by Wilbur Smith
‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded without any preliminaries, and Kitty said to Centaine, ‘Hello, Mrs Courtney. How did such a nice cultured lady ever end up with such an ill-mannered son?’
Centaine laughed, she liked Kitty. Shasa thought that it was a case of kindred spirits. Kitty explained, ‘I was in Rhodesia to get a profile on Ian Smith before he meets Harold Wilson, and I made a side trip for the speech that Verwoered is giving today, and of course to visit with you.’
They chatted for a few minutes, then Centaine excused herself. ‘I must get a good seat in the gallery.’
As she moved away Shasa asked Kitty softly, ‘When can I see you?’
‘This evening?’ Kitty suggested.
‘Yes — oh no, damn it.’ He remembered his rendezvous with the White Sword informer. ‘Where are you staying?’
‘The Nellie as usual.’
‘Can I call you there later?’
‘Sure,’ she smiled. ‘Unless I get any better offers.’
‘You little bitch! Why don’t you marry me?’
‘I’m too good for you, buster.’ It had become one of their stock jokes. ‘But I don’t mind an order of small beer and chips on the side. See you later.’
Shasa watched her climb the staircase towards the press gallery. Over all the years he had known her, she seemed not to have aged a day. She still had the body of a girl, and the light spring of youth in her step. He pushed back the sudden cold gloom of loneliness that threatened to engulf him and walked into the chamber.
The benches were filling. Shasa saw that the Prime Minister was in his seat at the head of the Government benches. He was talking to Frank Waring, the Minister of Sport, and the only other Englishman in the cabinet.
Verwoerd looked fit and vigorous. It seemed impossible that he had taken two revolver bullets through his skull and had come back with such power to dominate his own party and the entire chamber this way. He seemed to have an infinite capacity for survival and, of course, Shasa grinned cynically, the luck of the devil himself.
Shasa started towards his own seat, and Manfred De La Rey jumped up and came to intercept him.
He seized Shasa’s arm and leaned close to him. ‘The divers have raised the ferry. Gama’s body is not in it and the door to the cabin has been forced. It looks as though the bastard has got clean away. But we have every exit from the country guarded and my men will get him. He cannot get away. I think the Prime Minister is going to make the announcement of his disappearance during his speech this afternoon.’
Shasa and Manfred began walking towards their seats on the front bench, when somebody bumped so roughly against Shasa that he exclaimed and glanced around. It was the uniformed messenger that Shasa had noticed on the park bench.
‘Be careful, fellow,’ Shasa snapped at him as he recovered his balance, but the man did not seem to hear.
Although his expression was vacant and his eyes staring and unseeing, the messenger walked with a quick determined step, brushing past Manfred and heading towards the Opposition benches on the left side of the Speaker’s throne.
‘Damned rude,’ Shasa said, pausing to watch him.
Suddenly the messenger seemed to change his mind, he veered across the chamber and hurried towards where Dr Verwoerd was sitting. The Prime Minister saw him coming and looked up expectantly, supposing that the man had a message for him. Nobody else in the chamber seemed to be taking any notice of the messenger’s erratic behaviour, but Shasa was watching with puzzlement.
As the messenger stood over Dr Verwoerd, he swept his dark uniform jacket open and Shasa saw the silver flash of steel.
‘Good Christ!’ he exclaimed. ‘He’s got a knife.’
The messenger lifted the blade and struck once, and strangely the Prime Minister was smiling, as though he did not realize what was happening. The blade came free and the silver was misted pink with blood.
Shasa started forward, but Manfred still had hold of his arm. ‘The Manchurian Candidate,’ he hissed and Shasa froze.
Standing over the Prime Minister, the assassin struck again and then again. With each blow the blood spurted down his white shirt front and Dr Verwoerd lifted his hands in a pathetic gesture of appeal.
At last the men closest to him realized what was happening and they leapt upon the assailant. A knot of struggling men swarmed over him, but the man was fighting back with a kind of demonic strength.
‘Where is the Devil?’ he shouted wildly. ‘I’ll get the Devil.’
They bore him to the green carpet and pinned him there.
Dr Verwoerd still sat in his seat staring down at his own chest from which the bright flood poured. Then he pulled the lapels of his jacket closed as though to hide the terrible sight of his own blood, and with a sigh slid forward and crumpled on to the carpeted floor of the chamber.
Shasa and Manfred De La Rey were in Shasa’s parliamentary office when Tricia brought the news through.
‘Gentlemen, the party whip has just telephoned. Dr Verwoerd has been declared dead on arrival at the Volks Hospital.’
Shasa went to the liquor cabinet behind his desk and poured two glasses of cognac.
They watched each other’s eyes as they drank silently, and then Shasa lowered his glass and said, ‘We must start at once to draw up a list of those we can rely on to support you. I think John Vorster is the man you will have to beat for the premiership, and his people will already be busy.’
They worked together through the afternoon preparing their lists, placing ticks and crosses and queries against the names. Telephoning, wheedling and extorting, arranging meetings, making promises and commitments, trading and compromising, and as the afternoon wore on a stream of important visitors, allies, passed through Shasa’s suite.
While they worked, Shasa watched Manfred, and wondered again how fate had chosen such strange travelling companions as they were. It seemed that they had nothing in common except that one most vital trait — burning unrelenting ambition and hunger for power.
Well, it was at their fingertips now, almost within their grasp, and Manfred was a man possessed. The effect of his enormous force of character was apparent on the men who came up to Shasa’s office suite. One by one they were swept along by it, and one by one they swore their allegiance to him.
Slowly it dawned upon Shasa that it was no longer a possibility — or even a probability. They were going to win. He knew in his guts and his heart. It was theirs — the premiership and the presidency between them. They were going to win.
In the heady excitement of it all the afternoon passed swiftly, the grandfather clock in the corner of Shasa’s office chimed the hours softly, such a familiar sound that he hardly noticed it until it struck five and he started and jumped to his feet, confirming the time with his wristwatch.
‘It’s five o’clock.’ He started towards the door.
‘Where are you going? I need you here,’ Manfred called after him. ‘Come back, Shasa.’
‘I’ll be back,’ Shasa answered, and ran into the outer office.
There were men waiting there, important men. They stood up to greet him, and Tricia called, ‘Mr Courtney—’
‘Not now.’ Shasa ran past them. ‘I’ll back soon.’
It would be quicker on foot than trying to take the Jaguar through the five o’clock rush-hour traffic, and Shasa began to run.
He realized that the woman informer was so nervous and afraid that she would probably not linger at the rendezvous. He had to get there before the appointed time. As he ran he reviled himself for having forgotten such an important appointment, but it was all confusion and uncertainty.
He raced down the sidewalk, crowded with office workers relieved of the tedium of their day who poured out of the buildings. Shasa pushed and shoved, and weaved and ducked. Some of those he barged into shouted angrily after him.
He sprinted through the columns of slowly moving vehicles, and ran into the Adderley Street entrance of the railway station. The clock abov
e the main concourse stood at five thirty-seven. He was already late, and platform four was at the far end of the building.
Wildly he raced down the concourse, and barged on to the quay. He slowed to a hurried walk, and made his way down the platform, examining the faces of the commuters waiting there. They stared back at him incuriously, and he glanced up at the platform clock: five-forty. Ten minutes late. She had come and gone. He had missed her.
He stood in the centre of the platform and looked despairingly around him, not certain what to do next. Overhead the public address system squawked, ‘Train from Stellenbosch and the Cape Flats arriving platform four.’
That was it, of course. Shasa felt a vast relief. The train was late. She must be on the train, that was why she had chosen this place and time.
Shasa craned his head anxiously as the carriages rumbled slowly into the platform and, with a squeal and hiss of vacuum brakes, came to a halt. The doors were thrown open and passengers spewed out of them, beginning to move in a solid column towards the platform exit.
Shasa jumped up on the nearest bench, the better to see and to be seen.
‘Mr Courtney.’ A woman’s voice. Her voice – he recognized it, even after all the years. ‘Mr Courtney.’
He stood on tiptoe, trying to see over the heads of the passengers.
‘Mr Courtney!’ There she was, caught up in the crowd, trying to push her way through to him, and waving frantically to attract his attention.
He recognized her instantly. The shock immobilized him for a few seconds as he stared as he stared at her. It was the Stander woman, the one he had met briefly at Manfred’s holiday cottage when he had flown there to make the cannery deal with him. That was years ago, but he remembered that she had called him Squadron Leader. He should have pieced it together at that time. How foolish and unperceptive he had been. Shasa was still standing on the bench staring at her, when suddenly something else caught his attention.
Two men were roughly pushing their way through the crowds of passengers. Two big men in dark ill-fitting suits and the fedora hats that were somehow the mark of the plain-clothes Security Police. Clearly they were making for the Stander woman.
At the same moment as Shasa, she saw the two detectives and her face went white with terror.
‘Mr Courtney!’ she screamed. ‘Quickly — they are after me.’ She broke out of the crowd and began to run towards Shasa. ‘Hurry, please hurry.’
Shasa jumped down from the bench and ran to meet her, but there was an old woman carrying an armful of parcels in his way. He almost knocked her down, and in the moments it took to untangle himself, the two detectives had caught up with Sarah Stander, and seized her from either side.
‘Please!’ She gave a despairing scream, then with wild, improbable strength broke free of her captors, and ran the last few paces to Shasa.
‘Here!’ She thrust an envelope into Shasa’s hand. ‘Here it is.’
The two security officers had recovered swiftly and bounded after her. One of them seized both her arms from behind and dragged her away. The other came to confront Shasa.
‘We are police officers. We have a warrant for the arrest of the woman.’ He was panting with his efforts. ‘She gave something to you. I saw it. You must hand it over to me.’
‘My good man!’ Shasa drew himself up and gave the detective his most haughty stare. ‘Do you have any idea just who you are speaking to?’
‘Minister Courtney!’ The man recognized him then, and his confusion was comic. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t know—’
‘What is your name, rank and serial number?’ Shasa snapped.
‘Lieutenant Van Outshoom No. 138643.’ Instinctively the man stood to attention.
‘You can be sure you will hear more of this, Lieutenant,’ Shasa warned him frostily. ‘Now carry on with your other duties.’ Shasa turned on his heel and strode away down the platform, tucking the envelope into his inner pocket, leaving the detective staring after him in dismay.
He did not open the envelope until he reached his office again. Tricia was still waiting for him.
‘I was so worried when you ran out like that,’ she cried. Good, loyal Tricia.
‘It’s all right,’ he reassured her. ‘It all worked out fine. Where is Minister De La Rey?’
‘He left soon after you, sir. He said he would be at home at Groote Schuur. You could reach him there if you needed him.’
‘Thank you, Tricia. You may go home now.’
Shasa went through to his own office and locked the door. He went to his desk and sat down in his studded leather chair. He took the envelope from his inner pocket and laid it in front of him on the desk blotter, and he studied it.
It was of cheap coarse paper, and his name was written in a round girlish hand. The ink had smeared and run.
‘Meneer Courtney.’
Shasa was suddenly reluctant to touch it again. He had a premonition of some terrible revelation which would turn the even tenor of his existence into strife and turmoil.
He picked up the Georgian silver paper knife from his desk set and tested the point with his thumb. He turned the envelope over and slid the point of the knife under the flap. The envelope contained a sheet of ruled notepaper with a single line of writing in the same girlish script.
Shasa stared at it. There was no sense of shock. Deep in his subconscious he must have known the truth all along. It was the eyes, of course, the yellow topaz eyes of White Sword that had stared into his own on the day his grandfather died.
There was not even a moment of doubt, no twinge of incredulity. He had even seen the scar, the ancient gunshot wound in Manfred’s body, the mark of the bullet he had fired at White Sword, and every other detail fitted perfectly.
‘Manfred De La Rey is White Sword.’
From the moment they had first met that childhood day upon the fishing jetty at Walvis Bay, the fates had stalked them, driving them inexorably towards their destiny.
‘We were born to destroy each other,’ Shasa said softly, and reached for the telephone.
It rang three times before it was answered.
‘De La Rey.’
‘It’s me,’ Shasa said.
‘Ja. I have been waiting.’ Manfred’s voice was weary and resigned, in bitter contrast to the powerful tones in which he had exhorted and rallied his supporters just a short while before. ‘The woman reached you. My men have informed me.’
‘The woman must be set free,’ Shasa told him.
‘It has been done already. On my orders.’
‘We must meet.’
‘Ja. It is necessary.’
‘Where?’ Shasa asked. ‘When?’
‘I will come to Weltevreden,’ Manfred said, and Shasa was taken too much by surprise to respond. ‘But there is one condition.’
‘What is your condition?’ Shasa asked warily.
‘Your mother must be there when we meet.’
‘My mother?’ This time Shasa could not contain his amazement.
‘Yes, your mother — Centaine Courtney.’
‘I don’t understand – what has my mother got to do with this business?’
‘Everything,’ said Manfred heavily. ‘She has everything to do with it.’
When Kitty Godolphin got back to her suite that evening, she was in a mood of jubilation. Under her direction, Hank’s camera had captured the dramatic moments as the bloodstained body of Dr Verwoerd was carried from the chamber to the waiting ambulance, and she had recorded the panic and confusion, the spontaneous unrehearsed words and expressions of his friends and his bitter enemies.
The moment she entered the suite, she booked a call through to her news editor at NABS in New York to warn him of the priceless footage she had obtained. Then she poured herself a gin and tonic and sat impatiently beside the telephone waiting for her call to come through.
She lifted it as it rang.
‘Kitty Godolphin,’ she said.
‘Miss Godolphin.’ A strange voice, s
peaking with a deep melodious African accent, greeted her. ‘Moses Gama sends you his greetings.’
‘Moses Gama is serving a life sentence in a high security prison,’ Kitty replied brusquely. ‘Don’t waste my time, please.’
‘Last night Moses Gama was rescued by warriors of the Umkhonto we Sizwe from the Robben Island prison ferry,’ said the voice, and Kitty felt the flesh of her cheeks and lips go numb with the shock of it. She had read the reports of the ferry sinking. ‘Moses Gama is in a safe place. He wishes to speak to the world through you. If you agree to meet him, you will be allowed to use your camera to record his message.’
For a full three seconds she could not answer. Her voice had failed her but her mind was racing. ‘This is the big one,’ she thought. ‘This is the one that comes only once in a lifetime of work and striving.’ She cleared her throat and said, ‘I will come.’
‘A dark blue van will arrive at the ballroom entrance to the hotel in ten minutes from now. The driver will flick his lights twice. You are to enter the rear doors of the van immediately, without speaking to any person.’
The vehicle was a small Toyota delivery van, and Kitty and Hank with the sound and camera equipment were cramped in the interior so that it was difficult to move, but Kitty crawled forward until she could speak to the driver.
‘Where are we going?’
The driver glanced at her in the rear-view mirror. He was a young black man of striking appearance, not handsome but with a powerful African face.
‘We are going into the townships. There will be police patrols and road-blocks. The police are everywhere searching for Moses Gama. It will be dangerous, so you must do exactly as I tell you.’
For almost an hour they were in the van, driving through darkened back streets, sometimes stopping and waiting in silence until a shadowy figure came out of the night to whisper a few words to the driver of the van, then going on again until at last they parked for the last time.