A song in the morning

"Shifting ground is a poor foundation for trust, Prime Minister," the P.U.S. said.

"This afternoon, Prime Minister, we confirmed that Jack Curwen did indeed fly to South Africa shortly before the police station bombing took place," the Director General said. "Also that in his work for a demolition company he had acquired a knowledge of explosives. In my opinion, something will happen."

"This young man, can he be stopped?"

"By calling in the Ambassador and putting all our cards on the table . . . " t h e Director General said.

"In the present state of our relations with the government of South Africa that would be intolerable."

"Then as you put it, Prime Minister, we hold onto our seats and hope that we have anticipated only the blacker prospects."

There was a light tap at the door.

The Prime Minister shifted in annoyance at the interruption.

A secretary came in, glided past the Prime Minister with a grimace of apology. The secretary spoke in the Director General's ear. He gestured his excuses and followed her from the room.

The Prime Minister reached for a worn leather case, as if to indicate that the meeting was concluded.

"If only a few small bombs are thrown at police stations, we can weather that, I believe."

"I thought you'd like to be kept fully informed, Prime Minister."

The P.U.S. pushed himself up from his chair.

The Director General stood in the doorway. There was a man behind him, a creased raincoat, hair that hadn't been combed. The Director General ushered him into the room.

"Just tell the Prime Minister what you've told me, what you understand to be Jack Curwen's objective."

The man who had been a friend to Jimmy Sandham looked around him.

It was a moment to savour.

He spoke drably, without expression, flat monotone. "It is Mr Curwen's intention, apparently, without anyone else's help, to blast his way, using a home-made device, through the walls of the hanging section of Pretoria Central prison to his father's cell. This with a view to taking his father out."

There was an aching silence in the room.

The Director General nudged his man away through the door, and closed it. The P.U.S. whistled his astonishment.

The Director General was stony-faced.

The Prime Minister's head swayed, right to left, left to right, slow movement, bemused.

"God help us, Director General, let's call the meeting to a halt before you spring any more surprises on us. I'm going to camp in the air-raid shelter for the next five nights and pray. Either that he makes it out safely with his father, or that they're both killed, with their lips sealed. Given the choice, which do you think the good Lord would wish me to pray for?"

* * *
Sam Perry had thought it a good notion to take his wife to the golf club social. She'd lost nearly a stone in weight in the days since Jack had left for South Africa. She was gaunt, and moping through the house each day. She knew most of the wives at the club and he'd thought it would be best for her to be out, not sitting in the house and knitting and unpicking what she'd knitted. He'd taken to coming home for his lunch because then they had a chance to talk it through without young Will being there. They made a show for the youngster when he came rattling in from school in the late afternoon, but the child must have known from his mother's appearance that crisis touched his family. They talked in the middle of the day, but there was nothing to talk about. Her first husband was going to hang, her son was in danger and beyond her reach, and Sam Perry could only say that they had to live with it, live in hope.

On any other evening at the golf club she would have sailed into the drinking, shouting crowd, confident, happy among friends. Not on this evening. She was by his side from the moment they went through the doors and into the bar. As if she were frightened to be more than a yard from him. While he put away four gins she sipped at two tomato juices, and every ten minutes she looked at her watch.

It hadn't worked out. He wondered if it would be better when it was over, when Jeez was dead and buried, when Jack had been . . . when Jack had come home. He thought it would be a bloody long convalescence. It was a swine of a thought for Sam Perry, that she might never recover, might never regain her fun and the gaiety that he loved in her.

He knew she had made an effort to come out with him.

He realised she couldn't last long that evening. He saw the pleading in her eyes, he started to make their excuses and shake hands. As soon as was decently possible. He thought of the tittle-tattle that would follow their backs out of the room. There'd be a few of them who'd get a laugh out of speculating on the problems of Sam and Hilda Perry.

It was still too early to pick up Will from Scouts.

They'd go home first . . . He heard the strong sigh of relief from Hilda when they were in the car park and clear of the raucous celebration of the bar.

A mile to their home.

Sam Perry drove slowly. He let his left hand rest on her arm, moved it only to change gear.

He turned into Churchill Close. He could hear her crying, very faintly.

"Don't hurt yourself, love," he said. "You couldn't have stopped Jack going."

He looked at her. He was going to kiss her cheek. He saw her startled, staring eyes. She was peering through the windscreen and at their home at the end of the cul de sac.

He saw what she had seen. They always drew shut their front bedroom curtains when they went out in the evening, nice curtains but not heavy curtains.

He saw the traverse of the torch beam.

Sam Perry braked. He backed away to the end of the road. He drove fast to the police station.

* * *
To the two constables the Ford Fiesta was an obvious target of interest. It was far from commonplace for an old car to be parked in the shadows between the extremities of the street lights in this sedate suburb. Via their radio link the constables had heard that two men had been arrested following a forcible entry to a property in Churchill Close. They had heard that four officers had used truncheons to subdue the intruders. They had heard that no getaway vehicle had been found in Churchill Close. They had heard that the arrested men's accents were thought to be South African. Two streets away the Fiesta and the man sleeping behind the wheel were worth a check. It was smoothly done.

Door opened, keys out of the ignition before the man had tumbled awake. Major Swart was escorted to the police station.

* • •
"Twice in one day, Major Swart. Extraordinary." Detective Inspector Cooper thought the sullen silence of the South African amply repaid the hassle of being called out from home, of having to drive from north London into Surrey.

"There's ways for foreigners to behave in our country, Major Swart, and there are ways that are outside the tram-lines. Sitting in the getaway while your muckers are managing a spot of larceny is right outside the lines."

Three South Africans held while in pursuance of a crime was sufficient reason for a call to be made from Surrey Constabulary H.Q. to the Scotland Yard duty desk. The detective inspector was a member of Special Branch.

"I'm here, Major Swart, because when we searched your two muckers we found their embassy ID cards. Now, Major Swart, I'm sure you'll agree with me that the Libyans wouldn't stop short of a spot of larceny, or the Nigerians, perhaps, or the Eastern bloc chappies, but the representatives of the South African government, that's going to raise an eyebrow or two. Is it because they don't pay you much, Major Swart? Is it a bit of burglary to supplement the overseas allowance?"

He sat on the plastic-topped table in the interview room, swinging his feet casually. Swart was on a chair, rigidly straight-backed, as though he was at attention. It amused the detective inspector to think of the turmoil in the mind of the South African. Exposure. Disgrace. Expulsion.

"I have to wonder why half the diplomatic mission from Pretoria should have travelled out of London to burgle a home in this nothing town. Very puzzling, Major Swart, because next door I have laid out on a table the items that your muckers were intending to take away with them. All pretty peculiar, but not so peculiar that I can't hold you and charge you . . . "

He saw the South African stiffen.

"Oh yes, there'll be charges. Conspiracy to rob, in your case. Your friends are in deeper trouble, of course. Theft, assaulting police officers in the execution of their duty. You might get away with eighteen months, three or four years they'll get. You'd thought of that, I expect. You knew you'd be gaoled if you were caught, surely you did? Not nice gaols like yours. You'll probably all get Pentonville, that's where they send the short termers. Pentonville isn't segregated like those nice gaols of yours, Major Swart. You'll have a bunch of kaffirs on your landing for company."

He thought the young constable by the door would be having a field day listening to this heap of crap. He would tell the constable that if a word of this interview got out then the boy could kiss his promotion up his arse.

"I claim diplomatic immunity."

"Bollocks."

"I am Major Hannes Swart. I am an accredited diplomat."

"You're a burglar, and what's more you dress up in funny clothes and make a spectacle of yourself at funerals."

"I am Second Secretary in the Consular Section of the Embassy of the Republic of South Africa."

"You are a security police agent who has engaged in criminal activities."

"I demand the right to telephone my embassy . . . "

"Refused." The chief inspector grinned.

". . . in order that my embassy can verify my creden-tials."

"No chance."

He turned, and he walked out. He left the constable with Major Swart. He went into the adjoining interview room and collected off the table the plastic bags inside which were the items collected by the men arrested in Churchill Close.

He carried them back for the Major to see. He laid them on the table in front of him. There was a letter in an opened envelope. There was a booklet offering South African holidays. There was a pamphlet entitled Blasting Practice -

Nobel's Explosive Co. Ltd, and another Blasting Explosives and Accessories - Nobel's Explosive Co. Ltd. There was a sales brochure issued by Explosives and Chemical Products Ltd of Alfreton in Derbyshire.

He saw the South African's eyes hovering over the display.

He played a hunch. He thought he had kept the best until the last. From behind his back he produced a see-through plastic bag in which was a framed photograph. It was the photograph of a young man. He held it under the South African's nose.

"Shit. . ."

Major Hannes Swart made the two links. He linked the photograph with the photo-fit picture sent from Johannesburg. He linked the photograph with the young man who had met Jacob Thiroko.

"Shit . . ."

Jack Curwen was the bomber in Johannesburg, and Jack Curwen was the one whom he'd seen talking to Jacob Thiroko. Explanations hammering into place.

The detective inspector watched him keenly.

"I demand the right to contact my embassy."

"Crash job, is it, time of the essence?"

"I have the right to telephone my embassy."

"To tell them what your muckers found?"

"It is my right to make a telephone call."

"So it can all go on the encoder and hum back home?"

"I can establish my identity. You have no right to hold me.

"Major Swart, this isn't parking a C.D. car on a double yellow outside Harrods."

Major Swart stared at the photograph of Jack Curwen.

He no longer listened to the detective inspector. His eyes flickered on, up to the table, up to the opened envelope and the spider writing that addressed the envelope to Mrs Hilda Perry. He was a trained policeman, excellent on faces. He remembered the photograph of James Carew. He looked at the face of Jack Curwen, the son.

"Shit . . . "

"I demand the right to make a telephone call."

"They all say that, every piss-arsed, common thief, they all want to telephone their embassies . . . "

"I claim diplomatic immunity."

"I must be getting hard of hearing in my old age."

Major Swart smiled. He thought it was his winning smile.

He chuckled. He beamed up at Detective Inspector Cooper.

There was a fractional wink.

"Heh, man, we're all policemen together. I'm security police, you're Special Branch. Same job, same problems.

Both fighting the same enemy. We're on the same side, man.

We have to help each other. If you had a problem in the North of Ireland and we could help, of course we'd help.

Just a telephone call, man. What do you say?"

"I'd say you are a common burglar, and I'd say you are pissing in the wind, Major Swart."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He understood.

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

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

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

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

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

He knew that no bastard heard him.

* * *
It was a bleak little room. There were posters of the smiling leader on the walls and boxes of pamphlets piled on the bare floorboards. The Prime Minister's speech to the constituency workers had failed because, before it was delivered, the message had come through that the Director General was arriving for discussion on a matter of the utmost urgency.

"They're incommunicado at the moment?"

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

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

"When would Curwen move?"

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

"Does he stand any chance?"

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

"No chance?"

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

"Tell me."

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

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

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

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

"Emotion requires that they succeed, Director General

. . . It is only for his father?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

• * *
It was past midnight. Ros and Jan still not back. Jack worked methodically.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he had no primer, no priming charge.

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

He had three detonators.

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

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

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

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

Jack had completed the shaped charge when they came hack.

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

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

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

and "bent metal".

"We took a car," Ros said.

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

The two stared down at Jack's handiwork.

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

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

"How so?"

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

"The first time?"

"But you're supposed to be . . ."

"It's the first time," Jack said.

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

"My father'll know."

"I think it's pathetic."

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

"I'll make a cup of tea," she said.

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