Spy Out the Land (27 page)

In late 1973, Manning had relocated again, this time to Brussels, where he had continued to run the organisation from this very flat and, the documentary had implied, regularly flew to African
countries to meet with sources. Manning had boasted that he had a comprehensive database on Western subterfuge across the continent, and one of his cohorts had called him ‘the Simon
Wiesenthal of Africa’, the thought of which had nearly put Dark into hysterics and had brought Claire running from the bedroom to see what had brought it on.

He felt like laughing again now, but this time out of despair. If he wasn’t mistaken, the vaunted database looked like it was the two filing cabinets in the corner of the room.

‘It played better on the radio, Geoffrey,’ he said, more to himself than Manning.

‘They blamed you for Wilson, you know.’

It took Dark a moment to catch up to what he was saying, and then the penny dropped.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘of course they did.’

‘That was where it all started for me. A couple of blighters from London barged into my office a few days after it happened. No signal, no call. Just turned up out of the blue and told me
I’d seen Paul Dark with a sniper rifle, nobody else, just Dark.’ He looked up, anger blazing in the bloodshot eyes. ‘Told
me
, Head of Station! You were a traitor, they
said, a Russian double. You’d been planning to kill our prime minister. They had a whole story worked out. But I’d been there. I’d been in that god-awful little room with you and
seen it all with my own eyes, so I knew they were lying. Traitor you might well be, yes, but assassin you were certainly not. And if we were prepared to stitch someone up for that, where did that
leave me? In the final analysis, who was I? The more I thought about it – and by Christ did I think about it – the more I realised that I didn’t really know the answer to that
one. So I resolved to find out.’

Dark stared at him. Well I never, he thought. Manning had set out on his voyage of self-discovery as a result of what had happened in Nigeria. He would have called it shell shock, only it seemed
to have woken the man up.

‘I take it they blocked your pension?’

Manning glared at him. It was an old Service aphorism that the few who left its ranks and then attacked it publicly were usually motivated less by a newfound conscience and more by revenge.

‘It’s not about my bloody pension. But yes, they took it away. I handed back the OBE before they could strip me of that. I didn’t deserve it anyway. “Other Buggers’
Efforts”.’

Dark nodded in pretended sympathy. ‘Are you alone here?’

Manning grunted, but Dark sensed a lie. He crossed the floor to the kitchen and looked out the window at a higgledy-piggledy landscape of back gardens, rooftops, washing lines and pylons. A set
of double doors leading off to one side were half-open, and he walked through to find a young girl lying on her side on a mattress on the floor, sleeping. The coverlet was turned back and the
imprint of Manning’s body was still visible on the sheets next to her. She was naked, and Dark winced at the sight of her pale ribcage. He leaned down to the mattress and shook her shoulder.
She awoke, a startled look dawning in large grey eyes.

‘Time to leave,’ Dark said, and walked back to the living room. A minute later she emerged, now dressed in denim shorts and a T-shirt. Manning nodded at her in a silent signal, and
she slipped out the front door without a word. Dark listened as she descended the staircase and, once he heard the front door shut, walked over to Manning. He crouched down and stared into his
face.

‘I need you to tell me everything you know about Hope Charamba.’

The embassy was cloaked in darkness by the time Weale reached it. He showed the sentry at the door his ‘Frederick Collins’ passport and was escorted up a narrow
flight of stairs to the secure room, which was a sparse soundproofed space only slightly larger than a prison cell. Waiting for him behind the barrier was Sebastian Thorpe, a small, pink-faced man
in his fifties wearing a ruffled shirt and a pale-blue suit that made him look like a villain in a light opera.

‘Welcome, Mr Collins. How was your flight? Did you fly direct from Stockholm?’

‘I need a gun,’ said Weale. ‘A semi-automatic if possible.’

Thorpe froze for a moment, then gave a steely smile. ‘I see. Delighted to meet you, too. Do you have a chit for it?’

Weale couldn’t tell whether he was being serious. They had to produce signed forms to gain access to weapons at Inkomo, of course, but this man had been given direct orders by his Chief.
What the hell did he think he’d come here for?

‘I don’t have time for this crap. Our target might leave the country any moment. Call Harmigan – he told me to check in as soon as I got here.’

Thorpe stared at him for a moment, his arms folded. He’d received the Cat A flash that this man was due to arrive just a few hours earlier, and he hadn’t been pleased: it had
essentially ordered him to act as his butler. The message had also indicated that Collins was an alongsider, a freelance operative working in tandem with the Service but not officially attached to
it. Thorpe didn’t like alongsiders at the best of times, as they often had their own agendas and could muck things up as a result, but Collins made him feel especially uneasy. From the way he
carried himself, he guessed he was a former soldier or mercenary, and he was perturbed by his casual use of the word ‘target’. But after a few moments he walked to his desk, connected
to the secure line and dialled the number in London.

‘It’s Thorpe,’ he said, when he’d been put through. ‘Your Mr Collins has arrived.’

Manning was refusing to co-operate. He looked like a bruised boxer, slouched back against the chair. Dark had tied him to it with the sheet from the mattress to stop him trying
anything.

‘Torture me if you like, old horse,’ he said, jutting out his chin. ‘I’m not helping a traitor.’

Dark nodded. The old Manning was still in there somewhere. Dark didn’t have any scruples about torturing him if it would get him closer to finding Claire and Ben – but he thought he
spied a quicker method.

‘How old was that girl I saw when I came in, Geoffrey? Thirteen, fourteen?’

Manning glared at him. ‘Elise is eighteen.’

‘Really? She looked a lot younger than that to me. I wonder if she’d be able to prove her age in a courtroom. Shall I call the news desk of
Le Soir
? Or perhaps
Reuters?’ He walked over to the telephone and lifted the receiver. ‘There must be an enterprising journalist in this town who’d look into it if I gave them the nod. You’re a
dab hand at this sort of thing nowadays, what do you think? “Former British Diplomat in Child Prostitute Disgrace – Sentencing Tomorrow”. Would that work as a headline?’

‘I’m fond of her. Leave her out of this.’

Dark ground his jaw. ‘I’m fond of my family, Geoffrey. So enough of the bullshit and start talking. Hope Charamba.’

Manning looked up to the ceiling, his Adam’s apple bobbing frenetically in his throat. Then his shoulders abruptly sagged in defeat. ‘I’ve not heard of her, but I’d guess
she’s related to Matthew Charamba.’

Dark replaced the receiver and walked back to the armchair.

‘Good. And who is Matthew Charamba, exactly?’

‘He’s a Rhodesian nationalist. Or Zimbabwean, I should say. He was a village school-teacher who rose through ZIPRA’s ranks and—’

‘I’m rusty on these acronyms, old horse.’

Manning nodded. ‘ZIPRA’s the military wing of ZAPU and ZANLA’s the equivalent for ZANU. There are also a couple of splinter groups. They’re all supposedly united now
– there was an agreement in Lusaka last year – but there’s still a hell of a lot of tension below the surface.’

‘Main cause?’ Dark willed Manning to hurry along – his politics might have changed but his lugubrious way of speaking hadn’t.

‘Tribal differences, mainly. ZANLA are primarily Shona, while most of ZIPRA are Ndebele.’ Manning caught Dark’s look of impatience. ‘Charamba is Ndebele. A few years ago
he was being tipped to take over as ZIPRA’s commander-in-chief but he was arrested before that happened.’

‘What was the charge?’

‘Oh, the usual – “conspiring against the state”. The trial was held
in camera
. He spent three years in prison but was released with a few other revolutionary
leaders last year as part of Smith’s supposed softer approach. Within a few weeks he’d left ZIPRA and set up a new group, the Zimbabwean People’s Party.’

‘Moscow-backed?’

‘I doubt it. ZIPRA is heavily funded by the Kremlin, but Charamba seems to be independent of foreign influence. He’s managed to draw some people from ZIPRA and even a few from ZANLA,
but otherwise it hasn’t really gone anywhere. Might not stay that way for long, mind. Our sources indicate it’s pretty much just him and a few aides working out of a heavily guarded
villa in Lusaka. The Zambian government turn a blind eye to his presence there, as they do with ZIPRA. A lot of Zambians support ZIPRA, either tacitly or directly, and a few of them have aligned
with Charamba’s group.’

Dark took this in, marvelling at how he had underestimated Manning all those years ago. He might not be the Wiesenthal of Africa, but his grasp of the politics was impressive. Dark would never
have guessed the man had such talents, but even his unpredictability had a predictable side: once he’d persuaded himself he had no option but to co-operate, the expert’s zeal to share
his knowledge had overtaken him and the information had started tumbling out. The trick now was to gather as much of it as he could in case he had second thoughts.

‘Why did Charamba leave ZIPRA?’ he asked. ‘And why didn’t he join the other lot, ZANLA?’

‘Oh, he has no truck with them, either. He came to the conclusion in prison that there’s no point in negotiating with the white regime in the way they’ve all been doing because
it’s taking place entirely on the whites’ terms. He’s right – those bastards have no intention of ever letting go of power. Charamba’s position is that the starting
point for them coming into talks should be setting a fixed date for majority rule. He argued that should be within a year – Mozambique’s just done it in nine months – but Ian
Smith has repeatedly said he doesn’t believe majority rule is even possible in his lifetime, so the others rejected the idea. Unworkable.’

‘And now he’s in exile in Zambia and no longer at the top table, is that it?’

Manning pursed his lips. ‘For the time being, but I wouldn’t rule out his making a comeback, as turnarounds are very common in these movements. These new talks are unlikely to
progress very far without him. I rather suspect that at some point they’ll get desperate and reconsider, especially as anything they agree at the negotiating table has to go to a national
poll – that’s what went wrong last time. That gives Charamba a lot of power. His time in prison sealed his reputation as a revolutionary for a lot of people, and there are now songs
about him sung in the villages.’

‘Hang on. Slow down. What new talks?’

Manning frowned. ‘I thought you knew. Smith is holding constitutional talks with ZANU and ZAPU on Monday. On Victoria Falls Bridge.’

‘Will Charamba be there?’

‘Not as far as I know. But I haven’t listened to the World Service yet. They were due to have a report on it later.’

Dark absorbed the information. It was too much of a coincidence not to be relevant. The talks had to be why they had taken Claire and Ben.

‘Does Charamba have any children?’

Manning peered at him, puzzled. ‘Not that I know of. I think he was briefly married, but his wife died in a raid by the authorities several years ago.’

Dark considered this. Either Manning’s expertise had its limits, or a gigantic set of coincidences had taken place. On balance, he decided it must be the former. He looked at the filing
cabinets in the corner of the room. Both of them had locks on. He grabbed Manning by the chin and forced his head to face them.

‘I’m going to need your help opening those.’

Diadov dropped his two sullen charges outside the Gare de Midi, and Cherneyev headed straight for the taxi rank. Once he had taken out his wallet, the drivers soon crowded
around him. He showed each of them the photograph of Dark and asked in broken French if anyone recognised him. No one did. He turned back to Proshin.

‘Come,’ he said, as if addressing a pet dog who needed to be taken for a walk.

They climbed into one of the taxis and Cherneyev directed it to the Gare du Nord, where he repeated the procedure. Ten minutes and a thousand francs later, he had found Dark’s driver and
they were in his car speeding towards Rue de Stassart.

The photographs were spread across the desk: a few were in colour but most were black-and-white Xeroxes, or Xeroxes of Xeroxes, the features of the men – they were almost
all men – lost in the contrast of deep shadows. Dark sifted through them, frustrated. There were a couple of images of Matthew Charamba, newspaper clippings at the time of his imprisonment,
but they were too grainy to be any help, and there was no mention of his having a daughter.

Dark willed himself not to panic. He didn’t yet have enough to go on. It seemed pretty likely that Claire – Hope – was Matthew Charamba’s daughter, but he still had no
idea who had kidnapped her, or why. There was a bewildering array of leaders in the guerrilla movement, and he had no idea how to navigate the spider’s web of their connections to Charamba to
find who had the strongest motive.

‘Is this it?’ he asked Manning. ‘Is this all you have?’

‘On the Zimbabweans? Yes.’

Something stirred in Dark’s mind, phrasing Manning had used earlier. Dark turned to face him.

‘How about on the Rhodesians?’

As Thorpe turned his white Sunbeam Rapier into a cobbled street, Weale caught the scent of grilled fish on the air. He peered out of the window: Africans, dozens of them,
walking around like they owned the place.

He glanced down at the gun Thorpe had retrieved for him, after a great deal of tutting, from a safe in the Station. It was a Walther 7.65 automatic that looked as if it hadn’t been used
this decade. But he’d checked the mechanism several times, and it would do the job.