Unofficial and Deniable. John Davis Gordon

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СКАЧАТЬ ‘I demand to see the American Ambassador,’ and when the Intelligence boys had developed her numerous rolls of film and tried to question her about faces and equipment depicted therein she had demanded a lawyer, and told them she and her numerous high-powered publishers were going to sue the South African government to Kingdom Come. In short, Military Intelligence didn’t know how to squeeze information from a furious, beautiful American journalist with a wound in her breast – Military Intelligence was accustomed to black terrorist captives who quickly spilt the beans under a bit of robust interrogation and they didn’t have the nerve to third-degree information from a well-known American photo-journalist. General Tanner himself had flown out from Pretoria to try to deal with her; he had eventually called in the most senior CIA operative of the Angolan desk all the way from Lusaka, but even their formidable combined expertise failed to extract information and they had finally thankfully delivered her into the custody of the American Ambassador and her father, a big-wheel lawyer from Boston who arrived with a crack of thunder and placed her in a private clinic in Pretoria pending her deportation as an Undesirable Alien. She had refused even to divulge the identity of .her dead Cuban lover. Harker had felt almost proud of her when General Tanner had told him what a load of trouble she was. A very desirable Undesirable.

      That was over two years ago, and now here she was back in his life as he sat in his dungeon in Harvest House reading her thick file. The beautiful Josephine Franklin Valentine smiled at him ravishingly from the pages of many magazine and newspaper cuttings containing her war photographs and stories – wars in Israel, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Mozambique, Rhodesia, Angola: wherever men made war Ms Josephine Valentine went in with her cameras blazing, her typewriter pounding out the staccato Hemingwayesque prose. Very good, lean, evocative writing – you could almost smell the blood and dust and cordite. She evidently loved the high drama of war, the strange business of going into battle, the extraordinary courage it required; she obviously deeply admired the men who did all this for a living when they could be making lots more money in a nice air-conditioned office. Yet she was very liberal, and a strict political analyst. She bitterly condemned the South African government but she was also condemnatory of the Russians for invading Afghanistan; she sympathized with the Israelis, admired their fighting men; she was dismissive of the Arabs as soldiers while very sympathetic to the Palestinians’ cause. She had a high opinion of the Egyptians for making peace with the Jews, and there was a splendid photograph of her sitting in Gaddafi’s ceremonial tent drinking camel’s milk, earnestly discussing his holy Jihad against the West, but in her story she blasted him as an enemy of mankind, particularly for the Lockerbie Disaster bomb. She had great admiration for the Rhodesians as soldiers, as Davids taking on the Goliaths of Russia and China, but she condemned most of their politicians as constituting a ‘cowboy government’. She applauded the Cuban army for fighting the South Africans in Angola – indeed it was she who had deeply embarrassed the President of the United States by revealing to the world that America was waging a secret war on the side of pariah South Africa against the communists, thus causing both countries to pull out of Angola for several years. But now the whole Western world was covertly on the side of the South Africans to drive the Cubans out of Africa, the war was at full blast again and Josephine Valentine was there, boots and all, sweat-stains on her khaki outfit, dust sticking to her face, blonde hair awry, stealing the show with her photographs and stories – until the Bassinga raid that Harker had led.

      Josephine had written a dramatic piece about the battle. She admitted that the South Africans had saved her life, but there was no admission that she had attempted suicide – she attributed the self-inflicted wound to her engagement in the heroic battle in which her Cuban lover had been killed at her side. She did not divulge the dead man’s name but the South Africans had eventually identified him from photographs: Brigadier Paulo Rodriguez, forty-four years old, one of Fidel Castro’s top military strategists, the man expected to liberate South Africa from the apartheid yoke after his communist forces conquered Angola and Namibia. And for the first time she declared her political colours. She wrote:

      ‘I am not a communist, though I am very liberal – and indeed I am sure communism is going to mellow, as Mr Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika portend. But for the time being the Cubans are the only knights in shining armour around with the guts to take on the dragon of apartheid, and I’m rooting for them …’

      There were many other cuttings and photographs from the society pages that Dupont had collected over the years: Josephine Valentine at country club balls, at yacht club regattas, at anti-apartheid functions. There were a dozen large colour photographs taken by Dupont’s salesmen with telephoto lenses: and, yes, she was certainly beautiful: that long blonde flowing hair, those big dark-blue eyes that looked both sparkling and short-sighted, a wide smile of full lips and perfect teeth, a slightly dimpled chin – and long legs and a bust to break any man’s heart. There were several clippings of her magazine articles condemning America’s policy of economic sanctions against Cuba – ‘Why beggar thy neighbour if you want him to like you?’ Harker read them carefully: she had great admiration for the machismo of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and the boys of the Sierra Maestro even if she wasn’t a Marxist. He turned to the Covering Report compiled by Dupont over the years.

       Codename Bigmouth

      Valentine, Josephine Franklin, female Caucasian, born 27 February 1962, in Boston, Massachusetts, US citizen. Parents Denys Adam Valentine, American, well-known lawyer in Boston, mother Elaine Franklin, née O’Reilly, Irish, allegedly aristocracy, naturalized American, now deceased …

      Catholic College, Boston … Berkeley University … graduated in Political Philosophy and English Literature … post-graduate course in journalism, University of New York, before becoming a freelance journalist writing for various political magazines … political leanings strongly to left, possibly communist though no actual membership of any party known … tends to the Ban-the-Bomb, long-haired movements, often seen at protest rallies of various kinds … staunch supporter of Anti-Apartheid League, secretary of Chelsea Branch …

      Financial situation: evidently wealthy, financed by Valentine Trust in her favour …

      Sports interests include yacht racing, tennis, skiing, skating, cycling …

      Cultural interests include opera, art, literature …

      Lifestyle appears to fluctuate between the extravagant and the quiet … likes fast cars …

      No criminal record …

      Apparently good health … contact lenses … front teeth capped …

      Sex Life …

      At this point Harker got up, went to his little refrigerator, extracted ice and poured whisky into a glass.

      Sex life? This detail he found really distasteful. It was offensive that ordinary people out there should be sleuthed by his salesmen trying to get smutty details of their sex lives. The hypocrisy of it! Sex, the great equalizer, the great common denominator, why the hell can’t we all just decriminalize sex? But no, almost the whole English-speaking world felt compelled to adhere to the hypocrisy, marriages were broken, careers ruined, ministers and governments fell. And what irritated Harker as he went back to his desk with his whisky was that he was, pruriently, looking forward to reading about the beautiful Josephine Valentine’s sex life … He took a sip of whisky and began to read on.

      Scandal on campus when subject was having an affair with a married professor, Cedric Mansell, wife Elizabeth threatened to cite her as co-respondent … affair with Joshuah Danning, son of Senator Danning of Massachusetts … became engaged to football star Stephen Dickason who was subsequently jailed for drug-possession … affair with sportswriter Jim Nichols of New York Post … weekend in Poconos Mountains with Columnist Frederick Jackson of Washington Post …

      Subject leaving US to take up residence in London. Case summary СКАЧАТЬ