Chapter 16 (Spy story, Amazon-Kindle)
On the Wednesday after the U-boat sighting at Port St Johns, Digger O’Brien met again with his non-commissioned officers to check what progress they had made. Nothing, seemed to be the answer. Inquiries around the towns and villages had shown up no suspicious strangers. Nor could these NRV members think of anyone at all in their area who might be the sort of “mole” George Trebble was talking about.
Then Digger noticed George himself jumping up and down like a schoolboy who had done his homework. ‘What have you got, George?’ he said.
‘Maybe a suspect, sir,’ said Trebble. ‘Can we talk in private?’
‘No, George,’ Digger O’Brien said. ‘If we can’t trust one another here, we may as well go back to our tiddlywinks.’
So George Trebble proceeded to tell them all about Nick Mostert, about the fracture Ian Ross apparently was unable to find and his plan to get the young Moore to question Mostert face to face.
‘Good work, George,’ said Digger. ‘But that’s a hell of an allegation and it must not go any further than this room. In the meantime, let’s see if we can watch this Mostert bloke. See where he goes. See who he talks to.
‘What does he drive anyway? Oh, that old De Soto with the cage on the back. Well, according to Ginger Southwood, that size vehicle could fit those tracks. Although he thinks it’s more likely to be a truck. So I also want you chaps to get together and make a list of all the trucks you can think of in this area.’
‘Herman Weisse’s got that Dodge,’ said Arthur Klette. The auctioneer-licence examiner was one of two lance-corporals in the NRV. And he knew local vehicles. ‘Gerald Wilson’s got an old Chev van. And Leon de Witt has got his milk delivery truck. That’s about it.’
‘There’s the black Ford truck of the Buhls,’ said George Trebble. ‘But I haven’t seen anyone driving it since Fritz left. It just stands there at the back of the garage.’
‘See how many others you can think of,’ said Digger. ‘A lot of traders have trucks. But if our spy turns out to be a trader, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.’
A different manner of surveillance was already in place around Nick Mostert, as he walked up York Road, having dropped some chickens off with the butcher. Billy Miller was matching him pace for pace on the other side of the street.
Mostert turned into the BV (for Best Value) Bazaar and spent ten minutes chatting to the owner, George Kolivos, who occasionally bought eggs from him. When he emerged, Billy was staring at the shop from the opposite pavement.
Nick Mostert changed direction and walked back towards the Grosvenor Hotel. The boy did the same. Mostert crossed the road and confronted him.
‘Are you following me, Billy?’ he asked. ‘You are Billy Miller, aren’t you?’
Billy Miller glared. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘No, I mean. I’m not following anybody. I’m just waiting here for a friend.’
Mostert laughed, patted Billy on the shoulder and walked off.
A few minutes later, in the Grosvenor bar, Pondo Harrington told him that a pilot whose parents lived in Umtata would be in town that Friday night and had expressed a wish to meet him, to exchange war experiences.
‘Why me?’ asked Mostert.
‘Well, young Moore’s with Twelve Squadron at the moment,’ said Pondo. ‘Just recently joined. So you should have lots to talk about.’
The public library, a block and a half away from the O’Brien home in Owen Street, was Danny’s favourite place, milk bars and the Metro Cinema notwithstanding.
Even when he wasn’t changing his library books, he liked to go in and browse through the children’s section, looking at the books he had yet to read. He liked their smell, but also the fact that they were there, for him to enjoy at some time in the future.
But what afterwards? He paged now through the library books his father took out. The Saint and Bulldog Drummond looked interesting, although the action seemed slow-moving.
Billy Miller walked in. They had arranged to meet in the corner where the picture books were, the furthest point from the librarian’s desk.
‘How did it go?’ Danny whispered.
Billy shook his head. ‘He saw me,’ he whispered back.
‘How?’
‘Well, I tried to watch him from the town hall gardens,’ said Billy, ‘but then he went down to the butcher so I had to come out into the street.’
‘D’you think he knew you were following him?’
Billy nodded. ‘He asked me if I was. I said I was waiting for a friend. He thought it was a big joke.’
‘Maybe he’s on the lookout for people following him because he is that spy,’ said Danny. ‘We’ll have to be more careful. It’s going to be hard.’
Walking back along Owen Street, they encountered Alan Dewes, looking like the cat that swallowed the canary. In his hand he had a small torch. ‘You two!’ he said. ‘Come and see what I’ve found!’ He turned and began to trot down the hill.
Behind Owen Street was a lane that led up from the O’Brien home to the bottom fence of the Royal Hotel. The large house where the Dewes lived was midway between those two points. On the opposite side of the lane was the town engineer’s yard, a place of bulldozers, a steamroller and trucks.
That was where Alan was bound. Danny and Billy followed through the back gate of the Dewes’ property. They climbed through the strand fence of the yard and made their way to an open area where Alan stopped. Ahead was a half-open manhole cover.
‘Help me move this more,’ he said. ‘It’s quite heavy.’
The boys shifted the cover to reveal an opening several feet in diameter. On one side, metal rungs led down into the darkness. Alan turned on his torch.
‘It goes to the drains!’ he said. ‘Let’s go and see.’
Danny and Billy followed him down the ladder and the three were amazed by what lay below. A warren of passages led in four directions. Their outline could be seen by the occasional shafts of daylight emitted through gaps just below the concrete roof. Since it had not rained for several months, the floor was dry and surprisingly clean.
They chose one passage. Billy took Alan’s torch and led the way. After an incline, the passage flattened out to a T-junction. Ahead was another metal ladder. Billy climbed it. ‘Wow!’ he exclaimed. ‘We’re right under the pavement!’
The other two coaxed him down to take turns to look. ‘I can see the Clarendon Hotel!’ said Alan.
‘That’s right,’ said Danny. ‘That means we’re on the corner of Owen and Sutherland Street, right under the Metro!’
They retraced their steps and followed the tunnel past the manhole where they had climbed down. It led to a dead end. But to the right was another patch of light. It was the drain just below the O’Briens’ house.
‘There’s my dad’s car outside,’ said Danny. ‘It must be home time.’
‘Let’s come back and explore tomorrow,’ Alan said. The boys climbed out of the tunnel, dusted themselves down and carefully replaced the manhole cover.
‘How did you find this place, Alan?’ asked Billy. ‘That was darned clever.’
Alan had been looking for old ball bearings in the town engineer’s waste bin that contained metal scraps. The boys substituted large ball bearings, when they could be found, for the real marbles that were fast running out.
Alan’s search revealed six ball bearings in a broken brace but when he tried to prise them out, one had fallen through a vent in the manhole cover. ‘So I shifted it a bit and saw that deep hole and the ladder!’
The next afternoon, the three went back with a torch apiece. And then they discovered an even more marvellous thing. The network of drains ran under pavements on both sides of all the streets in the centre of the town, with regular gaps in the gutters where they could see out. High up, near the ceiling, the individual road names were stenciled in black paint.
Sometimes there were metal-runged ladders as they had encountered the previous day but usually the drain floor below these gaps was high enough to enable the boys to stand on tiptoe and peer out.
It was an expedition of wonder and excitement. At one point, Billy looked and said, ‘Hey! I was standing right above here yesterday. There’s the BV Bazaars! Old Mostert would never have seen me if we knew about these tunnels then!’
‘That’s right!’ said Danny. ‘We can follow him from down here in future. Wherever he goes around town. Wow!’
They walked east along Sutherland Street and beyond the Royal Hotel. A car was parked in a grove of trees on the empty lot below the Catholic Cathedral. A couple were in the front seat, in a close embrace.
‘What are they doing?’ asked Alan.
‘Kissing,’ said Billy Miller. ‘It’s Mrs Howlett and Mr Fuller from the jail.’
‘I didn’t know they were even related,’ said Alan Dewes.
They watched the two adults until they became bored, and then turned back along the drain to Owen Street. Harry Spring was walking with his pogo-stick motion towards the Masonic Hall.
Billy cupped his hands and started to moan in a deep voice. ‘Harreee!’ he intoned. ‘Harreee!’ Harry Spring rose a foot in the air and almost fell over.
During break at school the next day, the three of them told Charles Perkins about the underground maze and together they drew up a plan of action. It didn’t involve Steyn Mostert, whom they thought would still be embarrassed because Nick Mostert was his relative.
Coming cold into a civil war
Maseru.– It happens, essentially, because I have been away from Lesotho for too long, on a year’s sabbatical abroad where reports of the civil war were flimsy, discounting its intensity.
After dinner with my local correspondent on the first evening, I return to the Lancer’s Inn hotel to find a crowd around the parking area. An off-duty waiter is assaulting a woman, holding her by the hair and hitting her with his fist. I intervene. The waiter falls down. Somebody calls the police.
They arrive in a Land Rover. With no questions asked, I am handcuffed and tossed into the back. A constable sits opposite me. On the drive to the police station, he beats methodically on the short chain between the metal cuffs. There is no apparent malice. His attitude suggests this is just something he does with prisoners.
At the charge office, I am allowed no phone calls but summarily pushed into a cell with eleven others. Then the overhead light is put out again.
There are no beds but duckboards on the floor. The cement beneath them is damp and cold enough this winter evening to set me shivering. The man next to me offers a portion of his traditional blanket.
Foolishly I ask him, “What are you in for?”
“I killed my wife yesterday,” he says.
Why? It was over another man.
Sleep, which was always going to be problematic, thus becomes impossible. I lower the blanket and sit up. Most of the others in this small cell, perhaps three metres square, are awake too. They are not surprised to hear the story of my arrest.
“This country knows only violence now,” says a voice from the corner, “and the police are the worst. They are completely out of control.”
Another voice chimes in: “Maseru is bad but Butha Buthe and Leribe are worse. In the parts where the (opposition) Congress Party is strong, Jonathan’s thugs are acting like butchers. Killing and maiming. Killing and maiming. You must see what they did to Tsepo here.”
The darkness does not allow such inspection, so the man explains, “They clubbed him with rifles, then they took him to police headquarters in Leribe. They put barbed wire around his testicles.
“Tsepo is not even a Congress member but, after that, he was forced to say he was.”
“Surely the police must charge Tsepo with some crime or else release him?”
“Do you think,” says the first speaker, “we are here because we have committed crimes? We have done nothing. We are only trying to speak out about what the government is doing. Lesotho is supposed to be a democracy.”
“And Leabua (Jonathan) is behaving like this,” a new voice adds, “because he knew all the time he was losing the election, and shouldn’t be in power.”
So what will happen to them?
“Oh, they will hold us for some more days or until others are picked up and they need the space in this cell. Then they will beat us badly and let us go.”
But, they add, it is worse for others.
“Even just down the road,” says one. “Maseribane (the deputy premier, Chief Sekhonyane Maseribane) has a big tent in his garden where people are tortured every day. Some die from the torture and the bodies are taken out at night.
“It is common knowledge. Those are the people the government thinks are its real opponents, not small fish like us.”
In the course of that night, I hear other stories of the revolution. Of mass executions in the mountains, earlier in the year. Of how King Moshoeshoe the Second was captured at the traditional shrine of Thabo Bosiu while trying to raise a force of rebel horsemen.
The king was found – the men tell me with some derision – hiding in a ruined hut, weeping like a child.
As the sun rises, I begin to see them: young men, mostly, barely out of their teens. The self-confessed killer, who was prepared to share his blanket, is not much older.
I am shown Tsepo’s wounds, open sores around an area grown elephantine. I feel his forehead. It is burning hot.
At first light, too, I am called to the cell window. Outside is my friend and correspondent, Joe Molefi. He has spoken to the waiter, who is with him and is prepared to tell the senior police officer at the station that it was all his fault: that he was striking a woman and I stepped in to try to protect her.
My release, however, does not happen quite like that.
The senior policeman, a colonel, has me brought to his office. He tells me I may go after I have paid ten Loti admission of guilt.
Admitting what guilt?
Assault, the colonel says.
But the waiter is outside, waiting to confess that he was to blame.
“I don’t know of any waiter,” says the colonel.
“Well, let me go outside and find him.”
“No,” says the colonel. “You are here because you were fighting in a public place. If you want to be released, you must pay the fine.”
I think of the dank cell, the other men who have endured several nights already and could be there for several nights more. I wonder what will happen if I turn down this opportunity to get out and write about it.
So, eventually, I pay the ten Loti. But before I do, I show the colonel the bruises on my wrist from the constable’s truncheon. I tell him I wish to lay my own charge of assault.
“How do we know,” he says, “that you were not resisting arrest?”
The colonel is writing out a receipt for my fine. I tell him also that there is a man in the cell who has a high fever from a septic wound and needs a doctor urgently.
The man’s name, I say, is Tsepo Mohale. He has the wound because barbed wire was applied to his genitals.
The colonel finishes writing and hands me the receipt. Pointedly, he puts his pen away.
Then, with a slight motion of his head, he indicates the door.
From One Man’s Africa
How much longer must we live with this rotting fish?
Years ago, I became a foreign correspondent in Africa because the apartheid government withdrew my official Press card. And thus I became limited in what I could report in my own country.
Not that I had written anything that wasn’t honest or accurate. But it was critical of the policies of separate development, the segregation of people because of their colour.
Thus I was surprised when the same government approved my application for dual citizenship, allowing me to get a British passport to travel freely in Africa.
I knew the sub-continent well. For a year, I had worked on a newpaper in Zimbabwe, when it was Rhodesia. Later, I had reported on UDI from Zambia’s perspective. I had covered the independence celebrations in the three former British protectorates – Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. I had travelled extensively in Namibia, then South-West Africa, and Mozambique.
All that exposure to social normality I had enjoyed. It was refreshing to escape South Africa’s stultifying politics, to be where people behaved naturally, where attitudes were not directed by race or prejudice.
In 1975, independence came to Portugal’s African provinces, Angola and Mozambique. When would what seemed inevitable, democracy, happen in South Africa? Not in my lifetime, I thought. As confirmation, the apartheid government sent the army into Angola, at the behest of the CIA, to try to ward off communism. And when the South African forces were in a position to occupy Luanda, the capital, the CIA asked it to withdraw.
Then, in 1990, came the great “Rainbow Nation” transition. President F W de Klerk – under considerable economic pressure from world sanctions – unbanned the African National Congress and freed Nelson Mandela. I was in Lusaka when ANC leaders began returning from exile. In four years, they would be in charge of South Africa. With the party was a member of the anti-apartheid movement who had been close to them for several years. I asked him what sort of government he thought they would make. “They are good people,” he said. “But right now they couldn’t run a bath, let alone a government. They’ve got some quick learning to do.” The man explained, “The ANC has never really prepared itself for this. Before sanctions seriously began to bite two years ago, many members had come to believe that change would not happen while they were alive.” Evidence of that unreadiness (and immaturity) came early. The ANC accepted responsibility for a vast apartheid-era debt, which should have been cancelled. Instead, the new government approached the International Monetary Fund for a huge loan. It announced there would be free health care for children under six and pregnant or breastfeeding mothers. And a raft of social grants.
One effect of that has been to clog queues at hospitals and clinics with youngsters and mothers suffering from minor ailments, while chronic patients are delayed or even denied treatment. Another is much more serious and even tragic. Teenage girls, many still at school, have become pregnant in order to get the grants on offer. And hundreds of those have abandoned their babies because they lacked the will or the proper funds to carry on as mothers.
Introducing these grants may have been a naive mistake but they have become an area for corruption ever since. Old age pensions continue to be claimed long after the death of the original recipient. Many thousands of rands in social security funds have been embezzled by officials down the line. The incompetence of civil servants has been another major problem in the twenty years of democracy. A recent independent report showed that less than 20 per cent of municipalities were properly managing the funds allocated to them. Hence all the protests over the non-delivery of services.
Mismanagement is rife at provincial level too, particularly in the education departments. Witness the scandal in Limpopo a few years ago where hundreds of pupils had to go without school books for most of a year because a consignment had simply been dumped in the veld by the company contracted to deliver them, but not paid.
Well, if an official is intent on feathering his own nest, he is very likely to be derelict in his duties. And the chronicle of neglect grows almost daily.
The Electricity Supply Commission’s lack of preparation for the future, which resulted in regular power cuts, did huge damage to commerce and industry. The dyke seems to be plugged, but how effectively?
And now we have critical water shortages. The drought is to blame for much of that. But in twenty years the ANC government hasn’t built a single new dam. Worse, some of the biggest municipalities haven’t kept existing dams and reservoirs in proper repair. So, for example, supplies are available from Lesotho’s Highlands Water Scheme to alleviate some problems. But the pumps that would carry that water to the reservoirs need replacing.
It is all a tragic state of affairs for the millions of us who had such high hopes for our country in 1990 and beyond. But cynics would say that is the nature of rainbows. They are a trick of the light and they don’t last. And there is no gold at the end of them.
South Africa’s own gold, for so many years the mainstay of our economy, now accounts for a few percent of the Gross Domestic Product. And that economy looks less stable with every budget. It does not help that university students are now clamouring for a free education, worthy though their campaign may be.
If all the money lost to graft, lavished on unnecessary grants and benefits, could somehow be recovered, we would be in a better position to meet such demands when they arise. It would also help if our glorious leader would pay back the R246 millon squandered on what he calls “just a house”.
Jacob Zuma admitted this month that he puts the interests of the ANC ahead of the interests of the country. If he was honest, he would have gone further and admitted that he puts the interests of Jacob Zuma ahead of both.
Now he wants a four billion rand presidential jet capable of intercontinental flight, with a seating capacity of 30 and a conference room capable of holding eight. Why? Is he planning to hold secret party meetings at thirty thousand feet with his top incompetents while they hob-nob around the world?
Political commentator Justice Malala observed this week that “a fish rots from the head down”. That is certainly true in our case. But how much longer must South Africans live with this stench of corruption and avarice?
Duel in the African sun
Somewhere in Mozambique – With consummate poise, I execute a series of big cape passes, the odd natural or two thrown in for good measure. After five minutes of this, I am quite prepared to retire behind the makeshift bullring for a quiet bottle of lunch.
But the crowd will give me no respite. Five veronicas, the classic pass of the big cape, bring them to their feet. A languid relobera, a sweet chiqueline, and I begin to feel that I will never again be able to find peace of mind in the mundane world of journalism.
Then they let in the bull.
Being at all times honest to a fault, I will be the first to concede that the animal which comes pounding into the arena is not a fighting bull in the true sense.
Possibly, it is slightly smaller than the fighting variety. And, well, possibly a bit younger.
I am also willing to admit that its horns are not of a size one normally associates with fighting bulls. But further than that I am not prepared to budge. (My colleagues, with their usual cynicism, will claim this description perfectly fits a calf. But if there is any such talk, I shall sue.)
At one stage during my training, I had considered taking the first charge on my knees, as I had once seen the great Antonio Ordonez do in Seville. Now, however, I reject that plan as frivolous and exhibitionist.
My substitute ploy, though less spectacular, is far more effective. I merely turn sideways to the line of the bull’s attack and disappear.
For ordinary mortals, the trick would be impossible. But for a man of my lateral proportions (I would make the young Sinatra look like an overstuffed gourmet) it is easy.
Bewildered, the bull blunders on.
Twenty metres away, an aged toureiro is reclining against the bamboo stockade, chatting to a friend in the stand. The bull takes him unawares, horns ripping through his trousers, raising a bruise on his thigh.
Hopping about indelicately on one leg, the man lets fly two flurries in Portuguese which I interpret loosely as “Please, you must be more considerate” and “Why do you not use the cape?”
Back in the middle of the sandpit, I feel it is time to establish supremacy. Shoulders erect, I leap nimbly into the air and yell “Toiro!”
It is a terrible mistake. Hardly have I landed when the bull is upon me.
Round and round the ring we race. After five laps I am ahead. On the seventh, I almost lap my snorting adversary, but manage to check my pace.
By the ninth circuit, we are both dead beat. We face each other through the settling dust. The bull stands there, chest heaving and mouth agape. I stand there, chest heaving and mouth agape. It must be a horrible sight.
After a statutory two-minute pause, we are at it again.
The bull comes on. Hopefully, I extend my cape. It is a reflex action, like the threshing of a drowning man. Amazingly, it works. The bull tears at the red square, misses comprehensively, and ploughs a neat furrow in the dirt with its nose.
When it charges again, I have summoned up enough energy for a lame veronica, while shuffling off in the direction of where, in cricketing terms, square leg would be.
Now the bull, with evil aforethought, decides on a change of tactics. From a distance of two metres, it suddenly takes off. I choose the same instant to get my front foot trapped in the folds of the cape, and fall.
Fortunately, the bull has badly over-judged its leap. By the time it is able to turn, skidding like a puppy on a polished floor, I am thirty metres away and still moving.
The chase begins afresh. Midway through the eight round, it is obvious which way the result will go. The bull begins to move in for the kill.
What happens next is not in the script. At the height of its final lunge, the bull seems to lose co-ordination and crashes down in a superb belly-flop. From this position, legs splayed, it eyes me like a beached porpoise.
Now the aficionados are around me, slapping my back and mumbling praises. Someone thrusts a bandarillio, the long coloured dart, into my hand. It is the old toureiro, his thigh bound with an incredibly dirty handkerchief.
“Come, amigo,” he says softly. “Now you must place the dart in the toiro’s neck to signify the kill.”
But something in the man’s tone makes me decline. I have never been able to stand the sight of blood.
Particularly my own.
From One Man’s Africa.
Have spear, will travel
Dar es Salaam – Three hitchhikers stand in deep dust at a T-junction, 300 kilometres west of here.
The sun is like an oven, but the three neither wilt not sweat. The do not wear the uniquitous khaki and denim of foreign visitors, nor bear themselves down with backpacks. They are not ordinary hitchhikers.
The three men are clad, off-shoulder to knee, in dyed cotton with a water gourd around the waist and a clutch of hunting spears held forward as though presenting arms.
From this posture, they wave down a truck as it emerges from the Tanzanian bush. The driver brakes at once. These, after all, are odd people. Shun them, and you might find a sudden leak in your petrol tank.
The truck is east-bound, but it could as well be going in any direction. Masai warriors are seldom choosy. Not for nothing do they remain nomads, following the instinct to move anywhere except where they happen to be.
How far they will travel on this route will probably be subject to the affirmative nod of three heads. It might depend on the sighting of untended cattle, or merely another of the whims that shift the Masai.
Motor transport is relatively new to these particular tribesmen, but they have adjusted quickly. They know the times of day when vehicles are more likely to appear. They also know – from exposure to passing tourists – that they are a saleable commodity.
Female Masai, generally, may not be photographed, under threat of death or bad wounding. Males usually accede, but at an extravagant fee that could test a tourist’s budget. Sometimes refusal to pay is not worth the risk of asking what that fee might be.
The Masai are still the mavericks of Africa. All other tribes are either wary or alarmed by their doggedness to go where they please and graze their cattle on any available land.
An interesting juxtaposition of cultures occurs around a settlement near Morogoro, in central Tanzania. Here, one of Africa’s least Westernised people has met elements of the continent’s most sophisticated blacks, expatriates of the African National Congress.
There was one particular encounter a few weeks ago when a pride of lions threatened local stock on the fringe of the town. Masai warriors were alerted, killed four of the marauders in one day with their spears and put the others to flight. To the ANC cadres, such feats are awesome, part of an Africa they have never known.
Any sighting of the Masai makes them shake their heads in astonishment. A teacher at the ANC’s Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College near Morogoro tells with wonder how the rest of the Tanzanian population seem to view the Masai.
He went on a package tour of one of the game parks in central Tanzania. The guide enumerated all the animals in the reserve. He began by informing the tourists that there were this many elephants, that many impala, wildebeest, zebra and so on.
Then the guide added, “And we have nearly two thousand Masai.”
From One Man’s Africa (Jonathan Ball Publishers).
At least reporters got a response
By the sort of contradiction that modern technology often inflicts upon us, the personal computer most “print” journalist use to transmit their copy is, essentially, impersonal.
They simply send a story through the international ether. Sometimes its receipt is acknowledged, sometimes not.
The post office cable, the old-fashioned telex message, was an umbilical cord. It even has its own idiom.
Cable-ese we called it. Because the cost of press telegrams was calculated by the word, and that cost obviously ballooned with distance, prefixes were used. Un- meant no or not; pro- for or to; et, and; ex-, from; and con-, with. Soonest meant as soon as possible.
It was a shorthand that sms experts might consider looking at today.
This genre of language produced one classic story of the Reuters man dispatched by his London office to Zanzibar after the 1964 revolution. A week passed with no word from him. The foreign editor sent a cable: “Why unnews?” he demanded.
Not much was happening on the spice island after a spate of killings and arrests, so the reporter sent a message back. “Unnews, good news,” it said.
The response from the foreign editor came the same afternoon. Short and sharp. “Unnews, unjob,” he cabled.
A threat like that would have sent most journalists to their typewriters to dash off the first “situationer” piece that came to mind. This correspondent, however, was made of sterner stuff. “That makes you forty-love,” he replied.
The need to keep down cabling costs led to some wonderful invention. Another Fleet Street friend spent three weeks in Addis Ababa during a similar lull in news. Eventually, he sent the foreign editor a two-word cable: “Nunc dimittis.” Which translated, as choirboys past and present know, means “Lord, let now thy servant depart in peace . . .”
Quick as a flash, the foreign editor replied with another biblical reference: “Matthew 24.6.”
My friend reached for the hotel Gideon’s, looked up the reference, then rang for bar service. Matthew 24.6 held no comfort for a restless soul.
It read: “But the time is not yet.”
Often, service messages could take on a certain ambiguity. More so if the receiving party chose to read them that way.
Eric Robins, a veteran Time correspondent, was declared a prohibited immigrant in the former Rhodesia after Ian Smith’s UDI. He and I were staying at the same hotel in Lusaka when he received the notification. Earlier, Eric had written a profile of Sir Roy Welensky for the magazine. Welensky was the first and last premier of the doomed Central African Federation, a former professional boxer and a florid personality.
At three o’clock in the morning Zambia time, hours before publication of his piece, Robins was dragged from his bed by a porter monitoring the hotel telex machine.
It was a message from his New York office. “How old Welensky?” it said.
Eric was infuriated. He knew Roy Welensky’s date of birth had to be in a hundred files in the Time library and that the person editing his article could easily have looked it up.
So he sent this message back: “Old Welensky fine,” it said. “How you?”
From One man’s Africa
Extract from John Ryan’s “Spy story” (Amazon.com, Kindle direct publishing
Otto Steiger, commander of U 160, stared out through binoculars at the small bay where the submarine’s dinghy was headed. Overhead, the Milky Way blazed with a billion stars.
Anyone with a less jaundiced eye might have been enthralled at the sight. But Steiger had other things on his mind.
Immediately, he was worried that the dinghy might be too visible from the shore in that starlight. And, from behind the hills, the moon would soon be up. He would much have preferred cloud cover. He worried also that the contact vehicle had not yet arrived. Above all, he worried about the war and his own plight.
Below Otto Steiger, as he stood at the top of the conning tower, was the emblem he and his crew had decided on when the vessel was commissioned more than two years earlier. It was supposed to be a rabbit’s foot, a symbol of luck, but the member of the engine room crew who had volunteered to paint it had overstated his artistic talents. So, instead, what he eventually achieved looked rather like an overweight lily or, some thought, a leek.
Yet, up to now, the emblem had brought a fair deal of luck to U 160. The fact that it was still intact after two years and some months, particularly in the seas off Africa, spoke for itself. But that had been the time when the war was running in Germany’s favour, as detailed in regular bulletins from naval headquarters to the U-boat fleet. Since then, the bulletins had dried up, younger and younger men were being conscripted into the services, and Steiger was enough of a realist to know what all of that indicated. During his last furlough, just a month earlier, he had heard that the German navy was losing submarines at the rate of twenty a month.
Whether or not the information was right, it sent a chill up Steiger’s spine. He just hoped luck would not abandon him and his crew in this outlandish part of the world.
How had the mighty fallen! Steiger remembered the day he had been offered a transfer from destroyers to the elite submarine corps. It was hardly an offer, more an order he could not refuse, but the role of the submarine in modern naval warfare had been so romanticised that he was elated at the chance.
Of course, they never told you the truth about submarines. They never told you how precarious it was to command a vessel not much more than half the length of a football pitch in combat against ships of much greater size, speed and strike power.
They never told you – or maybe they never knew, those admirals, those toffee-nosed relics of World War I – the dangers of diving in the Indian Ocean. These waters were so clear that you could not hide from the bombs and depth charges of enemy aircraft. Yet, deep down, they concealed rocks and coral sharp enough to penetrate any submarine’s inner hull. And, when the weather turned around, they could produce waves that made the North Atlantic look like a millpond.
Instead, what naval bosses tried to instil in you was an entirely false sense of security in the one facility the submarine had that the other naval craft did not – the ability to submerge and thus, allegedly, become invisible.
In reality, submarines spent most of the time on the surface, plodding along on their diesel engines at the pace of tramp steamers, pitching and rolling, forcing the crew to grab at any possible appendage in the interior structure of the vessel to stay upright.
They never told you, although they surely did know, those old admirals, what it would be like sharing such cramped quarters with fifty other males, breathing the same polluted air, day after day, week after week, bumping against one another in the narrow gangways. Sardine cans, the other naval men had begun to call submarines, and they weren’t far out.
As Otto Steiger scanned the coast around the river mouth, he caught a flash of headlights from the contact area and signalled back with the Aldis lamp. So the dinghy should be back within the hour, with the jerry cans of water they desperately needed and possibly some fresh meat and fruit, bananas or paw paws.
Exactly what the contact could supply didn’t really matter. In the end, it would all taste of diesel fumes.
John Ryan 