by Wilbur Smith
Victoria Gama, the black Evita, the mother of the nation, stood in the centre of the tiled floor. She was naked to the waist. Her breasts were beautifully shaped. Smooth as velvet, black as the fur of sable, large as the ripe ts melons of the Kalahari desert.
In her right hand she held a supple whip made of cured hippo hide, the terrible African siambok. It was slim as one of Vicky's elegant fingers and as long as her arm. In her other hand she held a glass. She was drinking from it as Raleigh burst into the room. The gin-bottle stood on the sink behind her.
There were two members of the Gama Athletics Club in the kitchen with her.
They were the eldest and biggest of all her bodyguards. Both of them were in their late teens. They were also bared to the waist. They stood at either end of the long kitchen table and held a naked body pinioned down upon the table.
The flogging must have been in progress for some considerable time. The whip-weals were latticed closely across the shiny black skin, raised and purple. Some of them had cut through into the flesh and were bleeding. The blood formed a puddle under the body and spilled over to drip on to the tiled kitchen floor.
"Are you mad?'Raleigh hissed at her. 'With the journalist in the house?" "He is a police spy,'Vicky snarled at him. 'He is a traitor. I have to teach him a lesson." 'You are drunk again.' Raleigh struck the glass from her hand, and it spun into the comer and shattered against the wall. 'Can't you enjoy your little boys without having to warm yourself up to it?" Her eyes blazed with fury, and she lifted the whip to slash at his face. He caught her wrist and held it easily. He twisted the whip out of her fingers and flung it into the sink. Still holding her wrist, he spoke to her young bodyguards.
"Get rid of this.' He indicated the bleeding figure on the table. 'Then clean the place up. No more of this sort of thing while the white man is in the house. Do you understand?" They lifted the boy off the table, and he moaned and blubbered as they half-carried him to the door.
As soon as they were alone, Raleigh turned back to Vicky. 'You bear an illustrious name. If you bring dishonour upon it, I will kill you myself Now, go to your room." She marched from the room. Despite the gin, her step was regal. She carried her liquor well. If only she could carry her fame and the adulation of the media as well, he thought grimly.
He had watched her change over a few short years. When Moses Gama married her, she had been a bright and pure flame, committed to her husband and the struggle. Then the American left had discovered her, and the media had showered praise and money upon her to the point where she believed all they said about her.
From there the disintegration had been swift. Of course, the struggle was fierce. Of course, freedom must be won through rivers of blood. However, for Vicky Gama the spilling of blood had become a pleasure and not a duty, and her personal glory had eclipsed the call of freedom. It was time to consider carefully what must be done about her.
They took Michael back to the car park where he had left his old Valiant.
Raleigh Tabaka sat up beside the driver in the front seat of the butchery-van while Michael crouched in the back. Michael was surprised to see that his car was still standing where he had left it.
"Nobody took the trouble to steal it,' he remarked.
"No,' Raleigh agreed. 'It was guarded by our people. We look after our own." They shook hands, and Michael began to turn away, but Raleigh was not yet ready to let him go.
"I believe you own an aircraft, Michael?' he asked.
"Of a sort,' Michael laughed. 'It's an old Centurion that has already flown over three thousand hours." 'I have a favour to ask of you." 'I owe you one,' Michael agreed. 'What do you want me to do?" 'Will you fly to Botswana for me?' Raleigh asked.
"With a passenger?" 'No. Fly there on your own - and return on your own.) Michael hesitated a moment longer. 'Is it to do with your struggle?" 'Of course,' Raleigh replied frankly. 'Everything in my life is to do with the struggle." 'When do you want me to go?' Michael asked, and Raleigh did not let his relief show in his expression.
Perhaps, after all, it might not be necessary to use the 2xe material that they had filmed in the ballet-dancer's flat in London.
"When can you get away for a few days?' he asked.
Unlike his father or his brothers, Michael had not taken to flying early in life. Looking back on it, he realized it was because of their passionate love of aircraft that he had shied away from them. Instinctively he had resented his father's efforts to interest him and to instruct him. He didn't want to be like them. He refused to be forced into the mould his father had prepared for him.
Later, when he moved outside the cloying family influence, he discovered the fascination of flight all for himself. He had bought the Centurion out of his own savings. Despite its age, the aircraft was fast and comfortable.
She cruised at 2 1 o knots and took him up to Maun in northern Botswana in a little over three hours.
He loved Botswana. It was the only truly democratic country in all of Africa. It had never been colonized by any of the European powers, although Britain had been its protector from the 188os when the Boer Republic had threatened to muscle in and take the land from the Tswana tribe.
After Britain had relinquished her status as protector and handed the country back to the people, it had swiftly transformed itself into a model for the rest of the continent. It was a multi-party democracy with universal suffrage and regular elections. The Government was truly responsible to the electorate. There were no tyrants or dictators. By African standards, very little corruption existed. The minority white population was accepted as a useful and productive section of the population. There was little inverse racism or tribalism. After South Africa, it was the most prosperous state in all of Africa. In fact it had achieved almost effortlessly the condition that Michael prayed his own country would some day be able to arrive at, after all the suffering and strife. Michael loved Botswana and was happy to be going back there.
At Maun he cleared the formalities in the small singleroomed building that housed both Customs and Immigration and then took off again for a short northern leg into the Okavango delta.
The delta was an extraordinary wetland area where the mighty Okavango river debouched into the northern Kalahari desert and formed a vast swamp. It was not a swamp of reeking black mud and dreary wastes. The waters were clear as a trout stream. The sandbanks; and bottoms of the maze of waterways were of sugary white sands. The islands were decked with palms and luxuriant growth. The wild fig trees were loaded with yellow fruit, and the fat green pigeons swarmed in their branches. Strange and rare fishing owls, seeming more like apes than like birds, nested in the tall African ebony trees.
The fabled lions of the Okavango with manes like russet haystacks were quick as otters in the lambent waters. Great herds of buffalo grazed in the reed-beds with a canopy of snowy egrets hovering over them. Weird sitatunga antelope with elongated hoofs, corkscrew horns and shaggy coats spent their entire amphibian lives in the tall papyrus, and clouds of duck and geese and waterfowl shaded the blazing orange sunsets.
Michael landed the Centurion on an airstrip on one of the larger islands.
There were two river bushmen in a dugout canoe to ferry him across a lagoon perfumed with water-lilies to the camp.
The camp was called the Gay Goose Lodge, and catered for up to forty guests who lived in picturesque little reed huts. The ostensible reason for their visit was to study and photograph the animals and birdlife of the delta or to troll for the glittering striped tigerfish that shoaled in the waterways. Each morning and evening expeditions of guests ventured out in the primitive canoes, to be poled silently through the reed-beds and channels by one of the black boatmen.
However, the guests were almost exclusively male, and the name Gay Goose had been chosen with good reason. All of the staff were good-looking young Tswana lads who were also chosen with good reason. The camp was run by a political refugee from South Africa. Brian Susskind was a striking-looking fellow in his mid
-thirties. He had long blond hair, bleached almost white by the sun. He wore ear-rings in his pierced ear-lobes, gold chains around his neck that tinkled on his bare muscular chest, and bangles of ivory and plaited elephant hair at his wrists.
"God, darling,' he greeted Michael, 'it's just so lovely to meet you.
Raleigh has told me all about you. You are going to absolutely love it here. We've got such fun people with us. They are in an absolute tizz to meet you, too." Michael spent a long and exciting weekend at Gay Goose Camp, and when it was time to leave Brian Susskind came across the lagoon in the Makorro canoe to see him off.
"It's been such fun, Mickey.' He squeezed Michael's hand. 'I think we'll be seeing a lot more of each other. Don't forget to trim your plane. You may be a touch tail-heavy on take-off." Michael took off without looking in the hidden compartment below the passenger-seats, but he noticed the small alteration in trim that Brian had warned him of. The cargo that Brian had loaded must be very heavy for its bulk. He had been told not to touch it or try to examine it. He followed his instructions strictly.
As he cleared Customs on his arrival at Lanseria Airport his nerves were stretched tight and he puffed on his cigarette. He need not have worried.
The Customs officer recognized him from many previous occasions and did not even bother to examine his luggage, let alone traipse out on to the tarmac to inspect the Centurion.
That night one of the black nightwatchmen in the Lanseria hangar unloaded a heavy box from under the Centurion's back seat and passed it through the fence to the driver of a small blue butcher's delivery-van.
In the kitchen at Nobs Hill in Drake's Farm township, Raleigh Tabaka inspected the seals on the crate. They were all intact.
Nobody had tampered with the cargo. Raleigh nodded with satisfaction and unscrewed the lid. The crate contained seventy copies of the Holy Bible.
Michael Courtney had passed another test.
Michael flew up to Gay Goose Camp five weeks later. This time, on his return the crate contained twenty minilimpet mines of Russian manufacture.
He paid another nine visits to Gay Goose over the following two years, and each time the entry through the South African Customs at Lanseria was easier on his nerves.
Five years after he had first met Raleigh Tabaka, Michael was invited to join the African National Congress as a member of its military wing, Urnkhonto we Sizwe, 'the Spear of the Nation'.
"I've been thinking about this a lot recently, he answered Raleigh, 'and reluctantly I've already reached the conclusion that sometimes the pen alone is not enough: At last I've come to realize that, even though it goes against my deeply ingrained feelings, there comes a time when a man must take up the sword. Even a year ago I would have refused what you are offering me, but now I accept the dictates of my conscience. I am ready to join the armed struggle."
"All right, Bella,' Centaine Courtney-Malcomess nodded firmly. 'You will begin at the far end of the street - and I'll take this end.' Then she transferred her attention to the back of the chauffeur's head. 'Klonkie, drop us round the comer, then you can pick us up again at lunchtime." Obediently Klonkie slowed the yellow Daimler, eased it around the comer and pulled into the pavement.
The two women climbed out and watched the limousine pull away. 'You don't want the voters to see you in a great luxury wagon with a chauffeur,'Centaine explained. 'Envy is a corrosive emotion, and you'll find it at every level of society.' She turned her full attention upon her granddaughter and inspected her carefully from head to foot.
Isabella's hair was freshly shampooed and gleaming with ruby highlights in the sunshine. However, Centaine had insisted that she pull it back into a severe bun behind the head. Her make-up was limited to a moisturizing cream that gave her a scrubbed schoolgirl complexion. She wore no lipstick, although her lips were a natural youthful pink.
Centaine nodded, and ran her eyes downwards. Bella wore a classic cashmere outfit with low-heeled sensible shoes. Centaine nodded again with complete satisfaction. She smoothed the tweed skirt over her own hips.
"All right, Bella. Remember we are aiming at the ladies this morning." They had timed their visit for mid-morning, when the men were out of the house, the children were at school, and the main chores were behind the lower-middle-class housewives who lived in this area below the slopes of Signal Hill, overlooking the city and the harbour of Cape Town.
The previous evening Isabella had addressed a predominantly male audience in the Sea Point Masonic Hall. Most of them had come out of curiosity to listen to the first ever female National Party candidate in their constituency.
On that occasion Bella's dress and make-up had evoked a chorus of wolf-whistles from the body of the hall when she stood up to speak. They had heckled her good-naturedly for the first few minutes while she struggled to overcome her nervousness. However, the horseplay had roused her anger, and she had flushed and snapped at them.
"Gentlemen, your behaviour does none of us credit. If you have any sense of fair play, you'll give me a sporting chance." They grinned shamefacedly, shuffled their feet and relapsed into a silence that grew more attentive as she spoke. She and Centaine had studied the issues that concerned them most, and they listened as she addressed herself to them.
It had been a good baptism of fire, and Centaine was proud of her, without making it too obvious.
"All right,' she said now. 'You'll do, missy. Here we go for St. George, for Harry, and for England." The war-cry was entirely inappropriate to the occasion, Isabella smiled wryly, and misquoted to boot, but who would dare tell Nana that? They separated and went to their respective ends of the street.
Number twelve was a semidetached cottage with bullnosed corrugated-iron roof and a Victorian fretwork castiron trellis beneath the eaves. The front garden was five paces deep, but the dahlias were in full bloom. Isabella went up the'path and quietened the yapping fox terrier on the stoep with a sharp word. She had always been good with dogs and horses.
The housewife came to the door and peered suspiciously at Isabella through the fly-screen. Her hair was in yellow plastic curlers.
"Yes? What do you want?" 'My name is Isabella Courtney and I am your National Party candidate for next month's by-election. May I talk to you for a few minutes?" 'Hold on,.' The woman disappeared, and came back a minute later with a headscarf over her curlers.
"We are United Party supporters,' she declared her allegiance, but Isabella distracted her.
"What beautiful dahlias!" This was an opposition party stronghold. Isabella was a political fledgling. Her own party would never have allowed her to contest a safe Nationalist seat. Those were reserved for others who had already proven their worth. As it was, it had taken all Nana's influence and persuasive ability, together with Isabella's own personality and presentability, to win the opportunity from the party machine to make this foredoomed attempt.
The very best Isabella could hope for was a good showing and a gallant defeat. Nana had set their objective. In the last general election the United Party had taken this seat with a five thousand majority.
"If we can cut the majority to three thousand, then in 2= the next election we can force them to give you a better constituency to contest." Now the housewife softened with gratification as Isabella looked at her prize-winning dahlias and wavered.
"May I come in?' Isabella smiled her sweetest and most winning smile, and the woman stood aside reluctantly.
"Well, just for a few minutes." 'What work does your husband do?" 'He's a motor mechanic." 'What does he think about trade fragmentation and black trade unions?" Isabella struck hard, and the woman looked grave. Isabella. was talking about family survival and the bread in her children's mouths.
"May I get you a cup of coffee, Mrs. Courtney?' she asked and Isabella did not correct her form of address.
Fifteen minutes later she shook the housewife's hand and went back down the short garden path. She had followed Nana's maxim: 'Be forceful, but be brief' She felt a flush of achievement
. Her victim had begun as a definite 'No' and gradually mellowed under Isabella's persuasive logic to a tentative 'Maybe'. Isabella marked her so on her copy of the voters' roll.
