Power of the Sword

by Wilbur Smith

  Despite himself and his rage at Fourie, Lothar threw back his head and laughed with delight and admiration.

  ‘Fourie and his strikers don’t realize what they are taking on,’ he roared. ‘By God, I’d prefer to tickle an angry black mamba with a short stick than get in Centaine Courtney’s way right now.’ He sobered and thought about it for a while, then he told Hendrick and Manfred quietly:

  ‘I have a feeling that those diamonds will be coming through to Windhoek, strike or no strike. But I don’t think Fourie will be driving the truck, in fact I don’t give Fourie much chance of driving anything again. So we won’t have a nice polite co-operative escort to hand the package over to us as we had planned. But the diamonds will be coming through, and we are going to be here when they do.’

  The yellow Daimler passed their position at eleven o’clock the following night. Lothar watched the glow of the headlights gradually harden into solid white beams of light that swept across the plain towards him and then dipped and disappeared into the riverbed only to blaze up into the moonless sky as the Daimler pointed its nose up the cutting and climbed out of the riverbed again. The engine bellowed in low gear on the steep incline and then settled to a high whine as it shot over the top and sped away into the north-east towards the H’ani Mine.

  Lothar struck a match and checked his watch. ‘Say she left Windhoek an hour after her telegraph last night – that means she has reached here in twenty-two hours’ straight driving, over these roads in the dark.’ He whistled softly. ‘If she keeps going like that, she’ll be at the H’ani Mine before noon tomorrow. It doesn’t seem possible.’

  The blue hills rose out of the heat mirage ahead of Centaine, but this time their magic was unable to captivate her. She had been at the wheel for thirty-two hours with only brief intervals of rest while she refuelled at the staging posts, and once when she had pulled to the side of the road and slept for two hours.

  She was tired. The weariness ached in the marrow of her bones, burned her eyes like acid and lay upon her shoulders and crushed her down in the leather seat of the Daimler as though she wore a suit of heavy chain mail. Yet her anger fuelled her, and when she saw the galvanized iron roofs of the mine buildings shining in the sun her weariness dropped away.

  She stopped the Daimler and stepped down in the road to stretch and swing her arms, forcing fresh blood into her stiff limbs. Then she twisted the rearview mirror and examined her face in it. Her eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed with little wet balls of mud and mucus in the corners. Her face was deathly white, powdered with pale dust and drained of blood by her fatigue.

  She wet a cloth with cool water from the canvas water bag and cleaned the dust from her skin. Then from her toilet bag she took the bottle of eyewash and little blue eyebath. She bathed her eyes. They were clear and bright again when she checked in the mirror, and she patted her pale cheeks until the blood rouged them. She readjusted the scarf around her head, stripped off the full-length white dust-jacket that protected her clothes and she looked clean and rested and ready for trouble.

  There were little groups of women and children gathered at the corners of the avenues. They watched her sullenly and a little apprehensively as she drove past them on the way to the administration building. She sat straightbacked behind the wheel and looked directly ahead.

  As she neared the office, she saw the pickets who had been lolling under the thorn tree outside the gates hastily reorganizing themselves. There were twenty at least, most of the able-bodied white artisans on the mine. They formed a line across the road and linked arms facing her. Their faces were ugly and threatening.

  ‘Nothing goes in! Nothing goes out!’ they began to chant as she slowed. She saw that most of them had armed themselves with clubs and pick handles.

  Centaine thrust the palm of her hand down on the button and the Daimler’s horn squealed like a wounded bull elephant and she drove hard at the centre of the picket line with the accelerator pedal pressed to the floorboards. The men in the centre saw her face behind the windshield and realized that she would run them down. At the last minute they scattered.

  One of them yelled, ‘We want our jobs!’ and swung his pick handle against the rear window. The glass starred and collapsed over the leather seat, but Centaine was through.

  She pulled up in front of the verandah just as Twentyman-Jones hurried out of his office struggling with his jacket and necktie.

  ‘We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow at the very earliest.’

  ‘Your friends were.’ She pointed at the shattered window, and his voice went shrill with indignation.

  ‘They attacked you? That’s unforgivable.’

  ‘I agree,’ she said. ‘And I’m not going to be the one who does the forgiving.’

  Twentyman-Jones wore a huge service pistol holstered on his skinny hip. Behind him was little Mr Brantingham, the mine bookkeeper, his head bald as an ostrich egg and much too large for his narrow rounded shoulders. Behind his gold-rimmed pince-nez he was close to tears, but he carried a double-barrelled shotgun in his pudgy white hands.

  ‘You are a brave man,’ Centaine told him. ‘I won’t forget your loyalty.’

  She led Twentyman-Jones into her office and sat down thankfully at her desk. ‘How many other men are with us?’

  ‘Only the office staff, eight of them. The artisans and mine staff are all out, though I suspect there has been pressure on some of them.’

  ‘Even Rodgers and Maclear?’ They were her senior overseers. ‘Are they out also?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. Both of them are on the strike committee.’

  ‘With Fourie?’

  ‘The three of them are the ringleaders.’

  ‘I’ll see that they never work again,’ she said bitterly, and he dropped his eyes and mumbled:

  ‘I think we have to bear in mind that they haven’t broken the law. They have the legal right to withhold their labour, and to bargain collectively—’

  ‘Not when I am struggling to keep the mine running. Not when I am trying to ensure that there will be jobs for at least some of them. Not after all I’ve done for them.’

  ‘I’m afraid they do have that right,’ he insisted.

  ‘Whose side are you on, Dr Twentyman-Jones?’

  He looked stricken. ‘You should never have to ask that question,’ he said. ‘From the first day we met I’ve been your man. You know that. I was merely pointing out your legal position.’

  Immediately contrite, Centaine stood up and reached for his arm to console him.

  ‘Forgive me. I’m tired and jumpy.’ She had stood up too quickly and the blood drained from her head. She turned deathly pale and swayed giddily on her feet. He seized her and steadied her.

  ‘When did you last sleep? You have driven from Windhoek without rest.’ He led her to the leather sofa and forced her gently down upon it.

  ‘You are going to sleep now, for at least eight hours. I’ll have fresh clothes brought down from your bungalow.’

  ‘I must speak to the ringleaders.’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head as he drew the curtains. ‘Not until you are refreshed and strong again. Otherwise you could make mistakes of judgement.’

  She sagged back and pressed her fingers into her closed eyelids. ‘You are right – as always.’

  ‘I’ll wake you at six this evening, and I’ll inform the strike committee that you will interview them at eight. That will give us two hours to plan our strategy.’

  The three members of the strike committee filed into Centaine’s office, and she stared at them for fully three minutes without speaking. She had deliberately had all the chairs removed, except those in which she and Twentyman-Jones sat. The strikers were forced to stand before her like schoolboys.

  ‘There are over a hundred thousand men out of work in this country at the present time,’ she said in a dispassionate voice. ‘Any one of whom would go down on his knees for your jobs.’

  ‘That won’t bloody work,’ said Macl
ear. He was a nondescript-looking man, of medium height and uncertain age, but Centaine knew he was quick-witted, tenacious and resourceful. She wished he was with her rather than against.

  ‘If you are going to use foul language in front of me, Mr Maclear,’ she said, ‘you can leave immediately.’

  ‘That won’t work either, Mrs Courtney.’ He smiled sadly in acknowledgement of her spirit. ‘You know our rights, and we know our rights.’

  Centaine looked at Rodgers. ‘How is your wife, Mr Rodgers?’ A year previously she had paid for the woman to travel to Johannesburg for urgent treatment by one of the leading abdominal surgeons in the Union. Rodgers had gone with her on full pay, and all expenses paid.

  ‘She’s well, Mrs Courtney,’ he said sheepishly.

  ‘What does she think of this nonsense of yours?’ He looked down at his feet. ‘She’s a sensible lady,’ Centaine went on. ‘I would think she is worrying about her three little ones.’

  ‘We are all together,’ Fourie cut in. ‘We are all solid, and the women are behind us. You can forget all that—’

  ‘Mr Fourie, please do not interrupt me when I am speaking.’

  ‘Playing the high and mighty lady muck-a-muck around here is going to get you nowhere,’ he blustered. ‘We’ve got you and your bloody mine and your bloody diamonds over a barrel. You are the one who has got to do the listening when we speak, and that’s the plain fact of the matter.’ He grinned cockily and looked to his mates for approbation. The grin concealed his trepidation. On one side he had Lothar De La Rey and his threat. If he could not come up with a good enough excuse for not performing his obligations he knew he was a dead man. He had to aggravate the strike until someone else transported the diamonds and gave him an escape. ‘You aren’t going to get one single bloody diamond off this property until we say so, lady. We’re keeping them here as hostages. We know you’ve got a really whopping packet sitting there in the strongroom, and that’s where it will stay, until you listen to what we have to say.’ He was a good enough judge of character to guess what Centaine Courtney’s reaction to that threat would be.

  Centaine studied his face intently. There was something that did not ring true, something devious and convoluted in his manner. He was being too deliberately aggressive and provocative.

  ‘All right,’ she agreed quietly. ‘I’ll listen. Tell me what you want.’

  She sat quietly while Fourie read the list of demands. Her face was impassive, the only signs of her anger that Twentyman-Jones knew so well were the soft flush of blood that stained her throat and the steady rhythmic tap of her foot on the wooden floor.

  Fourie reached the end of the reading and there was another long silence. Then he proffered the document.

  ‘This is your copy.’

  ‘Put it on my desk,’ she ordered, disdaining to touch it. ‘The people that were retrenched from this mine last month were given three months’ pay in lieu of notice,’ she said. ‘Three times more than they were entitled to, you know that. They were all given good letters of reference, you know that also.’

  ‘They are our mates,’ Fourie said stubbornly. ‘Some of them our family.’

  ‘All right.’ She nodded. ‘You have made your position clear. You may leave now.’ She rose and they looked at one another in consternation.

  ‘Aren’t you going to give us an answer?’ Maclear asked.

  ‘Eventually,’ she nodded.

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘When I am ready and not before.’

  They filed towards the door, but before he reached it, Maclear turned back and faced her defiantly.

  ‘They’ve closed the company store and cut off the water and electricity to our cottages,’ he challenged her.

  ‘On my orders,’ she agreed.

  ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘I don’t see why not. I own the store, the generator, the pumphouse and the cottages.’

  ‘We’ve got wives and children to feed.’

  ‘You should have thought about them before you started your strike.’

  ‘We can take what we want, you know. Even your diamonds. You can’t stop us.’

  ‘Make me a very happy woman,’ she invited. ‘Do it. Break into the store and steal the goods from the shelves. Dynamite the strongroom and take my diamonds. Assault my loyal people. Nothing would please me more than to see the three of you in gaol for life – or dancing on the gallows tree.’

  As soon as they were alone again, she turned to Twentyman-Jones.

  ‘He is right. The first and only consideration is the diamonds. I have to get them safely into the bank vaults in Windhoek.’

  ‘We can send them in under police escort,’ he agreed, but she shook her head.

  ‘It might take five more days for the police to reach here. There is all sorts of red tape before they can move. No, I want those diamonds away from here before dawn. You know the insurance doesn’t cover riot and civil disturbance. If something happens to them I will be ruined, Dr Twentyman-Jones. They are my lifeblood. I cannot risk them falling into the hands of these ignorant arrogant brutes.’

  ‘Tell me what you intend.’

  ‘I want you to take the Daimler round to its garage in the rear. Have it refuelled and checked. We will load the diamonds through the back door.’ She pointed across her office to the concealed door she used sometimes when she wished to avoid being seen entering or leaving. ‘At midnight when the pickets are asleep you will cut the barbed-wire fence directly opposite the garage door.’

  ‘Good.’ He was following her intentions. ‘That will let us out into the sanitary lane. The pickets are at the main gates on the opposite side of the compound. They haven’t posted anyone on the rear side. Once we are clear of the lane it’s a straight run out onto the main road to Windhoek, we’ll be clear in a matter of seconds.’

  ‘Not we, Dr Twentyman-Jones,’ she said, and he stared at her.

  ‘You don’t intend going alone?’ he asked.

  ‘I have just made the journey alone, swiftly and with not the least sign of trouble. I anticipate no problem with the return. I need you here. You know I cannot leave the mine to Brantingham or one of the clerks. You have to be here to deal with these strikers. Without you they may wreck the plant or sabotage the workings. It would only take a stick or two of dynamite.’

  He wiped his face with his open hand, from forehead to chin, in an agony of indecision, torn between two duties: the mine which he had built up from nothing and which was his pride, and the woman who he loved as dearly as a daughter or a wife he had never had. At last he sighed. She was right, it had to be that way.

  ‘Then take one of the men with you,’ he pleaded.

  ‘Brantingham, bless him?’ she asked, raising her eyebrows, and he threw up both hands as he saw how ridiculous that idea was.

  ‘I’ll take the Daimler around to the back,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll get a telegraph through to Abe in Windhoek. He can send out an escort immediately to meet you on the road, that is if the strikers haven’t cut the wires yet.’

  ‘Don’t send that until I am clear,’ Centaine instructed. ‘The strikers may just have had enough sense to have put a tap on the line, in fact that is probably why they have not cut it yet.’

  Twentyman-Jones nodded. ‘Very well. What time do you intend breaking out?’

  ‘Three o’clock tomorrow morning,’ she said, without hesitation. It was the hour when human vitality was at its lowest ebb. That was when the strike picket would be least prepared for swift reaction.

  ‘Very well, Mrs Courtney. I will have my cook prepare you a light dinner – and then I suggest you get some rest. I will have everything ready and wake you at two-thirty.’

  She woke the instant he touched her shoulder and sat up.

  ‘Half past two o’clock,’ Twentyman-Jones said. ‘The Daimler is refuelled and the diamonds loaded. The barbed wire is cut. I have drawn you a bath and there is a selection of fresh clothes from the bungalow.’

&nb
sp; ‘I will be ready in fifteen minutes,’ she said.

  They stood beside the Daimler in the darkened garage and spoke in whispers. The double doors were open, and there was a crescent moon lighting the yard.

  ‘I have marked the gap in the wire.’ Twentyman-Jones pointed and she saw the small white flags drooping from the barbed wire strands fifty yards away.

  ‘The canisters of industrial diamonds are in the boot, but I have put the package of top stones on the passenger seat beside you.’ He leaned through the open window and patted the black despatch box. It was the size and shape of a small suitcase, but of japanned steel with a brass lock.

  ‘Good.’ Centaine buttoned her dust-jacket and pulled on her soft dogskin driving gauntlets.

  ‘The shotgun is loaded with Number Ten birdshot, so you can fire at anybody who tries to stop you without risk of committing murder. It’ll just give them a good sting. But if you mean business, there is a box of buckshot in the glove compartment.’

  Centaine slid in behind the wheel and pulled the door closed gently so as not to alert a listener out in the silent night. She placed the double-barrelled shotgun on top of the diamond chest and cocked both hammers.

  ‘There is a basket in the boot, sandwiches and a Thermos of coffee.’

  She looked at him out of the side window and said seriously, ‘You are my tower.’

  ‘Don’t let anything happen to you,’ he said. ‘A pox on the diamonds, we can dig more of them. You are unique, there’s only one of you.’ Impulsively he unbuckled the service revolver from around his waist and leaned into the Daimler to push it into the pocket at the back of the driver’s seat. ‘It’s the only insurance I can offer you. Remember there is a cartridge under the hammer,’ he said. ‘Pray you never need it.’ He stepped back and gave her a laconic salute. ‘God speed!’