Wilbur Smith - Gold Mine

by Gold Mine(Lit)

  "Theresa Steyner," she answered his call.

  "We've got a week to ourselves," he told her. "One whole glorious week." "When?"she demanded joyously.

  And he told her.

  "Where shall we go?" she asked.

  "We'll think of somewhere." At 11:26 a.m. on December 16th, Johnny Delange blasted the face of the drive, and went forward in the fumes and dust.

  In the beam of his lantern, the new rock blown from the face was completely different from the blueish Ventersdorp quartzite. It was a glassy, blackish green, veined with tiny white lines, more like marble than country rock.

  "We are on the dyke." He spoke to Big King, and stooped to Pie. up a lump of the serpentine rock. He weighed it in his hand.

  "We've done it, we've beaten the bastard!" Big King stood silently beside him. He did not share Johnny's elation.

  "Right!" Johnny tossed the lump of rock back onto the pile. "Bar down, and make safe. Then pull them out of the drive. We are finished here until further orders."

  "Well done, Johnny," applauded Rod. "Clean her up and pull out of the drive. I don't know how much longer it will be till we get the order to hole through the dyke. But take a holiday in the meantime. I'll pay you four fathoms of bonus a day while you are waiting." He broke the connection with his finger keeping the receiver to his ear.

  He dialled and spoke to the switch-board girl at Head Office. "Get me Doctor Steyner, please. This is Rodney Ironsides." He waited a few seconds and then Manfred came on the line.

  "We've hit the Big Dipper," Rod told him.

  "I will leave for Europe on tomorrow morning's Boeing," said Manfred.

  "You are to do nothing until I return." Manfred cradled the receiver and depressed the button on his intercom.

  "Cancel all my appointments," he told his secretary. "I am unavailable."

  "Very well, Doctor Steyner." Manfred picked up the receiver of his unlisted, direct line telephone. He dialled.

  "Hello, Andrew. Will you tell him that I am ready to discharge my obligations. We have intersected the Big Dipper." He listened for a few seconds, then spoke again.

  "Very well, I will wait for your reply." Andrew replaced the telephone and went out through the sliding glass doors onto the terrace. It was a lazy summer's day, hushed with heat, and the sun sparkled on the crystal clear waters of the swimming-pool. Insects murmured languidly in the massed banks of blooms that surrounded the terrace. The fat man stood before an artist's easel. He wore a blue beret and a white smock that hung like a maternity dress over his jutting stomach.

  His model lay face down on an air mattress by the edge of the pool. She was a dainty, dark-haired girl with a pixy face and a doll-like body.

  Her discarded bikini lay in a damp bundle on the flags of the terrace.

  Drops of water caught the sun and bejewelled her creamy buttocks, giving her a paradoxical air of innocence and oriental eroticism.

  "That was Steyner," said Andrew. "He reports that they have hit the Big Dipper." The fat man did not look up. He went on laying paint upon the canvas with complete concentration.

  "Please lift your right shoulder, my dear, you are covering that utterly delightful bosom of yours," he instructed, and the girl obeyed him immediately.

  Finally he stepped back and regarded his own work critically.

  "You may have a break now." He wiped his brushes while the naked girl stood up, stretched like a cat and then dived into the pool. She surfaced with the water sticking her short dark hair against her head like the pelt of an otter, and swam slowly to the far end of the pool.

  "Cable New York, Paris, London, Tokyo and Berlin, the code word "Gothic"," he instructed Andrew. This was the word which would unleash the bear offensive on the financial markets of the world. On receipt of those cables, agents in the major cities would begin to sell the shares of the companies mining the Kitchenerville field, sell them by the millions.

  "Then instruct Steyner to get Ironsides out of the way, and hole through the dyke." Manfred answered Andrew's return call on the unlisted line. He listened to, and acknowledged, his instructions.

  Afterwards he sat still as a lizard, running over his preparations.

  Reviewing them minutely, examining them for flaws. There were none.

  It was time to begin the purchase of Sander Ditch shares.

  He called his secretary on the intercom and instructed her to place calls to numbers in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg itself. He wanted the purchase orders to come through a number of different brokers, so that it would not be obvious that there was only one buyer in the market.

  There was also the question of credit; he was not covering the purchase orders with banker's guarantees. The stock brokers were buying for him simply on his name and reputation and position with CRC Manfred could not place too large a buying order with any one firm lest they ask him to provide surety. Doctor Manfred Steyner had no surety to offer.

  So, instead, he placed moderate orders with dozens of different firms.

  By three o'clock that afternoon Manfred had ordered the purchase of three quarters of a million rand's worth of shares. He had no means of paying for those shares but he knew he would never be called upon to do so.

  When he sold them again in a few weeks" time they would have doubled in value.

  A few minutes after his final conversation with the firm of Swerling and Wright in Cape Town, his secretary came through on the intercom.

  "SAA have confirmed your reservation on the Boeing to Salisbury.

  Flight 126 at nine a.m. tomorrow. You are booked to return to Johannesburg on the Rhodesian Airways Viking at 6 p.m. tomorrow evening."

  "Thank you." Manfred grudged this wasted day but it was imperative that Theresa believed he had left for Europe. A She must see him depart on the SAA flight. "Please get my wife on the phone for me." "Theresa," he told her, "something important has come up. I have to fly to London tomorrow morning. I am afraid I will be away over Christmas." Her display of surprise and regret was unconvincing. She and Ironsides had made their own arrangements for the time he was away, Manfred was convinced of this.

  It was all working out very well, he thought as he cradled the receiver, very well indeed.

  The Daimler drew up under the portico of Jan Smuts Airport and the chauffeur opened the door for Terry and then for Manfred.

  While the porter removed his luggage from the boot of the Daimler, Manfred swept the car park with a quick scrutiny. So early in the morning it was less than half filled.

  There was a cream Volkswagen with a Kitchenerville number plate parked near the far end. All the line and senior members of the Sander Ditch had cream Volkswagens as their official vehicles.

  "The bee has come to the honey pot thought Manfred, and smiled bleakly.

  He took Terry's elbow into the main concourse of the airport.

  Terry waited while Manfred went through his ticket and immigration formalities. On the outside she was a demure and dutiful wife, but she also had seen the Volkswagen and inside she was itching and bubbling with excitement.

  Darting surreptitious glances from behind her sunglasses, looking for that tall broad-shouldered figure among the crowds.

  It seemed a lifetime until she stood alone on the observation balcony with the wind whipping her piebald calfskin coat around her legs, and blowing her hair into a snapping, dancing tangle. The long shark-like shape of the Boeing jet crouched at the far end of the runway and as it started forward Terry turned from the balcony rail and ran back into the main building.

  Rod was waiting for her just inside the doors, and he swung her off her feet.

  "Gottcha!" With her feet dangling, she put her arms around his neck and kissed him.

  The watchers paused and then smiled, and there was a minor traffic jam at the head of the stairs.

  "Come on," she entreated, "let's not waste a minute of it." He put her on her feet, and they ran down the staircase hand in hand. Terry paused only to dismiss the chauffeur, and the
n they ran through the car park like children let out of school, and clambered into the Volkswagen. Their luggage was on the back seat.

  "Go, she said, "go as fast as you can!" Twenty minutes later Rod pulled the Volkswagen to a tyre-squealing halt in front of the hangars at the private airfield.

  The twin-engined Cessna stood on the tarmac. Both engines were ticking over in readiness, and the mechanic climbed down from the cockpit when he recognized Terry.

  "Hello, Terry, right on time, he greeted her.

  "Hello, Hank. You've got her warmed up already. You are a sweety!"

  "Filed your flight plan also. Nothing too good for my most favourite customer." The mechanic was a chunky grizzled little man, and he looked at Rod curiously.

  "Give you a hand with the bags," he said.

  By the time they had the luggage stowed away in its compartment, Terry was in the cockpit speaking to the control tower.

  Rod climbed up into the passenger seat beside her.

  Terry switched off her radio and leaned over Rod's lap to speak to Hank.

  "Thanks, Hank." She paused delicately, and then went on with a rush.

  "Hank, if anyone asks you, I was on my own today, okay?"

  "Okay." Hank grinned at her. "Happy landings." And he closed the cockpit door, and Terry taxied out onto the runway.

  "Is this yours? Rod asked. It was a 100,000 rand's worth of aircraft.

  "Pops gave it to me for my birthday," Terry replied. "Do you like it?"

  "Not bad," Rod admitted.

  Terry turned upwind and applied the wheel brakes while she ran the engines up to peak revs, testing their response.

  Suddenly Rod realized that he was in the hands of a woman pilot. He fell silent and his nerves began to tighten up.

  "Let's go," said Terry and kicked off the brakes. The Cessna surged forward, and Rod gripped the arm rests and froze with his gaze fixed dead ahead.

  "Relax, Ironsides," Terry advised him without taking her eyes off the runway, "I've been flying since I was sixteen." At 3,000 feet she levelled out and banked gently onto an eastern heading.

  "Now that didn't hurt too much did it?" She smiled sideways at him.

  "You are quite a girl," he told her. "You can do all sorts of tricks."

  "You just wait," she warned him. "You ain't seen nothing yet!" They flew in silence until the Highveld had fallen away behind them, and they were over the dense green mattress of the Bushveld.

  "I'm going to divorce him." She broke the silence, and Rod was not surprised that they were experiencing the mental telepathy of closely attuned minds. He had been thinking about her husband also.

  "Good," he said.

  "You think I'd have a chance with you if I did?"

  "If you played your cards right, you might get that lucky." "Conceited swine," she said. "I don't know why I love you.

  "Do you? "he asked.

  "Yes."

  "And I you." They relapsed into a contented silence, until Terry put the Cessna in a shallow dive.

  "What's wrong?" Rod asked with alarm.

  "Going down to have a look for game." They flew low over thick olive-green bush broken by veils of golden brown grass.

  "There," said Rod, pointing ahead. A line of fat black bugs moving across one of the open places. "Buffalo! "And over there. "Terry pointed left.

  "Zebra and wildebeeste," Rod identified them. "And there is a giraffe." Its long stalk of a neck stuck up like a periscope.

  It broke into an awkward stiff-legged run as the aircraft roared overhead.

  "We have arrived." Terry indicated a pair of round granite koppies on the horizon ahead. They were as symmetrical as a young girl's breasts, and as they drew nearer Rod made out the thatched roof of a large building standing in the hollow between the koppies. Beyond it a long straight landing-strip had been cut from the trees, and the fat white sausage of a wind sock flew from its pole.

  Terry throttled back and circled the homestead. On the lawns half a dozen tiny figures waved up at the Cessna, and as they watched, two of the figures climbed into a toy Land Rover and set off for the landing-strip. A ribbon of white dust blew out from behind it.

  "That's Hans," Terry explained. "We can go down now." She lined the Cessna up for its approach, and then let it sink down with the motors bumbling softly. The ground came up and jarred the undercarriage, then they were taxiing to meet the racing Land Rover.

  The man who piled out of the Land Rover was white-haired, and sunburned like old leather.

  "Mrs. Steyner!" He was making no attempt to conceal his pleasure.

  "It's been much too long. Where have you been?" I've been busy, Hans." "New York? What the hell for?" said Hans surprisingly. This is Mr. Ironsides." Terry introduced them. "Rod, this is Hans Kruger.

  "Van Breda?" asked Hans as they shook hands. "You related to the van Bredas from Caledon?" "I don't think so," Rod muttered weakly and looked at Terry appealingly.

  "He is stone deaf," Terry explained. "Both his ear drums blown out by a hang fire in the 1930s. He won't admit it though."

  "I'm glad to hear it," Hans nodded, happily. "You always were a healthy girl. I remember when you were a little piccaninny."

  "He is an absolute darling though, so is his wife. They look after the shooting lodge for Pops," Terry told Rod.

  "Good idea!" Hans agreed heartily. "Let's get your bags in the Land Rover and go up to the house. I bet Mr. van Breda could use a drink also." And he winked at Rod.

  The lodge had thatch and rough-hewn timber roofing, stone-flagged floors covered with cured animal skins and Kelim rugs. There was a walk-in fireplace flanked by gun racks on which were displayed fifty fine examples of the gunsmith's art. The furniture was massive and masculine, leather-cushioned and low. The Spanish plaster walls were hung with trophies, horned heads and native weapons.

  A vast wooden staircase led up to the bedrooms that opened off the gallery above the main room. The bedrooms were air-conditioned, and after they had got rid of Hans and his fat wife, Rod and Terry tested the bed to see if it was suitable.

  An hour and a half later the bed had been judged eminently satisfactory, and as they went down to pass further judgement on the gargantuan lunch that fat Mrs. Hans had spread for them, Terry remarked, "Has it ever occurred to you, Mr. Ironsides, that there are parts of your anatomy other than your flanks which are ferrous in character?" Then she giggled and added softly, "And thank the Lord for that. " Lunch was an exhausting experience and Terry pointed out that there wasait'de sense in going out before four o'clock as the game would still be in thick cover avoiding the midday heat, so they went back upstairs.

  After four o'clock Rod selected a.375 magnum Holland and Holland rifle from the rack, filled a cartridge belt with ammunition from one of the drawers, and they went out to the Land Rover.

  "How big is this place?" Rod asked as he turned the Land Rover away from the gardens and took the track out into the virgin bush.

  "You can drive for twenty miles in any direction and it's all ours.

  Over there our boundary runs against the Kruger National Park," Terry answered.

  They drove along the banks of the river, skirting sandbanks on which grew fluffy-headed reeds. The water ran fast between glistening black rocks, then spread into slow lazy pools.

  They saw a dozen varieties of big game, stopping every few hundred yards to watch some lovely animal.

  "Pops obviously doesn't allow shooting here," Rod remarked, as a kudu bull with long spiral horns and trumpet-shaped ears studied them with big wet eyes from a range of thirty feet. "The game is as tame as domestic cattle."

  "Only family are allowed to shoot," Terry agreed. "You qualify as family, however." Rod shook his head. "It would be murder." Rod indicated the kudu. "That old fellow would eat out of your hand."

  "I'm glad you feel like that," Terry said, and they drove on slowly.

  The evening was not cool enough to warrant a log fire in the cavernous fireplace of the lodge. They lit one an
yway because Rod decided it would be pleasant to sit in front of a big, leaping fire, drink whisky and hold the girl you love.

  When Inspector Grobbelaar lowered his teacup, there was a white scum of cream on the tips of "his mustache. He licked it off carefully, and looked across at Sergeant Hugo.

  "Who have we got next?" he asked.

  Hugo consulted his notebook.