Authors: Jeremy Duns
‘Went well, I thought.’
The American took the glass and nodded his thanks. ‘Yeah, though Wilson didn’t seem to appreciate that file you gave him too much.’
‘No, but it did the trick. Desperate times call for desperate measures.’
‘Sure.’ Bradley grunted. ‘Trust Dark to take up with a nigger.’
‘Looked rather pretty, from the pictures.’
‘Well, he always had a way with women, let’s give the fucker that.’ Bradley took a sip of the whisky and glanced around the massive office. The neighbourhood was a dump, but
Harmigan had certainly made the most of his penthouse suite. He set the glass on the small table next to him and leaned forward in his chair.
‘Let’s not beat about the bush, Sandy. Your men royally screwed up here, and we need to get things back on track right away.’
Harmigan nodded. ‘I have it in hand.’
In hand, thought Bradley. It was like stepping back in time with these guys.
‘How, exactly?’
‘The cell leader has stayed in Stockholm and is now acting under my personal instructions to find and finish Dark.’
Bradley smiled at the euphemism. ‘And you’re sure he’s still up to it?’
‘Yes.’
Bradley turned and picked his glass up again. ‘He’d damn well better be. By the way, what’s the deal with the Gold girl?’
Harmigan froze for a fraction of a second, then recovered and looked across at him with a perfectly level expression. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean all that shit she spouted about framing leftists. A little close to the knuckle, wasn’t it?’
Harmigan felt his heart return to its normal rate.
‘That wasn’t my doing.’
Bradley raised his eyebrows over the rim of the glass. ‘You mean you haven’t brought her into this? Don’t you trust her?’
‘I trust her to do her job, yes – she’s an exceptional analyst. But this isn’t for her. The fewer people who know the better.’
Bradley leaned back in the chair and felt the warm glow of the whisky radiate through his chest. ‘I hope she isn’t
too
exceptional an analyst, Sandy.’
‘It’s all under control.’
Saturday, 23 August 1975, Salisbury, Rhodesia
‘I’m having second thoughts about the South Africans’ plan for a conference.’ Ian Smith looked at the men around the table. ‘The sticking point,
as most of you know, has been that several of the guerrilla leaders fear they’ll be arrested if they re-enter Rhodesia. Rightly, I might add!’
There were chuckles around the room.
‘Their new proposal is for us to meet in a South African Railways’ dining car at Vic Falls. The carriage would be positioned very precisely on the bridge so that their delegation
would be seated on the Zambian side of the border and we’d be on this side.’
There was a murmur around the table. ‘We could use the opportunity to bring the lot back over here and apply the screws,’ said Shaw. ‘We might learn a thing or two.’
Smith frowned, but there was a hint of a smile behind it. ‘That’s not especially helpful, Willard. Tempting, but rather counter-productive in the longer term, I suspect.’
‘What does Kaunda make of this?’ asked Riggs, head of Special Branch.
‘He’s keen,’ said Smith. ‘The idea is that he would attend with Vorster, both of them acting as observers.’ He pursed his lips in a small, cynical smile.
‘Nkomo and Sithole would have a few of their people with them. Mugabe has refused to take part, claiming the others are selling out, but I don’t think we need shed any tears over that.
Zambia, Botswana and Tanzania would send a few delegates for form’s sake, and BOSS would oversee the security arrangements. I don’t object to any of it on principle, actually:
it’s an ingenious solution, and just the sort of dramatic stunt the international press eats up. I naturally want any summit we participate in to receive as much attention as possible. But my
feelings haven’t really changed on the futility of talks right now. Vorster is threatening to withdraw more material support, but I reckon we can manage pretty well even if he does –
and as I’ve said before, I don’t take kindly to being blackmailed.’ He leaned back in his chair and lifted his hands towards the others. ‘But I’d like your views on
this.’
Three seats to Smith’s left, Roy Campbell-Fraser was frantically thinking how to deal with this development. The last time he had spoken to Matthew Charamba he had given him a deadline for
noon tomorrow to accede to his demands and arrange with Nkomo that he would attend the conference. But that deadline might now be too late. Campbell-Fraser had been sure Smith would bow to the
South Africans’ pressure to take part in the summit, and indeed had believed it was a done deal, but the man was even more stubborn than he had thought possible. He cleared his throat and
Smith turned to him, his eyebrows raised.
‘Roy?’
‘Well, I may have something for you, Prime Minister – although I must stress that it’s highly provisional, based on talk from some of our recently captured terrs.’
‘Oh, yes? What have they been saying?’
‘That Matthew Charamba might be joining the African delegation.’
Smith rolled his eyes. ‘Charamba? That thug’s made his position clear: he wants us to specify a precise time-frame for black rule. That is totally unacceptable. He’s just the
sort of leader we can’t do business with.’
‘I’m aware of all that, Prime Minister, but we’re hearing that he’s now thinking of abandoning that position and coming into the negotiations to argue it would be better
to postpone talk of majority rule until peaceful transition looks like a realistic prospect.’
‘What? That’s a complete U-turn! Why on earth would he do that?’
Campbell-Fraser shrugged. ‘We don’t really know at the moment. This is just what we’re hearing. It might be that his inner circle have persuaded him his previous position was
futile. If one were of a more cynical frame of mind, one might suspect he’s changing his strategy so he can position himself as a potential leader instead of forever being in
exile.’
‘A power-grab, you mean, uniting all the factions?’
‘Perhaps. Anyway, I don’t think we care too much why he’s changed his mind, do we, as long as he turns up and argues it that way?’
Smith pressed his forefinger against his lower lip. After a few seconds he smiled. ‘This might be very good news, Roy. Charamba has massive support among the blacks so he would be able to
swing any arrangement if he came to the talks. How sure are you of these rumours?’
‘At the moment, I’d say we’re about eighty per cent sure. I hope to firm things up very soon.’
Smith nodded, taking this in. ‘Excellent. Let me know the minute you hear anything further. Call my office directly.’ He looked around the table. ‘Now, do we have any other
business to attend to?’
The counter-intelligence unit of Sweden’s Säkerhetspolisen, informally known as Säpo, operated out of offices in the large police station in Bergsgatan on the
quiet island of Kungsholmen. John Weale approached the concrete shed in front of the station, where a sentry asked for his name, consulted a docket and then let him past.
He walked through the gates feeling uncharacteristically anxious. As soon as he had got off the phone with Harmigan he had broken protocol and called the Commander, who had tersely confirmed
that the orders were genuine: he was to meet with Säpo and discover what they knew of Dark’s movements, then find Dark and ‘silence’ him.
Weale had spent his life taking orders, including to kill in cold blood, but he was reluctant to do so in this case, and not just because they came from a Brit. Despite Harmigan’s blithe
claims this would be a walk in the park, it was an extremely risky idea to impersonate a Service officer at the drop of a hat to another intelligence agency. Weale had meticulously prepared a
legend for Frederick Collins as a British fabric salesman, not as a spook based in Sweden. His knowledge of the country was related to the operation at hand, and if anyone scratched at the surface
it would fall apart. Harmigan had assured him the Swedes wouldn’t be looking for anything out of the ordinary and that if he encountered any trouble he was simply to insist on placing a
direct call to his office in London, but that was scant comfort. He knew he had no choice, and Campbell-Fraser had made the operation’s importance clear: the very fate of white rule in
Rhodesia was at stake. He had decided to take him at his word and act accordingly. It would make the job a hell of a lot easier.
The marble-floored lobby of the building was deserted except for an overweight man in a brown suit and maroon shirt smoking a cigarette. He had shaggy greying hair and lonely eyes with large
bags beneath them. Seeing Weale approach, he crushed his cigarette out in a nearby stand and ambled towards him.
‘Frederick Collins?’
‘Yes, I’m here to see Iwan Morelius.’
‘That’s me.’ He stuck out a large hand.
Weale took it. ‘A pleasure to meet you, Iwan. I take it Sandy Harmigan has explained to you our interest in this matter?’
Morelius nodded. ‘Broadly speaking, yes. A Soviet agent in your service, I understand.’
‘
Formerly
in our service,’ said Weale, wincing. He hoped he wasn’t overplaying it – his accent didn’t take much modifying but he had to be careful not to
caricature the tight-arsedness too much and come over like Terry-Thomas. The key to cover was not to bow too much to expectation, and he’d decided that the best way to avoid tripping up was
to stick fairly closely to his own personality.
‘I understand,’ said Morelius. ‘You come highly recommended by Sandy, incidentally. How is he these days?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Weale, his tone airy. ‘I haven’t seen him in more than a year. He still knows how to give orders over a telephone, though.’
Morelius smiled, the bristles of his moustache falling over his lip as he did so. ‘Where is it you’re based, Mr Collins? You aren’t on the Service’s declared list
here.’
‘Ah, yes, sorry about that – I’m not at the embassy, more of a roving man in the region.’
The Swede nodded. ‘I see.’
They walked to the lift, and a minute later emerged into a modern open-plan office, where Weale was introduced to a group of neat young men with side-partings and, in several cases, horn-rimmed
spectacles.
‘They dress better than I do,’ Morelius said with a smile. He turned to the men. ‘This is Frederick Collins from British intelligence. He’s here to tell us what he knows
about Herr Johansson, and in turn you will tell him what we’ve discovered.’
Harmigan rapped on the door of Rachel Gold’s office and, without waiting for an answer, stepped inside. He closed the door and drew the blinds with a swift pull of the
sash, then took her in his arms. She felt her breathing tighten as they kissed, his skin scratching against hers. Then he drew away, his eyes sparkling as she hadn’t seen them do for
months.
‘Oh, you were glorious, my dear! Wonderful. I’ve just had a little chat with Bradley and he’s given us the go-ahead to use KH, with all the bells and whistles.’
KH was Kinnaird House, a CIA command centre in Pall Mall that was rigged up with powerful radio receivers, computers and other state-of-the-art equipment. It had briefly been used during the
Penkovsky operation, and senior members of the Service still waxed lyrical about it.
Harmigan was holding a straw hat in one hand, which he placed on his head gingerly. ‘I’m heading over there now to get things going. Want to take the car with me?’ She
didn’t reply and he looked at her, puzzled. ‘What’s wrong? Darling, this is rather a hefty promotion. And it’s well deserved, believe me. Nobody will question it.’
She slumped into her chair and folded her arms, incredulous at his apparent ignorance of the cause of her anger.
‘Who’s the officer you sent to talk to the Swedes?’
The penny dropped as Harmigan completed the sentence in his mind:
. . . and why haven’t you sent me out there to work with him?
This was why you should never fall in love with
your subordinates, he thought. He took the hat off and tried to think how to calm her down.
‘A very good chap, Fred Collins. He’s one of our alongsiders in the region. I don’t want to involve the Station if I can avoid it. Darling, you’ve read the files
backwards and forwards so you know I wasn’t telling tales in there – Dark’s a very dangerous man, and will very likely try to kill anyone who gets in his way.’
She gave him a savage look. ‘So you can’t send this delicate little flower to help find him, is that it? Come on, Sandy, you know I’d be better use on the ground in Stockholm
than watching it all unfold from here.’
He flicked at the ribbon of his hat, and she clenched her fists unseen beneath the desk. The ghost of the Gadlow operation had risen between them, as she had been afraid it would. He claimed to
trust her judgement, but when it came to the crunch he didn’t trust it enough to send her out in the field again.
Harmigan took a deep breath. ‘Dear heart, be reasonable. This might get extremely hairy, but it’s not only about that. I know you feel Dark’s your bag, but this is a team
effort, remember, and I need your analytical skills here. Dark might not even be in Sweden, and even if he is he may well turn up somewhere else before long. KH is where we’ll gather all the
intel, and I can’t afford to have you incommunicado on a flight to Christ knows where when the shit hits the fan. But one of our ground rules was you wouldn’t question my judgement like
this.’
An invocation of the famous ground rules. They never seemed to suit her much, she thought. But his voice had now taken on its familiar commanding air and she knew he intended to cow her with it,
as he had cowed the prime minister and Bradley, and as he had previously cowed Whitehall into appointing him Chief. She knew all his tricks. He wanted her to feel like the hysterical woman making
unreasonable demands, seeing attacks where there were none. Instead, his response had brought home the reality of the situation to her: it wasn’t just that he still blamed her for Gadlow, but
that he blamed himself for ever thinking she might have succeeded. There would be no second chances in the field because he had decided she was inherently unsuited to it – she was only any
use as an analyst, a back-room digger helping out the blokes, good old Rachel in HQ.