The Queen v. Karl Mullen (3 page)

Mkeba had picked up a pencil from the desk while he was speaking. On the last word he snapped it between his strong fingers.

Early on the following afternoon Fischer Yule said to Karl Mullen, “I had to spend most of the morning at King Charles II Street, being talked to by Max Freustadt, our Consul General. You know him?”

“I met him ten years ago. He was an up-and-coming man in the Foreign Department in Pretoria. Might have gone up further, and come along quicker, if he hadn’t always seemed to be worrying.”

“He’s got a lot of things to worry him right now. You’re one of them.”

“Why’s he worrying about me?”

“Because he knows nothing about you – officially.”

“That’s crazy. I know that our Foreign Department explained exactly what I was trying to do. And asked for full help and support.”

“Sometimes people travel faster than letters. As soon as the official communiqué does turn up he promises he’ll notify Whitehall that you’re attached to my section.”

“And until then I’m just a private citizen?”

“Presumably. But it needn’t stop you working.” There was a note in Yule’s voice which suggested that he was not entirely enamoured of Mullen. “I’m sure there’s a lot you can tell me. For a start, you might explain to me just exactly what you’re up to.”

“As I told you, I’m here to secure the extradition of one Jack Katanga to Mozambique.”

“Why to Mozambique?”

“Because he happens to be a citizen of that country by birth and residence. Once he is back in Mozambique I can assure you we shall have little difficulty in securing his transfer to Johannesburg, where he will stand trial for the murder of a member of the Transvaal security force.”

“The second step won’t be difficult,” agreed Yule. “But I don’t think the first one will be easy.”

“Not easy, no. But we have one strong card. It seems that he has had the impudence to admit the murder, in print. In the book the British public are so eagerly awaiting.”

“
Death Underground
? Yes. It’s had a lot of publicity. I understood that it was a slashing attack on the mine-owners in the Rand.”

“Correct. But it is also an account of his life.”

“Have you read it?”

“No. It has been kept very carefully under wraps. No advance copies. No serialisation in the newspapers. Designed to explode with maximum effect on publication day, tomorrow. But inevitably certain extracts have leaked out. And there seems to be no doubt that among them is an account of his escape from custody five years ago. An escape which resulted in the death of one of his escorts.”

Yule touched a bell on his desk and said to his secretary, the middle-aged, placid Mrs. Portland, “Would you ask Mr. Silverborn to join us.” And to Mullen, “I thought we ought to bring our legal department in on this.” As he spoke he was extracting a number of folders from the filing cabinet behind his desk. There was a bundle of three different-coloured folders, kept together by an elastic band; one buff, one red and one green. He slid out the buff folder and opened it. He said, “This is Katanga’s personal history so far as it’s known to us here. It starts five years ago when he got into the Vaal, through Swaziland, and helped to organise the big miners’ strike on the Rand. That, as you know, was when he was picked up – Oh, Lewis, this is Karl Mullen.”

Lewis Silverborn was tall and serious. His black hair was streaked with white. He nodded and lowered himself into a chair on the other side of the desk.

“I’ll ask him to tell you what he was going to tell me. About Jack Katanga—”

“The
Death Underground man?”

“About his book, yes. But I’d like him to let us have the earlier history. It may be relevant.”

“Extremely relevant,” agreed Silverborn. He had a notebook open on his knee.

“
Our
records,” said Mullen complacently, “seem to go back a lot further than yours.” He was on his own ground now and spoke with increased confidence. “To be precise they start in 1932. Katanga’s grandmother was a Kikuyu girl from south Kenya. She was about sixteen years old, working in a Mombasa restaurant, when she was seduced by a Swedish sailor, who brought her south and set up house with her in Inhambane. When she’d produced a son for him, he dumped her and pushed off, presumably back to Sweden.”

“I don’t imagine we shall hear much about
that
in his book,” said Yule.

“It doesn’t reflect great credit on his grandfather. However, his grandmother was a woman of spirit. Lourenço Marques was a growing tourist centre and there was plenty of work in the restaurants and hotels. The son – let’s call him Old Jack – married a local girl and took up the traditional Kikuyu occupation of farming.”

“One of the traditional Kikuyu occupations,” said Yule. “The other being brigandage.”

Mullen did not like being interrupted, but had already sufficient respect for Yule not to demonstrate his feelings. He said, “At all events Old Jack became a farmer and a successful one. First with a plot he hired, then with a spread of his own, at Moamba. His son – Young Jack – seems to have been an exceptionally good-looking boy. His Swedish blood coming out perhaps. He caught the eye of a missionary, Simon Ramsay. His main mission was in Lourenço Marques, but he’d set up a number of local reading-rooms and libraries, one of them at Moamba. Young Jack, aged sixteen, became a protégé of his and was soon speaking excellent English and showing an interest in politics and economics – and in Ramsay’s daughter, Dorothy, two years younger than he was.”

“Which she reciprocated?”

“Apparently. But it was at this point that things took an unexpected turn. You remember that there was an agreement between Mozambique and South Africa for the annual recruiting of labourers for work in the Witwatersrand mines. I always thought it was a gross misuse of language to describe it as slave-labour. The pay was reasonable and the work no harder than the men were doing in their own country. The difficulty was that the government had to find a hundred thousand men every year and this involved a measure of conscription. Anyway. Old Jack was drafted. The term was three years. His wife was allowed to go with him. What happened next is a key to much that followed. Old Jack was badly crippled in a mine accident. He died soon afterwards, of his injuries. It was no one’s fault. An independent enquiry completely exonerated the mine-owners. The family got a pension and low-cost housing for his widow and his daughters. Since the farm had suffered a forced sale they had no inducement to go back to Moamba. Young Jack didn’t go with his sisters. He was taken in by Simon Ramsay. After a bit the inevitable happened.”

“Absence,” agreed Yule, “may make the heart grow fonder, but close proximity can be even more effective. What happened? Did Young Jack seduce the daughter of the house?”

“No. He proposed marriage. Father was horrified and made every effort to prevent such an unsuitable union. But Dorothy was firm. She maintained that she could help Jack in his work. To which her father is said to have replied, ‘What work? He’s simply a terrorist.’”

“Which was true.”

“Certainly. His ostensible job was as a reporter on the
Lourenço Marques Gazette.
In fact a lot of his time and most of his enthusiasm was devoted to promoting and, ultimately, leading, the Anti-Forced Labour Movement. As soon as Dorothy reached the age of eighteen and parental consent was no longer necessary, the marriage took place. Simon Ramsay officiated, with horrified reluctance, and totally washed his hands of the pair.”

“Is he still alive?”

“I believe so. He retired to England and when I last heard of him he had a living in Norfolk. Meanwhile Young Jack had moved on, from writing polemics, to actual intervention in the affairs of the Rand. The farm at Moamba had been sold, but he still had many friends there and it was, I imagine, a useful base of operations being on the southern border of Mozambique and a few miles from Swaziland. A no-go area for the police of both states.”

“You surprise me,” said Yule blandly. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but under a recent treaty – the Nkomati Award it was called, wasn’t it? – you know more about these things than I do – didn’t the Mozambique authorities undertake to suppress
all
guerrilla activity? And wasn’t there a similar agreement with the late King Subhuza of Swaziland?”

Mullen looked up sharply. He had more than a suspicion that his leg was being pulled, but Yule’s face gave nothing away. He said, “Those agreements existed, yes. But as Shakespeare says, they were more honoured in the breach than the observance. I am reporting matters as they were. Not as they should have been.”

“Of course, of course.”

“The first undercover trip that Katanga made to the Rand seems to have been exploratory. On the second trip, with the help of Cyril Ramaphosa and his mine-workers’ union, he succeeded in shutting down three of the largest mines on the Witwatersrand for a month. On his third and final expedition—”

“Right. That’s where our records start,” said Yule. “It seems to have been a startling success. I mean, of course, from Katanga’s point of view.” He was leafing through his file as he spoke. “The production of gold and diamonds was reduced to a trickle. Some of the smaller companies, that were facing bankruptcy, would have given in to the strikers, if they had been allowed to.”

“Possibly. But since the government were men and not old women they weren’t allowed to. Their backs were stiffened by a large reinforcement of police, backed by a few companies of special troops. The strikers were ordered to go back to work and many of them went. And Jack Katanga and others of the principal leaders were arrested. Unfortunately—”

“Very unfortunately,” said Yule drily.

“The two policemen who were taking him by truck to Jo’burg bungled the job. Probably they underestimated their prisoner. They had handcuffed him, but with his hands in front. Not, as they should have been, behind his back. We don’t know exactly what happened. Only the result. The driver of the truck heard a shot. By the time he’d slammed on the brakes and got round behind the truck, Young Jack was a hundred yards away, heading for open country.”

“Still handcuffed?”

“Apparently. But the driver was too shaken by what he found in the back of the truck to do anything effective. One of the guards was unconscious, with blood pouring down his face. The other had been shot dead.”

“Yes,” said Yule. “I read the police report, which seemed a little evasive. And the report of the coroner’s inquest, which was even less precise. However, we shall know all about it when we read the book, shan’t we? What do
you
think, Lewis?”

“Think about what?” said Silverborn, surprised at being suddenly brought into the discussion.

“If we now get a detailed account, by the criminal, of his crime, won’t that support an application for extradition?”

“Not an easy question to answer. The normal rule is that a country will extradite a person to stand trial in another country
if
there is prima facie evidence that he has committed a serious criminal offence there. And provided, of course, that there is a mutual extradition treaty between the two countries.”

“Between Great Britain and South Africa.”

“No. Between Great Britain and Mozambique. I’ll find out about that. I rather think there is such a treaty.”

“And surely a written statement by someone that he committed a murder must amount to prima facie evidence.”

“I shall have to read the passage very carefully before arriving at any conclusion. And there is one thing that puzzles me. Why was an immediate application not made by the South African authorities to the Mozambique government to return Katanga to stand trial?”

“It was,” said Mullen grimly. “But before anything effective could be done, he had skipped to England.”

“And you have applied to the British government?”

“More than once. And they flatly refused to extradite him, on the grounds that his offence had not been proved to their satisfaction. And that the motive for pursuing him was primarily political. It soon became clear that we were deadlocked.”

“And you think that this book is the key to open the lock.”

“We hope so.”

“You realise that it is going to involve an application to the High Court. An application which will certainly be resisted strenuously and will therefore be lengthy and expensive. The feeling of the Court will be against you and the attendant publicity will be hostile.”

“I can assure you,” said Mullen stiffly, “that we have counted the cost and are prepared to pay it, whether in hard cash or hard words.”

“Then if that is your decision—”

Mr. Silverborn started to get up, but Yule waved him back. “One minute,” he said. “I’d like to understand this. I have been out of the country for some years now and I can’t pretend to judge the situation as accurately as you. Do I gather, from what you say, that you regard Jack Katanga as a serious threat to the stability of our country? I don’t mean as an organiser of strikes on the Rand. I mean, in a wider sense.”

Mullen, who understood the importance of what he was being asked, took time to arrange his thoughts.

“At the moment,” he said, “the government has agreed to talk to the ANC. This gives it some sort of recognition. And great hopes are pinned on this. My own opinion is that these hopes may prove delusive. I do not think that they will lead to a grant of equal voting rights, one man one vote. Because that would be capitulation.”

“The government may be forced to go down that road.”

“So long as the army and the police remain staunch, they cannot be forced to go anywhere they don’t wish. They will make concessions, no doubt. But I fear that disappointed hopes will lead to even greater trouble.”

“Armed revolt?” said Yule.

“Possibly. There is a tremendous level of aggression. It is below the surface, but you can sense it, and feel it, and smell it. Not in the peaceful areas that visitors see; East Cape and the western seaboard. But among the homeland areas in Natal and in the industrial belt along the Vaal. It is like a fire smouldering underground, but liable to burst into flame at any moment.”