Unofficial and Deniable. John Davis Gordon

American blonde with the dazzling smile who collected wars and war heroes, the beautiful busty photo-journalist in sweat-stained khaki who always managed to wangle a helicopter ride into battle-zones denied to others by using charms pressmen don’t possess. She had a formidable and exotic reputation which lost nothing in the telling: while it was not true that she had been a high-priced hooker in New York, as alleged by certain members of the press, it was probably true that she always managed to be in the right place at the right time to get her spectacular pictures by screwing the right officer. It was said of her that she collected war heroes – but ‘warriors’ would have been a better word. She never had a lengthy relationship with her conquests: she used them, thanked them and left them with a broken heart.

      Her war photographs made her famous: Harker had seen her name in many magazines over the years, read many a piece by her, seen many of her hair-raising pictures. Ms Valentine had shown up in Rhodesia during the long bush war, leaping out of helicopters with her cameras into operational zones, ‘screwing her way into the front lines’ to get her photographs; then she had been seen on the other side of the Zambezi amongst the black terrorists; and she was always popping up in the Middle East in the Arab–Israeli conflict. It seemed that wherever there was a war Josephine Valentine was there, charming her way into more stories; she was big buddies with the heavyweights of both sides. Military men all over the world knew about her, particularly in Africa; many had seen her, met her, entertained her, fantasized about her. Jack Harker was intrigued by what he knew of her and not a little frustrated that he seemed to be one of the few military men who had never set eyes on her. A dozen times she had left the bar, mess, bunker, trench, helicopter moments before he arrived.

      And then, in 1986, when he finally encountered her in the Battle of Bassinga she was covered in blood, half naked, her teeth bared as she furiously tried to fire an AK47 automatic rifle at him.

      The Battle of Bassinga in Angola was Jack Harker’s ‘century’, the hundredth battle of his military career, the hundredth time he had leapt into action, heart pounding, to do or die. It was also one of the worst battles: a parachute jump at a dangerously low level, at night, right over the target area, which was a camp holding thousands of terrorists and their Cuban advisors, all armed with billions of dollars worth of the latest Russian military hardware with which to liberate southern Africa from the capitalist yoke. The aircraft came in low in the hopes of avoiding the terrorists’ radar but the groundfire started up before they were over the drop-zone. Harker led from the front and he was first out of the aircraft, plummeting through thin air with his heart in his mouth, and he was the first casualty of the operation – a bullet got him through the shoulder as he pulled his parachute’s rip-cord: he was covered in blood by the time he crash-landed in a tree on the wrong side of the river. He extricated himself with great difficulty and strong language, stuffed a wad of emergency dressing deep into the wound and forded the river with more strong language.

      All battles are bad but this seemed Jack Harker’s worst ever. He was awarded a medal for it, but he did not have coherent memories of it. He remembered the cacophony, the screams and the gunfire, the flames leaping, the shadows racing, remembered stumbling, lurching, the bullets whistling about him, blood flooding down his chest into his trousers no matter how deep into the wound he rammed the wad of cotton wool with his finger; he remembered storming the water tower, staggering up the ladder to destroy the machine-gun nest that was causing so much havoc, storming a Russian tank and throwing a hand-grenade down the hatch, he remembered the sun coming up on the cacophony of gunfire and smoke and flames and the stink of blood and cordite; he remembered being pinned down for a long time by a barrage of automatic fire coming from a concrete building on the edge of the parade ground, two of his men being mowed down as they tried to storm the building; he remembered scrambling up and running at the doorway.

      The battle had been going on for an hour, the sun was up now, the camp strewn with bodies, the earth muddy with blood. Harker lurched across the parade ground, doubled up, rasping, trying to run flat out but finding he could only stagger, and he crashed against the wall beside the door. He leant there a moment, gasping, trying to get his breath, to clear his head, and he was about to burst through the doorway, gun blazing, when he heard a woman cry in English, ‘You bastards …’ Harker lurched into the room, his rifle at his hip – and stared.

      Josephine Valentine was clad only in white panties; she had her back to him, her blonde hair in a ponytail, crouched at the window, wrestling with the jammed mechanism of an AK47, sobbing, ‘You bastards …’ On the floor behind her sprawled the half naked body of a Cuban officer, blood flooding from his back. Beside him crouched a black soldier, holding a rifle in one hand, shaking the body with the other; then he saw Harker, his eyes widened in terror, he raised his gun and Harker shot him. The soldier crashed against the wall, dead, and Josephine turned wildly and saw Harker. Her beautiful face was creased in anguish, her wild blue eyes widened in terror at seeing him; she flung the useless rifle aside, collapsed on to her knees beside the dead black soldier and screamed: ‘He’s only a boy!’ She snatched up his weapon, ‘Only a toy gun, he carved it!’ She flung it at Harker, then she scrambled frantically to the dead Cuban and grabbed at his pistol holster.

      ‘Leave that gun!’ Harker shouted.

      ‘You killed my man!’ she shrieked and swung the big pistol on Harker and pulled the trigger. There was a deafening bang and the force of the bullet knocked him backwards across the room, his thigh shattered. He crashed into the wall, shocked, and then saw her turn the pistol on herself. In a wild dramatic movement she thrust the muzzle against her naked left breast, her mouth contorted in anguish as she howled, ‘You killed him …’ She pulled the trigger and the blow of it knocked her off her knees, on to her back.

2

      ‘Publishing,’ said General Tanner, head of Military Intelligence, when he visited Harker in hospital on the South West African border, ‘is excellent cover for an espionage agent.’

      Harker frowned. ‘Are you saying she was a spy?’

      The general smiled. ‘I’ve changed the subject, I’m talking about you now. But yes, Josephine Valentine is a spy of a kind, fraternizing with the enemy. All photo-journalists are spies because they sneak up on you, take their forbidden pictures and flog them to the highest bidder.’

      ‘You’re talking about me? Sorry, General, you’ll have to explain – we were talking about Josephine Valentine. The bullet missed her heart, then?’

      ‘Made a bit of a mess of some ribs but the doc says it’ll hardly leave a scar. Pity, she’s been a pain in the arse for years. Like her to have a nice scar to remind her to stay out of our business, goddam drama queen. Pity we didn’t catch her boyfriend alive, he could have given us some useful information.’

      ‘She didn’t talk at all?’

      ‘Wouldn’t tell us a damn thing, just demanded to see the American consul. But we developed eighteen rolls of her film and we got some good intelligence on enemy hardware – and saw a few familiar faces. She’s threatened to sue us, of course.’ He smiled.

      ‘Where is she now?’

      ‘In Pretoria; we’re getting rid of her next week when she’s fit enough to travel. Daddy is coming out to take care of his darling wayward daughter. Anyway …’ the general plucked a grape off the bunch he had brought Harker, ‘… as I was saying: publishing is ideal cover for an espionage agent.’ He looked solemn.

      Harker smiled. ‘As you were saying. But I’m afraid you’re going to have to explain that too.’

      Tanner smiled. ‘Or there’s the import-export business – but it’s rather dull. Running a restaurant or a small hotel might be okay but it can be hard work – and putting you in charge of a bar would be like putting a rabbit in charge of a lettuce patch, aha-ha-ha!’ The general popped the grape into his mouth. ‘Whereas publishing,’ he chewed, ‘would be fun, particularly in an exciting place like New York. Respectability, lots of long lunches and cocktail parties, plenty of intellectual