by Wilbur Smith
"Cyndex is colourless and odourless. However, for safety reasons we have added the scent of almonds to our gas. There will be no aerosol mist or any other indication of its application, except via the monitoring equipment.
The readout will show parts of Cyndex in one hundred thousand parts of air.' He paused and cleared his throat. 'Now, gentlemen - and my lady - if you are ready, we will proceed with the demonstration." The minister nodded his helmeted head, and the director gave a terse order into the microphone on his desk. Isabella imagined Ben or one of the other technicians adjusting the controls in the back room.
For a few seconds nothing happened. The breathing and the heartbeats of the four baboons continued sedately tracing regular luminous green patterns on the screens.
Then the panel registering the concentration of Cyndex in the inflowing air flickered and moved up from zero to - five parts of nerve gas in one hundred thousand parts of air.
Within seconds the displays began to alter - all except that above the fully suited baboon. The heartbeats accelerated swiftly, the breathing became rapid and deep. The changes were most violent on the display panel above the naked ape.
Isabella stared at it in horror. She saw its eyelids fficker, and tears began to run down the shaven face. It mouthed the air, its tongue lolling and rolling between its lips. Strings of silver saliva drooled down on to its chest.
"Fifteen seconds,' intoned the director. 'Subject Number One is now incapacitated. Number Four is unaffected, Two and Three are registering medium to acute symptoms." The naked baboon began to writhe and struggle against the retaining straps.
Isabella tasted the bitter bile rising in the back of her throat and swallowed it down.
Suddenly the baboon opened its mouth wide and shrieked. The thin agonized cry carried to them even through the double-glazed windows. It ripped along Isabella's nerve-endings. She clenched her fists and felt cold sickly sweat break out beneath the clinging white suit. Beside her she felt Lothar De La Rey stir, and all around her the other men made small instinctive gestures of revulsion and discomfort. They were soldiers and policemen hardened to atrocity and suffering, yet they shuffled their feet, clenched gloved hands or made ducking, twisting movements of their heads.
All three of the exposed animals were twitching and kicking, rolling their heads, arching their spines in spasmodic convulsions. The mucou4 linings of their tongues and of their open screaming mouths turned a bright boiled scarlet, their fluttering streaming eyeballs glazed over with a network of bloodshot veins. They began to vomit. The nappy that the first baboon wore was soiled by a spreading stain of urine and faeces.
Isabella fought down the waves of nausea that rose to engulf her. She wanted to scream, to run, to hide from the horror of it.
"One minute five seconds. Number One all vital life-signs terminated." The pathetic childlike corpse hung against the straps. Its shaven nakedness was aberrant and obscene.
"Two minutes fifteen seconds. Number Two terminated." 'Three minutes eight seconds. Number Three terminated." 'You will notice that Number Four is totally unaffected. The suit has afforded complete protection." Isabella rose to her feet. 'Excuse me,' she blurted. She had been determined to outlast any of the men in the room. Her vow was forgotten now. She fled down the corridor and burst into the women's changing-room.
She ripped the helmet from her head and dropped on her knees and clutched the cold porcelain of the toilet-bowl with both hands. She choked and sobbed, and her horror and pity and guilt shot up her throat in a thick bitter acid stream and spewed into the bowl.
After what she had just experienced Isabella could not bring herself to return to the blissful domestic environment of Garry and Holly's home.
She left the Capricorn plant without seeing the minister or Lothar or any of the other officials. She drove without attention to her surroundings.
She drove fast, too fast, pushing the Porsche up near its top speed. She was trying to expurgate her shame in the elemental and purifying sensation of speed. The attempt was not successful. After an hour she turned back towards Johannesburg and slowed the Porsche to a more moderate pace.
The fuel-tank was almost empty, and she pulled into the next service station that she reached. While the attendant refuelled her tank she realized that she had lost track of her whereabouts. This was not her home town. She knew only that she was somewhere in the network of roads and the maze of residential suburbs that surround the huge industrial and mining complex of the city of Johannesburg.
She asked the attendant which was the quickest route from here back to Sandton. As soon as he explained where she was, she realized that fate or her own subconscious had guided her. She was only two or three miles from Michael's home. A few years previously, Michael had bought himself a smallholding of fifty acres on which stood a dilapidated farmhouse. It was close enough to the offices of the Golden City Mail for him to commute to work. Michael had set about renovating the house on a do-it-yourself basis.
He planted a hundred or so fruit trees, much to the delight of the birds and locusts and aphids, and he kept a flock of chickens that wandered into the kitchen and defecated on the sink and down the refrigerator door.
"Well, it's their home, too,' Michael had explained to her when she remonstrated. 'A turd or two never hurt anybody.' Although Michael's original intention had been to convert the birds into an endless series of poulet reti and coq all vin, he had so far not been able to bring himself to chop off a single head. Some of the birds had already died of old age.
"Michael!'Isabella felt her spirits lighten and she checked her wristwatch.
It was after six. He should be home by now. 'Michael is exactly the person I need right now." As she drove along the winding track through the scraggly blue-gum plantation that marked the boundary of Michael's estate, she saw his Volkswagen Kombi parked in front of the house. Michael's old Valiant had finally passed away. She smiled as she remembered Michael's description of how an electrical short-circuit had selfignited in rush-hour traffic and the ancient vehicle had given itself a Viking's funeral and created a five-mile traffic-jam as its own cortege of mourners. She noted that the Kombi, acquired secondhand, seemed not to be in much better shape.
One half of the tin roof of Michael's home was painted in fresh sparkling apple green, the other half was in genuine red rust. He had lost heart in the middle of the renovations.
Michael had also cleared a landing-strip down one boundary of his property and had registered it as a private airfield with the directorate of civil aviation. He kept his old Cessna Centurion aircraft in a hangar at the far end of his fruit orchard. The building was constructed with secondhand corrugated-iron sheets that Michael had purchased cheaply from a scrapyard.
The resulting edifice was very much in keeping with Michael's usual style.
She found him in the hangar working in the interior of the blue and white aircraft. She tugged at the leg of his overalls, and he crawled out backwards and registered surprise and pleasure. They hadn't seen each other for almost a year.
After he had kissed her, he fetched a bottle of wine from the rusty old refrigerator in the corner and filled two tumblers. Only then did Isabella notice that he seemed nervdus and distracted. He kept glancing at his watch and going to the door of the hangar. She was hurt and disappointed.
"You are expecting somebody,' she said. 'I'm sorry, Mickey. I should have phoned you beforehand. I hope I haven't put you out." 'No, of course not. Not at all,' he assured her, but stood up with alacrity and obvious relief. 'But... well, to tell the truth...' his voice trailed off, and once again he glanced over her head towards the door.
One of his lovers, she thought bitterly. He's worried that I will meet his ' latest fancy boy. She resented him not being available when she needed him so badly, and cut short their farewells.
She watched him in the rearview mirror as she drove back through the trees.
He looked lonely and vulnerable, and her anger at him evaporated.
Poor dear Mickey, she thought. You are as lost and unhappy as I am.
She checked the Porsche at the gate to the property, and then pulled out and turned eastward on to the main tarmac highway heading back towards Sandton. There was another vehicle approaching. It was a nondescript grey van. As it drew level, she casually glanced sideways at the driver and immediately straightened up in the seat. The driver was her brother Ben. He had not noticed her and was in conversation with the black man who sat in the passengerseat beside him. The passenger was much darker-skinned than Ben, a full-blooded Zulu or Xhosa, with striking features and a smouldering expression. It was not the kind of face that one would readily forget.
She slowed the Porsche and watched the departing vehicle in her rearview mirror. Suddenly the rear brake-lights of the van glowed red, and then the turning-indicator began to flick on and off. The van turned into the track leading to Michael's house and disappeared amongst the blue gums.
"Mystery solved,' Isabella muttered, and accelerated the Porsche. "Although I don't understand why Michael didn't want me to see Ben. He knows that I arranged the job at Capricorn for him.' She considered it for a moment longer. 'It must be the man with Ben. That's a face to remember. I wonder who he is?"
It was almost eight and the sun had already set when she pulled into the garage under Garry's house in Sandton.
"Damn it,' Garry greeted her as she entered the livingroom. 'Where the hell have you been? Do you know what the time is?' Both Garry and Holly were in evening dress. It was not often she saw Garry angry.
"Oh my God! The ball! I'm sorry." Then Garry saw her face, and immediately his anger smoothed away. 'Poor Bella. You look as though you have had a lousy day. We'll wait while you change." 'No, no,' she protested. 'Go ahead. I'll follow you." For Isabella the evening was a disaster. The partner who Holly had arranged for her was a university professor and a total bore. Because she was a senator he wanted to discuss politics all evening.
"Don't you think I get enough of that?' she asked tartly, and he sulked at the rebuke. She left early. The rest of the night was troubled and nightmare-ridden. She dreamt of the shaven ape dressed in military battledress and strapped into the white chair.
Somewhere in her dreams the tortured creature changed identity and became her own little Nicky in his suit of camouflage. She woke in a cold trembling welter of sweat and horror.
She could not risk sleep again, nor the fantasies that sleep might bring.
She sat in a chair and read until dawn defined the outline of the windows.
She ran a bath, but before she could step into it there was a knock at the door of her suite. When she opened it, Garry stood on the threshold in a silk dressing-gown. His hair was in disarray and his eyes were bleary and swollen with sleep.
"I have just had a call from Pater at Weltevreden,' he told her.
"At this hour? Is everything all right? Is it Nana?" 'No. He told me to tell you that both of them are well." 'Then, what did he want?" 'He wants you and me to fly down to Weltevreden immediately."
"Both of us?" 'Yes. You and me. Immediately." 'What on earth for?" "He wouldn't say. just that it's a matter of life and death." She stared at Garry. 'What can it be?" 'How soon can you be ready to leave - half an hour?" 'Yes, of course." 'I'll ring Lanseria Airport and tell them to have the Lear ready and the pilots standing by.' He checked his watch. "We can be in Cape Town before ten o'clock." When they landed at Cape Town's D. F. Malan Airport, Klonkie the chauffeur was waiting for them. He drove them directly to Weltevreden.
Shasa and Centaine were waiting for them in the gun-room. By family tradition the gun-room was where the most dire and unpleasant subjects were addressed and thrashed out, both figuratively and literally. For it was here, across the big leather armchair, that Shasa had administered corporal punishment to his three sons. A summons to the gun-room was never taken lightly, and Isabella felt a prickle of apprehension as she and Garry entered.
Nana and Shasa stood shoulder-to-shoulder behind the old desk, and their expressions were so bleak that Isabella stopped dead in her tracks and Garry bumped into her from behind. She hardly felt it.
"What is it?' she asked fearfully, and then she realized that Nanny was also in the room, standing in front of the stone fireplace. The old coloured woman had been weeping. Her face was swollen with grief, and her eyes were bloodshot. She clutched a sodden handkerchief in one hand.
"Oh, Miss. Bella,' she sobbed. 'I'm so sorry, child. I had to do it - for your sake..." 'What on earth are you talking about, Nanny?" Isabella started towards her, to comfort her - and then she stopped again.
A dreadful sense of disaster overwhelmed her as she realized what lay on the desk in front of Nana and Shasa.
"What have you done, Nanny?' she whispered, chilled and stricken with despair. 'You've destroyed us." On the desk was her leather bound journal. Nanny had been into her safe.
"You have destroyed me and my baby. Oh, Nanny, how could you do this to us?" The journal was open at the page which contained the lock of Nicky's hair.
On the desk-top beside it lay his knitted baby bootee and the copy of his birth certificate.
"Oh, you stupid prying old woman.' Isabella's anger boiled over. 'You'll never know what harm you have done. You've killed my Nicky. I'll never forgive you for this, never." Nanny wailed with despair, then covered her mouth with her wet handkerchief and fled from the room.
"She did it because she loves you, Bella,' Shasa told her sternly. 'She did what you should have done eight years ago.5 'It was none of her business. It's nothing to do with any of you. You don't understand. If you meddle with this, you will put Nicky and Ramsey in terrible danger." She ran to the desk and snatched up the journal and clutched it to her chest. 'This is mine. You have no right to interfere." 'What is happening here?' Garry stepped up beside Isabella. 'Come on, Bella. If you are in trouble, then it concerns all of us. We are a family.
We stand together." 'Yes, Bella, Garry is right. We stand together." 'If only you had come to us right away-'Centaine broke off, and sat down behind the desk. 'Recriminations will not help us now. We have to work this thing out - all of us together. Sit down, Bella. We can guess most of it.
You must tell us the rest of it. Tell us about Nicky and Ramsey, all of it."
Isabella swayed on her feet, confused and torn by the torment of her emotions. Garry wrapped a thick muscular arm around her shoulders to steady her.
"It's OK, Bella. We are all here behind you now. Who is Nicky? Who is Ramsey?" 'Nicky is my son. Ramsey is his father,' she said softly, and buried her face against the great comforting barrel of his chest.
They let her cry for a while, and then Centaine lifted the telephone. "I'll call Doc Saunders. He can give her a shot to calm her." Isabella spun towards her. 'No, Nana. I don't need anything. I'll be all right. just give me a minute." Centaine set the telephone back on its cradle, and Garry led Isabella to the buttoned-leather sofa and sat beside her. Shasa came to sit on her other side, and they held her between them.
"All right,' Centaine said at last. 'That's enough. You can weep later. Now we've got work to do." Isabella straightened up, and Shasa handed her the handkerchief from his breast pocket.
"Tell us how it happened,' Centaine ordered.
Isabella took a deep breath. 'I met Ramsey at the Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park when Daddy and I were living in London,' she whispered. Her voice strengthened as she went on. She spoke for almost half an hour. She told them why she and Ramsey had been unable to marry and how they had gone to Spain for Nicky's birth.
"I was going to bring him here to Weltevreden. Ramsey and I planned to be married here just as soon as he was free. ' She told them how Ramsey and Nicky had been abducted. She told them of the water torture of the infant she had been forced to witness and the nightmare of her existence since then.
"What did they want from you, these mysterious people? What price did you have to pay for Ramsey and Nicky's safety? What did you have
to give them in exchange for the chance to visit Nicky? Shasa demanded harshly.
Centaine thumped her cane on the wooden floor.-'That is not important at the moment. We'll deal with that later." 'No,' Isabella shook her head. "I don't mind answering. They wanted nothing from me. I think that they were forcing Ramsey to perform some service for them. They rewarded him by allowing me to visit the two of them, Ramsey and Nicholas." 'You are lying, Bella,' Shasa accused her harshly. 'Ramsey Machado is using you. You are being forced to work for him and his masters." 'No.' She was appalled that he had seen through her lies so easily. 'Ramsey is as helpless as I am. We are being threatened and blackmailed-" 'Stop it, Bella,' Shasa cut her short. 'You are the one being forced to pay the price. Nicholas is the hostage. Ramsey is the evil puppet-master who pulls the strings." She cried out with anguish: 'No! You are wrong! Ramsey is-" 'I'll tell you who Ramsey de Santiago y Machado is. Yes, you provided us with his family-tree and his full names and date of birth," Shasa pointed out, and Isabella clutched the journal protectively. 'You know that I have friends in Israel. One of them is the director of Mossad. I telephoned him.
