Rage

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Ready?’ one of the deckhands called down from above.

  ‘Send it down,’ Raleigh shouted back, and they watched the arm of the derrick swing out over the hold, silhouetted against the stars, and the line came down from the boom.

  The three of them worked swiftly, hooking the Zodiac on, but before they had finished the beat of the trawler’s engine died away and the motion of the hull in the water changed as the vessel’s way died and she began to drift.

  Raleigh led them up the ladder on to the deck. The night was moonless, but the stars were bright and clear. The light breeze was from the south-east, so there was unlikely to be a change in this fair weather. All the trawler’s navigational lights and the lights in the wheelhouse were extinguished.

  Cape Town was ablaze with lights. The mountain was floodlit, a great ghostly silver hulk under the stars, while behind them the lights on Robben Island twinkled low on the black sea. Raleigh judged that they were about halfway between the city and the island.

  The skipper was waiting for him on deck.

  ‘We must move fast now,’ he said.

  Robert and Changi climbed into the Zodiac. Their wet-suits were black, the rubber sides of the boat were black and the engine cover of the Evinrude was black. They would be almost invisible on the black waters.

  ‘Thank you, comrade,’ Raleigh said and offered the skipper his hand.

  ‘Amandla!’ said the skipper as he gripped it. ‘Power!’ and Raleigh took his place in the bows of the Zodiac.

  The winch clattered and the Zodiac rose swaying, swung out over the side, and then fell swiftly to the surface of the water.

  ‘Start up,’ Raleigh instructed, and Robert whipped the starter cord and the engine fired and caught with the first pull.

  ‘Case off,’ Raleigh ordered, and Changi unhooked the line from the boom, while Robert manoeuvred the Zodiac alongside the trawler and tied on to the light line from the rail. He let the engine idle for five minutes to warm it thoroughly and then cut it.

  The two vessels lay silently linked together and the minutes passed torturously.

  Suddenly the skipper called down. ‘I have them in sight.’

  ‘Are you certain?’ Raleigh cupped his hands around his mouth to reply.

  ‘I’ve seen that ferry every day of my life.’ The skipper was leaning over the rail. ‘Start your motor and cast off.’

  The Evinrude roared into life and the Zodiac dropped back astern of the trawler. Now Raleigh could make out the ferry. It was coming almost directly towards them; both the green and red navigational lights showed.

  The trawler moved forward, a wash of white water churning out from under her stern. She was still completely blacked out, and her speed built up rapidly. The skipper had assured Raleigh that she was capable of fourteen knots. She turned in a wide arc across the black surface and headed straight for the approaching ferry at speed.

  Robert ran the Zodiac out to one side, and dropped back slightly, shearing off two hundred feet from the larger vessel.

  The ferry held its course. Clearly it hadn’t spotted the darkened ship bearing down out of the night. Raleigh stood up in the bows of the Zodiac, steadying himself with two turns of the painter around his wrist, and he watched the two vessels come together. The ferry was half the length of the steel-hulled trawler and it lay much lower in the water.

  At the very last moment somebody on board the ferry shouted and then the bows of the trawler crashed into her, taking her just forward of the beam. Raleigh had warned the skipper not to damage the cabin and risk harming the occupants.

  The trawler checked and the bows rose high as she trod the smaller vessel down, and then the ferry rolled over in a flurry of foam and breaking water. The trawler drove over her, broke free of her swamped hull, and went dashing away into the darkness. Within a hundred yards she had disappeared.

  ‘The chains will pull him under,’ Raleigh shouted. ‘Work quickly!’ He fitted his face plate over his mouth and nose.

  Robert sent the Zodiac roaring alongside the sinking ferry. She had turned turtle and her bottom was painted with orange antifouling. Her lights were still burning beneath the water and there were three or four swimming warders thrashing around, trying to get a grip on the sides.

  Raleigh and Changi, each carrying a short jemmy bar, slid over the side and dived under the trawler’s submerged transom.

  Raleigh jammed the point of the jemmy into the lock of the cabin door and with a single heave tore it away. The door slid back and a burst of trapped air exploded in silver bubbles around his head.

  The cabin was hooded, but the lights were still burning, lighting the interior like a goldfish bowl, and a confusion of bodies, clad in the serge uniform of the Prison Service, were struggling and kicking and swirling around the cabin. Amongst them Raleigh picked out the khaki cotton drill tunic of a prisoner. He seized a handful of it and pulled Moses Gama clear.

  Changi took Moses Gama’s other arm and they swam him between them out from under the heaving transom and up to the surface. It had taken less than sixty seconds since the trawler had rammed, and Robert gunned the Zodiac up to them the moment they surfaced. He reached down and caught hold of Moses Gama’s arm, the two men in the water heaved from under him and he rolled over the side of the Zodiac on to the floor boards.

  Raleigh and Changi seized the loops of rope on the Zodiac’s side to pull themselves up and the moment they were on board Robert gunned the Evinrude and they shot away from the foundering vessel. The splashing and cries of distress faded behind them as Robert turned the Zodiac back towards the shore. The long deserted stretch of Woodstock beach showed as a pale line of sand and surf in the starlight ahead.

  Raleigh stripped off his face plate and leaned solicitously over the figure on the deck. He lifted him into a sitting position, and Moses Gama coughed painfully.

  ‘I see you, my uncle,’ Raleigh said softly.

  ‘Raleigh?’ Moses’ voice was rough with the salt water he had swallowed. ‘Is it you, Raleigh?’

  ‘We will be ashore in ten minutes, my uncle.’ Raleigh tucked one of the thermal blankets around Moses’ shoulders. ‘All the plans for your escape have been carefully laid. Everything’s ready for you, my uncle. Soon now you will be where nobody can touch you.’

  Robert ran the rubber inflatable in through the surf at full throttle and they shot up the sand, clear of the water. As they came to a standstill, they lifted Moses Gama out of the Zodiac and ran with him up the beach, carrying him between them so his chained feet barely touched the sand.

  There was a small closed van parked amongst the dunes and Raleigh jerked the rear doors open and they lifted Moses into the back and laid him on the mattress that covered the floorboards. Changi jumped in beside him and Raleigh slammed the rear doors closed. Robert would take the Zodiac out and sink it.

  Raleigh stripped off the jacket of his wet suit. The key to the van was on a loop of nylon line around his neck. He opened the driver’s door and slid behind the wheel. The van was facing back along the track. The track joined the road that skirted the industrial area of Paarden Eiland and Raleigh drove sedately along it, towards the black township of Langa.

  The official Cape Town residence of the Minister of Police was one of those clustered around the Prime Minister’s residence at Groote Schuur. The cumbersome physical division of the legislative and excutive arms of government between the cities of Cape Town and Pretoria made for costly duplications. During the annual session of parliament in Cape Town all the ministers and the entire diplomatic corps were forced to move down from Pretoria a thousand miles to the north, and official residences had to be maintained in both cities at enormous expense.

  Manfred De La Rey’s ministerial residence was an elegant Edwardian mansion set in acres of its own private lawns and gardens. As Roelf Stander parked his shabby little second-hand Morris in front of this imposing building, it seemed oddly out of place.

  Sarah Stander had been desperately trying to
arrange a private meeting with Manfred ever since her son had been convicted and sentenced to death. However, Manfred had been in Pretoria, or at his ranch in the Free State, or opening a memorial to the women who had died in the British concentration camps during the Boer War, or addressing the National Party caucus, and therefore unable to see her.

  Sarah had persisted, telephoning his office at parliament every day, telephoning Heidi at home and pleading with her, until at last Manfred had agreed to see her at seven o’clock in the morning before he left for parliament.

  Sarah and Roelf had driven in the Morris from Stellenbosch, leaving before sun-up so as not to be late for the appointment. When the coloured butler showed them through to the dining-room, Manfred and Heidi were seated at the breakfast table.

  Heidi sprang up and came to kiss Sarah’s cheek.

  ‘I am sorry we have not seen you for so long, Sarie.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sarah agreed bitterly. ‘I also am sorry — but as you explained to me, Manie has been too busy for us.’

  Manfred stood up from the head of the table. He was in his shirt-sleeves and the linen table napkin was tucked into the top of his dark suit trousers.

  ‘Roelf,’ he smiled, and they shook hands like old friends.

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to see us, Manie,’ Roelf said humbly. ‘I know how busy you are these days.’ The years had not been kind to Roelf Stander, he had greyed and shrunk and Manfred felt a secret satisfaction as he studied him.

  ‘Sit down, Roelf.’ Manfred led him to a place at the breakfast table. ‘Heidi has ordered breakfast for you – will you start with porridge?’

  He seated Roelf and then reluctantly turned back to Sarah. She was still standing beside Heidi.

  ‘Hello, Sarie,’ he said. She had been such a pretty little thing. They had grown from childhood together. There were still the remains of that girlhood beauty in her eyes and the shape of her face. The memory of the love they had once shared rushed back to him, and he felt the sweet nostalgic yearning for his youth. He had a vivid image of her lying naked on a bed of pine needles in the forest high up on the slopes of the Hottentots Holland mountains on the day that they had become lovers.

  He searched in his heart for a vestige of what he had felt for her then, but he found none. Any love that once had flowered between them had been smothered by the knowledge of her treachery. For more than two decades he had delayed his revenge, contenting himself with slowly undermining and reducing this woman to her present state, waiting for exactly the right moment to extract the final retribution. It had come — and he savoured the moment.

  ‘Hello, Manie,’ she whispered, and she thought, ‘He has been so cruel. He has filled my life with pain that has been difficult to bear. Now all I ask from him is my son’s life — surely he will not deny me that also.’

  ‘So, why have you come to see me?’ Manie asked, and Heidi led Sarah to a seat at the table. She took the silver teapot from the coloured servant and told him, ‘Thank you, Gamat, you can leave us now. Please close the door.’ And she poured steaming coffee into Sarah’s cup.

  ‘Yes, Sarie,’ she agreed. ‘Tell us why you have come to see us.’

  ‘You know why I have come to you,’ Sarah said. ‘It is Kobus.’

  A deathly stillness held them all over the slow passage of the seconds, and then Manfred sighed.

  ‘Ja,’ he said. ‘Kobus. Why do you come to me about Kobus?’

  ‘I want you to help him, Manie.’

  ‘Kobus has been tried and convicted of a sickening act of senseless brutality,’ Manfred said slowly. ‘The highest court in the land has decreed that he must die on the gallows. How can I help Kobus?’

  ‘The same way you helped that black terrorist, Moses Gama.’ Sarah was pale and the coffee cup clattered as she tried to set it down on the saucer. ‘You saved his life – now save the life of my son.’

  ‘The state president exercised leniency in Gama’s case—’

  ‘No, Manie,’ Sarah interrupted. ‘It was you that changed it. I know – you have the power to save Kobus.’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I haven’t got that sort of power. Kobus is a murderer. The worst kind of killef — one without compassion or remorse. I cannot help him.’

  ‘You can. I know you can, Manie. Please, I beg of you, save my son.’

  ‘I cannot.’ Manfred’s expression set. His mouth hardened into a straight unrelenting line. ‘I will not.’

  ‘You must, Manie. You have no choice – you must save him.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ He was becoming angry. ‘There is nothing I must do.’

  ‘You must save him, Manie, because he is your son also. He is the child of our love, Manie, you have no choice. You must save him.’

  Manfred sprang to his feet and placed his hand protectively on Heidi’s shoulder. ‘You come into my house and insult me and my wife.’ His voice shook with the force of his anger. ‘You come here with wild stories and accusations.’

  Roelf Stander had sat quietly through it all, but now he lifted his head and spoke softly. ‘It is true, Manie. Every word she tells you is true. I knew she was carrying your child when I married her. She told me frankly. You had deserted her – you had married Heidi and I loved her.’

  ‘You know it is true,’ Sarah whispered. ‘You have always known, Manie. You cannot have looked into Kobus’ eyes without knowing. Both your sons have your yellow eyes, Manie, Lothar and Kobus – both of them. You know he is your son.’

  Manfred sank back on to his chair. In the silence Heidi reached across and deliberately took his hand. That reassuring touch seemed to rally him.

  ‘Even if that were true, there is nothing I would do. No matter whose son he is, justice must run its course. A life for a life. He must pay the penalty for his deed.’

  ‘Manie, please. You must help us—’ Sarah was weeping now, and the tears at last spilled down her pale cheeks. She tried to throw herself at Manfred’s feet, but Roelf caught her and held her. She struggled weakly in his arms, but he held her and looked at Manfred.

  ‘In the name of our friendship, Manie, everything we have done and shared – won’t you help us?’ he pleaded.

  ‘I am sorry for you, Roelf.’ Manfred stood up again. ‘You must take your wife home now.’

  Roelf drew Sarah gently towards the door, but before they reached it Sarah pulled out of his hands and faced Manfred again.

  ‘Why?’ she cried in anguish. ‘I know you can – why will you not help us?’

  ‘Because of you White Sword failed,’ he said softly. ‘That is why I will not help you.’

  She was struck dumb by the words, and Manfred turned to Roelf. ‘Take her away now,’ he ordered. ‘I have finished with her at last.’

  During the long journey back to Stellenbosch Sarah huddled in the passenger seat and sobbed brokenly. Only when Roelf parked the Morris outside their cottage did she straighten up, and her voice and her face were ruined with grief.

  ‘I hate him,’ she repeated. ‘Oh God, how I hate him.’

  ‘I spoke to David Abrahams this morning,’ Isabella said, leaning forward in the saddle to pat the mare’s neck so that her father couldn’t see her face. ‘He offered me a job at the Johannesburg office.’

  ‘Correction,’ said Shasa. ‘You telephoned David and told him that Johannesburg needed a PRO at a salary of two thousand a month plus dress allowance plus five-day week and a company car – and I believe you even stipulated the make, Porsche 911, wasn’t it? David called me the minute you hung up.’

  ‘Oh, Daddy, don’t be so technical.’ Isabella tossed her head defiantly. ‘You wouldn’t want me to dress in rags and starve up there, would you?’

  ‘What I would want is for you to stay here where I can keep an eye on you.’ Shasa felt the leaden weight of impending loss in his chest as he looked at her. She was the spice of his life, and she had only been back from London a month or so. Now she wanted to be off again. His instinct was to fight to keep her,
but Centaine had advised, ‘Let them go gently, and there is a chance they will come back to you.’

  ‘It isn’t Siberia or the Outer Hebrides, Daddy. Do be practical. It’s just up the road.’

  ‘A thousand miles up the road,’ Shasa agreed. ‘And much closer to the rugby stadium at Loftus Versveld.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ It was very seldom Shasa could catch her off-balance, and vindictively he relished her agitation.

  ‘Rugby football,’ he explained. ‘Great sweaty oafs beating their bony heads together.’

  She recovered splendidly. ‘Pater, if this has anything to do with Lothar De La Rey, I would just like to point out that he is one of the greatest athletes of our time and the youngest brigadier in the history of the police force – and that he means absolutely nothing to me at all.’

  ‘Your indifference is monumental. I am greatly relieved.’

  ‘Does that mean I can accept David’s job offer?’

  Shasa sighed and the loneliness descended upon him like a winter’s evening. ‘How can I stop you, Bella?’

  She let out a triumphant squeal and leaned out of the saddle to wrap those long tanned arms around his neck, and Shasa’s stallion danced under him with aristocratic affront.

  Isabella chattered merrily all the way back to the chateau.

  ‘One thing I forgot to mention to David was a housing allowance. Flats are so awfully expensive in Joey’s. I couldn’t find anything suitable on the pittance he is paying me.’ Shasa shook his head with admiration.

  The grooms were waiting in the kitchen yard to take the horses, and still in their jodhpurs and riding boots they went through to the breakfast room with Isabella hanging lovingly on her father’s arm.

  Centaine was at the sideboard, helping herself to scrambled eggs from the chafing dish. She was still in her gardening clothes and had been amongst her roses since dawn. Now she looked at Isabella inquiringly – and Isabella gave her a happy wink.

  ‘Damn it,’ Shasa intercepted the exchange. ‘I’ve been set up. It’s a conspiracy.’