Moses parked the Chev in a dark side street. On the wall were th graffiti that declared this the territory of the Rude Boys, one of th most notorious of the street gangs, and he waited only a few second before the first gang member materialized out of the shadows, all urchin with the body of a child and the face of a vicious old man.
'Look after it well,' Moses flipped him a silver shilling. 'If th tyres are slashed when I come back, I'll do the same for your back side." The child grinned at him evilly.
He climbed the dark and narrow staircase to the Vortex Club. t couple on the landing were copulating furtively but furiously agains the wall as Moses squeezed past. The white man turned his fac away but he never missed a beat.
At the door to the club somebody studied him briefly through th peephole and then let him enter. The long crowded room was haz with tobacco smoke and the sweet smell of cannabis. The clientel included the full spectrum from gang members in zoot suits an( wide ties to white men in dinNer-jackets. Only the women were all coloured.
Dollar Brand 'and his Quartet were playing a sweet soulful jaz and everybody was still and attentive. Nobody even looked up a Moses slipped down the side wall to the door at the far end, but th man guarding it recognized Moses and stood aside for him to enter In the backroom there was only one man sitting at a rounc gambling table under a green shaded light. There was a cigarette smouldering between his fingers, and his face was pale as putty, hi, eyes implacable dark pits.
'You are foolhardy to call a meeting now,' said Joe Cicero, 'with.
out good reason. All the preparations have been made. There is nothing more to discuss." 'I have good reason,' said Moses, and sat down on the empty chair, facing him across the baize-covered table.
Joe Cicero listened without expression, but when Moses finished, he pushed the lank hair off his forehead with the back of his hand.
Moses had learned to interpret that gesture as one of agitation.
'We cannot dismantle the escape route and then set it up again later. These things take time to arrange. The aircraft is already in position." It was an Aztec chartered from a company in Johannesburg, and the pilot was a lecturer in political philosophy at Witwatersrand University, the holder of a private pilot's licence and a secret member of the South African Communist Party.
'How long can he wait at the rendezvous?" Moses asked, and Cicero thought about it a moment.
'A week at the longest,' he replied.
The rendezvous was an unregistered airstrip on a large droughtstricken ranch in Namaqualand which was lying derelict, abandoned by the discouraged owner. From the airfield it was a four-hour flight to Bechuanaland, the British protectorate that lay against the northwestern .border of the Union of South Africa. Sanctuary had been arranged for Moses there, the beginning of the pipeline by which most political fugitives were channelled to the north.
'A week must be enough,' Moses said. 'Every hour increases the danger. At the very first occasion that we can be sure Verwoerd will take his seat again, I will do it." It was four o'clock in the morning before Moses left the Vortex Club and went down to where he had parked the Chev.
Kitty Godolphin sat in the centre of the bed, naked and crosslegged with all the shameless candour of a child.
In the years Shasa had known her, she had changed very little physically. Her body had matured slightly, her breasts had more weight to them and the tips had darkened. He could no longer make out the rack of her ribs beneath the smooth pale skin, but her buttocks were still lean as a boy's and her limbs coltishly long and slim.
Nor had she lost the air of guileless innocence, that aura of eternal youth which so contrasted with the cynical hardness of her gaze. She was telling him about the Congo. She had been there for the last five months and the material she had filmed would surely put her in line for her third Emmy and confirm her position as the most successful television journalist on the American networks. She was speaking in the breathless voice of an ingdnue.
'They caught these three Simba agents and tried them under th mango trees outside the burnt-out hospital, but by the time they ha sentenced them to death, the light was too bad for filming. I gave th commander my Rolex watch, and in return he postponed the executions until the sun was up the next morning so that Hank could filr It was the most incredible footage. The next morning they paraded th condemned men naked through the market-place and the local wome bargained for the various parts of their bodies. The Baluba have always been cannibals. When they had sold all three of them, they too] them down to the river and shot them, in the head, of course, so a not to damage the meat, and they butchered them there on the rive bank and the women queued up to claim their portions." She wa trying to shock him, and it irritated Shasa that she had succeeded.
'Where do you stand, my love?" he asked bitterly. 'One day yol are sympathetically interviewing Martin Luther King, and the nex you are portraying all the grossest savagery of Africa." She laughed, that throaty chuckle that always roused him. 'Ant the very next day I am recording the British imperialist makin bargains with your gang of bully boys while you stand with a loo on the neck of your slaves." 'Damn it, Kitty. What are you - what are you trying to do?" 'Capture reality,' she told him simply.
And when reality doesn't conform to your view of it, you bribe somebody with a Rolex watch to alter it." 'I've made you mad." She laughed delightedly, and he stood UlC from the bed and crossed to where he had thrown his clothes ovel the back of the chair. 'You look like a little boy when you sulk,' she called after him.
'It will be light in an hour. I have to get back home and change,' he said. 'I've got an appointment with my Imperialist slave-masters at eleven." 'Of course, you've got to be there to hear Supermac tell you how much he wants to buy your gold and diamonds - and he doesll't care whether they are dripping with the sweat and blood--' 'All right, sweetness,' he cut her off. 'That's enough for one night." He stepped into his trousers, and as he tucked in his shirt, he grinned at her. 'Why do I always pick screaming radical females?" 'You like the stimulation,' she suggested, but he shook his head, and reached for the velvet smoking-jacket.
'I prefer the loving - talking of which, when will I see you again?" 'Why, at eleven o'clock at the houses of parliament, of course.
I'll try to get you in the shot, you are so photogenic, darling." He went to the bed and stooped over her to kiss that angelic smile on her lips. 'I can never understand what I see in you,' he said.
He was still thinking of her as he went down to the hotel carpark and wiped the dew off the windshield of the Jaguar. It was amazing how she had been able so effortlessly to hold his interest over all these years. No other woman, except Tara, had ever done that. It was silly how good he felt when he had been with her. She could still drive him wild with erotic desire, her tricks still worked on him, and afterwards he felt elated and wonderfully alive - and, yes, he enjoyed arguing with her.
'God, I haven't closed my eyes all night, yet I feel like a Derby winner. I wonder if I am still in love with the little bitch." He took the Jaguar down the long palm-lined drive from the Mount Nelson Hotel. Considering the proposition and recalling his proposal of marriage and her outright rejection, he went out through the hotel gates and took the main road that skirted the old Malay quarter of District Six. He resisted the temptation to shoot the red of the traffic lights at the foot of Roeland Street. It was highly unlikely there would be other traffic at this time of the morning, but he braked dutifully and was startled when another vehicle shot out of the narrow cross street and turned in front of his bonnet.