I LEFT AT FIRST LIGHT. The crossing was uneventful. As soon as I had crawled under the fence, relief swept over me. I stood up and stretched again, feeling the sinews in my back and legs protest. Then I strode on through the openings in the game fence, caution abandoned, walking for perhaps an hour before I reached the main road to Mbabane, where I hitched a lift.
I was dropped off near the safe house. The gate to the driveway was padlocked. I called out. After some time a man stepped out of the back door of the house.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“I have come for Themba,” I responded.
“You had better come inside.”
I followed the man into the house, where the utilitarian furniture was immediately familiar. I introduced myself. He looked startled and put a fist up to his heart.
“Comrade, why are you here?” A dark expression passed over his face and a coldness came into his tone. “You should not be here,” he said.
I could feel anger rising up in me. “Where is Themba?” I asked.
“Themba has been redeployed,” he replied.
“And who might you be?” I asked.
“I am Silver,” he said.
“Comrade Silver, you and I need to talk – urgently.”
The man looked uncomfortable. “Not here,” he said. “There has been an explosion in Amersfoort and we are on high alert. This house may not be safe.”
Later, after he had made some phone calls, Silver drove us into Mbabane. In the car he was practically monosyllabic. I asked him about the explosion. A military base had been attacked, he said. A missile had been fired into it. Three soldiers had died. MK had claimed responsibility. He would not say more. The rest of the drive into the city centre was silent.
In the bar of a small colonial-era hotel two other men joined us at a table right at the back. Silver ordered lime cordials. The men were silent. The clamminess at the back of my neck grew.
“Say what you have to say, comrade,” Silver instructed me when we all had our drinks in front of us.
I wished I had something stronger than lime cordial in my glass but it would have to do. I recounted what had been happening in Helderstroom over the past nine months – the breaking off of contact with Swaziland and the showdown with Mzwai. I concluded by saying that I had come to Swaziland without orders to try to find out what was happening and how we should proceed with our mission. I put forward the alternatives Rachel had proposed.
One of the men who had joined us stepped in. “Thank you, comrade, for your useful contribution to the discourse. The problem is that the reports we have received say that you were not doing anything – that you and Comrade Rachel were living off the movement, that you were having a sexual liaison. In fact our information is more along the lines that you were obstructing Comrade Mzwai in his mission.”
I looked around the table. I saw three bland faces, two of them devoid of expression, the one who had just spoken permitting himself the trace of a mocking smile at the mention of Rachel. I felt very uneasy. I wished I had been more cautious in my verbal report. In their view, I sensed, Rachel and I were dissidents. The communications had stopped because they had not known what to do with us. I realised there was no point in arguing. Something had happened here, some final determination of a struggle between factions which originated elsewhere – Lusaka, London, Moscow – and the after-effects were playing out here, on the periphery of Swaziland.
“But Themba –” I began.
“Comrade Themba has been redeployed,” said the second man, repeating what Silver had told me. He shrugged and slid a look full of meaning that I couldn’t interpret to his companions.
I asked to be excused and went to the toilet out in the yard. I threw up but it was more of an empty retching – I had not eaten since Helderstroom. A thread of bile, coloured green by the lime cordial, swirled in the bowl as I flushed.
Back in the bar I said to Silver, “There are clearly two sides to one story here. What do you propose we do, comrade?”
Silver looked confused, as if he had no anchor, no certainty as to how he should handle this. One of the others, an older, heavier man, spoke for him. “There has been a breakdown of communication here. We need to give it our full attention. We need to bring in senior comrades. The problem is that outside Mbabane is not safe now after the mission last night. We expect there to be some reaction by the Boers. So we need you to stay here for a few days while we deal with that and then regroup.”
Then they went off unceremoniously to a corner of the bar to deliberate. I drained my lime cordial, deciding that it was unpleasantly sweet and I wouldn’t be ordering another anytime soon. When they came back they said I should remain at the hotel. They would come back to me in a week or so and take the matter further. They left me with a wad of South African notes to cover my expenses and then they left. Alone in the hotel bar, I ordered three double whiskies, one after the other, and drank until my head swam.
In the hotel room, which was a dark and musty recess and smelt as if it had not been aired for months, I fell onto the bed and slept, uninterrupted by dreams.
I woke up feeling disorientated, my head heavy and my mouth dry and sour tasting. The room was just as stuffy as it had been before sleep claimed me. I looked at my watch and discovered that some eight or nine hours had passed. I went into the bathroom where I gulped down two glasses of tepid tap water and splashed water on my face and neck.
Then I ventured out into the passages of the hotel in search of breakfast. A fanlight told me that it was early morning, probably just after daybreak. It was too early for custom, though, as I discovered. The restaurant was closed and there was no visible sign of life other than a tabby cat on the counter in the empty bar, who barely opened an eye at my appearance.
I contemplated my options. With the bombing there would be a lust for retribution. The security forces would fan out, no doubt using the drag-net method that would suck in anyone within a wide radius. Finding the bombers would be a process of attrition, including solitary confinement, beatings and torture until someone cracked and a lead could be found.
I felt uncertain about everything right now, but I knew that staying where I was, here in a hotel in Mbabane, was not a place where I could feel confident about my safety. I could not afford to be trapped here.
First I needed to go back to Helderstroom and discuss the events of these past days with Rachel and confirm to her that our misgivings had not been without basis. She needed to accept that whichever side of the story was presented was less relevant right now than the one thing that was crystal clear: our mission had been irretrievably compromised. We would have to dissolve the network and cast dust over our tracks. In this I was sure she would agree with me.
And so again I set out for the crossing of the border back into South Africa. I found the bakkie in its copse, undisturbed. On the road back to Helderstroom dark clouds were gathering, low and ominous, promising rain, and it was cold. I was gripped by a spasm of hunger and realised that it had been almost three days since I had last eaten. I pulled into a roadside café and ordered a hamburger. While I was waiting I turned and surveyed the news racks with the daily papers. All the headlines featured the attack on the Amersfoort military outpost and some included photographs of the dead soldiers. They looked impossibly young. The state was promising an appropriate response to the communist terrorists who had done the damage. They would not be allowed to hide. They would be hunted down.
Back on the road, with the rain now coming down in sheets, a convoy of armoured vehicles passed me, travelling fast. I watched them disappear in my rear-view mirror. Outside Volksrust there was a build up of traffic and I was forced to slow down. Just over the rise of a hill I saw what the problem was. Flashing lights and cops in the road. My worst fear was a road block and here it was. I did my best to steady my nerves as I got closer, but a hammering in my throat betrayed my fear. To my relief I was waved on. The police were diverting traffic around the corpse of an ox which had collided with a van. The accident must have only just happened because the animal was still lying in the centre of the road. As I manoeuvred the bakkie around it, I had to get quite close to it and my eyes were drawn to the pool of blood spreading on the tarmac. The creature lay there, solid and stiff legged, its eyes dull, already robbed of the glint of life. I could smell its death.
I put my foot on the accelerator and set the windscreen wipers to go faster.