Atom Bomb Angel

  ‘Contracted as a result of working in the mine?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘What about his son, Ben – have you got any more information on him?’

  ‘May I ask what your interest in him is?’

  ‘He’s just applied to us for a job.’

  ‘To you?’

  ‘My company advertised for an expert on South West Africa to advise us on mineral prospects. He was one of the applicants for the job,’ I said.

  ‘His son?’

  ‘He’s in his third year at Oxford University, studying atomic energy.’

  ‘That’s right. I knew he was at university in England. You want to be careful – smart niggers are dangerous niggers.’

  I nodded. ‘That’s one of the reasons for my visit. We are thinking of hiring him – he’s a bright youngster – but we suspect he might have other motives.’

  Smed raised an eyebrow. He went back over to the filing cabinet, and pulled out a file that was an inch and a half thick. ‘I suggest you take a read through this, Mr Flynn: it’s a psychologist’s report. I’ve got a couple of jobs I must go and do, which will take me about half an hour. We have to watch our backs the whole time in this country; we watch anyone we think is dangerous, or could one day become dangerous, very closely. We employ a team of psychologists, and their job is to alert us to any warning signs they see. Would you like some tea or coffee – or a drink?’

  ‘Coffee, please.’

  ‘I’ll have it sent up. Have a good read.’ Smed went out and I opened the file; it was not a cheerful read.

  Ben Tsenong had been lucky enough to win one of only three science scholarships a year awarded to the whole of Namibia. After two years away at college, he had returned home for the summer holidays before commencing his third year. He had found his father very ill and his mother demented with worry. He then discovered Westondam’s doctor had lied to his father about his illness; he’d told him he had bronchitis. Not having sufficient money to go to a doctor on his own account, Ben’s father had accepted the Westondam doctor’s diagnosis. Ben paid for a specialist, and found out the truth. If there had been a chance of curing his father when the disease was first discovered, there certainly wasn’t now.

  Ben Tsenong was eaten up with hatred – hatred against Westondam Mining Corporation, against the South African government, against Germany for beginning it all with their colonization. But the strongest hatred he had was for the country that he now knew best of all: England.

  He hated England firstly for the way it took over where Germany left off. England could have done something to improve life for the Namibians, but instead did nothing. He hated England because he believed that it was England that was responsible for everything bad about South Africa and the way it ruled. He hated the fat cats of England who licked the cream its colonialism had raked off the world. He hated the fat people of England in their Jaguar cars most of all, but he hated them almost as much in their Fords or their Vauxhalls or in their Minis, or their imported Renaults or BMWs or Mercedes, or any of their cars.

  Ben Tsenong was a scientist, and he understood science. He did not understand the world, and most of what he knew of the world, he hated. He hated all the countries that used nuclear energy; he hated the people in those countries for the lights they left on, for their mindless television programmes, for their Space Invader machines, for their ice-crushing machines, for their neon lights and moving staircases and sunray lamps, for their electric toothbrushes, and toy train sets, for everything that was useless and meaningless and guzzled the energy that had made nuclear power at all necessary; and made it necessary for his father to spend his life down in that mine, breathing in those particles of dust that had radon atoms clinging to them, which had gone down into his lungs, and sat there, and set to work, beaming out destruction, killing good cells and making bad cells, until the bad cells began to multiply on their own, without any assistance, and dreadfully, painfully, started to kill the life that was his father, and destroy forever the will to live that was his mother.

  Namibia had no nuclear power stations. The uranium that was mined here went mostly to Europe and North America. His father had never switched on a light that was fuelled by the uranium he had dug from the ground.

  Smed came back in. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘I can see what you mean,’ I said.

  Smed offered me another cigarette; I declined. He lit one for himself.

  ‘Does the name Lukas Ogomo ring a bell?’

  Smed’s eyes opened wide, and he nodded. ‘A very bad bell.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘If he had his way, he would close down all uranium mines in the country, and if independence comes, he may well get his way. He’s totally committed to it, and although generally speaking he’s only a small noise in SWAPO, on uranium he is their leading spokesman. He’s friendly with Tsenong’s son too – but I don’t know how they know each other.’

  ‘Where is he based?’

  ‘Windhoek. Operates from SWAPO’s headquarters there. You thinking of employing him too?’

  ‘No, but I’d like to have a chat with him.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll get very far.’

  ‘How about if I went to see Felix Wajara?’

  Smed grinned broadly. ‘He eats white men for breakfast. You wouldn’t get an audience; you’d be wasting your time. If you want to talk to anyone, Ogomo is your best bet – it’s a slim bet, but at least he would be approachable. But be careful what you say.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  Smed looked at his watch. ‘Do you want to see around the mine before lunch? Or shall we just have a large drink here?’

  ‘Let’s just have a large drink here,’ I said.

  ‘Quite right,’ agreed Smed. ‘Anything that’s above ground you can see from here anyway. Below ground, there’s nothing but niggers, darkness and dust.’

  I thought I might be in luck having a different driver take me back to Windhoek, but I wasn’t. He was a different driver, but there was no difference in the way he drove.

  Shortly after we hit the main road, we passed a pull-in bar called the Beerstop, and I made a mental note of it.

  We made it to Windhoek without being wiped out, and I thanked the driver out aloud, and God under my breath, and got out. It was three o’clock, and I had some business to do. I went first to hire a car; a slightly dented, but fairly recent model Datsun was all Avis had, and it suited me fine. I next went to a shop-fitters, and bought a male shop-window dummy, which I put in the boot of the car. From there I went to a hardware store, and bought a ball of twine, a packet of absorbent cloths and some long nails. Then I went to a chemist and bought a pack of disposable hypodermic syringes and some Elastoplast. Then I went to the public library, and asked to see some articles on Ogomo; never having seen him before, I wanted to look at some photographs of him so I would know what he looked like.

  He was short, and quite fat, with goldfish eyes, a dimple in each cheek, and an inane smile. My first impression of the photographs were that they had been taken while he was stoned out of his mind. It was the same for everyone who saw him for the first time – everyone, that is, who didn’t know that the dimple on the left cheek had been caused by a 2mm soft-nose bullet entering his mouth, and the dimple on the right cheek by the same 2mm soft-nose bullet leaving his mouth, courtesy the anonymous sniper, for whom no one had claimed responsibility, who had failed to test his new image-intensifier telescopic sight before firing, a test which would have revealed to him that, at a range of two hundred and fifty yards, the rifle was firing four inches too low.

  The bullet had severed an important muscle in each cheek, the result of which being that Ogomo was left with a permanent grin on his face.

  At a quarter to five I went to a call box and dialled the number of the SWAPO headquarters in Windhoek. A girl answered.

  ‘May I speak to Lukas Ogomo – it is very urgent.’

  ‘Hold a minute, please.’

/>   I breathed a sigh of relief – at least she hadn’t said he was out, or, worse still, abroad. Another woman’s voice came on the phone.

  ‘Who are you please?’

  If they had gained one thing from one hundred years of white domination, it was the white man’s art of vetting unwanted telephone callers. ‘A friend of Ben Tsenong – from England.’

  A surprisingly high-pitched man’s voice came through the receiver. ‘Ogomo speaking. Who are you, please?’

  ‘A friend of Ben Tsenong – from England.’

  ‘What do you want?’ He sounded tense.

  ‘I have a message from Ben. I must speak to you in private. I’m in danger, and it’s very urgent.’

  ‘Do you want to come here?’

  ‘No good.’

  ‘You tell me where?’

  ‘Have you a car?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Take the Okandja Road, and take the turning for Otjiwarongo. Go on for about three miles and you pass a bar on the right-hand side of the road – it’s called the Beerstop. About four hundred yards further on, there’s a turning to the right marked with a small post which says Otjosundu. You take that turning. Immediately on the left is a piece of flat land. You’ll see a yellow Datsun parked there. I’ll be in that car waiting for you. Leave your car and join me. If anyone comes with you I shall know something is wrong and will drive straight off.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Ogomo in a voice that sounded as if he didn’t understand at all. However, he repeated correctly the directions I had given him.

  ‘Half past nine this evening.’

  ‘Half past nine,’ he said.

  I hung up and went back to the hotel, leaving everything locked in the boot of the car except for the syringes, which I took up to my room. I opened my briefcase, and removed a small black box containing two phials labelled with the names of chemicals used for rock-testing analysis. From each one I filled a syringe, then I emptied the remainder of the chemicals down the sink, and rinsed the phials out carefully. I put the syringes into a plastic bag, together with one of the cloths I had bought, sealed the bag carefully, and put it into my jacket pocket. Outside, dusk was beginning to fall. I wanted to get to the site before it was completely dark in case there was anything I hadn’t noticed as I had jolted past on two occasions earlier that day.

  The drive took about forty minutes. The place was even better than I had at first thought. The bar, with two battered cars and the remains of a bicycle outside, could not accurately be described as the hub of the universe, and there was no other building anywhere in view. I pulled the Datsun a good way off the road, switched off the lights, and settled down to wait until night had fallen completely. It was a calm, muggy evening; there was a new moon and the sky was quite dark, which pleased me – I didn’t have any desire to be floodlit.

  After about ten minutes, the quiet was broken by the clattering of bicycles, and I saw the silhouettes of a bunch of people pedalling past. They cycled off into the dark and then there was silence again.

  When it was as dark as it was going to get, I unscrewed the cover of the interior light in the car, and removed the bulb. Next, I took the dummy out of the boot, assembled it, and placed it in the driving seat. I removed the bag of syringes from my pocket, wrapped one in the cloth, and put it back in my pocket. I laid the other, and the Elastoplast, on the front passenger seat of the car. I hoped no policeman would come along on a routine patrol and decide to do a check up on the car. I didn’t know what he’d make of a junkie dummy.

  I walked back down to the main road, where I could see clearly in all three directions. There were no lights on in the Beerstop, and the cars and bicycle were gone. A pick-up truck with several men crammed in the cab drove down the road, and I stepped back into the bushes to avoid being caught in the beam of its lights. It pulled into the forecourt of the Beerstop, and I heard the sound of cursing; they had evidently been expecting the bar to be open. They drove off down the road. I walked over to the bar. The door was pad-locked, and there were large shutters pulled down to the ground. I walked all around the outside, safety catch off my gun, but there was no one there. I went back to my watch post.

  I was glad to have my Beretta with me, and it is thanks to Trout and Trumbull that I am able to take it wherever I go. They constructed a shoulder holster for it, which, if assembled in a certain way, gives the whole thing the appearance of being a pistol-grip super-8 movie-camera. It never fails to fool airline security guards.

  At nine twenty-five, I saw the bright glow of headlamps stab the sky some way in the distance. They disappeared, then stabbed the sky again, this time closer, and I began to hear the sound of a car. Two minutes later, a Toyota estate car slowed down and turned right onto the Otjosundu road. It drove slowly for some yards, and then turned left off the road. As quietly as I could, and keeping to the shadow of the bushes, I sprinted across towards where my car was parked. The Toyota placed itself so that its headlamp beams were full on the Datsun, and the dummy silhouetted perfectly; even to me it looked as though there were a real person sitting in the car. The driver got out of the Toyota and walked across to the Datsun. I took the rag from my pocket, and emptied the contents of the syringe into it. Holding the rag in my left hand, I ran up behind him, silent on my rubber shoes, passing the Toyota closely and glancing in to make sure no one was concealed in there.

  I waited until he had put his hand on the handle of the Datsun’s passenger door, then I clamped the chloroform-soaked rag over his nose. The shock of it must have made him take a deeper breath than usual, for he went limp right away. I had no trouble in recognizing him from the pictures of him I had seen in the library: it was Lukas Ogomo.

  I removed his jacket, rolled up his right shirt sleeve, laid him out on the back seat of the Datsun, and tied his arms and legs firmly together. Then I picked up the syringe and waited for him to come round. The content of the syringe was a pale-yellow, liquid barbiturate, Pentothal. When Ogomo came round, I would inject into him just enough to put him into a happy, relaxed state of near-euphoria – the final point of consciousness before sleep – in which he should completely lose all his inhibitions.

  It took about fifteen minutes before he began to stir, and then he started to come awake quite quickly. I stuck the needle into his arm, and pushed in a fairly generous helping of the mixture. His eyes rolled. I lashed the syringe to his arm with the Elastoplast.

  ‘Hallo, Lukas,’ I said.

  ‘Man, hi!’

  ‘Good, eh, Lukas?’

  ‘That’s good; feels real good.’

  ‘You relax and enjoy yourself, Lukas.’

  ‘Sure, sure. Where am I? Where am I? I can’t move – what is all this? Hey? Hey?’ He was starting to panic. I pushed the plunger in further and he relaxed immediately. ‘Who the hell cares,’ he said cheerfully, ‘this is a nice place!’

  I gave another gentle push on the plunger.

  ‘What the fuck’s going on, man?’

  ‘Don’t worry, relax, lie back, have a nice time.’

  ‘I’m having a nice time.’

  ‘Tell me some things, Lukas.’

  ‘What would you like to know, man?’

  ‘Tell me about Angel?’

  ‘Angel’s top secret, man, I can’t talk about that.’ He laughed. ‘No way; that’s my little secret – well, not just mine, everyone’s, but – hey – I have to get back now. What’s up? I can’t move my hands—’

  I pushed the plunger again.

  ‘Aren’t you meant to be telling me things?’ he said.

  ‘No, Lukas, you’re telling me, you’re giving me messages for Ben, for Ben Tsenong, and for Patrick, Patrick Cleary.’

  ‘This feels good.’

  ‘They’re screwing you, Lukas.’

  ‘Whatd’yer mean?’

  ‘You’ll find out.’

  ‘How can they? Why would they?’

  ‘You know better than I do. Ben isn’t happy. He thinks you’re ignoring
him.’ I pushed the plunger in a short way.

  ‘Tsenong’s just a boy. He’s small fry. He’s just a kid, just a kid. Cleary’s the smart one in England. I like Cleary, he’s nice.’

  ‘Kind to you, is he?’ I pushed on the plunger.

  ‘Oh yes, I mean, we’re not great buddies, you know, or anything like that, no, but – er – he’s nice.’

  ‘Who is your great buddy?’

  ‘Felix is. He’s always been good to me. Felix is my good friend.’

  I pushed the plunger in further.

  ‘I could stay like this for ever; feels so good, so good.’

  ‘Felix who?’

  ‘Wajara. And Hadino – Dusab: he’s good to me too.’

  ‘Is he in Angel?’

  ‘Sure he is. Felix and Hadino and a lovely bunch of men.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Not all lovely; guy I can’t stand – German – hate all Germans – they killed my grandparents, German bastards. I’ll kill them all, fucking Germans. I can’t move my feet.’

  He was getting panicky. I injected more Pentothal and he relaxed.

  ‘Who’s the German?’

  ‘Can’t move my feet.’

  I gave a long push of the plunger. ‘Who’s the German?’

  ‘Killer, Keller, Keller-Bluff, no, Keller-Blaus, Gunther Keller-Blaus; he’s in charge of France.’

  ‘France? Why not Germany?’

  ‘Not allowed to touch Germany.’

  ‘Who isn’t?’

  ‘Angel.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Konyenko said so. Said Spain instead. Much help from ETA.’

  ‘Who’s Konyenko?’

  ‘Russian. Don’t want the winds blowing over Russia. Don’t want to radiate Russia. Radiate, radio, radio, rashio, russiate,’ he rambled on.