Authors: Jeremy Duns
The main item on the agenda was the discovery by the spooks that the South African government was secretly sounding out ZANU and ZAPU about the possibility of a new round of talks on ‘the
Rhodesian question’. The men listened intently as Willard Shaw, the chief of the Central Intelligence Organisation, presented the evidence. Shaw was a pudgy sunburned man with wisps of
dun-coloured hair parted so severely to the left that it gave his entire face a lopsided look. Campbell-Fraser generally didn’t judge men by their appearances – it could be fatal to
underestimate people on such a basis – but he hadn’t trusted Shaw from the moment he had set eyes on him. His instincts had proven correct. In the early days of the Scouts, he’d
worked closely with the CIO on operations, but he had soon found Shaw obstructive. Campbell-Fraser’s guess was that it was simply because the other man didn’t like a newcomer infringing
on his intelligence-gathering patch, but in his view this attitude was potentially dangerous for the security of the country.
The animosity between them had reached boiling point three weeks earlier, when Shaw had informed him that in March two of his operatives had assassinated Herbert Chitepo, one of the founders of
ZANU and the head of its military high command, with a bomb placed in his car outside his home in Lusaka.
Campbell-Fraser had been furious that the operation had been carried out without his knowledge, but also that the CIO men – both former British SAS officers – had planted evidence at
the scene that had suggested someone in ZANU could have been responsible. Shaw had thought this a brilliant way to sow dissent within ZANU, which had split from ZAPU several years earlier following
power struggles within the movement. But Campbell-Fraser felt the manoeuvre had been politically naive: he would have either clearly incriminated specific targets within ZANU or left it open enough
to suggest ZAPU might also have been involved, thereby creating a much wider field of suspicion.
Instead, Shaw had fumbled it with a halfway house, with disastrous results. One of ZANU’s founders, Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole, had left to form a more moderate group, while a firebrand
figure within ZANU, Robert Mugabe, had consolidated his power by accusing rivals of collusion in the assassination. Far from fostering divisions, Shaw’s unsanctioned operation had made ZANU
stronger, more militant and, worst of all, united behind Mugabe, who Campbell-Fraser felt was much more of a threat than Sithole had ever been, let alone the murdered Chitepo.
Now Shaw was crowing over his outfit’s latest intelligence haul. Through an asset in Lusaka, they had obtained a copy of a secret memorandum drawn up by the South Africans and Zambians.
Grandly titled ‘Towards the Summit: An Approach to Peaceful Change in Southern Africa’, the document proposed ‘a new spirit of co-operation and racial harmony’ across the
region, with Zambia, Botswana and Tanzania pledging to use their influence to find ‘a political solution in Rhodesia’. In return, South Africa would withdraw its military assistance
from Rhodesia and pressure Smith to release more political prisoners.
Photostats of the document had been handed around the table, and Smith grunted with barely suppressed anger as he read through it. According to Shaw’s source, the document had been written
by a special adviser to Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda in collaboration with the head of the South African spy agency BOSS, Hendrik van den Bergh, who was very close to South Africa’s prime
minister, John Vorster.
In recent years, Vorster had launched a charm offensive on black African leaders in an attempt to ease the international isolation South Africa faced as a result of apartheid. His idea was to
rebuild diplomatic and trade links by exploiting Western fears of a Soviet takeover in the region, presenting himself as a statesman who could come to peaceful terms with his black neighbours. This
stuck in Smith’s craw, as during the war Vorster had been a general in the Ossewabrandwag, a South African paramilitary group that had been so pro-Nazi it had even adopted their salute. It
was there that Vorster had first met and befriended his spy chief van den Bergh. Smith hated the British with an implacable intensity, but they had at least been on the right side together during
the war with Hitler.
Despite his white supremacist past, Vorster had succeeded in persuading some that he had changed his spots. Chief among them was Zambia’s Kaunda, who had referred to one of Vorster’s
speeches as ‘the voice of reason for which Africa and the world have waited for many years’. The wider international community had been slower to proclaim Vorster a new messiah of
moderation – the United Nations had even suspended South Africa from the General Assembly – but he wasn’t giving up yet. Since the collapse of Portuguese rule in Mozambique,
he’d redoubled his efforts, and he had South Africa’s old ally Rhodesia firmly in his sights. Slowly but surely, he had applied pressure on Smith, taking advantage of the fact that
Mozambique’s fall meant he now depended much more on South African help. Vorster had already scaled back his military support to Rhodesia and forced Smith into releasing several guerrilla
leaders from prison.
Smith closed the dossier and sighed. The document confirmed his worst fears about Vorster. If he didn’t play by South Africa’s rulebook, they would withdraw more military, weapons
and oil shipments, isolating Rhodesia further and making life easier for the guerrillas. Smith felt as if a noose was tightening around his neck, and unconsciously loosened his tie.
Campbell-Fraser was the first to speak.
‘This is sickening reading, Willard, but it seems very broad. Do you have any intel about specific plans for talks?’
Shaw shook his head. ‘Just whispers at the moment, I’m afraid. But several credible sources have told us they’re discussing it. One asset has told us Vorster offered the
Zambians a million rand to host the talks and give them more credibility.’
Smith gave another snort of anger. He stood abruptly and wandered over to the windows, looking down at the scene Campbell-Fraser had earlier.
‘Well done on getting this, Willard,’ he said. ‘I think we can be in no doubt about Vorster’s game here. He wants to set up talks and then go public at the same time as
he informs us of them. That way, if we agree to take part he gets the glory of having arranged it, but if we refuse we’ll look like we’re turning our back on negotiations for no good
reason in the eyes of the international community. Teaming up with Kaunda would make us look even worse for turning it down, as he would have gone the extra mile to reach out to a black leader.
What a devious little bastard.’
He turned to face the room, and nodded at Shaw. ‘I need you to keep a very close eye on this. Apart from their going behind our backs, I don’t like being blackmailed, especially by
an ex-Nazi. And despite all the platitudes about peace and harmony in this –’ he picked the document up from the table and waved it scornfully – ‘I don’t think
we’re at a point where another summit would be fruitful. None of the current crop of black leaders is up to the job, as they’re all much more concerned with securing their own positions
than any sort of reasonable and mature policy regarding the future of this country. More to the point, none of them is prepared to budge an inch right now. They have too much to lose with their own
people, and they know if they concede even the tiniest thing to us they could be deposed, or perhaps worse. And of course we can’t get any agreement on the big sticking points without wider
black approval.’
He pursed his lips in a sour smile, and everyone in the room understood the reason for it. The last serious attempt at talks had been arranged by the British four years earlier, and had ended in
farce. All sides had signed up to the idea that anything agreed at the negotiating table would then have to be ratified by a vote from the country at large. An agreement had eventually been reached
– majority, i.e. black, rule was postponed for around a century – but unsurprisingly this had fallen apart as soon as it had been put to that same population, who had rejected it
virtually
en masse.
Since then, there had been little appetite for another round of talks.
Smith turned to Shaw again. ‘You mentioned at our last meeting that new rifts might be emerging in ZANU’s leadership. Perhaps that’s something we should be cultivating, in the
hope of forcing a new attitude?’
Shaw nodded. ‘I’ll consider how we can do that, Prime Minister, and report back at our next meeting.’
‘Excellent.’
They moved to the next point on the agenda. Campbell-Fraser listened in silence. His expression was neutral, but inside he was seething. ZANU’s leadership was now looking more united, not
less, and it was largely thanks to Shaw’s own meddling. And he recognised a ball being kicked into the grass when he saw it. Smith was discussing vague long-term possibilities, when what was
needed was immediate and concrete action. Familiarity had bred Campbell-Fraser’s contempt for the empty routines of bureaucracy, but also for the prime minister personally. Outside Rhodesia,
Smith was widely viewed as a monster, a cold-blooded racist who was refusing to budge on the matter of majority rule. In international circles, 250,000 whites leading a country with over five
million blacks was manifestly unfair and needed to be rectified. But the country’s white minority, naturally, viewed Smith very differently. He was their protector and indeed saviour:
‘Good Old Smithy’, standing up to the wily, hypocritical Brits and the rest of the world.
Campbell-Fraser didn’t subscribe to either view. There was something twisted about Smith, he thought: in public he came over as all hail-fellow-well-met, the decent, principled chap, but
close-up he cut a creepier figure, with skin like sandpaper, a bulbous nose and one glass eye staring out at the world with disdain. Campbell-Fraser had no reason to doubt Smith’s patriotism
– he’d seen him at a garden party the previous summer, drunkenly singing along to the rousing pop hit ‘Rhodesians Never Die’ with tears welling in his eyes – but he
detested the way the man had painted himself as a war hero for political ends. Through his own research, Campbell-Fraser knew what most didn’t: that Smith’s military career had been
unexceptional. He’d simply crashed a couple of planes and been injured as a result.
Having observed him at close quarters for two years, Campbell-Fraser had concluded that Smith might once have been a half-decent if unlucky pilot, but was now just another ineffective
politician. He could certainly be stubborn, but he was also self-important and unimaginative, and far from being intransigent Campbell-Fraser felt he had been far too soft when negotiating with the
blacks. He’d kowtowed to Vorster’s demand for him to free terrorist leaders from prison, and was now surprised that they might try to seek concessions through talks. What the hell had
he expected? From Campbell-Fraser’s vantage point, Smith’s image as a strong negotiator was a sham, and he was losing the diplomatic battle in imperceptible but nevertheless real
increments. If it carried on this way, one day soon they’d all wake up and find the blacks in charge.
No, Campbell-Fraser thought, he no longer had any sense of loyalty to Ian Smith. His loyalty was to Rhodesia, and he would do whatever it took to ensure it remained under white rule –
‘in civilised hands’, as Smith himself had once put it. And Campbell-Fraser was prepared to work without Smith’s knowledge, or even against him, if he felt it was in
Rhodesia’s best interests.
Sunday, 13 July 1975, Haga Park, Stockholm, Sweden
Paul Dark lit a cigarette and raised it to his mouth. The moment the tip glowed, he inhaled deeply and leaned back on his elbows. He squinted in the afternoon sunshine, taking
in the view that stretched out before him. The hillside was dotted with squares of brightly coloured blankets, each of which was home to a Swedish family with young children – like small
islands of social democratic prosperity, he thought. A few feet away, Ben was running around pretending to be an aeroplane with another boy, while Claire was seated cross-legged next to him on
their blanket, one finger entwined in her hair as she browsed the arts section of
Dagens Nyheter
, a pair of sunglasses perched on her head. He leaned over and found his own pair, which he
pushed tight against the bridge of his nose.
So here it is, he thought. Fifty. Half a century.
He realised with a start that he was now older than his father had been at the time of his death. He took another drag of the cigarette as he let the thought sink in.
He didn’t deserve to have outlived him; indeed, he was lucky to be alive at all. If it hadn’t been for the Hanssons, he would have died out on the ice in the Finnish archipelago six
years earlier. Even with Gunnar’s intervention, had the lighthouse happened to be just a few miles further out he would have lost too much blood by the time they’d reached it. It had
been touch and go as it was: Gunnar had wanted to evacuate him to a hospital on the mainland, but Helena had persuaded him that it would take too long so they had instead called in a doctor from a
nearby island, who had given him a strong shot of morphine and cleaned and dressed the wound. Eventually, he had set up a makeshift operating table on the ground floor of the lighthouse, and
removed the bullet.
Once Dark had regained consciousness, he had explained that he and Sarah were British diplomats who had escaped from imprisonment in Moscow, only to be chased by Soviet secret police across the
border. They asked how it was that he spoke Swedish that sounded local to the region, and he told them his mother had been Erika Nordstedt of Åbo.
They hadn’t questioned his story much further after that. He was one of them, a Swedish-speaking Finn, a Nordstedt no less, and Gunnar had seen the Russians try to kill him with his own
eyes. That was enough. Dark had asked them not to inform the coastguard about him, because the presence of an unidentified foreigner might reach the ears of the Russian consulate in Mariehamn and
renew the hunt for him, and they had agreed. For this, and much else, Dark would be forever grateful.