A Sparrow Falls c-9

by Wilbur Smith

  Once more the image of racked weapons passed before his eyes, they faded only slowly to be replaced with a vivid shocking picture of a face.

  it was the face of a marble angel, smooth and white and strangely beautiful, with blue eyes in pale blue sockets, a burst of pale golden curls escaping from under the rim of the steel helmet on to the smooth pale forehead Mark dropped his feet from the desk with a crash, fighting away the memory of the young German sniper, forcing it from his mind, and coming to his feet abruptly.

  He found that his hands were shaking and he crushed out the cigarette and turned to the door. His knock was over-loud and demanding, and the voice from beyond was gruff with irritation. Come in. He stepped through. What do you want, Mark, you know I don't - Sean Courtney cut himself short and the tone of his voice changed to concern as he saw Mark's face. What is it, my boy? I have to tell you something, sir, he blurted.

  They listened with complete attention as he described his involvement with the executive of the Communist Party, and then broke off to steel himself for the final betrayal. These men were my friends, sir, they treated me as a comrade. You must understand why I am telling you this, please. Go on, Mark, Sean Courtney nodded, and the Prime Minister had drawn back in his chair, still and quiet and unobtrusive, sensing the struggle of conscience in which the young man was involved. I came to believe that much of what they were striving for was good and just, opportunity and a share of life for every man, but I could not accept the methods they had chosen to bring these about. What do you mean, Mark? They are planning war, a class war, sir. You have proof of that? Sean's voice did not rise, and he asked the question carefully. Yes. I have. Mark drew a deep breath before he went on. I have seen the rifles and machine guns they have ready for the day. The Prime Minister shifted in his chair and then was still again, but now he was leaning forward to listen. Go on, Sean nodded, and Mark told them in detail, stating the unadorned facts, reporting exactly what he had seen and where, accurately estimating the numbers and types of every weapon, and finally ending, MacDonald led me to believe that this was only one arsenal, and that there were others, many others, on the Witwatersrand. Nobody spoke for many seconds, and then the Prime Minister stood up and went to the telephone on Sean's desk. He wound the crank handle, and the whirr-whirr was loud and obtrusive in the silent room. This is the Prime Minister, General Smuts, speaking. I want a maximum priority connection with Commissioner Truter, the Chief of the South African Police in Johannesburg! he said, and then listened, is expression bleak and his eyes sparkling angrily. Get me the Exchange Supervisor he snapped and then turned to Sean, still holding the earpiece. The line is down, Floods in the Karroo, he explained, indefinite delay. Then he turned his attention back to the telephone and spoke quietly for many minutes with the Supervisor, before cradling the earpiece. They will make the connection as soon as possible. He returned to his seat by the window and spoke across the room. You have done the right thing, young man. I hope so, Mark answered quietly, and the doubts were obvious, shadows in his eyes and the strains of misery in his voice. I'm proud of you, Mark, Sean Courtney agreed. Once again you have done your duty. Will you excuse me now, please gentlemen? Mark asked, and without waiting for a reply, crossed to the door of his own office.

  The two men stared at the closed teak door long after it had closed, and it was the Prime Minister who spoke first. A remarkable young man, he mused aloud. Compassion and a sense of duty. He has qualities that could carry him to great heights, qualities for which one day we may be grateful, Sean nodded. I sensed them at our first meeting, so strongly that I sought him out. We will need him, and others like him in the years ahead, old Sean, Jannie Smuts stated and then switched his attention. Truter will have a search warrant issued immediately, and with God's help we will crush the head of the snake before it has a chance to strike. We know about this man MacDonald, and of course we have been watching Fisher for years. Mark had walked for hours, escaping from the tiny box of his office. He had been driven by his conscience and his fears, striding out under the oaks, following narrow lanes, crossing the little stone bridge over the Liesbeeck stream, torturing himself with thoughts of Judas. They hang traitors in Pretoria, he thought suddenly, and he imaged Fergus MacDonald standing on the trap in the barnlike room while the hangman pinioned his arms and ankles. He shuddered miserably and stopped walking, with his hands thrust deeply into his pockets and shoulders hunched, and he looked up to find himself standing outside the Post Office.

  Afterwards he realized that it had probably been his destination all along, but now it seemed an omen. He did not hesitate a moment, but hurried into the office and found a pile of telegram forms on the desk. The nib of the pen was faulty and it sphittered the pale watery ink, and stained his fingers.

  MACDONALD 5 5 LOVERS WALK FORDSBURG.

  THEY KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE GOT IN THE CELLAR GET RID of IT.

  He did not sign it.

  The Post Office clerk assured him that if he paid the sevenpence for urgent rating, the message would have priority as soon as the northern lines were reinstated.

  Mark wandered back into the street, feeling sick and depleted by the crisis of conscience, not certain that he had done the right thing in either circumstance, and he wondered just how futile was his hope that he might have forced Fergus MacDonald to throw that deadly cargo down some disused mine shaft before death and revolution was turned loose upon the land.

  It was almost dark as Fergus MacDonald wheeled his bicycle into the shed and paused in the small back yard to slip the clips off the cuffs of his trousers, before going on to the kitchen door.

  The smell of cooking cabbage filled the small room with a steamy moist cloud that made him pause and blink.

  Helena was sitting at the kitchen table and she hardly glanced up as he entered. A cigarette dangled from her lips with an inch of grey ash clinging hopelessly to the end of it.

  She still wore the grubby dressing-gown she had worn at breakfast, and it was clear that she had neither bathed nor changed since then. Her hair had grown longer and now dangled in oily black snakes to her cheeks. She had grown heavier in the last months, the line of her jaw blurring with a padding of fat and the hair on her upper lip darker and denser, breasts bulging and drooping heavily in the open front of the gown. Hello then, love. Fergus shrugged out of his jacket and dropped it across the back of a kitchen chair. She turned the page of the pamphlet she was reading, squinting at the curl of blue smoke that drifted across her eyes.

  Fergus opened a black bottle of porter and the gas hissed fiercely. Anything happened today? Something for you, she nodded at the kitchen dresser, and the cigarette ash dropped down the front of her gown, settling in fine grey flakes.

  Carrying the bottle, Fergus crossed to the dresser and fingered the buff envelope. One of your popsies, Helena chuckled at the unlikeliness of her sally, and Fergus frowned and tore open the envelope.

  He stared at the message for long uncomprehending seconds before he swore bitterly. Jesus Christ! He slammed the bottle down on the kitchen table with a crash.

  Even this late in the evening, there were small groups on each street corner. They had that disconsolate andbored air of men with too little to fill their days, even the commando drilling and the nightly meetings were beginning to pall. As Fergus MacDonald pedalled furiously through the darkening streets, his first alarm and fright turned to fierce exultation.

  The time was right, they were as ready as they would ever be, if time drifted on without decisive action from either side, the long boring days of strike inactivity would erode their determination. What had seemed like disaster merely minutes before, he now saw was a heaven-sent opportunity. Let them come, we will be ready for them, he thought, and braked alongside a group of four loungers on the pavement outside the public bar of the Grand Fordsburg Hotel. Get a message to all area commanders, they are to assemble at the Trade Hall immediately. It's an emergency. Brothers, hurry. They scattered quickly, and he pedalled on up the risin
g ground of the dip, calling out his warning as he went.

  In the Trade Union offices, there were still a dozen or so members; most of them were eating sandwiches and drinking Thermos tea, while a few worked on the issue of strike relief coupons to Union families, but the relaxed atmosphere changed as Fergus burst in. All right, comrades, it's beginning. The ZARPS are on their way. It was classic police tactics. They came in the first light of dawn. The advance guard rode down into the dip of land between Fordsburg and the railway crossing, where the Johannesburg road ran down between sleazy cottages and overgrown plots of open ground, thick with weeds and mounds of rotting refuse.

  There was a heavy ground-mist in the dip, and the nine troopers on police chargers waded through it, as though fording the sluggish waters of a river crossing.

  They had muted harness and muffled accoutrements, so that it was in ghostly silence that they breasted the softly swirling mists. The light was not yet strong enough to pickZuid Afrikaanse Republiek Polisie, used as a derogatory term, out their badges and burnished buttons, it was only the dark silhouette of their helmets that identified them.

  Fifty yards behind the leading troopers followed the two police carriages. High four-wheelers with barred windows to bold prisoners, and beside each one of them marched ten constables. They carried their rifles at the slope, and were stepping out sharply to keep up with the carriages.

  As they entered the dip, the mist engulfed them, chesthigh, so that their disembodied trunks bobbed in the white soft surface. They looked like strange dark sea-animals, and the mist muted the tramp of their boots.

  Fergus MacDonald's scouts had picked them up before they reached the railway crossing and for three miles had been pacing them, slipping back unseen ahead of the advance, runners reporting every few minutes to the cottage where Fergus had established his advance headquarters. All right, Fergus snapped, as another of the dark figures ducked through the hedge of the sanitary lane behind the cottage and mumbled his report through the open window. They are all coming in on the main road. Pull the other pickets out and get them here right away.

  The man grunted an acknowledgement and was gone.

  Fergus had his pickets on every possible approach to the town centre. The police might have split into a number of columns, but it seemed his precautions were unnecessary.

  Secure in the certainty of complete surprise and in overwhelming force, they were not bothering with diversion or flanking manoeuvres.

  Twenty-nine troopers, Fergus calculated, together with the four drivers, was indeed a formidable force. More than sufficient, if it had not been for the warning from some unknown ally.

  Fergus hurried through into the front parlour of the cottage. The family had been moved out before midnight, all the cottages along the road had been cleared. The grumpy squalling children in pyjamas carried on the shoulders of their fathers, the women with white frightened faces in the lamplight, bundling a few precious possessions with them as they hurried away.

  Now the cottages seemed deserted, no lights showed, and the only sound was the mournful howling of a mongrel dog down in the dip. Yet in each cottage, at the windows that faced on to the road, silent men waited.

  Fergus spoke to one of them in a whisper and he pointed down into the misty hollow, then spat and worked a round into the breech of the Lee-Enfield rifle which was propped on the windowsill.

  The rifle bolt made a small metallic clash that lit a sparkle of memory and made the hair rise on Fergus neck.

  It was all so familiar, the silence, the mist and the night fraught with the menace of coming violence. Only on my order, Fergus warned him softly. Easy now, lads. Let them come right in the front door before we slam it on their heads. He could see the leading horsemen now, half a mile away but coming on fast in the strengthening light. it wasn't shooting light yet, but the sky beyond the dark hills of the mine dumps was turning to that pale gull's-egg blue that promised shooting light within minutes.

  Fergus looked back at the road. The mist was an added bonus. He had not counted on that, but often when you did not call for fortune, she came a-knocking. The mist would persist until the first rays of the morning sun warmed and dispersed it, another half hour at least. You all know, your orders. Fergus raised his voice and they glanced at him, distracted for only a moment from their weapons and the oncoming enemy.

  I They were all good men, veterans, blooded, as the sanguine generals of France would have it. It flashed through Fergus'mind once again how ironical it was that men who had been trained to fight by the bosses were now about to tear down the structure which the bosses had trained them to defend. We will tear down and rebuild, he thought, with exultation tingling in his blood. We will destroy them with their own weapons, strangle them with their own dirty loot, he stopped himself, and pulled the dark grey cloth down over his eyes and turned up the collar of his coat. Good luck to all of us, brothers, he called softly, and slipped out through the front door. That old bugger has got guts, acknowledged one of the soldiers at the window. You're right, he ain't afraid of nothing, agreed another, as they watched him dodge under the cover of the hedge and run forward until he reached the ditch beside the road, and jumped down into it.

  There were a dozen men lying there below the lip, and as he dropped beside them, one of them handed him a pickhandle.

  rYou strung that wire good and tight? Fergus asked, and the man grunted. Tighter than a monkey's arsehole, the man grinned wolfishly at him, his teeth glinting in the first soft light of morning. And I checked the pegs meself, they'll hold against a charging elephant. Right, brothers, Fergus told them. With me when I give the word. And he lifted himself until he could see over the low blanket of mist. The troopers'helmets bobbed in the mist as they came on up the slope, and now he could make out the sparkle of brass cap badges and see the dark sticklike barrels of their carbines rising above each right shoulder.

  Fergus had paced out the ranges himself and marked them with pieces of rag tied to the telephone posts on the verge.

  As they came up to the one-fifty-yard mark Fergus stood up from the ditch, and stepped into the middle of the road.

  He held his pick-handle above his head and shouted, Halt! Stay where you are!

  His men rose out of the mist behind him and moved swiftly into position like a well-drilled team; dark, ominous figures standing shoulder to shoulder, blocking the road from verge to verge, holding their pick-handles ready across their hips, faces hidden by caps and collars.

  The officer in the centre of the squadron of horsemen raised a hand to halt them and they bunched up and sat stolidly while the officer rose in his stirrups. Who are you? Strikers'Council, Fergus shouted back, and we'll have no scabs, black-legs or strike-breakers on this property! I am under orders from the Commissioner of Police, empowered by a warrant of the Supreme Court. The officer was a heavily built man, with a proud erect seat on his horse, and a dark waxed mustache with points that stuck out on each side of his face. You're strike-breakers! Fergus yelled. And you'll not set a foot on this property. Stand aside! warned the officer. The light was good enough now for Fergus to see that he wore the insignia of a Captain, and that his face was ruddy from sun and beer, his eyebrows thick and dark and beetling under the brim of his helmet. You are obstructing the police. We will charge if we have to. Charge and be damned, puppets of imperialism, running dogs of capitalism, Troop, extend order, called the Captain, and the ranks opened for the second file to come up into a solid line.

  They sat on the restless horses, knee to knee. Strike-breakers! yelled Fergus. Your hands will be stained with the blood of innocent workers this day"Batons! called the Captain sternly, and the troopers drew the long oaken clubs from the scabbards at their knees and held them in the right hand, like cavalry sabres. History will remember this atrocity, screamed Fergus, the blood of the lamb, Walk, march! Forward! The line of dark horsemen waded forward through the mist as it swirled about their bootedlegs. Gallop, charge! sang out the Captain, and the riders sw
ung forward in their saddles, the batons extended along the horses necks, and they plunged forward; now the hooves drummed low thunder as they came down upon the line of standing figures.

  The Captain was leading by a length in the centre of the line, and he went on to the wires first.

  Fergus men had driven the steel jumper bars deep into the verge, pounding them in with nine-pound hammers, until only two feet of their six-foot length protruded, and they had strung the barbed wire across the road, treble strands pulled up rigid with the fencing strainers.

  It cut the forelegs out from under the leading charger, the bone broke with a brittle snap, startlingly loud in the dawn, and the horse dropped, going over on to its shoulder still at full gallop.

  An instant later the following wave of horsemen went on to the wire, and were cut down as though by a scythe, only three of them managing to wheel away in time. The cries of the men, and the screaming of the horses, mingled with the exultant yells of Fergus' band as they ran forward, swinging their pick-handles, One of the horses was up, riderless, its stirrups flapping, but it was pinned on its haunches, the broken forelegs flapping and spinning as it pawed in anguish at the air, its squeals high and pitiful above the cries of fallen men.

  Fergus pulled the revolver out of the waist -band of his trousers, dodged around the crazed screaming animals and pulled the police Captain to his knees.

  He had hit the ground with his shoulder and the side of his face. The shoulder was smashed, sagging down at a grotesque angle and the arm hanging twisted and lifeless.

  The flesh had been shaved from his face, ripped off by stone and gravel, so that the bone of his jaw was exposed in the mangled flesh. Get up, you bastard, snarled Fergus, thrusting the pistol into the officer's face, grinding the muzzle into the lacerated wound. Get up you bloody black-leg. We'll learn you a lesson. The three troopers who had escaped the wire had their mounts under control, and had circled to pick up their downed comrades, calling to them by name. Grab a stirrup, Heintjie! Come on, Paul. Get up! Horses and men, milling and shouting and screaming in the mist, a savage confused conflict, above which Fergus raised his voice. Stop them, don't let the bastards get away, and his men swung the pick-handles, dodging forward under the police batons to thrust and hack at the horsemen, but they were not quick enough.