Rage c-11

by Wilbur Smith

  While they worked, Shasa watched Manfred, and wondered again how fate had chosen such strange travelling companions as they were.

  It seemed that they had nothing in common except that one most vital trait - burning unrelenting ambition and hunger for power.

  Well, it was at their fingertips now, almost within their grasp, and Manfred was a man possessed. The effect of his enormous force of character was apparent on the men who came up to Shasa's office ji ii

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  suite. One by one they were swept along by it, and one by one they swore their allegiance to him.

  Slowly it dawned upon Shasa that it was no longer a possibilityor even a probability. They were going to win. He knew in his guts and his heart. It was theirs - the premiership and the presidency between them. They were going to win.

  In the heady excitement of it all the afternoon passed swiftly, the grandfather clock in the corner of Shasa's office chimed the hours softly, such a familiar sound that he hardly noticed it until it struck five and he started and jumped to his feet, confirming the time with his wristwatch.

  'It's five o'clock." He started towards the door.

  'Where are you going? I need you here,' Manfred called after him.

  'Come back, Shasa." 'I'll be back,' Shasa answered, and ran into the outer office.

  There were men waiting there, important men. They stood up to greet him, and Tricia called, 'Mr Courtney--' 'Not now." Shasa ran past them. 'I'll be back soon." It would be quicker on foot than trying to take the Jaguar through the five o'clock rush-hour traffic, and Shasa began to run.

  He realized that the woman informer was so nervous and afraid that she would probably not linger at the rendezvous. He had to get there before the appointed time. As he ran he reviled himself for having forgotten such an important appointment, but it was all confusion and uncertainty.

  He raced down the sidewalk, crowded with office workers relieved of the tedium of their day who poured out of the buildings. Shasa pushed and shoved, and weaved and ducked. Some of those he barged into shouted angrily after him.

  He sprinted through the columns of slowly moving vehicles, and ran into the Adderley Street entrance of the railway station. The clock above the main concourse stood at five thirty-seven. He was already late, and platform four was at the far end of the building.

  Wildly he raced down the concourse, and barged on to the quay.

  He slowed to a hurried walk, and made his way down the platform, examining the faces of the commuters waiting there. They stared back at him incuriously, and he glanced up at the platform clock: five-forty. Ten minutes late. She had come and gone. He had missed her.

  He stood in the centre of the platform and looked despairingly around him, not certain what to do next. Overhead the public address system squawked, 'Train from Stellenbosch and the Cape Flats arriving Platform Four." That was it, of course. Shasa felt a vast relief. The train was late.

  She must be on the train, that was why she had chosen this place and time.

  Shasa craned his head anxiously as the carriages rumbled slowly into the platform and, with a squeal and hiss of vacuum brakes, came to a halt. The doors were thrown open and passengers spewed out of them, beginning to move in a solid column towards the platform exit.

  Shasa jumped up on the nearest bench, the better to see and to be seen.

  'Mr Courtney." A woman's voice. Her voice - he recognized it, even after all the years. 'Mr Courtney." He stood on tiptoe, trying to see over the heads of the passengers.

  'Mr Courtney!" There she was, caught up in the crowd, trying to push her way through to him, and waving frantically to attract his attention.

  He recognized her instantly. The shock immobilized him for a few seconds as he stared at her. It was the Stander woman, the one he had met briefly at Manfred's holiday cottage when he had flown there to make the cannery deal with him. That was years ago, but he remembered that she had called him Squadron Leader. He should have pieced it together at that time. How foolish and unperceptive he had been. Shasa was still standing on the bench staring at her, when suddenly something else caught his attention.

  Two men were roughly pushing their way through the crowds of passengers. Two big men in dark ill-fitting suits and the fedora hats that were somehow the mark of the plain-clothes security police.

  Clearly they were making for the Stander woman.

  At the same moment as Shasa, she saw the two detectives and her face went white with terror.

  'Mr Courtney!" she screamed. 'Quickly - they are after me." She broke out of the crowd and began to run towards Shasa. 'Hurry, please hurry." Shasa jumped down from the bench and ran to meet her, but there was an old woman carrying an armful of parcels in his way. He almost knocked her down, and in the moments it took to untangle himself, the two detective had caught up with Sarah Stander, and seized her from either side.

  'Please!" She gave a despairing scream, then with wild, improbable strength broke free of her captors, and ran the last few paces to Shasa.

  'Here!" She thrust an envelope into Shasa's hand. 'Here it is." The two security officers had recovered swiftly and bounded after her. One of them seized both her arms from behind and dragged her away. The other came to confront Shasa.

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  'We are police officers. We have a warrant for the arrest of the woman." He was panting with his efforts. 'She gave something to you. I saw it. You must hand it over to me." 'My good man!" Shasa drew himself up and gave the detective hi, most haughty stare. 'Do you have any idea just who you are speaking to?" 'Minister Courtney!" The man recognized him then, and his confusion was comic. 'I'm sorry, sir. I didn't know --' 'What is your name, rank and serial number?" Shasa snapped.

  'Lieutenant Van Outshoorn No. 138643." Instinctively the man stood to attention.

  'You can be sure you will hear more of this, Lieutenant,' Shasa warned him frostily. 'Now carry on with your other duties." Shasa turned on his heel and strode away down the platform, tucking the envelope into his inner pocket, leaving the detective staring after him in dismay.

  He did not open the envelope until he reached his office again.

  Tricia was still waiting for him.

  'I was so worried when you ran out like that,' she cried. Good, loyal Tricia.

  'It's all right,' he reassured her. 'It all worked out fine. Where is Minister De La Rey?" 'He left soon after you, sir. He said he would be at home at Groote Schuur. You could reach him there if you needed him." 'Thank you, Tricia. You may go home now." Shasa went through to his own office and locked the door. 'He went to his desk and sat down in his studded leather chair. He took the envelope from his inner pocket and laid it in front of him on the desk blotter, and he studied it.

  It was of cheap coarse paper, and his name was written in a round girlish hand. The ink had smeared and run. 'Meneer Courtney." Shasa was suddenly relucta to touch it again. He had a premonition of some terrible revelation which would turn the even tenor of his existence into strife and turmoil.

  He picked up the Georgian silver paper knife from his desk set and tested the point with his thumb. He turned the envelope over and slid the point of the knife under the flap. The envelope contained a sheet of ruled notepaper with a single line of writing in the same girlish script.

  Shasa stared at it. There was no sense of shock. Deep in his subconscious he must have known the truth all along. It was the eyes, of course, the yellow topaz eyes of White Sword that had stared into his own on the day his grandfather died.

  There was not even a moment of doubt, no twinge of incredulity.

  He had even seen the scar, the ancient gun-shot wound in Manfred's body, the mark of the bullet he had fired at White Sword and every other detail fitted perfectly.

  'Manfred De La Rey is White Sword." From the moment they had first met that childhood day upon the fishing jetty at Walvis Bay, the fates had stalked them, driving them inexorably towards thei
r destiny.

  'We were born to destroy each other,' Shasa said softly, and reached for the telephone.

  It rang three times before it was answered.

  'De La Rey." 'It's me,' Shasa said.

  'Ja. I have been waiting." Manfred's voice was weary and resigned, in bitter contrast to the powerful tones in which he had exhorted and rallied his supporters just a short while before. 'The woman reached y-)u. My men have informed me." 'The woman must be set free,' Shasa told him.

  'It has been done already. On my orders." 'We must meet." 'Ja. It is necessary." 'Where?" Shasa asked. 'When?" 'I will come to Weltevreden,' Manfred said, and Shasa was taken too much by surprise to respond. 'But there is one condition." 'What is your condition?" Shasa asked warily.

  'Your mother must be there when we meet." 'My mother?" This time Shasa could not contain his amazement.

  'Yes, your mother - Centaine Courtney." 'I don't understand - what has my mother got to do with this business?" 'Everything,' said Manfred heavily. 'She has everything to do with it." When Kitty Godolphin got back to her suite that evening, she was in a mood of jubilation. Under her direction, Hank's camera had captured the dramatic moments as the blood-stained body of Dr Verwoerd was carried from the chamber to the waiting ambulance, and she had recorded the panic and confusion, the spontaneous unrehearsed words and expressions of his friends and his bitter enemies.

  The moment she entered the suite, she booked a call through to her news editor at NABS in New York to warn him of the priceless footage she had obtained. Then she poured herself a gin and tonic ?, / and sat impatiently beside the telephone waiting for her call to come through.

  She lifted it as it rang.

  'Kitty Godolphin,' she said.

  'Miss Godolphin." A strange voice, speaking with a deep melodiou, African accent, greeted her. 'Moses Gama sends you his greetings." 'Moses Gama is serving a life sentence in a high security prison,' Kitty replied brusquely. 'Don't waste my time, please." 'Last night Moses Gama was rescued by warriors of the Umkhonto we Sizwe from the Robben Island prison ferry,' said the voice, and Kitty felt the flesh of her cheeks and lips go numb with the shock of it. She had read the reports of the ferry sinking. 'Moses Gama is in a safe place. He wishes to speak to the world through you. If you agree to meet him, you will be allowed to use your camera to record his message." For a full three seconds she could not answer. Her voice had failed her but her mind was racing. 'This is the big one,' she thought. 'This is the one that comes only once in a lifetime of work and striving." She cleared her throat and said, 'I will come." 'A dark blue van will arrive at the ballroom entrance to the hotel in ten minutes from now. The driver will flick his lights twice. You are to enter the rear doors of the van immediately, without speaking to any person." The vehicle was a small Toyota delivery van, and Kitty and Hank with the sound and camera equipment were cramped in the interior so that it was difficult to move, but Kitty crawled forward until she could speak to the driver. 'Where are we going?" The driver glanced at her in the rear-view mirror. He was a young black man of striking appearance, not handsome but with a powerful African face.

  'We are going into the townships. There will be police patrols and road-blocks. The police are everywhere searching for Moses Gama.

  It will be dangerous, so you must do exactly as I tell you." For almost an hour they were in the van, driving through darkened back streets, sometimes stopping and waiting in silence until a, shadowy figure came out of the night to whisper a few words to the driver of the van, then going on again until at last they parked for the last time.

  'From here we walk,' their guide told them, and led them down the alleys and secret routes of the gangs and comrades, slipping past the rows of township cottages, twice hiding while police Land-Rovers cruised past, and finally entering the back door of one of the thousands of identical undistinguished cottages.

  Moses Gama sat at a table in the tiny back kitchen. Kitty recognized him instantly although his hair was now almost completely silver and his great frame was skeletally wasted. He wore a white open-neck shirt and dark blue slacks, and as he rose to greet her, she saw that though he had aged and his body was ravaged, the commanding presence and his messianic dark gaze were as powerful as when she had first met him.

  'I am grateful that you have come,' he told her gravely. 'But we have very little time. The fascist police follow closely as a pack of wolves. I have to leave here within a short while." Hank was already at work, setting up his camera and lights, and he nodded to Kitty. She saw that the gritty reality of the surroundings, the bare walls and plain unadorned wooden furniture would add drama to the setting, and Moses' silver hair and enfeebled condition would touch the hearts of her audience.

  She had prepared a few questions in her mind, but they were unnecessary. Moses Gama looked at the camera and spoke with a sincerity and depth that was devastating.

  'There are no prison walls thick enough to hold the longing of my people for freedom,' he said. 'There is no grave deep enough to keep the truth from you." He spoke for ten minutes and Kitty Godolphin who was old in experience and hardened in the ways of a naughty world was weeping unashamedly as he ended, 'The struggle is my life. The battle belongs to us. We will prevail, my people. Amandla! Ngawethu!" Kitty went to him and embraced him. 'You make me feel very humble,' she said.

  'You are a friend,' he replied. 'Go in peace, my daughter." 'Come." Raleigh Tabaka took Kitty's arm and led her away. 'You have stayed too long already. You must leave now. This man's name is Robert. He will lead you." Robert was waiting at the kitchen door of the cottage.

  'Follow me,' he ordered, and led them across the bare dusty backyard, through the shadows to the corner of the road. There he stopped unexpectedly.

  'What happens now?" Kitty asked in a whisper. 'Why are we waiting here?" 'Be patient,' Robert said. 'You will learn the reason soon." Suddenly Kitty was aware that they were not alone. There were others waiting like them in the shadows. She could hear them now, the murmur of voices, quiet but expectant. She could see them as her eyes adjusted to the night, many figures, in small groups, huddled beside the hedges or in the shelter of the buildings.

  Dozens, no hundreds of people, men and women, and every

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  moment their numbers increased as more came out of the night shadows, gathering round the cottage that contained Moses Gama, as though his presence was a beacon, a flame that, like moths, they could not resist.

  'What is happening?" Kitty asked softly.

  'You will see,' Robert replied. 'Have your camera ready." The people were beginning to leave the shadows, creeping closer to the cottage, and a voice called out 'Babo! Your children are here. Speak to us, Father." And another cried. 'Moses Gama, we are ready. Lead us!" And then they began to sing, softly at first, 'Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika - God save Africa!" and the voices joined and began to harmonize, those beautiful African voices, thrilling and wonderful.

  Then there was another sound, distant at first, but swiftly growing closer, the sobbing undulating wall of police sirens.

  'Have your camera ready,' said Robert again.

  As soon as the American woman and her cameraman had left the cottage, Moses Gama began to rise from the table. 'It is done,' he said. 'Now we can leave." 'Not yet, my uncle,' Raleigh Tabaka stopped him. 'There is something else that we must do first." 'It is dangerous to delay,' Moses insisted. 'We have been in this place too long. The police have informers everywhere." 'Yes, my uncle. The police informers are everywhere." Raleigh put a peculiar emphasis on his agreement. 'But before you go on to the place where the police cannot touch you, we must talk." Raleigh came to stand at the front of the table facing his uncle.

  'This was planned with great care. This afternoon the white monster Verwoerd was assassinated in the racist parliament." Moses started. 'You did not tell me this,' he protested, but Raleigh went on quietly.

  'The plan was that in the confusion after Verwoerd's assassination you would emerge to
lead a spontaneous rising of our people." 'Why was I not told of this?" Moses asked fiercely.

  'Patience, my uncle. Hear me out. The men who planned this are from a cold bleak land in the north, they do not understand the African soul. They do not understand that our people will not rise until their mood is ready, until their rage is ripe. That time is not yet.

  It will take many more years of patient work to bring their rage to full fruit. Only then can we gather the harvest. The white police are still too strong. They would crush us by raising their little finger and the world would stand by and watch us die as they watched the rebellion in Hungary die." 'I do not understand,' Moses said. 'Why have you gone this far if you did not intend to travel to the end of the road.9' 'The revolution needs martyrs as well as leaders. The mood and temper of the world must be roused, for without them we can never succeed. Martyrs and leaders, my uncle." 'I am the chosen leader of our people,' Moses Gama said simply.

  'No, my uncle." Raleigh shook his head. 'You have proved unworthy. You have sold out your people. In exchange for your life, you delivered the revolution into the hands of the enemy. You gave Nelson Mandela and the heroes of Rivonia to the foe. Once I believed you were a god, but now I know that you are a traitor." Moses Gama stared at him silently.

  'I am glad you do not deny this, my uncle. Your guilt is proven beyond any doubt. By your action you have forfeited any claim to the leadership. Nelson Mandela alone has the greatness for that role.

  However, my uncle, the revolution needs martyrs." From the pocket of his jacket Raleigh Tabaka took something wrapped in a clean white cloth. He laid it on the table. Slowly he opened the bundle, taking care not to touch what it contained.