by Wilbur Smith
"your brother's boss boy has asked for transfer. will you take him?"
"ja!" davy delange nodded. "i know him, he's a good boy." and that takes care of one more detail, thought rod, as he stepped out of the cage into a bright summer's afternoon and tasted the fresh sweet air with pleasure. now there are only the butt ends of the day's work to tidy up. then i can go and fetch the drink that dan promised me.
dimitri met him in the passage outside the office.
"i've got kowalski in my office." "good," said rod grimly. he went into his own office and sat on the edge of his desk.
"send him in," he called through to dimitri.
kowalski came through the door and stopped. he stood very still, his long arms hanging slackly at his side, his belly bulging out over his belt.
"you call me," he muttered thickly, his english hardly intelligible. it was a peasant's face, coarse-featured, dull eyed he had not shaved, dirt from the stopes clung in the thick black stubble of beard.
"you beat a man today? "rod asked softly.
"he no work, kowalski nodded. "i beat him. maybe next time his brothers they work. no bloody nonsense!"
"you're fired," said rod.
"pull your time and get the hell off this property."
"you fire?"
kowalski blinked in surprise.
"there will be criminal charges pressed against you by the company." rod went on. "but in the meantime i want you off the property."
"police?" kowalski growled. there was expression on his face now.
"yes," said rod, "police. the spade-sized hands at the end of kowalski's arms balled slowly into massive fists.
"you call da bloody police!" he took a step towards the desk, big, menacing.
"dimitri," rod called sharply, "close the door." dimitri had been listening intently, now he jumped up from his desk and closed the inter leading door. he stood with his ear pressed to the panelling.
for thirty seconds more there was the growl and mutter of voices, then suddenly a thud, a bellow, another thud and a shattering crash.
dimitri winced theatrically.
"dimitri!" rod's voice, and he pushed the door open.
rod sat on the edge of his desk, swinging one leg casually, he was sucking the knuckle of his right hand.
"dimitri, tell them not to put so much polish on the floor. our friend slipped and hit his jaw on the desk." dimitri clucked sympathetically as he stood over the reclining hulk of the big pole.
kowalski was snoring loudly through his mouth.
"gave himself a nasty bump," said dimitri. "shame!" doctor steyner worked on quietly for the remainder of monday morning. he favoured the use of a tape recorder, for this cut out human contact which manfred found vaguely repellent. he disliked having to speak his thoughts to a female who sat opposite him with skirts up around her thighs, squirming her bottom and touching her hair. however, what he really could not abide was the odour. manfred was very sensitive to smells, even his own body smell of perspiration disgusted him. women, he found, had a peculiar cloying odour that he could detect beneath their perfume and cosmetics. it nauseated him.
this was why he had insisted on separate bedrooms for theresa and himself. naturally he had not told her the reason, but had insisted instead that he was such a light sleeper that he could not share a room with another person.
his office was in white and ice-blue, the air clean and cold from the air-conditioning unit, his voice was crisp and impersonal, the whiff of the recorder subdued, and with the conscious portion of his mind manfred was happily absorbed in his conjuring tricks with figures and money, past performance and future estimates, a three-dimensional structure of variables and contingencies which only a super-normal brain could visualize. but beneath it was a sense of disquiet; he was waiting, hanging in time, and the outward sign of his agitation was the way the fingers of his right hand ran up and down his thigh as he worked, a caressing narcissistic gesture.
a few minutes before noon the unlisted direct telephone on his desk rang, and the movement of his hand stilled.
only one caller could reach him here, only one caller had that number.
for a few seconds he sat unmoving, delaying the moment, then deliberately he switched off the recorder and lifted the telephone.
"doctor manfred steyner." he identified himself.
"you have got our man in?" the voice enquired.
"not yet, andrew." there was silence from the other end, a dangerous crackling silence.
"but there is no cause for alarm. it is nothing. a delay merely, not a setback."
"how long?"
"two days at the latest by the end of the week."
"you will be in paris next week?"
"yes." manfred was an adviser to the government team which was to meet the french for gold price talks.
"he will meet you there. it would be best for you that your side of the bargain were completed by then. you understand?" understand, andrew." the discussion was ended, but manfred interjected to prevent the caller from hanging up.
"andrew!"
"yes."
"will you ask him if-" manfred's tone had changed almost imperceptibly, there was an obsequious edge in it.
"ask him if i may play tonight, please, andrew."
"wait." the minutes drifted by, and then the voice came back on the line.
"yes, you may play. simon will inform you of your limits."
"thank you. tell him, thank you." manfred made no effort to conceal his relief as he cradled the receiver. he sat beaming at the ice-blue paper on the far wall of his office, even his spectacles seemed to sparkle.
there were five men in the opulently furnished room. one of the men was subservient to the others, he was younger than they, attentive to their moods and wishes. clearly he was a servant. of the remaining four, one was just as obviously the host. he was seated at the focus of all their attention. he was fat, but not excessively so, the fat of good living not of gluttony.
he was speaking, addressing himself to his three guests.
"you have expressed doubts as to the reliability of the tool i intend using in the coming venture. i have arranged a demonstration which i hope will convince you that your concern is groundless. that is the reason for the invitation that andrew here conveyed to you this afternoon." the host turned to the younger man. "andrew, would you be good enough to go through and wait for doctor steyner to arrive; as soon as that happens, please let simon seat him while you come through and inform us." he gave his orders with dignity and courtesy, a man accustomed to command.
"now, gentlemen, while we wait may i offer you a drink?"
the conversation that sprang up between the four of them as they sipped their drinks was knowledgeable, and extraordinarily well informed. at its root was one subject: wealth. mineral wealth, industrial wealth, the harvest of the land and the sea. oil, steel, coal, fish, wheat and gold.
there were clues to the stature of these men in the cut and quality of the cloth they wore, the sparkle of a stone on a finger, the tone of authority in a voice, the casual unaffected use of a high name.
"he is here, sir," andrew interrupted them from the doorway.
"oh! thank you, my boy." the host stood up. "would you mind stepping this way, please, gentlemen." he crossed the room and drew aside one of the gold and maroon drapes. behind it was a window.
the four men clustered about the window and looked through into the room beyond. it was a gaming room of an expensive gambling establishment. there were men and women sitting about a baccarat table, and none of them so much as glanced up at the window overlooking them.
"this is a one-way glass, gentlemen," the host explained.
"so you need not worry about being seen in such a den of iniquity."
they chuckled politely.
"what kind of profit does this place show you?" one of them asked.
"my dear robert!" the host feigned shock. "you don't for a moment believe that i would be in any way assoc
iated with an illegal undertaking?" this time they chuckled with genuine amusement.
"have exclaimed the host. "here he is." across the gaming room doctor manfred steyner was being ushered to a seat at the table by a tall sallow-faced young man, who in his evening dress looked like an undertaker.
"i have asked simon to place him so that you may watch his face as he plays." they were intent now, leaning forward slightly, scrutinizing the man as he arranged the plaques that simon had stacked at his elbow.
doctor manfred steyner began to play. his face was completely devoid of expression, but the pallor was startling.
every few seconds the pink tip of his tongue slipped out between his lips, then disappeared again. in the intervals between each coup, there was a reptilian stillness about him, the stillness of a lizard or an iguana. only a pulse beat steadily in his throat and his spectacles glittered like a snake's eyes.
"may i direct your attention to his right hand during the play of this coup," the host murmured, and all their eyes flicked downwards.
manfred's right hand lay open beside the pile of his chips, but as his card was laid before him so his fingers closed.
"carte." soundlessly he mouthed the word, and now his hand was a fist, the knuckles whitened, the tension was so fierce that his fist trembled. yet, still his face was neutral.
the banker flipped his card.
"sept!" the croupier's mouth formed the number. he faced manfred's card, then he swept manfred's stake away.
manfred's hand flopped open and lay soft and hairless as a dead fish on the green baize.
"let us leave him to his pleasures," suggested the host and drew the curtains across the window. they returned to their chairs, and they were strangely subdued.
"jesus," muttered one of the guests. "that was ugly. i felt like a peeping tom, like watching someone, you know, pulling his pudding."
the host glanced at him quickly, surprised at his perception.
"in effect, that is exactly what you were watching," he told him.
"you will excuse me playing the role of lecturer, but i know a little about this man. it cost me nearly four hundred rand for an analytic report on him by one of our leading psychiatrists." the -host pause , assuring himself of their complete attention.
"the reasons are obscure, probably arising from an event or series of events during the period in which doctor steyner was an orphan wandering through the smoking ruins- of war-torn europe." the host coughed, deprecating his own flight of oratory. "be that as it may. the results are there for all to see. doctor manfred kurt steyner's intelligence quotient is a genius rating of 158. he neither smokes nor drinks. he has no hobbies, plays no sport, has never made so much as an improper remark to any woman other than his wife, and there is some doubt as to just how often or to what extent she is favoured by his attentions." the host sipped his drink conscious of their intense interest. "mechanically, if that is the correct term, doctor steyner is neither impotent nor deficient in his manhood. however, he finds all bodily contact, and especially the secretions that may arise from such contact, to be utterly loathsome. for arousal he relies on the baccarat cards, for release he might endure a brief contact with a member of the opposite sex, but more likely he would oh, what was" the expression you used, robert?" they absorbed this in silence.
"he is, to be precise, a compulsive gambler. he is also a compulsive loser." they stirred with disbelief.
"you mean he triv to lose?" demanded robert incredulously.
"no." the host shook his head. "not on the conscious level. he believes he is trying to win, but he lays bets against odds that, with his magnificent brain, he must realize are suicidal. it is a deep-seated subconscious need to lose, to be humiliated. a form of masochism." the host opened a black leather notebook and checked its contents.
"during the period from 1958 to 1963 doctor steyner lost the total sum of r227,000 at this table. in 1964 he was able to arrive at an arrangement with his sole creditor to discharge the debt plus the accumulated interest." you could see the faces change as they rapidly searched their memories for a set of circumstances which would fit the dates and principals. robert reached the correct deduction first. in 1964 their host had sold his majority holdings in the north maun copper co. to crc at a price that could only be considered advantageous. just prior to this doctor steyner had been made head of finance and planning at crc.
"north maun copper," said robert with admiration.
that is how he had done it, the cunning old fox! he had forced steyner to buy well above market value.
the host smiled softly, deferentially, neither confirming nor denying.
"since 1964 to the present doctor steyner has continued to patronize this establishment. his gambling losses for this further period amount to-"
he consulted his notebook again, pretending surprise at the figure, "to a touch over r300,000." they sighed and moved restlessly.
even to these men it was a very large sum of money.
"i think we can rely on him." the host closed his notebook with a snap, and smiled around at them.
theresa lay in the dark. the night was warm, the stillness spoiled only by the kroaking of a frog down at the fishpond. the moonlight came in through the window, playing shadow pictures through the branches of the pride of india tree onto the wall of her bedroom.
she threw back the single sheet, and swung her legs off the bed.
she could not sleep, it was too warm, her nightdress kept binding under her armpits. she stood up and on a sudden reckless impulse she drew the nightdress off over her head and tossed it through the open door of her dressing-room, then, naked, she walked out onto the wide veranda.
into the moonlight, with the cool stone flags under her bare feet, and the warm night air moving like the touch of fairy hands on her skin.
she felt suddenly devilish and daring, she wanted to run down across the lawns and to have someone catch her doing it. she giggled, uncertain of this mood. it was so far removed from manfred's conception of a good german hausfrau's behaviour.
"he'd be furious," she whispered with wicked delight, and then she heard the motor of the car.
she froze with horror, the headlights flicked through the trees as the car came up the driveway and she darted back into her room; in panic she dropped to her knees and searched for her nightgown, found it and ran to the bed as she dragged it on over her head.
she lay in the darkness and listened to the car door slam. there was silence-until she heard him pass her door.
his heels cracked on the yellow wood floor, he was almost running.
theresa knew the symptoms, the late night return, the suppressed urgency, and she lay rigid in her bed, waiting.
the minutes passed slowly, and then the inter leading door from manfred's suite swung open silently.
"manfred, is that you?" she sat up and reached for the switch of the bedside lamp.
"don't put the light on." his voice was breathless, slurred as though he had been drinking but there was no trace of liquor on his breath as he stooped over her and kissed her.
his lips were dry and tightly closed, as he slipped off his dressing-gown.