Authors: Jeremy Duns
‘The first thing you have to understand,’ he said, ‘is that they have no intention of letting them go after the summit. Far too risky. They’ll kill them both.’
Charamba looked at him, his face frozen in shock at the words.
‘How can you be so sure?’
Dark didn’t reply for a few seconds. Then he said: ‘I have experience of operations like this. We need to formulate a plan and we need to do it now. How large is your
delegation?’
Charamba grimaced. ‘Two. Just me and my bodyguard.’ It had been a deliberate attempt to put him in his place by Nkomo and his cronies, but he’d had no choice but to accept.
Dark took this in. ‘Do you have any maps?’ he asked. ‘The more detailed the better.’
Charamba stared at the strange man who had dropped into his world, and weighed the way he had acted and spoken. Then he glanced back down at the photograph still in his hands and made a
decision. He stood and walked to the door.
‘Phillip, come in here. And bring the others. Everyone in the house.’
Monday, 25 August 1975, Victoria Falls
It was a quarter to ten in the morning. From the Rhodesian border post, Ian Smith walked slowly onto the bridge. He had put on a dark suit and tie, with a white shirt and
matching pocket handkerchief. Flanked by advisers and security men, he squinted in the sharp sunlight and nodded at the assembled photographers and pressmen, but said nothing – he had made a
statement at his hotel earlier, filled with the usual platitudes. The group walked along the platform next to the compartments, then climbed the small mobile staircase and entered Car 49.
At the Zambian end of the bridge, John Vorster and Kenneth Kaunda began their walk from the opposite direction. Kaunda, looking relaxed in one of his elegant safari suits, smiled and waved his
handkerchief at the onlookers. Directly behind them were the Zimbabweans and their retinues: Nkomo, Sithole, Muzorewa and the latest addition, Matthew Charamba. When they reached the platform, the
group paused briefly as Vorster and Kaunda gave brief comments, then they too walked towards the ‘peace train’.
As he made his way down to the central carriage, Roy Campbell-Fraser looked out of the window at the splendour of the Falls. The South Africans were overseeing the security with help from the
Zambians so he had no say in the arrangements, but he’d had a discreet word with the officers in charge and had been impressed by their thoroughness. The bridge had several inbuilt advantages
as a location: the ravines either side of it and the raging water below made for a formidable natural barrier. Security posts had been erected on both sides, and the entire area had been closed off
to aircraft, meaning that any approach from the sky would be instantly detected by the South African Air Force and shot down. Tourist trails around the edge of the Falls had been cordoned off, and
the South Africans had visited all possible sniper positions and reconnoitred nearby villages.
Campbell-Fraser opened the door to the central carriage and was greeted by the BOSS agent responsible for guarding it. He saw from the place-cards that he wasn’t to be seated at the table
itself, but directly to the right behind Smith. Still, it was a bird’s-eye view. He helped himself to a glass of whisky from the bar in the corner and waited as the room began to fill up.
In the first of the Zambian carriages, a South African security officer held a German Shepherd on a short leash. As Matthew Charamba entered, he asked him to raise his arms so he could be
frisked.
‘It’s just a formality,’ he said, noting Charamba’s expression.
‘Are you conducting the same formalities with the men on the other side of the carriage?’
‘Of course,’ the man replied with restrained equanimity. ‘Everyone who enters the train is being checked. This is for your own security.’
Charamba raised his arms and the man patted him down.
‘And who is this?’ he said when he had finished, nodding at the figure behind Charamba.
‘Phillip Gibo, my private secretary.’
The South African looked down at a clipboard and then up again at Gibo.
‘All right,’ he said. He frisked him, too, then gestured at the attaché case in his hand. ‘Open it, please.’
Gibo glanced at Charamba.
‘That contains my private papers,’ Charamba said.
The BOSS man glared. ‘Nothing goes beyond this point without being checked.’
Charamba took a breath and nodded. Gibo placed the case on the ground and opened the combination. It clicked open, and he lifted it back up to show the South African its contents. The South
African flicked his fingers over the papers, fingering the edges of the case. Then he clicked his teeth at the German Shepherd, which bounced up on its hind legs and sniffed at the case.
After a few moments the man nodded and let them through to the central carriage, where they took their seats on their side of the table.
The Grumman Gulfstream II landed on the airstrip at Inkomo at just after eight o’clock in the evening. Sandy Harmigan stepped onto the tarmac and felt the heat rush over
him. For a moment, he felt he was back in Malaya. He turned back to the plane and extended his hand to his wife.
‘Mind your step,’ he said.
She glowered at him. He hadn’t wanted her to come, but she had insisted. She liked to protect her investments, she’d said, a little too pointedly for his liking.
They reached the foot of the steps. In the dim haze ahead, a large man in camouflage gear was striding towards him.
‘Pete Voers,’ he said, sticking out a hand. ‘Major Campbell-Fraser sent me to pick you both up.’ He glanced up at the jet. ‘We don’t get too many of these
landing here.’
‘No,’ said Celia Harmigan with a chilly smile, ‘I don’t imagine you do.’
Voers considered responding, but decided against it. They walked towards the barracks. ‘I’ll show you the prisoners,’ he said. The Commander had said they would want to inspect
the goods.
Roy Campbell-Fraser was tired and angry. Despite the air conditioning, the carriage felt muggy and claustrophobic – the stale sweat of twenty men pressed against each
other around the narrow table lingered in his nostrils.
The summit had been going on for nearly two hours, but there had been more breaks than actual talk. Vorster and Kaunda had given some peppy opening remarks but had left ten minutes later –
the acrimony had begun within moments of their vacating the train. Now several of the delegates were openly doodling as the others spoke, and Smith was becoming increasingly irate at the lack of
progress.
Campbell-Fraser was furious for another reason: Matthew Charamba hadn’t spoken a word so far. He had simply sat there, stone-facedly listening to the others speak. What the hell was he
playing at? Campbell-Fraser glared at him across the table, thinking about his next move.
‘What does your daddy do?’ said the boy in English. They had quickly established it was their only shared language.
‘He helps people,’ said Ben.
‘My daddy’s a soldier,’ said the other proudly. ‘He will be back soon.’
‘Mine, too,’ said Ben.
In the small nursery section behind the barracks, Hope tried not to cry as she watched Ben playing with around a dozen other children on the linoleum floor, a ritual that seemed to take place
every evening before the children’s bedtime. A few other mothers looked on, but they sat apart and none of them talked to her. Joshua Ephibe stood by the door watching the scene, a
machine-pistol by his side. She wondered if he would have the guts to shoot her if she just took Ben in her arms and made a run for the door, but it was an idle thought – by her mental
calculations in the car from the airport, they were less than fifty kilometres from Salisbury, but the view through the flyblown windowpanes confirmed that this was a military base, and the
perimeter was patrolled by dozens of armed men.
Still, they had been let out into the open air now, and were staying in a tiny but clean room that felt a little less like a cell. There was running water and food was placed under their door
twice a day. The threat of physical assault also seemed to have abated, at least for now. Life almost felt normal. But that was perhaps worse, she thought, that they might become used to this
situation. She also knew there was a danger in feeling grateful to her captives – there had been a famous case a couple of years earlier during a bank robbery in Stockholm when just that had
happened. She and Erik had watched the news, gripped by the evolving drama. But then, his name wasn’t really Erik and hers wasn’t Claire, so they had been enacting their own hidden
drama as they’d sat on the cramped sofa together watching the television.
But this was all too real. She had nearly given up hope of being rescued now: even her father wouldn’t be able to breach such a place. She simply had to hope he acceded to their demands,
whatever they were. And in the meantime, pretend to Ben that everything was normal, while reminding herself at every opportunity that it wasn’t.
Paul Dark wiped the spray from his face-mask and pulled at the oars. Like the man in front of him in the dinghy, he was dressed from head to toe in black, but he also wore
rubber gloves and a matching mask to cover his skin.
It was coming up to nine o’clock. He’d chosen the time carefully: the sun had set three hours earlier, but tonight the moon would be close to full, which meant they might be able to
see more easily but could also be more easily seen. While it wasn’t quite pitch-black now, the next hour was the darkest it would get.
The dinghy hugged closer to the bank, and he let go of the oars and crouched, waiting for his opportunity. He checked the fasteners on the waterproof case strapped to his back one last time.
Everything was secure. High above, he was dimly aware of flashes of light passing by and for a moment he thought of the war and the searchlights he had seen in Germany.
Forget the war. Live now.
They reached the turning, and Dark tapped his companion on the shoulder in gratitude and then bent his legs and slipped over the side and into the black water. He shivered as the cold penetrated
his body, then started swimming below the surface. It was only a few feet to the bank, but the current was strong and he couldn’t crawl because the kick would stir up surf and whiteness of it
might alert the men above. So instead he stretched out his arms in a wide arc, pushing as hard as he could.
He reached the bank and came up for air, grasping at the surface with his hands. He held on to a rock momentarily but then his grip failed and he slipped back into the water, the current pushing
him away again. He clenched his eyes shut and pushed harder until he made up the last remaining foot again, and now he propelled himself out of the water in one smooth movement and managed to get
hold of a sharp outcrop of rock. He pulled himself out of the water and began crawling up with his hands until he was over the lip and into deep foliage. He leaned back, dizzy. Squinting through
his face-mask, he could make out the dinghy as it went back the way they had come, to safety and a warm bed in the hotel over the border with the rest of Charamba’s group. Then he looked
across at the view facing him. From this point, the ravine looked vast, and he was merely an atom on the face of the planet.
He started climbing. The moon was already brightening, and soon it would be worse than a spotlight. It took him nearly an hour to reach the small clearing he had identified on the map earlier,
and his fingernails were torn and the palms of his hands bleeding by the time he did. The roar of the falls was much louder now, filling the space and making his ears pulsate. He gathered his
breath and kept going. The final few feet took him nearly a quarter of an hour to crawl across, because now he could see the sentry: a man in khaki fatigues, the muscles on his forearm tensed
around the trigger of a sub-machine-gun.
He was young, perhaps even thirty years younger. But Dark had the motivation, the element of surprise, and decades more training. He waited until his breathing had stilled, then silently removed
the knife from its sheath and held it in his right hand, feeling its heft and accustoming himself to it. Then he crept towards the clearing until he was directly behind the sentry. He leaped
forward and chopped at the back of the man’s neck with his left forearm. As the man fell, Dark moved his left hand to cover his mouth and nostrils, then thrust the blade into his kidneys. It
caught on something, a bone or organ, and Dark wondered if he should draw it out and attack from the front, but then it sunk in and he was pulling it free and dragging the man back and downwards
into the shadow of the bridge.
He checked the man’s pulse. He was dead.
The killing had taken less than five seconds.
He left the man where he was and headed for the foot of the bridge. The steel girders stretched out above him, the latticework resembling the enormous web of a spider reaching up to the long
thin stretch leaping across the sky. He could just make out the carriage in the centre, the exterior of it pale grey in the moonlight, the inside of it lit like a Halloween pumpkin. He reached out
an arm and gripped one of the girders, then started making his way up.
Campbell-Fraser wanted to murder Matthew Charamba. The summit was now coming into its eleventh hour and he still hadn’t uttered a word.
He glanced across at the BOSS man standing by the door of the carriage. Campbell-Fraser had every confidence in the South Africans, but there was still a niggling concern in the back of his
mind. Harmigan had called just before he’d left Inkomo to inform him that Johnny Weale was missing in action in Brussels and that his intelligence indicated that Paul Dark was now on his way
to Africa – possibly to Salisbury, possibly to Lusaka. As a result, Harmigan had decided to fly out himself. The thought had worried Campbell-Fraser until he realised it would be useful. If
Dark tried to head for Inkomo to rescue his family, it wasn’t a bad thing to have the Chief of British intelligence standing in his way.