Golden Fox

by Wilbur Smith

  During his tenure Shasa had given her the run of his office, and she had used it as a club whenever she was in central Cape Town. It brought back so many memories to walk once again down the wide corridor. As a teenager she had not in any way appreciated the aura of history with which the magnificent old building was imbued.

  Now, with political aspirations thrust upon her against her will, she was entranced by portraits of great men, both good and evil, which decorated the panelled walls.

  The prime minister kept her waiting only a few minutes. When she went through into his office he came round his desk to greet her.

  ‘It’s so good of you to want to see me, Oom John,’ Isabella said in flawless Afrikaans. It was naughty of her to use such familiar address without being invited to do so. However, the term ‘Oom’, or ‘Uncle’, was one of great respect and the gamble paid off. Vorster’s blue eyes twinkled in acknowledgement of her nerve.

  ‘I wanted to congratulate you on your showing at Sea Point, Bella,’ he replied, and she felt a thrill of acceptance. Use of her pet name was an unusual accolade.

  ‘I’m having a coffee-break.’ Vorster waved at the silver and porcelain service on a side-table. ‘Will you pour a cup for both of us?

  ‘Now, young lady,’ he addressed her sternly over the rim of his cup. ‘What are you going to do with yourself? Since you aren’t going to be an MP.’

  ‘Well, Oom John, I am working for my father—’

  ‘Of course, I know that,’ he interrupted her. ‘But we can’t let all that fresh young political talent go begging. Have you considered a seat in the Senate?’

  ‘The Senate?’ Isabella gulped, and the coffee scalded her tongue. ‘No, Prime Minister, I haven’t. Nobody ever suggested—’

  ‘Well, somebody is suggesting it now. Old Kleinhans is retiring next month. I have to nominate somebody to take his seat. It will do until we can find a safe seat in the lower house for you.’

  The Senate was the upper of the two legislative houses of the Republic of South Africa. Its duties were similar to those of the House of Lords, and it had the power to hold up dubious legislation and refer it back to the lower house. It had been considerably expanded back in the 1950s when the then prime minister, Malan, had set out to disfranchise those coloured voters who had the vote. He had packed the upper house with senators nominated by himself in order to force through the distasteful Act that stripped the coloureds of their vote. Some of the seats in the upper house were still in the prime minister’s gift, and Vorster was offering her one of these.

  Isabella set down her coffee cup and stared speechlessly at him. Her mind was racing to keep up with this new development.

  ‘Will you accept the nomination?’ Vorster asked.

  It was a marvellous short cut, one that none of them – not Shasa nor even Nana – had dreamt of.

  Hendrik Verwoerd himself had started his political career in the Senate. At twenty-eight years of age, she would almost certainly be the youngest, brightest and certainly the most attractive senator in the upper house.

  Appointments to various commissions and house committees would certainly follow her nomination. If she was only half as good as she knew she was, the National Party would turn her into their prime feminist political figure. Her entry to the innermost circles of power, to the innermost state secrets would come very swiftly.

  ‘You do me great honour, Prime Minister.’ Her voice was a whisper.

  ‘I know that you will serve your country with even greater honour.’ Vorster held out his hand. ‘Congratulations, Senator.’

  As Isabella took his hand, she felt an icy finger of guilt trace down her spine, the chill of treason and treachery. She forced it back. The reaction followed swiftly – with a great surge of her spirits she realized that Red Rose was now invaluable to her masters. Soon she could set her own terms and demand her own rewards from them.

  Nicky and Ramón, she thought. Ramón and Nicky – it will be soon now. Much sooner than we could ever have believed. We will be together again.

  Isabella had come to love the austere grandeur of the Karoo.

  Shasa had purchased the vast sheep-ranch while she was still a child. On her first visit she had hated the grim stony kopjes and forbidding plains that spread aimlessly to a distant horizon blurred by sun and dust until the juncture of earth and a milky luminous sky was obscured. Then as a teenager she had read Eve Palmer’s The Plains of Camdeboo and she had begun to understand just what a wondrous world the Karoo really was.

  With her father, she had hunted for fossils in the up-thrust sedimentary beds that had been a vast antediluvian swamp in the age of the great reptiles, and she had stood amazed and filled with awe by their petrified bones and fangs.

  The homestead was named Dragon’s Fountain in memory of those terrible creatures, and for the spring of clear sweet water that gushed ceaselessly from a grotto at the base of one of the table-topped mountains. The sheer wall of red rock towered above the sprawling mansion with its green lawns and lush gardens nurtured by the spring. Vultures and eagles nested in the crags, and their droppings whitewashed the weathered precipice.

  The sheep-ranch spread over sixty thousand acres of this fascinating wilderness. Mingled with the flocks of merino sheep were vast herds of springbok. These graceful little antelope danced upon the plains like puffs of wind-driven dust. Their delicate bodies were pale cinnamon slashed with bars of chocolate and blazing white. Their lovely patterned heads and lyre-shaped horns made them Isabella’s favourite amongst all the multitudinous life-forms that inhabited the plains of Camdeboo. Both sheep and antelope flourished on the low wiry desert bush, and the diet flavoured their flesh with the taste of sage and wild herbs.

  Each winter, at the commencement of the hunting season, Shasa invited a party to Dragon’s Fountain to join the annual springbok cull. Anything over four inches of rainfall in the Karoo was considered a good year, and in such a season the springbok ewes lambed twice. The resulting explosion of the herds had to be controlled. In a year such as this it is necessary to cull a thousand head of springbok to protect the fragile desert growth from their ravages.

  Garry brought a party of his friends and their families down from Johannesburg. The landing-strip at Dragon’s Fountain had been extended and macadamized to accommodate the new Lear jet. Shasa brought the rest of the guests up from Cape Town in the twin-engined Queen Air.

  Isabella had not been able to leave Cape Town until the Senate went into recess. Then she drove up with Nana in the silver-grey Porsche that her father had given her on her twenty-ninth birthday to replace the aged Mini. She enjoyed having Nana as a passenger. The old lady’s stories whiled away the hours of the long drive. Unlike Shasa, Nana did not watch the speedometer. At one stage on the arrow-straight stretch of road between Beaufort West and the ranch, Isabella had wound the Porsche up to almost 160 miles per hour without a word of protest from Nana.

  It was mid-afternoon when they pulled into the kitchen yard at Dragon’s Fountain. Servants and dogs came pouring from the kitchen and outbuildings to give them a riotous welcome. When at last Isabella escaped to her own room, Nanny was already running her bath and unpacking her three suitcases.

  ‘God, I’m bushed, Nanny. I’m going to sleep for a week.’

  ‘Thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,’ Nanny warned her darkly.

  ‘Don’t come that with me, Nanny. You’re a Muslim.’

  ‘We got the same rules,’ Nanny sniffed haughtily.

  ‘Where are all the men?’ Isabella flopped on to the bed.

  ‘Out hunting, of course.’

  ‘Are there any nice ones, Nanny?’

  ‘Yes, but they are all married. You shoulda brought your own, Miss Bella.’ Nanny paused. ‘Come to think of it, there is a new one that got no wife.’ Then she shook her head. ‘You won’t like him.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He got no hair on his head,’ Nanny cackled merrily. ‘What you’d call an e
ggshell blond.’

  Nanny was correct. He didn’t tickle Isabella’s fancy, although he had a kind and rather sensitive face and beautiful Jewish sloe eyes. His bald head was a damper. It was tanned and freckled like a plover’s egg with a thick fringe of dark curls around the back in the style of Friar Tuck. He was talking to Garry on the wide front stoep.

  Isabella felt good when she came down for pre-dinner cocktails. She had managed an hour’s sleep after the hot bath. She was wearing a deceptively simple blue silk sheath with a risqué décolletage whose cunning cut and drape caught the eye of every man present, married or not.

  She went to Garry immediately. She hadn’t seen him for months. ‘My big teddy bear.’ She hugged him.

  With his arm still around her waist, Garry introduced them. ‘Bella, this is Professor Aaron Friedman. Aaron, this is my baby sister, Senator Doctor Isabella Courtney.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Garry!’ she protested modestly at his use of all her titles, and took Aaron Friedman’s hand. It was fine-boned but strong, the hand of a pianist or a surgeon.

  ‘Aaron is on a sabbatical from the University of Jerusalem.’

  ‘Oh, I love Jerusalem,’ Isabella told him politely. ‘In fact, I love Israel. It’s such an exciting vibrant country, so steeped in history and religion.’

  She gave him another minute of her attention, then she moved down the veranda to find her father. He had three of the prettiest wives grouped around him, giggling at his wit.

  ‘My beautiful daddy.’ She kissed him, and then took her place beside him with her arm linked through his in a proprietorial fashion. She knew just how good they looked together. As usual the two of them swiftly became the centre of the elegant little gathering.

  They sipped their champagne and laughed and chatted and flirted, while a flamboyant Karoo sunset lit the gaunt kopjes with a ruddy glow and set the clouds on fire.

  One of the men mentioned casually: ‘I was listening to the radio while I dressed. It seems that the Ethiopians have forced Haile Selassie to abdicate.’

  ‘Damned fuzzy-wuzzies, bunch of bandits and Shufta,’ said another. ‘I was there with the Sixth Division during the war – we went the hard way, on foot, while Shasa was swanning around in his Hurricane.’

  Shasa touched the black eye-patch. ‘We called it Abyssinia then. We went to keep an eye on them, and dashed if I didn’t leave one of mine behind.’

  They laughed, and somebody else remarked: ‘Haile Selassie was a marvellous old fellow really. Wonder what will happen now.’

  ‘The same as the rest of black Africa – chaos and confusion and communism, murder and mayhem and Marxism.’

  There was a general murmur of agreement, and they dismissed the subject and turned their attention to the splendour of the final moments of the sunset.

  The night fell with the suddenness of a stage curtain, and immediately the evening chill struck through their light clothing. With perfect timing, the dinner-gong chimed. Centaine rose from her seat at the end of the veranda to lead the entire party through the french windows into the long dining-room, where candlelight glinted on silver and crystal, and polished walnut glowed with a precious antique lustre.

  Isabella found her place-card and checked those on each side of her: Garry and Aaron Friedman.

  Damn, she thought. She had noticed him mooning after her ever since Garry had introduced them. It was natural that Nana would pair her with the only single male in the company.

  Aaron hurried across to hold her chair for her. As he seated her, she set herself the task of being pleasant. She soon discovered that he was a delightful conversationalist with a droll sense of humour that amused her. She no longer noticed his bald head.

  Garry had been occupied with his dinner partner but now he turned and leant forward to speak to Aaron across Isabella.

  ‘By the way, Aaron, if you really have got to be back at Pelindaba by Monday afternoon, I’ll fly you up in the Lear.’

  As the significance of the casual mention of that name struck her, Isabella felt her cheeks chill. The nuclear research institute was based at Pelindaba.

  ‘Are you all right, Bella?’ Garry was watching her with concern.

  ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘For a moment you looked quite strange.’

  ‘Nonsense, Garry. You are imagining things.’ But she was thinking furiously as Garry and Aaron made their arrangements. By the time Garry turned his attention back to his own partner, she had gathered herself.

  ‘I have neglected to ask you what discipline you teach, Professor.’

  ‘Won’t you call me Aaron, Doctor?’

  She smiled. ‘Only if you call me Isabella, Professor.’

  ‘I am a physicist, Isabella, a nuclear physicist. Very boring, I’m afraid.’

  ‘That’s not fair on yourself, Aaron.’ She touched his wrist lightly. ‘It’s the science of the future, in war and in peace.’

  Still touching him, she turned one shoulder and leant towards him so that the sheer silk of her décolletage fell away from her bosom. She wore no bra. When his eyes changed their direction of gaze and opened very wide, she knew that he was staring at her nipple. She gave him two seconds more before she straightened up, ending the show, and she lifted her fingers from his wrist.

  In those two seconds Aaron Friedman had undergone a profound change. He was now a man bewitched.

  ‘Where is your wife, Aaron?’ she asked.

  ‘My wife and I were divorced almost five years ago.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ She lowered her voice to a husky murmur and let her sympathy show in her eyes, staring deeply into his.

  Later that evening, while preparing for bed, Isabella sat in front of her dressing table and regarded herself in the mirror as she creamed away the last traces of her make-up.

  ‘Israel, Pelindaba, nuclear physics . . .’ she murmured. ‘It just has to add up to one big bang.’

  Not a month had passed during the past two years in which she had not been able to send some intelligence to her masters. Most of it was routine reports and minutes of meetings. But this could at last hasten her next meeting with Nicholas.

  During dinner Aaron had professed a great love of horses and riding – but, then, he would probably have declared a fascination with polar exploration and munching razor-blades if he thought that was what she wanted to hear. She would soon see how well he sat a horse. They had a date to ride out at dawn tomorrow morning.

  ‘How far will you go?’ Isabella asked herself in the mirror. She thought about it carefully before she answered. ‘Well, he is terribly amusing and quite sweet, and they do say that men with bald heads have a tremendous libido.’ She pulled a face at herself in the mirror. ‘You are a terrible little tart, aren’t you? A regular Mata Hari.’

  When she was fourteen years old her brother Sean had taught her a smutty rhyme about Mata Hari. How did it go? She cast her mind back.

  ‘She learnt the location

  Of a very secret station

  On the point of emission

  In the twenty-third position.’

  When she had asked him what ‘emission’ meant, Sean had sniggered dirtily and darkly. She had been obliged to look it up in the dictionary, which didn’t do much to clarify the issue. She smiled at her unintended pun.

  ‘Would you actually go that far?’ she demanded of herself and grinned again. ‘Well, perhaps not as far as the twenty-third. The second or third position should do the trick quite nicely.’ Beneath the flippancy she knew she would do anything for Nicky and Ramón.

  Dawn was still only a pale promise in the east when she went down to the stables the following morning, but already Aaron was waiting for her. He wore jodhpurs and riding-boots. That he had his own riding-gear was encouraging.

  The syce was already walking the saddled horses. The animals at Dragon’s Fountain were seldom exercised sufficiently, and there were always fields full of lucerne and oats irrigated from the spring. They were usually full of pep. H
owever, she had ordered the quietest old gelding in the stables for Aaron. She hoped he could manage him, and she watched uneasily as he approached his mount. She need not have worried. Aaron went up into the saddle, and she saw immediately that he had a good solid seat and gentle hands.

  They skirted the kopje as the sun burst over the horizon. It was cool enough to make her grateful for the waxed cotton Barbour hacking-jacket she wore. The still air had that peculiar desert lambency that made her believe that she could see to the very ends of the earth.

  The vultures left their shaggy nests in the rock-cliff above them and soared on wide graceful wings overhead. Out on the plain the springbok herds were still nervous and jittery from the previous day’s hunting. In their alarm they erected the snowy plumes of mane from the pouches of skin along their spines and flashed them in the bright morning sunlight as they blew away, lightly as smoke, into the purple blossoming sage. The sweet clean air seemed to fizz like champagne in her head, and she felt gay and reckless.

  Once the horses had warmed up, Isabella urged her mare into a gallop, and led them on a wildly exhilarating charge along the old dry riverbed and down to the dam. Huge flocks of Egyptian geese rose honking from the muddy brown water as they reined up on the bank.

  Isabella slid from the saddle and dabbed in theatrical distress at her eye with the end of her silk scarf. Aaron tumbled from the saddle with gratifying concern.

  ‘Are you all right, Isabella?’

  ‘I seem to have something in my eye.’

  ‘May I look?’

  She turned her face up to him. He cupped it gently in his hands and stared into her eye.

  ‘I don’t see anything.’

  She blinked her long dark lashes, and the early sunlight splintered into myriad pinpoints of pure sapphire in the depths of her iris.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked. His breath was sweet, and his body odour was clean and manly. She stared back into his eyes. They were dark and shining as burnt wild honey.

  He touched her lower lid, gently massaging the eyeball through the skin.