by Wilbur Smith
‘You had three sons, Shasa Courtney. You have one left. Are you willing to take that chance?’
He reared back in his chair and stared at her. She was unprepared for the agony that she saw in his expression and for a moment she thought she had gone too far. Then he subsided slowly.
‘You fight hard and dirty,’ he acknowledged sadly.
‘When it is worthwhile.’ She knew it was dangerous with an opponent of this calibre, but she felt sorry for him. ‘And for me this is worthwhile.’
‘For you, yes, I can see that – but for Garry?’
‘I think I owe you complete honesty. At the beginning it was a little bit of daring. I was intrigued by his youth – that in itself can be devastatingly appealing. And by the other obvious attractions which you have hinted at.’
‘The Courtney empire and his place in it.’
‘Yes. I would have been less than human if that hadn’t interested me. That’s the way it started, but almost immediately it began to change.’
‘In what way?’
‘I began to understand his enormous potential, and my own influence in developing it fully. Haven’t you noticed any change in him in the three months since we have been together? Can you truly tell me my influence on him has been detrimental?’
Despite himself Shasa smiled. ‘The pinstripe suits and the hornrimmed glasses. They are a vast improvement, I’ll admit.’
‘Those are only the unimportant outward signs of the important inward changes. In three months Garry has become a mature and confident man, he has discovered many of his own strengths and talents and virtues, not the least of which is a warm and loving disposition. With my help he will discover all the others.’
‘So you see yourself in the role of architect still, building a marble palace out of clay bricks.’
‘Don’t mock him.’ She was angry, protective and defensive as a lioness. ‘He is probably the best of all the Courtneys and I am probably the best thing that will ever happen to him in his life.’
He stared at her, and exclaimed with wonder as it dawned upon him. ‘You love him – you really love him.’
‘So you understand at last.’
She stood up and turned towards the door.
‘Holly,’ he said, and the unexpected use of her first name arrested her. She wavered, still pale with anger, and he went on softly, ‘I didn’t understand, forgive me. I think Garry is a fortunate young man to have found you.’ He held out his hand. ‘You said we might be friends – is that still possible ?’
Table Bay was wide open to the north-westerly gales that bore in off the wintry grey Atlantic. The ferry took the short steep seas on her bows and lurched over the crests, throwing the spray as high as the stubby masthead.
It was the first time Vicky had ever been at sea and the motion terrified her as nothing on earth had ever done. She clutched the child to her, and stared straight ahead, but it was difficult to maintain her balance on the hard wooden bench, and thick spray dashed against the porthole and poured over the glass in a wavering mirage that distorted her view. The island looked like some dreadful creature swimming to meet them, and she recalled all the legends of her tribe of the monsters that came out of the sea and devoured any human being found upon the shore.
She was glad that Joseph was with her. Her half-brother had grown into a fine young man. He reminded her of the faded photograph of her grandfather, Mbejane Dinizulu, that her mother kept on the wall of her hut. Joseph had the same broad forehead and wide-spread eyes, and although his nose was not flattened but high-bridged, his clean-shaven chin was rounded and full.
He had just completed his law degree at the black University of Fort Hare, but before he underwent his consecration into the hereditary role of Zulu chieftainship Vicky had prevailed upon him to accompany her upon the long journey down the length of the sub-continent. As soon as he returned to the district of Ladyburg in Zululand he would begin his training for the chieftainship. This was not the initiation to which the young men of the Xhosa and the other tribes were forced to submit. Joseph would not suffer the brutal mutilation of ritual circumcision. King Chaka had abolished that custom. He had not tolerated the time that his young warriors wasted in recuperation, which could better be spent in military training.
Joseph stood beside Vicky, balancing easily to the ferry’s agitated plunges, and he placed his hand upon her shoulder to reassure her. ‘Not much longer,’ he murmured. ‘We will soon be there.’
Vicky shook her head vehemently, and clutched her son more securely to her bosom. The cold sweat broke out upon her forehead, and waves of nausea assailed her, but she fought them back.
‘I am the daughter of a chief,’ she told herself. ‘And the wife of a king. I will not surrender to womanly weakness.’
The ferry ran out of the gale into the calm waters in the lee of the island, and Vicky drew a long ragged breath and stood up. Her legs were unsteady, and Joseph helped her to the rail.
They stood side by side and stared at the bleak and infamous silhouette of Robben Island. The name derived from the Dutch word for seal, and the colonies of these animals that the first explorers had discovered upon its barren rocks.
When the fishing and sealing industries based upon the island failed it was used as a leper colony and a place of banishment for political prisoners, most of them black. Even Makana, the prophet and warrior, who had led the first Xhosa onslaughts against the white settlers across the great Fish River, had been sent here after his capture, and here he had died in 1820, drowned in the roaring seas that beat upon the island as he tried to escape. For fifty years his people had refused to believe he was dead, and to this day his name was a rallying cry for the tribe.
One hundred and forty-three years later, there was another prophet and warrior imprisoned upon the island, and Vicky stared out across the narrowing strip of water at the low square unlovely structure, the new high-security prison for dangerous political prisoners where Moses Gama was now incarcerated. After his stay of execution, Moses had remained on death row at Pretoria Central Prison for almost two years, until finally mitigation of the death sentence to life imprisonment at hard labour had been officially granted by the state president and he had been transferred to the island. Moses was allowed one visit every six months, and Vicky was bringing his son to see him.
The journey had not been easy, for Vicky herself was the subject of a banning order. She had shown herself an enemy of the state by her appearances at Moses’ trial, dressed in the colours of the African National Congress, and by her inflammatory utterances which were widely reported by the news media.
Even to leave the township of Drake’s Farm to which the banning order confined her she had to obtain a travel permit from the local magistrate. This document set out precisely the terms upon which she was allowed to travel, the exact time which she was required to leave her cottage, the route and means of transport she must take, the duration of her visit to her husband and the route she must take upon her return journey.
The ferry manoeuvred in towards the jetty and there were uniformed warders to seize the mooring ropes as they were thrown across. Joseph took the boy’s hand from her and with his free hand helped Vicky across the narrow gap. They stood together on the wooden boards of the jetty and looked around uncertainly. The warders ignored them as they went on with the business of docking and unloading the ferry.
It was ten minutes before one of them called across to them, ‘All right, come this way,’ and they followed him up the paved road towards the security block.
The first glimpse that Vicky had of her husband after six months appalled her.
‘You are so thin,’ she cried.
‘I have not been eating very well.’ He sat down on the stool facing her through the mesh of the screen. They had developed a cryptic code during the four visits she had been allowed at Pretoria Central, and not eating well meant that he was on another hunger strike.
He smiled at her and his face was sku
ll-like so that his lips had retracted and his teeth were too big for his face. When he placed his hands on the shelf in front of him his wrists protruded from the cuffs of his khaki prison uniform and they were bone covered with a thin layer of skin.
‘Let me see my son,’ he said, and she drew Matthew to her.
‘Greet your father,’ she told the boy, and he stared solemnly at Moses through the grille. The gaunt stranger on the other side of the wire had never picked him up or held him on his lap, had never kissed or fondled him, had never even touched him. The mesh was always between them.
A warder sat beside Moses to see that the visiting rules were strictly observed. The time allowed was one hour, sixty minutes exactly, and only family matters could be discussed – no news of the day, no discussion of prison conditions and especially nothing with a political flavour to it.
One hour of family matters, but they used their code. ‘I am sure that my appetite will return once I have news of the family,’ Moses told her, ‘on paper.’ So she knew that he was hunger-striking to be allowed to read the newspapers. Therefore he would not have heard the news about Nelson Mandela.
‘The elders have asked Gundwane to visit them,’ she told him. Gundwane was their code name for Mandela. It meant ‘cane rat’ and the elders were the authorities. He nodded to show that he understood that Mandela had at last been arrested, and he smiled tautly. The information he had given to Manfred De La Rey had been used effectively.
‘How are the family members on the farm?’ he asked.
‘All is well, and they are planting their crops,’ Vicky told him, and he understood that the Umkhonto we Sizwe teams working out of Puck’s Hill had begun their campaign of terror bombings. ‘Perhaps you will all be reunited sooner than we think,’ she suggested.
‘Let us hope so,’ Moses agreed. A reunion would mean that the Puck’s Hill team would join him here on the island, or take the shorter road to the gallows.
The hour passed too swiftly, and the warder was standing up. ‘Time up. Say your goodbyes.’
‘I leave my heart with you, my husband,’ Vicky told him, and watched the warder lead him away. He did not look back at her, and his gait dragged like that of an exhausted old man.
‘It is only the starvation,’ she told Joseph as they walked back to the ferry. ‘He is still courageous as a lion, but weak from lack of food.’
‘He is finished,’ Joseph contradicted her quietly. ‘The Boers have beaten him. He will never breathe the air of freedom again. He will never see the outside of his prison again.’
‘For all of us, born black, this whole country is a prison,’ Vicky said fiercely, and Joseph did not reply until they were once more aboard the ferry and running back before the gale, towards the flat-topped mountain whose lower slopes were flecked with white walls and shining glass.
‘Moses Gama chose the wrong road,’ Joseph said. ‘He tried to assault the walls of the white fortress. He tried to burn it down, not realizing that even if he had succeeded all he would have inherited would have been ashes.’
‘And you, Joseph Dinizulu,’ Vicky flashed at him scornfully, ‘you are wiser?’
‘Perhaps not, but at least I will learn from the mistakes of Moses Gama and Nelson Mandela. I will not spend my life rotting in a white man’s prison.’
‘How will you assault the white man’s fortress, my clever little brother?’
‘I will cross the lowered drawbridge,’ he said. ‘I will go in through the open gates, and one day the castle and its treasures will be mine, even if I have to share a little of them with the white man. No, my angry little sister, I will not destroy those treasures with bombs and flames. I will inherit them.’
‘You are mad, Joseph Dinizulu.’ She stared at him, and he smiled complacently at her.
‘We shall see who is mad and who is sane,’ he said. ‘But remember this, little sister, that without the white man we would still be living in grass huts. Look to the north and see the misery of those countries which have driven out the whites. No, my sister, I will keep the white man here – but one day he will work for me, not I for him.’
‘Forget your anger, my son.’ Hendrick Tabaka leaned forward and placed his right hand on Raleigh’s shoulder. ‘Your anger will destroy you. Your enemy is too strong. See what has happened to Moses Gama, my own brother. See what is the fate of Nelson Mandela. They went out to fight the lion with bare hands.’
‘Others are still fighting,’ Raleigh pointed out. ‘The warriors of Umkhonto we Sizwe are still fighting. Every day we hear of their brave deeds. Every day their bombs explode.’
‘They are throwing pebbles at a mountain,’ Hendrick said sadly. ‘Every time they explode a little bomb against the pylon of a power line, Vorster and De La Rey arm another thousand police and write another hundred banning orders.’ Hendrick shook his head. ‘Forget your anger, my son, there is a fine life for you at my side. If you follow Moses Gama and Mandela, you will end the way they have ended – but I can offer you wealth and power. Take a wife, Raleigh, a good fat wife and give her many sons, forget the madness and take your place at my side.’
‘I had a wife, my father, and I left her at Sharpeville,’ Raleigh said. ‘But before I left her, I made a vow. With my fingers deep in her bloody wounds, I made a vow.’
‘Vows are easy to make,’ Hendrick whispered, and Raleigh saw how age had played like a blowtorch across his features, withering and searing and melting the bold lines of his cheekbones and jaw. ‘But vows are difficult to live with. Your brother Wellington has also made a vow to the white man’s god. He will live like a eunuch for the rest of his life, without ever knowing the comfort of a woman’s body. I fear for you, Raleigh, fruit of my loins. I fear that your own vow will be a heavy burden for all your life.’ He sighed again. ‘But since I cannot persuade you, what can I do to ease the rocky pathway for you?’
‘You know that many of the young people are leaving this country?’ Raleigh asked.
‘Not only the young ones,’ Hendrick nodded. ‘Some of the high command have gone also. Oliver Tambo has fled and Mbeki and Joe Modise with many others.’
‘They have gone to set the first phase of the revolution afoot.’ Raleigh’s eyes began to shine with excitement. ‘Lenin himself taught us that we cannot move immediately to the Communist revolution. We must achieve the phase of national liberation first. We have to create a broad front of liberals and churchmen and students and workers under the leadership of the vanguard party. Oliver Tambo has gone to create that vanguard party – the anti-apartheid movement in exile – and I want to be part of that spearhead of the revolution.’
‘You wish to leave the country of your birth?’ Hendrick stared at him in bewilderment. ‘You wish to leave me and your family?’
‘It is my duty, Father. If the evils of this system are ever to be destroyed, we will need the help of that world out there, of all the united nations of the world.’
‘You are dreaming, my son,’ Hendrick told him. ‘Already that world, in which you place so much trust and hope, has forgotten Sharpeville. Once again money from the foreign nations, from America and Britain and France, is pouring into this country. Every day the country prospers—’
‘America has refused to supply arms.’
‘Yes,’ Hendrick chuckled ruefully. ‘And the Boers are making their own. You cannot win, my son, so stay with me.’
‘I must go, my Father. Forgive me, but I have no choice. I must go, but I need your help.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘There is a man, a white man, who is helping the young ones to escape.’
Hendrick nodded. ‘Joe Cicero.’
‘I want to meet him, Father.’
‘It will take a little time, for he is a secret man, this Joe Cicero.’
It took almost two weeks. They met on a municipal bus that Raleigh boarded at the central depot in Vereeniging. He wore a blue beret, as he had been instructed, and sat in the second row of seats from th
e back.
The man who took the seat directly behind him lit a cigarette and as the bus pulled away, said softly, ‘Raleigh Tabaka.’
Raleigh turned to look into a pair of eyes like puddles of spilled engine oil.
‘Do not look at me,’ Joe Cicero said. ‘But listen carefully to what I tell you—’
Three weeks later Raleigh Tabaka, carrying a duffel bag and authentic seaman’s papers, went up the gangplank of a Dutch freighter that was carrying a cargo of wool to the port of Liverpool. He never saw the continent disappear below the watery horizon for he was already below decks at work in the ship’s engine room.
Sean did the deal at breakfast on the last day of the safari. The client owned seventeen large leather tanneries in as many different states and half the real estate in Tucson, Arizona. His name was Ed Liner and he was seventy-two years of age.
‘Son, I don’t know why I want to buy myself a safari company. I’m getting a little long in the tooth for this big game stuff,’ he grumbled.
‘That’s bullshit, Ed,’ Sean told him. ‘You nearly walked me off my feet after that big jumbo, and the trackers all call you Bwana One-Shot.’
Ed Liner looked pleased with himself. He was a wiry little man with a ruff of snowy hair around his brown-freckled pate.
‘Give me the facts again,’ he invited. ‘One last time.’
Sean had been working on him for three weeks, since the first day of the safari, and he knew Ed had the figures by heart, but he repeated them now.
‘The concession is five hundred square miles, with a forty-mile frontage on the south bank of Lake Kariba—’ As he listened, Ed Liner stroked his wife as though he were caressing a pet kitten.
She was his third wife and she was just two years younger than Sean, but fifty years younger than her husband. She had been a dancer at the Golden Egg in Vegas, and she had a dancer’s legs and carriage, with big innocent blue eyes and a curling cloud of blonde hair.