had yelled for the medics and ordered them to evacuate her on the first helicopter. Jack Harker felt he had saved her life even if in truth it was the medics who had done that. And what South African soldier would have let a white woman bleed to death on a black battlefield when medics were swarming around – particularly a beautiful half-naked, English-speaking woman who could obviously give her captors a lot of military intelligence about the Cuban enemy?

But Josephine Valentine had not told anybody anything. Harker had tried to question her while the medics were loading her on to the stretcher, tried to find out how many tanks and armoured cars the Cubans had down the road, to discover the name of the dead Cuban officer she was so upset about, and she had repeatedly told him to ‘fuck off’ – even when he asked her for the name of her next of kin in case she died. She had even refused to tell him her blood group. ‘I don’t want you to save my fucking life, asshole, haven’t you noticed?’

Nor did the Military Intelligence boys back at base camp in South West Africa have any success with her when she recovered consciousness after surgery, though her language improved. ‘Get lost,’ she said, ‘I demand to see the American Ambassador,’ and when the Intelligence boys had developed her numerous rolls of film and tried to question her about faces and equipment depicted therein she had demanded a lawyer, and told them she and her numerous high-powered publishers were going to sue the South African government to Kingdom Come. In short, Military Intelligence didn’t know how to squeeze information from a furious, beautiful American journalist with a wound in her breast – Military Intelligence was accustomed to black terrorist captives who quickly spilt the beans under a bit of robust interrogation and they didn’t have the nerve to third-degree information from a well-known American photo-journalist. General Tanner himself had flown out from Pretoria to try to deal with her; he had eventually called in the most senior CIA operative of the Angolan desk all the way from Lusaka, but even their formidable combined expertise failed to extract information and they had finally thankfully delivered her into the custody of the American Ambassador and her father, a big-wheel lawyer from Boston who arrived with a crack of thunder and placed her in a private clinic in Pretoria pending her deportation as an Undesirable Alien. She had refused even to divulge the identity of .her dead Cuban lover. Harker had felt almost proud of her when General Tanner had told him what a load of trouble she was. A very desirable Undesirable.

That was over two years ago, and now here she was back in his life as he sat in his dungeon in Harvest House reading her thick file. The beautiful Josephine Franklin Valentine smiled at him ravishingly from the pages of many magazine and newspaper cuttings containing her war photographs and stories – wars in Israel, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Mozambique, Rhodesia, Angola: wherever men made war Ms Josephine Valentine went in with her cameras blazing, her typewriter pounding out the staccato Hemingwayesque prose. Very good, lean, evocative writing – you could almost smell the blood and dust and cordite. She evidently loved the high drama of war, the strange business of going into battle, the extraordinary courage it required; she obviously deeply admired the men who did all this for a living when they could be making lots more money in a nice air-conditioned office. Yet she was very liberal, and a strict political analyst. She bitterly condemned the South African government but she was also condemnatory of the Russians for invading Afghanistan; she sympathized with the Israelis, admired their fighting men; she was dismissive of the Arabs as soldiers while very sympathetic to the Palestinians’ cause. She had a high opinion of the Egyptians for making peace with the Jews, and there was a splendid photograph of her sitting in Gaddafi’s ceremonial tent drinking camel’s milk, earnestly discussing his holy Jihad against the West, but in her story she blasted him as an enemy of mankind, particularly for the Lockerbie Disaster bomb. She had great admiration for the Rhodesians as soldiers, as Davids taking on the Goliaths of Russia and China, but she condemned most of their politicians as constituting a ‘cowboy government’. She applauded the Cuban army for fighting the South Africans in Angola – indeed it was she who had deeply embarrassed the President of the United States by revealing to the world that America was waging a secret war on the side of pariah South Africa against the communists, thus causing both countries to pull out of Angola for several years. But now the whole Western world was covertly on the side of the South Africans to drive the Cubans out of Africa, the war was at full blast again and Josephine Valentine was there, boots and all, sweat-stains on her khaki outfit, dust sticking to her face, blonde hair awry, stealing the show with her photographs and stories – until the Bassinga raid that Harker had led.

Josephine had written a dramatic piece about the battle. She admitted that the South Africans had saved her life, but there was no admission that she had attempted suicide – she attributed the self-inflicted wound to her engagement in the heroic battle in which her Cuban lover had been killed at her side. She did not divulge the dead man’s name but the South Africans had eventually identified him from photographs: Brigadier Paulo Rodriguez, forty-four years old, one of Fidel Castro’s top military strategists, the man expected to liberate South Africa from the apartheid yoke after his communist forces conquered Angola and Namibia. And for the first time she declared her political colours. She wrote:

‘I am not a communist, though I am very liberal – and indeed I am sure communism is going to mellow, as Mr Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika portend. But for the time being the Cubans are the only knights in shining armour around with the guts to take on the dragon of apartheid, and I’m rooting for them …’

There were many other cuttings and photographs from the society pages that Dupont had collected over the years: Josephine Valentine at country club balls, at yacht club regattas, at anti-apartheid functions. There were a dozen large colour photographs taken by Dupont’s salesmen with telephoto lenses: and, yes, she was certainly beautiful: that long blonde flowing hair, those big dark-blue eyes that looked both sparkling and short-sighted, a wide smile of full lips and perfect teeth, a slightly dimpled chin – and long legs and a bust to break any man’s heart. There were several clippings of her magazine articles condemning America’s policy of economic sanctions against Cuba – ‘Why beggar thy neighbour if you want him to like you?’ Harker read them carefully: she had great admiration for the machismo of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and the boys of the Sierra Maestro even if she wasn’t a Marxist. He turned to the Covering Report compiled by Dupont over the years.

Codename Bigmouth

Valentine, Josephine Franklin, female Caucasian, born 27 February 1962, in Boston, Massachusetts, US citizen. Parents Denys Adam Valentine, American, well-known lawyer in Boston, mother Elaine Franklin, née O’Reilly, Irish, allegedly aristocracy, naturalized American, now deceased …

Catholic College, Boston … Berkeley University … graduated in Political Philosophy and English Literature … post-graduate course in journalism, University of New York, before becoming a freelance journalist writing for various political magazines … political leanings strongly to left, possibly communist though no actual membership of any party known … tends to the Ban-the-Bomb, long-haired movements, often seen at protest rallies of various kinds … staunch supporter of Anti-Apartheid League, secretary of Chelsea Branch …

Financial situation: evidently wealthy, financed by Valentine Trust in her favour …

Sports interests include yacht racing, tennis, skiing, skating, cycling …

Cultural interests include opera, art, literature …

Lifestyle appears to fluctuate between the extravagant and the quiet … likes fast cars …

No criminal record …

Apparently good health … contact lenses … front teeth capped …

Sex Life …

At this point Harker got up, went to his little refrigerator, extracted ice and poured whisky into a glass.

Sex life? This detail he found really distasteful. It was offensive that ordinary people out there should be sleuthed by his salesmen trying to get smutty details of their sex lives. The hypocrisy of it! Sex, the great equalizer, the great common denominator, why the hell can’t we all just decriminalize sex? But no, almost the whole English-speaking world felt compelled to adhere to the hypocrisy, marriages were broken, careers ruined, ministers and governments fell. And what irritated Harker as he went back to his desk with his whisky was that he was, pruriently, looking forward to reading about the beautiful Josephine Valentine’s sex life … He took a sip of whisky and began to read on.

Scandal on campus when subject was having an affair with a married professor, Cedric Mansell, wife Elizabeth threatened to cite her as co-respondent … affair with Joshuah Danning, son of Senator Danning of Massachusetts … became engaged to football star Stephen Dickason who was subsequently jailed for drug-possession … affair with sportswriter Jim Nichols of New York Post … weekend in Poconos Mountains with Columnist Frederick Jackson of Washington Post …

Subject leaving US to take up residence in London. Case summary sent to Regional Director of Region Two, Chairman alerted in case she attempts to enter South Africa …

Conclusion: subject is dangerous because of her access to the media and because of her influential social connections, particularly in New York and Boston.

CAMs: Her sexual appetite generally can be portrayed as promiscuous – father is high-profile Catholic and subject could possibly be prevailed upon to spare him embarrassment. Best CAM is probably evoking scandal by planting evidence of criminal activity such as drug-dealing, paedophilia, pornography, shoplifting …

‘Jesus!’

Harker had tossed the report aside. Jesus – ‘CAMs’, Character Assassination Methods. Christ, did he really have to soil his hands with this sort of thing? Did South Africa’s military defence really require spending taxpayers’ money on an investigator to search back into the woman’s girlhood to find possible sexual peccadilloes? It would be laughable if it wasn’t so awful. And her sex life looked pretty average – could he really be expected to plant evidence of criminal activity on her? Ruin her life with a smear campaign because she organized protest rallies against apartheid? No way would he obey such an order.

And there was another reason for his truculence: although he didn’t admit it to himself, Harker felt possessive towards Josephine Valentine. Goddammit – he had saved her life!

Harker turned back to the large colour photographs of her taken with a telephoto lens when she was on the tennis court: and, Lord, she was beautiful. There were about a dozen shots of her in a variety of poses, bending, stretching, swiping, jumping, volleying, her blonde hair in a long pony-tail whipping dramatically around her face, her eyes flashing. Look at those long golden legs, look at that glorious ass, look at that bust …

He wondered where she was now. What wars were there, apart from the Angolan conflict? Plenty – Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Middle East, not to mention Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Tibet, Pakistan, Burma, Indonesia. He could easily find out her whereabouts by putting some of his salesmen on to making discreet enquiries. He could telephone her magazine publishers and ask. And she was a member of the New York Yacht Club – Harker had joined when he first arrived a year ago, maybe he would meet her there one day …

And then, that very week, Felix Dupont telephoned him on the scrambled line and said: ‘I see your girlfriend’s back in town soon.’

‘Which girlfriend?’ Harker really did not like his boss. ‘I have so many.’

‘The one you gave mouth-to-mouth to, old man. Just got a signal from our man in Angola, spotted her at Luanda airport, or what’s left of it, boarding a Russian transport flying to Cuba, onward destination New York via Mexico City. Our man in Havana will let us know her arrival details. I want you to have a salesman at the airport to tail her, then get on to her.’

This was interesting news. ‘Get on to her?’

‘Figuratively – but if you can do so literally so much the better, of course. Fuck the information out of the bitch.’

Oh, Harker really didn’t like his boss – and it sounded clear that the man was drinking, at seven o’clock in the morning. ‘What information in particular are you looking for?’

‘Any information, old man, you know that, don’t you remember anything they taught you at Intelligence School? Any fucking information is important in this dog-eat-dog world of espionage, these veritable valleys of dust and ashes in which there are so few oases of hope – any fucking information even if it’s what she has for breakfast or how she likes blow-jobs, because we never know when the info will become useful. But what we really want to know urgently is what Castro’s knuckle-dragging, tree-dwelling generals are planning in Angola, and we figure that your girlfriend may have some clues from all the pillow-talk she has out there.’

‘Is it known that she’s got a new lover in Angola?’

‘Of course she’s had another lover out there, how else does she get her free ride back to Havana? So get on to her and find out what she knows.’

‘Any specific orders about how I achieve that?’

‘The Three Bs – don’t they teach you anything at spy-school? Burglary, Bonking, Blackmail. Burgle her apartment, of course. Don’t do it yourself – send Clements in. She’s sure to come back with all kinds of film, notes, computer disks and so on – make microfilm and computer copies of everything. And you should also burgle her Anti-Apartheid League’s offices; it’s about time we dry-cleaned them to find out what they’re up to. You never know what snippets our lady may have sent back to them from sunny Angola.’ Harker heard Dupont take a swallow of something. ‘And then there’s bonking. Pillow-talk. Give her some of her medicine, old man. Swear undying love, tell her you want to publish her innermost memoirs, particularly what the generalissimos told her over the vino and cigars. That shouldn’t be too much of a hardship.’

Harker grinned to himself. Jesus, did Dupont really think that what this left-wing adventuress might know was worth all the effort?

‘And then,’ Dupont continued, ‘if all else fails, blackmail her. But that’s only as a last resort. And don’t you do it personally, get Clements on to it – but consult me first.’

Harker smiled. ‘Okay, send me her flight details.’

After Dupont hung up, Harker looked at Josephine Valentine’s file again. He turned up a colour photograph of her. Yes, she was beautiful … So, she was a member of the famous New York Yacht Club. He should try to meet her there before she started dating somebody seriously.

4

The following day Derek Clements checked out her apartment. The locks were standard; he picked them, made impressions, got keys cut. The next day he was at Kennedy Airport to tail her. That night he met Harker in a bar near Union Square.

‘How do you know it was her father who met her?’ Harker asked.

‘I heard her call him Dad.’ Clements was a tough, wiry little man with a ferrety face. He had been a US marine before showing up in the Rhodesian army as a mercenary.

‘What is the father like?’

‘About sixty. Stony-faced sort of guy. Grey hair. Good-looking. Nice suit, obviously lots of dough.’

‘How much baggage did Josephine have?’

‘One big holdall, one rucksack, sleeping bag. Camera box, video case, one camera around her neck.’

Harker was making notes. ‘And then?’

‘They took a taxi into Manhattan. I followed. They went straight to her apartment block on East Eightieth Street. It was now lunchtime, five-past-one. While she entered, the old man went to the delicatessen on the corner and came back with a package. He went inside. I went to the same deli, bought a coffee and sat and observed her apartment block. At two-thirty a taxi arrived, the old man emerged, got in and drove off. I waited another hour – had another coffee – waited to see if subject came out. She didn’t. I took a taxi home.’ He pulled out a wad of receipts. ‘Bureau owes me over a hundred and fifty bucks.’

‘Put it on the monthly sheet. Okay, you said you’d give me a plan of her apartment.’

Clements pulled an envelope from his pocket, took out a sheet of paper and unfolded it.

‘Small two-bedroom place but a nice view of Central Park. She uses the second bedroom as a study. Here.’ He pointed. ‘Computer, a rack of disks, lots of stationery. Piles of files with her stories and photos. Lots of framed photos on the wall, mostly military stuff. I microfilmed everything and copied all her disks.’ He indicated a small hand-grip on the end of the table.

‘When you go back in after she’s unpacked, will you be able to identify the new notes and disks?’

‘Yeah, all her disks are numbered, and all her notebooks, and all the entries are dated. When do you want me to go in again, sir?’

‘Give her a chance to settle down and establish a routine. Maybe she goes to the gym every day, or for a jog. You better set up an OP and find out her movements.’

‘Where, in a car?’

‘In a car. Read a paper, like they do in the movies. Move the car around, and change the model. Put Spicer on to the job as well, do a rota with him.’

‘Does Spicer know about this?’

‘No, and there’s no need for him to, just tell him I say so.’

‘He likes you, Spicer does, wants to know when you’re coming to his whorehouse again.’

Harker smiled. ‘And give me a call every morning before nine o’clock to report progress.’

A week later Harker had established a pattern of Josephine Valentine’s movements: Clements reported that her study light burned until about midnight every night, so she was writing hard. She slept until about mid-morning when she went to the corner delicatessen to buy newspapers, milk and fresh fruit. At one o’clock she emerged again wearing a leotard, wheeling a bicycle and wearing a pink crash helmet: on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays she rode across town, belting through the traffic, to attend an aerobics and dance class in a loft studio on the west side of Manhattan. On Tuesdays and Thursdays she rode to the rackets club where she played squash. In both cases she returned to her apartment block at three o’clock; her study light burned until midnight.

‘No evidence of a boyfriend yet?’

‘Not yet, sir,’ Clements said. ‘You want me to go in again one lunchtime? She’s settled down now, all her new gear must be on that desk.’

Harker sighed. He hated this – the risk, plus the dishonour of it, of unlawfully entering somebody’s home. But, war is war.

‘Not yet, helluva risk doing it in daylight. We’ve done well in a week. Let’s cool it, I’ll see if I can meet her at the yacht club or the rackets club before we do anything dangerous.’

It was much easier to meet her than anticipated. He had imagined that she would be surrounded by friends, that he would have to bide his time and ask somebody to introduce him, or contrive, with his usual uneasiness, to strike up a casual conversation. But she was alone when he first saw her, sitting at a table reading Time magazine: she was dressed to play squash, wearing a short white skirt, her racket on the table.

‘Miss Valentine?’

He had expected her to have a no-nonsense manner but she looked up with a ready smile. ‘Yes?’ And she was even more beautiful than her photograph suggested. And, for a flash, Harker glimpsed her again in that room in the heat of battle, naked but for her white panties, her breasts swinging as she turned on him.

‘I’m Jack Harker, I’m a member here. I saw your picture in the paper some time back and I’ve read a number of the war stories you’ve written. So I decided to be bold and introduce myself, because I admired them.’

‘Why, thank you!’ Josephine Valentine beamed. Praise is the quickest way to a writer’s heart but she surprised Harker by seeming flustered by it; he had expected a hard-nosed war journo who had seen and heard all the blandishments – instead she was blushing.

‘May I sit down a moment?’

‘Certainly, but I’m off to play squash in a few minutes.’ Harker sat, and she continued hastily, for something to say: ‘And what are you doing in New York, Mr Harker? You’re not American, with that accent.’

‘No, I’m a sort of British–South African mongrel.’

‘I see.’

He wondered whether she thought she saw a racist. ‘I run a publishing firm here, Harvest House. We’re fairly new in town but we’re keen. And that’s another reason I’ve introduced myself, apart from the pleasure of meeting you – I wondered whether you’ve considered writing a book?’

He felt he saw the light in her eyes.

‘As a matter of fact,’ she said, ‘I’m busy writing one right now. About South Africa, in fact.’

‘Well,’ Harker said, ‘would you consider having lunch with me one day to discuss it? Or dinner?’

‘That would be lovely.’

He felt a shit but he was a publisher. And war requires espionage. Personally, he felt as pleased as she was. As he watched her walk away to her squash date he thought: what a lovely girl, what lovely legs …