“My name is Swart.”
“You know my name. And who 1 am,” said Deaken.
“So what do you want?”
“So far I only know your name,” said Deaken.
The man reached inside his jacket pocket and showed Deaken his identification wallet. There was a photograph and the shield of the security service that Deaken remembered so well, imprinted above the name. The rank of colonel! Higher than he had expected; the man could be a deputy even. Certainly with sufficient authority to have contacted Underberg before coming here.
“Satisfied?” demanded Swart.
Deaken attacked at once. “You’ve got my wife. If anything happens to her, I guarantee it won’t just be the publicity. I’ll see that my father takes your whole fucking service apart!”
“What the hell are you talking about?” said Swart, amazed.
“I asked to see my father,” said Deaken. He realized gratefully that his voice didn’t show his anxiety.
“He’s coming,” said the fat man.
Swart lowered himself into the one chair.
“If it weren’t for who you are,” he said, “your record… and your father… you’d have been seen by one of the airport staff. As it is, I have driven all the way from Pretoria and I’m beginning to think I’ve wasted my time. I want to know now… right now… what you’re doing here. And not in gibberish. In words I can understand.”
The arrival of Deaken’s father saved him. There was movement from the doorway, and he looked up to see the tall, upright old man. Five years, he thought; nearer six. The final screaming row in the study of the Parkstown mansion, the accusations of disgracing the family, of being disowned, took on a Victorian, almost humorous, unreality. Except that it had been painfully real. Deaken smiled, wanting to reach out and touch his father, make now the apologies he had never been able to make before, but realized that would be as inappropriate as the smile. Piet Deaken came hesitantly into the room, looking not to his son but to the other men in the room for guidance. Swart stood up smartly, the demeanour of respect obvious, introducing himself and offering his hand. The old man took it with indifference, looking fully at his son for the first time. His appearance in the doorway had been misleading, Deaken decided. The initial impression had been that his father was upright and forceful as ever, but it wasn’t so: there was a bend to his body, an uncertainty, like a once strong tree under pressure from a sudden wind.
“Why have you come back?” he said. The voice, like the stance, was hesitant.
“For help,” said Deaken simply.
The ingenuous honesty of the reply surprised his father. He blinked, looking to Swart again, then back to his son.
“I want to save Karen’s life.”
“What!”
To Swart Deaken said, looking at the immigration officials, “I’m happy for them to stay if you are.”
The colonel’s reaction was immediate, a head jerk of dismissal.
Deaken realized he had penetrated the barriers his father had erected but Swart was still regarding him doubtfully. Politely he offered the chair to his father, preferring to stand, as he had stood a hundred times in a hundred courts, to make his case. Except that this case was the most important of his life. He started from the morning in the Geneva apartment, not referring to the argument with Karen but mentioning the arrangement to meet during the day, because he considered the timing important. And then of the encounter with Underberg, Karen’s frightened telephone call, the photograph with Azziz and his meeting aboard the Scheherazade with the boy’s millionaire father. Deaken had always prided himself on his ability to read the expression on the juries’ or judges’ faces. His father sat frowning, uncertain; Swart’s expression was one of bewilderment, deepening when Deaken concluded with the attack in Dakar.
The old man responded first. “Do you know anything about this?” he said to Swart.
“There have been rumours of some campaign underway in Namibia, but nothing definite.”
“1 mean about my daughter-in-law?”
“Absolutely nothing,” insisted Swart.
“What about Underberg then?” said Deaken.
There was a wall-mounted telephone near the door. Swart went to it, standing with his back to them and speaking quietly, so that neither could hear the conversation. When he hung up, Swart said simply, “Our service is in no way involved.”
“Have 1 your word?”
“I’ve spoken to the Director,” said Swart. He looked at Deaken. “He said the suggestion was as preposterous as the story.”
“What about the name?” demanded Deaken.
“There are two men named Underberg in the service,” agreed Swart. “Marius Underberg in central records. Jan Underberg is in the transport section.”
“What does it mean?” asked Piet Deaken.
There was a pause and then Swart said, “Perhaps, sir, your son is unwell?”
As he had when he planned his first escape, Tewfik Azziz waited until the house quieted and he was sure that everyone was asleep. Carefully he got out of the bed and for thirty minutes practised every noiseless exercise that he could recall from the gymnastic and calisthenic instruction at the Ecole Gagner, wanting to test his strength as fully as possible. He ached at the end but knew that it was from the exertion, not from any lingering effect of the illness. So he was fit again; fit enough to get away. He got back into bed, cupping his hands behind his head and staring up towards the ceiling. It had been instinctive to promise the woman that he wouldn’t go without her. No, not instinctive: politeness. Automatic, polite gratitude, for what she had done for him when he had been ill. By himself, he stood a chance. They would never make it together. He felt a flicker of guilt. But he had nothing to feel guilty about. It was him they wanted, not her. She was just a pawn. They wouldn’t harm her, if he got away. He was sure they wouldn’t…
There had been no argument from Swart about letting the father stand guarantor for his son, but during the drive from Johannesburg to Pretoria there wasn’t the reconciliation that Deaken had imagined in the detention room. Instead his father retreated behind the usual barriers, deep in his own thoughts.
Deaken was thoroughly confused. If the South African security service was not involved, then Karen was in no immediate danger from his being in the country. And the rerouting instructions for the Bellicose had been sent independently. So for the next four or five days Underberg-or whatever his name was-would receive information that was going to keep her safe. But who was holding Karen and Azziz? It was a maze. Deaken had turned the first corner and all he could see was another blank and impenetrable wall.
As they approached the Parkstown suburb, Deaken looked out at the jacaranda trees which were black against the night sky. In the morning they would be showing violet and purple; Deaken wondered if the arbour in the grounds of the house would be as spectacular as he remembered it.
When they telephoned from Johannesburg airport, Deaken’s mother was in bed. They arrived to find her fully dressed, carefully made up and immaculately coiffed, waiting for them in the larger of the garden drawing rooms, the one which overlooked the tennis court and the stepped terraces.
“Hello, Mother,” said Deaken.
She acknowledged him with a curt nod, the sort of gesture she would have accorded a stranger. He supposed he should go across to kiss her, but didn’t think she would want him to. He decided to sit down on one of the deep, green velvet settees.
“What is this all about?” His mother was as rigid and formal as her carefully waved white hair. It came as something of a surprise to Deaken to realize that she was a stronger person than his father. But it was he who elected to tell the story, more concisely than Deaken had done, missing none of the details, and showing the ability that had taken him from the advocates’ floor to the judges’ bench before exchanging a legal career for one in politics. But he didn’t stop at the account of missing the Bellicose in Dakar.