Unofficial and Deniable. John Davis Gordon
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threw back his head and laughed.
Of course she’d done a hell of a lot more than criticize Brigadier Swanepoel to antagonize the authorities into deporting her: Dupont had said in his covering report that she shouldn’t have been let into the country in the first place. She was obviously a communist, the South African Embassy in America should never have granted her a visa, somebody had slipped up as fucking usual. But Josephine didn’t want to talk any more about it. ‘It’ll all be in my book, I don’t want to steal my own thunder by telling you twice, so let’s just have a jolly lunch …’
And it was jolly. The initial suspicions and fencing behind them, the conversation flowed like the wine, copiously. She hardly mentioned her experiences as a photo-journalist again: instead she regaled him with anecdotes about her other adventures around the world, her work for the anti-apartheid movement in London, her investigation into the politics of Hong Kong, into the plight of the Aborigines in Australia, of the Palestinians in Israel, the plight of the whale, the coral reefs – ‘The whole goddam environment’s in a mess!’
‘Did you write about all those subjects?’ He had not seen any cuttings about the environment in her CCB file.
‘You bet. I’ll show you my file of cuttings one day.’
She wanted to set the world on fire. ‘But I’m not a communist, Jack. I’m all for enterprise, it’s the unacceptable face of capitalism I’m against. The monopolies, the exploitation, the sweated labour.’ She waved a hand. ‘Of course, when I was a starry-eyed freshman at university I went through the usual phase of communist idealism, but I grew out of that. And I think the world had to go through this period of communist revolution to sweep aside the feudal injustices of centuries, to redress the obscene imbalance of wealth and power that existed at the time. I admire the communists’ achievements.’
Like what? Harker was about to say, but changed it in his mouth: ‘Which ones?’
‘It’s undeniable,’ she said earnestly, ‘that the average Russian and Chinese peasant – the vast majority of those two massive countries – it’s undeniable that they’re much better off now than before their revolutions.’
Harker didn’t want to argue but he had to say, ‘But it’s 1998 now, and though the average Russian and Chinese probably is better off than his grandparents, he’s still very poor compared to his modern Western counterpart.’
‘Yeah? What about the poor of South America? The masses of India? They’re supposedly “Western” too in the sense that they’re in the West’s sphere, of influence.’
‘But the moral wrongs in those countries don’t make the economic and moral wrongs in Russia and China right, do they?’
‘True.’ She grinned. ‘So we’re coming up with profound truths. And I’m feeling more profound every minute.’ She pointed her finger at his nose. ‘But only a revolution will sweep aside the wrongs of most Third World countries, and the only power capable of making such a revolution is communism. All the other kinds are pussy-footing and piss-weak. So I applaud those underground communists who’re plotting to overthrow the repressive governments of Argentina and Chile and the like. I applaud the likes of Fidel Castro – I support the Cubans in Africa because even if they are driven back into the sea as you want, I betcha –’ she jabbed a finger – ‘that win or lose the Cubans will have been a big factor in the eventual collapse of apartheid.’
She looked at him an earnest moment, then thrust her warm smooth hand on his. ‘But even though you don’t like that, Major Jack Harker, sir –’ she gave a little salute – ‘will you please please please still consider publishing my shit-hot humdinger of a book?’
Harker threw back his head and laughed. It all seemed terribly funny.
‘Oh …’ she laughed, ‘I’m having a lovely day …’
Yes, it was a lovely day. On their second Irish coffee he just wanted to take her hand and walk with this lovely young woman through this lovely park with its trees in full summer bloom, its lovers and roller-skaters and musicians and horse-drawn carriages – just walk hand in hand, being frightfully learned and amusing, telling each other more about each other, going through that delightfully earnest process of impressing: that’s what Jack Harker wanted to do, then hail a taxi to take them back to his nice old apartment off Gramercy Park, then fold her in his arms. But there was going to be none of that delightful business: it was a non-starter because Josephine wanted to rush home to work.
‘While my writing blood is up! I’m not going to waste all this booze, I’m going to go’n pound out the prose so I bowl you over next Saturday, Jack Harker of Harvest House fame …’ She blew him a dazzling kiss as her taxi pulled away from the Tavern on the Green.
Harker watched her go with regret. As her cab disappeared she twiddled her fingers over her shoulder at him. He grinned and waved. Then he pulled out his cellphone and dialled Clements.
‘The eagle is on her way back,’ he said.
‘I’m clear,’ Clements replied.
‘Anything new?’
‘Some.’
‘So, drop everything around to me tonight.’
It was a wistful Harker who walked through Central Park, sat in the Sherry-Netherland’s bar and drank a row of whiskies. He had spent a lovely day with a lovely young woman and he wanted to savour it – and he was going to report none of it to Felix Dupont.
But when he got back to his apartment there was a coded message from Dupont on his answering machine, ordering him to proceed to Washington the next day for a conference. The following Saturday Harker could not meet Josephine Valentine as arranged because he was preparing to commit murder.
Colonel Felix Dupont, Director of Region One of the Civil Cooperation Bureau, ran a good, small hotel called the Royalton in a side street not far from Pennsylvania Avenue. It had only fifty rooms and the place was rather British: the interior was half-panelled in dark mahogany, the reception area had potted palms. Hunting trophies adorned the walls, antique chandeliers hung from the ornate ceiling. It had a handsome horseshoe bar called Churchill’s, also fitted out in mahogany with dark booths. All the bar staff were busty ladies – Felix Dupont didn’t hire any other kind. Churchill’s did good trade. The Royalton had no restaurant so it was inexpensive by Washington standards and therefore popular with travelling salesmen and husbands cheating on their wives. It was a profitable little hotel because of the low overheads, and its administration was undemanding, which left Dupont plenty of time for his covert Civil Cooperation Bureau duties.
Felix Dupont was a man of about fifty with dark bushy eyebrows over a round, bearded face. He had piercing blue eyes that could be jolly. He was a devout Afrikaner, but an Anglicized one from Cape Town. He had gone to the best private school of British persuasion and had even considered going to Oxford University before he opted for a career in the South African army. He had a very good military reputation. Harker respected his abilities but didn’t like him. The man was an unmitigated racist. The antagonism was mutual: Dupont respected Harker’s record as a soldier but he resented his Sandhurst background, his British culture and manners. Ninety years ago Dupont’s father and grandfather had fought the likes of Harker’s in the long and bitter Boer War, his grandmother and most of her children had perished of disease and malnutrition in the British concentration camps along with twenty-six thousand other Boers. If Dupont had had his way Harker would have been transferred to Region Two, London, where he could ‘ponce about with those English sonsabitches’. Now Dupont had a nasty job for Harker, codenamed Operation Marigold, and he relished the man’s reaction.
‘Jesus.’ It was the first time in his CCB career that Harker had been ordered to kill anybody.
Dupont waited, amused, his blue eyes hooded.
‘How?’