by Wilbur Smith
"Have you any ideas on who did it?" Rod asked.
"We have always got ideas," said the Inspector, so sadly that for a moment Rod had the impression that his name was on the list of suspects. "We believe that the murderer is employed by one of the mines in the district, probably the Sander Ditch. I have called on you to ask for your cooperation in the investigation."
"Of course."
"I will be conducting a great number of interrogations amongst your Bantu employees. I hoped you might find a room for me to use on the premises." Rod lifted his phone and while he dialled he told Grobbelaar, "I'm calling our Compound Manager. "Then he transferred his attention to the mouthpiece. "Ironsides here.
I am sending an Inspector Grobbelaar down to see you.
Please see that an office is placed at his disposal and that he receives full co-operation." Grobbelaar stood up and extended his hand.
"I won't take up more of your time. Thank you, Mr. Ironsides." His next visitor was Van der Bergh, his Personnel Officer, brandishing his departmental reports as though they were a winning lottery ticket.
"All finished," he announced triumphantly. "All we need is your signature." As Rod uncapped his pen, the telephone squealed again.
"My God," he muttered with pen in one hand and telephone in the other.
"Is it worth it?" It was well after one o'clock when Rod fled his office, leaving Lily Jordan to hold back the tide. He went directly to No. 1 shaft where he was welcomed like the prodigal son by Dimitri and his old Line Managers. They were all anxious to know who would be replacing him as Underground Manager. Rod promised to find out that afternoon when he visited Head Office, and changed into his overalls and helmet.
At the spot where Davy Delange had died, Rod found a gang fixing a screen of wire mesh over the hanging wall to protect the fuses of his drop-blast. The electric cable that carried the blasting circuit to the surface was covered with a distinctive green plastic coating and securely pegged to the roof of the drive.
In the concrete blast room at the shaft head, his electrician had already set up a separate control for this circuit. It would be in readiness at all times. He could fire it within minutes. Rod felt as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders as he passed through the swinging ventilation doors and tramped on up the drive to speak to Johnny Delange.
Halfway to the face he met the gigantic figure of Big King coming back towards him with a small gang of lashing boys under his command. Rod greeted him, and Big King stopped and let his- gang go on out of earshot before he spoke.
"I wish to speak."
"Speak then." Rod noticed suddenly that Big King's face was gaunt, his eyes appeared sunken and his skin had the dusty greyish look of sickness so evident in an ailing Bantu.
"I wish to return to my wives in Portuguese Mozambique," said Big King.
"Why?" Rod was dismayed at the prospect of losing such a valuable boss boy.
"my blood is thin." This was as non-committal an answer as any man has ever received. In essence it meant, "My reasons are my own, and I have no intention of disclosing them."
"When your blood is thick again, will you return to work here?" Rod asked.
"That is with the gods." An answer signifying no more than the one preceding it.
"I cannot stop you if you wish to go, Big King, you know that," Rod told him. "Report to the Compound Manager and he will mark your notice." "I have told the Compound Manager. He wants me to work out my ticket, thirty-three more days."
"Of course," Rod nodded. "You know that it is a contract.
You must work it out."
"I wish to leave at once," Big King replied stubbornly.
"Then you must give me your reason. I cannot let you break contract except if there is some good reason." Rod knew better than to set a dangerous precedent like that.
There is no reason." Big King admitted defeat. "I will work out the ticket." He left Rod and followed his gang down the drive. Since the night he killed the Portuguese, Big King had slept little and eaten less. Worry had kept his stomach in a turmoil of dysentry, he had neither danced nor sung. Nothing that Crooked Leg nor the Shangaan Induna could say comforted him. He waited for the police to come. As the days passed, so the flesh melted from his body, he knew that they could come before the thirty-three days of his contract expired.
His approach to Rod had been a last despairing effort.
Now he was resigned. He knew that the police were inexorable. One day soon they would come. They would lock the silver chains on his wrists and lead him to the closed van. He had seen many men led away like that and he had heard what happened to them after that. The white man's law was the same as the tribal law of the Shangaans.
The taking of life must be paid for with life.
They would break his neck with the rope. His ancestors would have crushed his skull with a war club, it was the same in the end.
Rod found Johnny Delange drinking cold tea from his canteen while his gang barred down the face.
"How's it going?" he asked.
"Now we have finished messing about, it has started moving again."
Johnny wiped cold tea from his lips and're corked the canteen. "We have broken almost fifteen hundred feet since Davy died."
"That's good going." Rod ignored the reference to the methane explosion and the drop-blast matt.
"Would have been better if Davy were still alive. "Johnny disliked Campbell, the miner who had replaced Davy on the night shift. "The night shift aren't breaking their fair ground."
"I'll chase them up," Rod promised.
"You do that." Johnny turned away to shout an order at his gang.
Rod stood and stared at the end of the drive. Less than a thousand feet ahead lay the dark hard rock of the Big Dipper and beyond it. *.: ? Rod felt his skin creep as he remembered his nightmare. That cold green translucent thing waiting for them beyond the dyke.
"All right, Johnny, you are getting close now." Rod tore his imagination away from that green horror. "As soon as you hit the serpentine rock you are to stop work immediately and report to me. Is that understood?"
"You'd better tell that to Campbell also," said Johnny.
"The night shift may hit the Big Dipper." "I'll tell him," Rod agreed.
"But you make sure you remember. I want to be down here when we hole through the dyke." Rod glanced at his watch. It was almost two o'clock. He had an hour to get to the consultant's meeting at Head Office.
"You are late, Mr. Ironsides." Doctor Manfred Steyner looked up from the head of the boardroom table.
"My apologies, gentlemen." Rod took his seat at the long oak table.
"Just one of those days." The men about the table murmured sympathetic acknowledgement, and Doctor Steyner studied him for a moment without expression before remarking, "I would be obliged for a few minutes of your time after this meeting, Mr. Ironsides."
"Of course, Doctor Steyner."
"Good." Manfred nodded. "Now that Mr. Ironsides has graced the table with his presence, the meeting can come to order." It was the closest any of them had ever heard Doctor Steyner come to making a joke.
it was dark outside when the meeting ended. The participants shrugged on their coats, made their farewells and left Manfred and Rod sitting at the table with its overflowing ashtrays and littered pencils and note pads.
Manfred Steyner waited for fully three minutes after the door had closed on the last person to leave. Rod was accustomed to these long intent silences, yet he was uneasy.
He sensed a new hostility in the man's attitude. He covered his awkwardness by lighting another cigarette and blowing a series of smoke rings at the portrait of Norman Hradsky, the original chairman of the Company. Flanking Hradsky's portrait were two others. One of a slim blond man, with J ravaged good looks and laughing blue eyes. The caption read: "Dufford Charleywood. Director of CRC from 1867-1872."
The other portrait in its heavy gilt frame depicted an impressively built man with mutton-chop whis
kers and black Irish features. "Sean Courtney" said the caption, and the dates were the same as Charleywood's.
These three had founded the Company, and Rod knew a little of their story. They had been as pretty a bunch of rogues as would be found in any convict settlement.
Hradsky had ruined the other two in an ingenious bear raid on the stock exchange, and had virtually stolen their shares in the Company.* We have become a lot more sophisticated since then, thought Rod. He looked instinctively towards the head of the long table and met Doctor Steyner's level, unblinking stare.
Or have we? he wondered. Just what devilment has our friend in mind?
Manfred Steyner was examining Rod with detached curiosity. So remote from any emotional rancour was Manfred, that he intended using the relationship that had developed between this man and his wife to further the instructions he had received that morning.
"How far is the end of the drive from the dyke?" he asked suddenly.
"Less than a thousand feet."
"How much longer before you reach it?"
"Ten days. No more, possibly less."
"As soon as the dyke is reached, all work on it must cease immediately.
The timing of this is important, do you understand?"
"I have already instructed my miners not to hole through without my specific orders."
"Good." Manfred lapsed into silence for another full minute. Andrew had called him that morning with instructions from the man. Ironsides was to be well away from the Sander Ditch when they pierced the dyke.
It was left to Manfred to engineer his absence.
"I must inform you, Mr. Ironsides, that it will be at least three weeks before I give the order to drill through. When you reach the dyke, it will be necessary for me to proceed to Europe to make certain arrangements there. I will be away for at least ten days during which time no work of any type must be allowed in the drive to the Big Dipper."
"You will be away over Christmas?" Rod asked with surprise.
"Yes," Manfred nodded, and could read Rod's mind.
Terry will be alone, Rod thought quickly, she will be alone over Christmas. The Sander Ditch goes onto essential services only for a full seven days over Christmas. Just a skeleton crew to keep her going. I could get away for a week, a whole week away together.
Manfred waited until he knew that Rod had reached the decision to which he had been steered, then he asked: "You understand? You will await my order to hole through. You need not expect that order until the middle of January."
"I understand."
"You may go." Manfred dismissed him.
"Thanks," Rod acknowledged drily.
There was a coffee bar in the ground-floor shopping centre of Reef Building. Rod beat a bearded hippie to the telephone booth, and dialled the Sandown number. It was safe enough, he had just left Manfred upstairs.
"Theresa Steyner," she answered his call.
"We've got a week to ourselves," he told her. "One whole glorious week." "When?"she demanded joyously.
And he told her.
"Where shall we go?" she asked.
"We'll think of somewhere." At 11:26 a.m. on December 16th, Johnny Delange blasted the face of the drive, and went forward in the fumes and dust.
In the beam of his lantern, the new rock blown from the face was completely different from the blueish Ventersdorp quartzite. It was a glassy, blackish green, veined with tiny white lines, more like marble than country rock.
"We are on the dyke." He spoke to Big King, and stooped to Pie. up a lump of the serpentine rock. He weighed it in his hand.
"We've done it, we've beaten the bastard!" Big King stood silently beside him. He did not share Johnny's elation.
"Right!" Johnny tossed the lump of rock back onto the pile. "Bar down, and make safe. Then pull them out of the drive. We are finished here until further orders."
"Well done, Johnny," applauded Rod. "Clean her up and pull out of the drive. I don't know how much longer it will be till we get the order to hole through the dyke. But take a holiday in the meantime. I'll pay you four fathoms of bonus a day while you are waiting." He broke the connection with his finger keeping the receiver to his ear.
He dialled and spoke to the switch-board girl at Head Office. "Get me Doctor Steyner, please. This is Rodney Ironsides." He waited a few seconds and then Manfred came on the line.
"We've hit the Big Dipper," Rod told him.
"I will leave for Europe on tomorrow morning's Boeing," said Manfred.
"You are to do nothing until I return." Manfred cradled the receiver and depressed the button on his intercom.
"Cancel all my appointments," he told his secretary. "I am unavailable."
"Very well, Doctor Steyner." Manfred picked up the receiver of his unlisted, direct line telephone. He dialled.
"Hello, Andrew. Will you tell him that I am ready to discharge my obligations. We have intersected the Big Dipper." He listened for a few seconds, then spoke again.
"Very well, I will wait for your reply." Andrew replaced the telephone and went out through the sliding glass doors onto the terrace. It was a lazy summer's day, hushed with heat, and the sun sparkled on the crystal clear waters of the swimming-pool. Insects murmured languidly in the massed banks of blooms that surrounded the terrace. The fat man stood before an artist's easel. He wore a blue beret and a white smock that hung like a maternity dress over his jutting stomach.
His model lay face down on an air mattress by the edge of the pool. She was a dainty, dark-haired girl with a pixy face and a doll-like body.
Her discarded bikini lay in a damp bundle on the flags of the terrace.
Drops of water caught the sun and bejewelled her creamy buttocks, giving her a paradoxical air of innocence and oriental eroticism.
"That was Steyner," said Andrew. "He reports that they have hit the Big Dipper." The fat man did not look up. He went on laying paint upon the canvas with complete concentration.
"Please lift your right shoulder, my dear, you are covering that utterly delightful bosom of yours," he instructed, and the girl obeyed him immediately.
Finally he stepped back and regarded his own work critically.
"You may have a break now." He wiped his brushes while the naked girl stood up, stretched like a cat and then dived into the pool. She surfaced with the water sticking her short dark hair against her head like the pelt of an otter, and swam slowly to the far end of the pool.
"Cable New York, Paris, London, Tokyo and Berlin, the code word "Gothic"," he instructed Andrew. This was the word which would unleash the bear offensive on the financial markets of the world. On receipt of those cables, agents in the major cities would begin to sell the shares of the companies mining the Kitchenerville field, sell them by the millions.
"Then instruct Steyner to get Ironsides out of the way, and hole through the dyke." Manfred answered Andrew's return call on the unlisted line. He listened to, and acknowledged, his instructions.
Afterwards he sat still as a lizard, running over his preparations.
Reviewing them minutely, examining them for flaws. There were none.
