Unofficial and Deniable
The sins of the past come home to roost in the New South Africa in the action-packed new novel from a master of the international thriller.The bestselling author of Hold My Hand I’m Dying and Roots of Outrage returns once more to the country he knows best – South Africa – for his heart-thumping new thriller, filled with political intrigue, courtroom drama and high adventure.Since the historic 1994 elections brought in the New South Africa, Jack Harker, a former operative for South African military intelligence, has created a new identity for himself as a publisher in New York, and a new life with writer and activist Josephine Valentine, who knows nothing of his undercover past. But his world is suddenly thrown into turmoil when he hears about the new Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which offers amnesty to those who confess to crimes committed during the dark days of Apartheid, and prosecution to those who do not.If Jack tells the truth about everything he was ordered to do in the service of his country, will Josephine ever be able to forgive him? If he keeps quiet, will former colleagues betray him? And will he even be given the choice? His confession would implicate a lot of powerful people, and it soon becomes clear that they will go to any lengths to ensure he will never be able to testify.
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JOHN GORDON DAVIS
UNOFFICIAL & DENIABLE
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2000
Copyright © John Gordon Davis 2000
Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers
John Gordon Davis asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007574407
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780008119348
Version: 2014-12-15
To Tana and David Hilton-Barber
CONTENTS
Andy Meyer, the junior officer on watch in the US Coast Guard station, remembered the yacht dropping anchor in the open channel of St Thomas, American Virgin Islands, in the small hours of that September morning in 1996 because it was not flying a flag. Four hours later, just before dawn, he noticed the yacht steaming out of the channel towards the nearby British Virgin Islands. Meyer hoped the skipper knew what he was doing – there were rocky waters ahead, best navigated in daylight, and technically he should have registered his arrival in American waters before departing. Meyer decided to make an entry in the Log, just to show he had done some work.
The sun was up when the yacht, Rosemary, anchored in the big open bay of Road Town, Tortola, the sleepy little capital of the nearby British Virgin Islands, but it is established by Immigration Department records that it was not until three o’clock that afternoon that the skipper, Sinclair Jonathan Harker, reported his arrival. He appeared, according to Mrs Doris Johnston, the chief immigration officer, to have been drinking; he was nervous, unshaven, wild-looking. He gave his last port of call as Nassau, Bahamas, and produced a crew list certifying that only he and his wife Josephine were aboard. He presented Josephine’s passport, along with his own, but Mrs Johnston told him that Josephine had to report in person. Mrs Johnston then demanded his Nassau port clearance certificate: Harker said he had not known he needed such a document before leaving the Bahamas. Mrs Johnston told him in no uncertain terms that he would have to return to Nassau to get it.
Harker then left Mrs Johnston’s indignant presence, went to the American Express office and telephoned Josephine’s insurance company in New York advising them of her death and asking what procedures he had to follow. He then sent a fax to her attorney, asking the same question, then another to her father, Denys Valentine, in Boston, reporting his daughter’s death, saying he would telephone as soon as he had composed himself. Then, instead of heading to the police station to report her death, he returned to his boat and proceeded to drink a bottle of rum.
At noon the next day a police party went out to his boat, alerted by Mrs Doris Johnston who had complained to them that Josephine Harker still had not reported to Immigration Department. The Commissioner of Police, Joshua Humphrey, found Harker sitting in the saloon of his yacht, ashen, starting on a new bottle of rum. Harker looked up and said:
‘I want to report a person missing on the high seas …
Joshua Humphrey, portly, black, with forty years’ experience, suspected immediately that Sinclair Jonathan Harker was guilty as
