Rage

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Many men will die with him,’ she whispered. ‘My father. Is there no way he can be spared, Moses?’

  He did not reply, but she saw the reflection of his gaze in the mirror and she could not bear the scorn. She dropped her own eyes and murmured.

  ‘I’m sorry – I will be strong. I will not speak of it again.’ But her mind was racing. There must be some way to keep her father out of the chamber at the fateful moment, but it would have to be compelling. As Deputy Leader of the Opposition, he must attend such solemn business as Verwoerd’s speech. Moses disturbed her thoughts.

  ‘I want you to repeat your duties to me,’ he said.

  ‘We have gone over it so often,’ she protested weakly.

  ‘There must be no misunderstanding.’ His tone was fierce. ‘Do as I tell you.’

  ‘Once the House is in session – so that we are certain Shasa will not intercept us – we will go up to his suite in the usual way,’ she began, and he nodded confirmation as she went over the arrangements, correcting her when she omitted a detail. ‘I will leave the office at exactly ten thirty and go to the visitors’ gallery. We must be certain that Verwoerd is there.’

  ‘Do you have your pass?’

  ‘Yes.’ Tara opened her handbag and showed him. ‘As soon as Verwoerd rises to begin his address, I will return to the office, using the panel door. By that time you will have …’ Her voice faltered.

  ‘Go on,’ he ordered harshly.

  ‘You will have connected the detonator. I will confirm that Verwoerd is in his seat, and you will …’ Again her voice dried up.

  ‘I will do what has to be done,’ he finished for her and then went on, ‘After the explosion there will be a period of total panic and confusion – with enormous damage to the ground floor. There will be no control, no organized police or security effort. That period will last sufficiently long for us to go downstairs and leave the building unchallenged, just as most other survivors will be doing.’

  ‘When you leave the country, can I come with you, Moses?’ she pleaded.

  ‘No.’ He shook his head firmly. ‘I must travel swiftly and you would impede us and put us in danger. You will be safer here. It will only be for a short time. After the assassination of the white slave-masters, our people will rise. The young comrades of Umkhonto we Sizwe are in position and ready to call the nation to revolution. Millions of our people will spontaneously fill the streets. When they have seized power, I will return. Then you will have a place of high honour by my side.’

  It was amazing how naïvely she accepted his assurances, he thought grimly. Only a besotted woman could doubt that afterwards the security police would take her away, and her interrogation would be brutal. It did not matter. It did not matter if they tried and hanged her. Her husband would be dead with Verwoerd and Tara Courtney’s usefulness would be at an end. One day, when the people’s democratic government of the African National Congress ruled the land, they would name a street or a square after her, the white woman martyr, but now she was expendable.

  ‘Give me your promise, Moses,’ she begged him.

  His voice was a deep reassuring rumble. ‘You have done well, everything I have required of you. You and your son will have a place at my side just as soon as that is possible. I give you my promise.’

  ‘Oh, Moses, I love you,’ she whispered. ‘I shall always love you.’ Then she sat back in her seat and adopted the role of cool white madam, as Moses turned the Chevrolet out of Parliament Lane into the members’ carpark and the constable at the gate saw the sticker on the windshield and saluted respectfully.

  Moses parked in the reserved bay and switched off the engine. They had fifteen minutes to wait before the House went into session.

  ‘Ten minutes to, Mr Courtney,’ Tricia called Shasa on the intercom. ‘You had better start going down, if you don’t want to miss the opening of the PM’s speech.’

  ‘Thank you, Tricia.’ Shasa had been totally absorbed with his own work. Verwoerd had asked him to draw up a full report on the country’s ability to respond to an embargo on sales of military equipment to South Africa by her Western erstwhile allies. Apparently Macmillan had hinted at this possibility to Verwoerd, a veiled threat in private conversation just before his departure. Verwoerd wanted the report before the month’s end, which was typical of the man, and Shasa would have difficulty meeting that deadline.

  ‘Oh, by the way, Mr Courtney,’ Tricia stopped him breaking off the connection. ‘I spoke to Odendaal.’

  ‘Odendaal?’ It took Shasa a moment to make the mental switch.

  ‘Yes, about the work on your ceiling.’

  ‘Oh, I hope you gave him a flea in the ear. What did he say?’

  ‘He says there has been no work done in your office, and no request from your wife or anybody else for rewiring of any kind.’

  ‘That’s decidedly odd,’ Shasa looked up at the damage, ‘because somebody has definitely been fiddling around in here. If it wasn’t Odendaal, then have you any idea who it might be, Tricia?’

  ‘No, Mr Courtney.’

  ‘Nobody been in here to your knowledge?’ Shasa insisted.

  ‘Nobody, sir, except of course your wife and her driver.’

  ‘All right, thank you, Tricia.’ Shasa stood up and fetched his jacket from the dumb valet in the corner. While he shrugged into it, he studied the hole above his desk and the length of wire that had been drawn out of the corner beside the bookcase and the end tucked behind the row of encyclopaedias. Until Tricia mentioned it, he had forgotten his irritation in the face of other more dire considerations, but now he thought about the little mystery with full attention.

  He crossed to the mirror and while he reshaped the knot of his tie and adjusted his black eye-patch he pondered the additional enigma of Tara’s new chauffeur. Tricia’s remark had reminded him of it. He still hadn’t taken the man to task for his unauthorized private use of the Chev. ‘Damn – where have I seen him before?’ he wondered, and with one last glance at the ceiling, he left the office. He was still thinking about the driver as he went down the corridor. Manfred De La Rey was waiting for him at the head of the stairs. He was smiling and quietly triumphant, and Shasa realized that he had not spoken to him in private since the shock of Macmillan’s speech.

  ‘So,’ Manfred greeted him, ‘Britannia has cut the apron strings, my friend.’

  ‘Do you remember how once you called me Soutpiel?’ Shasa asked.

  ‘Ja.’ Manfred chuckled. “‘Salt Prick” – with one foot in Cape Town and the other in London and the best part of you dangling in the Atlantic Ocean. Ja, I remember.’

  ‘Well, from now on I will have both feet in Cape Town,’ Shasa told him. It was not until that moment, when the fact of Britain’s rejection had sunk in, that Shasa realized for the first time that above all other things he was first and foremost a South African.

  ‘Good,’ Manfred nodded. ‘So at last you understand that although we may not always like each other or agree, circumstances have made us brothers in this land. One cannot survive without the other, and in the end we have only each other to turn to.’

  They went down into the chamber and took their seats on the green leather benches, side by side.

  When the Assembly rose to pray, to ask God’s blessing on their deliberations, Shasa looked across the floor at Blaine Malcomess and felt a familiar rush of affection for him. Silver-haired but tanned and handsome with those protruding ears and big strong nose, Blaine had been a tower in his life for as long as he cared to remember. In his new mood of patriotism – and, yes, of defiance of Britain’s rejection – he was glad of the knowledge that this would draw them still closer together. It would narrow the political differences between them, just as it had brought Afrikaner and Englishman closer.

  As the prayer ended, he sat down and turned his attention to Dr Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd as he rose to make his address. Verwoerd was a strong, articulate speaker and a brilliant debater. His address was sure to be long a
nd carefully reasoned. Shasa knew they were in for fine entertainment and he crossed his arms, leaned against the padded back rest with anticipation and closed his eyes.

  Then before Verwoerd could say his first word, Shasa opened his eyes and sat up straight on his bench. In that moment when he had cleared his mind of all recent worry, while he was relaxed and receptive, the ancient memory had flashed in upon him – full blown. He remembered where and when he had last seen Tara’s new chauffeur.

  ‘Moses Gama,’ he said aloud, but his words were lost in the applause that greeted the Prime Minister.

  Tara gave the doorman at the main entrance to parliament a cheery smile, and was surprised at herself. She felt cocooned in a layer of unreality, as though she watched an actress playing her role.

  She heard the muffled applause from the chamber as she swept up the stairs with Moses following her at a respectful distance in his chauffeur’s uniform and burdened by an armful of parcels. They had done this so often, and Tara smiled again as they passed one of the secretaries in the corridor. She tapped on the door to Shasa’s suite and without waiting for an answer swept into the outer office. Tricia rose from her desk.

  ‘Oh, good morning, Mrs Courtney. You’ll be late for the PM’s address. You’d better hurry.’

  ‘Stephen, you can just leave the parcels.’ Tara stopped in front of Tricia as Moses closed the outer door.

  ‘Oh, by the way. Somebody has been working on the ceiling of your husband’s office,’ Tricia came around the desk, as though to lead the way to Shasa’s office. ‘We wondered if you knew anything—’

  Moses placed the armful of parcels on a chair, and with his hands free turned to Tricia as she came level with him. He whipped one arm around her neck and with his other hand covered her mouth. Tricia was powerless in his grip, but her eyes flew wide with shock.

  ‘There are ropes and a gag in the top packet,’ Moses spoke softly to Tara. ‘Get them.’

  Tara stood paralysed. ‘You said nothing about this,’ she blurted.

  ‘Get them.’ His voice was still low, but it crackled with impatience and Tara sprang to obey.

  ‘Tie her hands behind her,’ Moses ordered, and while Tara fumbled at the knots, he stuffed a clean, white folded cloth into the terrified girl’s mouth and taped it in place.

  ‘Stay in here,’ he ordered Tara, ‘in case somebody comes in,’ and he bundled Tricia through into the inner office and forced her down on her stomach behind the desk. Swiftly he checked Tara’s knots. They were loose and sloppy. He retied them and then bound Tricia’s ankles as securely.

  ‘Come in here,’ he called, and Tara was flustered and stammering as she rushed in.

  ‘Moses, you haven’t hurt her?’

  ‘Stop that!’ he told her. ‘You have important work to do and you are behaving like a hysterical child.’

  She closed her eyes, clenched her fists and took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry.’ She opened her eyes. ‘I realize that it was necessary. I didn’t think. I am all right now.’

  Moses had already crossed to the corner of the bookshelf and he reached up and brought down the roll of wire from behind the encyclopaedias. He paid it out across the carpet as he moved back to the desk.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now go to your seat in the gallery. Wait five minutes after Verwoerd begins to speak and then come back here. Do not run, do not even hurry. Do everything calmly and deliberately.’

  ‘I understand.’ Tara crossed to the mirror and opened her handbag. Quickly she ran a comb through her hair and retouched her lipstick.

  Moses had gone to the altar chest and lifted the heavy bronze Bushman statue. He placed it on the carpet and lifted the lid of the chest. Tara hesitated, watching him anxiously.

  ‘Why are you waiting?’ he asked. ‘Go, woman, and do your duty.’

  ‘Yes, Moses.’ She hurried to the door of the outer office.

  ‘Lock both doors behind you,’ he ordered.

  ‘Yes, Moses,’ she whispered.

  As Tara went down the corridor, she was searching in her handbag again, and she found her leather-bound notepad with the miniature gold-plated pencil in the spine loops. At the head of the stairs she paused, and used the banisters to steady the notepad while she scribbled hastily on a blank page.

  Daddy,

  Centaine has been seriously injured in a motorcar accident. She is asking for you. Please come quickly.

  Tara

  She tore the page out of the notebook and folded it. It was the one appeal to which she knew her father would respond and she wrote his name on the folded note.

  Instead of going directly to the visitors’ gallery, she hurried down the wide staircase into the lobby and ran to one of the uniformed parliamentary messengers who was standing outside the main doors to the chamber.

  ‘You have to get this message to Colonel Malcomess,’ she told him.

  ‘I don’t like to go in now, Dr Verwoerd is speaking,’ the messenger demurred, but she thrust the note into his hand.

  ‘It’s terribly urgent,’ she pleaded and her distress was evident. ‘His wife is dying. Please – please.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can.’ The messenger accepted the note, and Tara ran back up the stairs. She showed her pass to the doorman at the entrance to the visitors’ gallery and squeezed past him.

  The gallery was crowded. Somebody had taken Tara’s seat, but she edged forward and craned to look down into the chamber. Dr Verwoerd was on his feet, talking in Afrikaans. His silvery curls were neatly cropped and his eyes slitted with concentration as he used both hands to emphasize his words.

  ‘The question that this person from Britain put to us was not addressed to the South African monarchists, nor was it addressed to the South African republicans. It was to all of us that he spoke.’ Verwoerd paused. ‘The question he asked was simply this. Does the white man survive in Africa or does he perish?’

  He had electrified the chamber. There was not a movement nor a shift of eyes from his face – until the uniformed parliamentary messenger slipped unobtrusively down the front row of Opposition benches and stopped beside Blaine.

  Even then he had to touch Blaine’s shoulder to draw his attention, and Blaine accepted the note without seeming to realize what he was doing. He nodded at the messenger, and, with the folded scrap of paper unread in his fingers, once more focused all his attention on Verwoerd where he stood below the Speaker’s throne.

  ‘Read it, Daddy!’ Tara whispered aloud. ‘Please read it.’

  In all that multitude Shasa was the only one who was not mesmerized by Verwoerd’s oratory. His thoughts were a jumbled torrent, one racing after another, overtaking and mingling as they followed without logical sequence.

  ‘Moses Gama!’ It was scarcely believable that the memory had taken so long to return to him, even over the years and in spite of changes that time had wrought in both of them. They had once been good friends, and the man had made a deep impression on Shasa at a formative period of his life.

  Then again, Shasa had heard the name much more recently; it had been on the list of wanted revolutionaries during the 1952 troubles. While the others, Mandela and Sobukwe and the rest, had stood trial, Moses Gama had disappeared, and the warrant for his arrest was outstanding. Moses Gama was still a criminal at large, and a dangerous revolutionary.

  ‘Tara!’ His mind darted aside. She had selected Gama as her chauffeur and, given her political leanings, it was impossible that she didn’t know who he was. Suddenly Shasa knew that Tara’s meek repudiation of her previous left-wing companions and her new conciliatory behaviour had all been a sham. She had not changed at all. This man Moses Gama was more dangerous than all and any of her previous effete companions. Shasa had been hoodwinked. In fact she must have moved even further to the left, crossing the delicate line between legitimate political opposition and criminal involvement. Shasa almost rose to his feet, and then remembered where he was. Verwoerd was speaking already.

  ‘The need to do justice
to all does not mean only that the black men must be nurtured and protected. It means justice and protection for the white men in Africa also—’

  Shasa glanced up at the visitors’ gallery and there was a stranger sitting in Tara’s seat. Where was Tara? She must be in his office – and the association of ideas led him on.

  Moses Gama had been in his office. Shasa had seen him in the corridor and Tricia had told him, ‘Only Mrs Courtney and her driver.’ Moses Gama had been in his office and somebody had drilled the ceiling and laid electrical wires. It had not been Odendaal or Maintenance. It hadn’t been anyone who had authority to do so.

  ‘We are not newcomers to Africa. Our forefathers were here before the first black man,’ Verwoerd was saying. ‘Three hundred years ago, when our ancestors set out into the interior of this land, it ‘was an empty wilderness. The black tribes were still far to the north, making their way slowly southwards. The land was empty and our forefathers claimed it and worked it. Later they built the cities and laid the railways and sank the mine-shafts. Alone, the black man was incapable of doing any of these things. Even more than the black tribes we are men of Africa and our right to be here is as God-given and inalienable as is theirs.’

  Shasa heard the words but made no sense of them – Moses Gama, probably with the help and connivance of Tara, had laid electrical wires in his office and – suddenly, he gasped aloud. The altar chest. Tara had placed the chest in his office, like the Trojan Horse.

  Wild with anxiety now, he swivelled his whole body towards the visitors’ gallery, and this time he saw Tara. She was squeezed against one wall and even at this distance Shasa could see that she was pale and distraught. She was watching someone or something on the Opposition side of the chamber, and Shasa followed her gaze.