by Wilbur Smith
‘What is ownership?’ Manyoro scoffed. ‘Just words on paper. It is still our land in every way that matters. The cattle are still ours. They still eat the same grass and drink the same water. That is how it has always been.’
‘But it is not as it must be in the future, Father. That is the point. We have to stand on our own feet and rule our land for ourselves. We must have an independent Kenya. We must be free. And I insist on being free to marry the woman I love.’
*
‘I cannot believe it!’ Chief Ndiri exclaimed, heaving his corpulent body to its feet to make his point. He placed his hands on the top of his antique mahogany desk and leaned forward, glaring furiously at Wangari. ‘My beautiful, brilliant daughter . . . with the whole world at her feet . . . who could have any man she desires . . . and she gives herself to a herder of cattle. Are you mad?’
‘He is not a cattle-herder, Father,’ Wangari replied. ‘He is a doctor.’
‘A Maasai doctor,’ Ndiri insisted. He sighed and slumped back into his chair, shaking his head sorrowfully. ‘I work so hard for so many years. I give you everything any young woman could desire – a fine education, beautiful clothes. How many people in all Kenya, black or white, have been blessed with as much as you?’
It was a fair question. Ndiri was a paramount chief of the Kikuyu, a position created by the colonial administration, for the tribe had traditionally been run by councils of elders. He and his family enjoyed privileges beyond anything his people could hope to attain. The house in which he and Wangari were talking was as substantial as any in the Kiambu district, and the servants were as numerous as those of the richest European families.
The chief had many acres of fertile farmland. From his office in Nairobi he ran a series of companies that dealt in road haulage and wholesale food distribution, and a chain of shops that served the native population. For him, colonisation had not entailed a loss of freedom or independence. Everything he had, he owed to the white man’s presence on his land.
‘I know that I am blessed. That’s why I want to help those who are less fortunate than me,’ Wangari replied, doing everything she could to remain calm. She could not allow her emotions to run away with her if she was to have a hope of winning her father over.
He was not impressed by her logic.
‘Bah!’ He swatted away her arguments with a dismissive flick of his hand. ‘Why do you care so much about people you don’t even know, but so little about your own family? You’ve broken your mother’s heart. She has dreamed of the day when you would be married. For years she has been talking to the other senior women of our tribe. These are mothers of strong, handsome sons from the best families. She was making sure that you would only be given to the best possible husband.’
Wangari stood tall, holding her head high as she replied, ‘I am not going to be given to anyone. I am not an object to be traded. I am a grown woman who will choose the man she wants for herself.’
‘Is this what they taught you in London?’ Ndiri asked. ‘To spit in your mother’s face?’
‘You were the one who wanted me to go to England. “Learn from the British,” you said. What did you expect?’
‘I expected that you would learn manners and refinement. You were supposed to become a lady.’
‘Oh, really? Are we Africans so lacking in dignity that we have to learn from our masters how to behave?’
‘You need to learn from someone, that is clear. How are you going to live when you marry this Maasai doctor? Don’t come running to me for money. I’m not paying for you to embarrass me in front of all my people.’
‘We don’t need your money. Benjamin and I took jobs during our university vacations. We saved our pay. We’re going to start a clinic in Eastlands—’
‘Eastlands?’ her father interrupted, even more scornful than before. ‘That’s nothing but a slum, a shanty town! It is a den of thieves. How will you heal the sick if the gangsters have stolen all your medicines, eh? Tell me that!’
‘Even gangsters need doctors, Father. They have families, too. They will see that Benjamin is helping the people. It will do them no good to harm us.’
‘And I suppose you will use that law degree that cost me so much money to help these gangsters stay out of prison.’
‘No, I will give the ordinary people of Eastlands advice about their legal and social problems, so that they do not lose out because they are too poor to pay for a normal lawyer.’
Chief Ndiri was barely listening. His head was filled with visions of his beautiful girl surrounded by the scum of the earth.
‘My God, is there nothing you will not do to shame your family?’ he asked.
Wangari could restrain herself no longer.
‘I am not shaming my family by helping those in need,’ she snapped back. ‘But you are shaming your family, your tribe and your country by licking the backsides of the white colonists. You do Government House’s bidding, even if it means hurting our people. You are the one who should be ashamed of himself.’
Chief Ndiri sprang back up again, his eyes bulging, his chest heaving with fury as much as exertion. He pointed at the door to his study.
‘Get out!’ he snarled. ‘Go! Leave this house and never darken its door again. You were the sun in my sky, Wangari. But you are dead to me now.’
The man’s passport named him as Michel Schultz. It stated that he had been born locally, and it had been issued by order of a government minister whose loyalty to the cause to which Schultz had dedicated the past quarter of a century was as steadfast and unwavering as his own.
Now, at the end of the working day, Schultz eased the long black snout of his German-made saloon out of the gates of the automotive engineering business that bore his name and into the evening traffic. The car was a new model, powered by an engine that gave it impressive acceleration and speed: qualities that had been enhanced still further by the modifications added by Schultz’s own mechanics. One of his most effective sales pitches was to take prospective customers for a drive, floor the accelerator and then shout over the roaring engine, ‘We can make your car go as fast as this!’
For now, he was obliged to crawl at walking speed until the car freed itself from the grasp of the rush-hour jams. Schultz drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. He was not a man who liked to be kept waiting. But though it was large and prosperous, the city was a fraction of the size of London, Paris or Berlin, and soon Schultz was driving through rolling foothills, along country roads dappled by the shade of the trees growing on either side and past the gates of country estates blessed with rich pastures and fruitful vineyards.
Schultz could easily have afforded one of those splendid properties, but his ally in high places had advised him to keep a low profile.
‘We don’t want anyone asking questions about where your money comes from,’ he said. ‘First, get a nice little business going, eh? That will explain everything.’
Schultz set to work building a new company, just as his forefathers had built the one that he had once ruled. He was confident he would succeed. He knew a great deal about the internal combustion engine. He had enough capital to fund his own enterprise and, if necessary, buy out competitors. Above all, he had a ruthless, domineering, bullying streak, inherited from his father, that made him willing to threaten, blackmail and if necessary destroy anyone who got in his way.
He would have his estate, and even if the mountains here did not soar as high as the ones he had left behind, they were undeniably impressive and the climate was considerably more congenial.
And there was the ocean. The final stretch of Schultz’s journey home took him through a seaside town, with fishing boats lined up by the dockside and onto a road that twisted and turned with all the coastline’s inlets and promontories. He came to an unmarked turning that seemed to lead nowhere. The view from the road was of nothing but the open sea and the sky.
It was when Schultz turned into the opening and drove down a gravel track that the
small headland, barely any bigger than a couple of tennis courts side by side, came into view. When Schultz had acquired the property, paying a pittance for it, all there was on it was a dilapidated hut and a set of stone steps that led down the steep rock face to a crumbling concrete jetty.
Through his friend the government minister, he had found a building company run by a man who could be trusted. The solid rock had been blasted open to create holes in which large tanks for water and generator-fuel could be placed, along with a cesspit. More ground had been levelled for the house where Schultz and his wife Johanne proposed to live. From the rear, as Schultz approached, the walls were unbroken by any windows and the building looked as impregnable as a bunker. The comparison was ironic, given Schultz’s personal history, but it also reflected his intentions. If necessary, at a moment of extreme crisis, he needed this place to function as his personal fortress.
Schultz opened the door to his garage, parked his car, and walked into his house.
The woman who now bore the name Johanne Schultz was waiting to greet her husband. Her hair tumbled in golden swirls around her shoulders. Her face was painted with thick black lashes and brazen crimson lips. She was wearing a flimsy, diaphanous gown, tied with a satin bow at her waist and a pair of heels that thrust her body up and out, exaggerating every curve of her buttocks and breasts.
She kissed him lightly on the lips and led him into the main living room. The far wall consisted of floor-to-ceiling windows, fashioned from bulletproof glass that looked over the evening water.
Neither man nor wife were interested in the view. Johanne teetered towards a sideboard on which two drinks were standing: a tall glass, dewy with condensation, filled with ice-cold beer and a shorter one that contained a double shot of schnapps.
She fetched the two glasses as silently and dutifully as a well-trained housemaid and brought them to her master. He took the beer glass, emptied it in one draught and then did the same with the spirit, relishing the way the chill of one was followed by the heat of the other.
She replaced the glasses, knowing that his eyes were following her every step, relishing his ravenous gaze. She came up to him, gently pressing her soft, almost naked body against his massive, fully clothed form.
The fact that she was exposed and vulnerable while he was still hidden behind his clothes excited Johanne.
‘Can we play the game?’ she asked. ‘I’ve given the servants the night off.’
She ran her hand over his crotch and breathed a little faster as she felt his hardness beneath her palm.
Schultz was breathing heavily too. He pushed his hand between the open folds of Johanne’s negligee and cupped her pudenda in his palm. She opened her legs, making it easier for him to slide two fingers inside her to feel her heat and wetness.
‘Yes,’ he growled. ‘We will play. I will ring for you when I am ready.’
She moaned softly and looked up at him. ‘Please, I beg you . . . don’t be too cruel.’
Schultz’s response was instant. He raised his hand as if to strike her. Johanne recoiled, stumbling backwards until her heel caught on the edge of a thick woollen rug and tripped her. There was terror in her eyes as he marched across and glared down at her, his thick neck reddening with fury.
‘How dare you tell me what to do?’ he shouted. ‘By God, I will make you pay for that!’
Schultz turned and stalked away. One of the side walls of the room was lined with bookcases. He pressed a particular point on the wooden panelling. The case opened with the faint hum of an electric motor, to reveal a secret passageway. Schultz stepped into it and disappeared from view as he walked down hidden stairs into a secret cellar.
The cases slid closed behind him.
On the floor of the living room, Johanne Schultz gave a little shiver comprised in equal parts of fear and arousal. She raised a finger to her cheek, imagining how it would be feeling if she had been hit. She pulled herself to her feet. There was no time to lose. The game had begun.
Mr and Mrs Michel Schultz called it ‘the game’ but it was more of a ritual: an acting out of the shared hate that had first brought them together.
In the early days, their relationship was a sexual version of the old saying that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’. Yet the bitter intensity of their coupling had awakened something in Johanne, a devilish version of the prince’s kiss that rouses a sleeping princess. She had been brought up to be conventionally sweet, a compliant girl. Thanks to Schultz she had become a woman who despised the norms of acceptable bourgeois existence. He had led her into the heart of darkness, and she had found herself at home.
Johanne examined herself in the mirror. She had removed her gown and was naked but for her high heels. At the age of thirty-two she was in her physical prime, a condition she maintained with a programme of diet and exercise as disciplined as any athlete’s. Her husband demanded no less and Johanne agreed with him, for her beauty was the source of her power and she had no intention of letting it go.
Johanne trembled with excitement and apprehension. He would hurt her, she knew that, though the methods he chose varied, so that she was never certain what was in store for her. That was part of the thrill.
What she knew for sure, however, was that the more Schultz bound her body, the more he set her spirit and her sexuality free. Every time he hurt her, the brief shock of pain would be followed by a much longer glow of pleasure. And by the time he penetrated her, they would both have been stimulated to levels of arousal that were as addictive as any drug.
Johanne checked that her make-up was perfect and every hair in place. It would not be long now.
She heard it: the ringing of the bell that told her he was ready. She took a deep breath, composed herself and walked to the bookshelf. She pressed the same panel that Schultz had done, waited while the shelf slid to one side and made her way down the stairs, holding on tight to the handrail, for they were steep and made of bare concrete. If she caught a heel and fell it could easily be fatal.
She emerged into the cellar. Schultz was dressed in the uniform he had proudly worn as an Oberst-Gruppenführer, or general, in the Allgemeine-SS. It was black, with the silver death’s head and crossbones badge on the cap and a scarlet, white and black swastika band around the left arm. He styled it with riding breeches and tall, shiny black boots, in the manner beloved by his former boss and hero Reinhard Heydrich, the mastermind of the Final Solution.
Schultz was not a handsome man: his hair was a wiry ginger mat, his facial features were coarse and his smile was invariably malicious. But he possessed an air of raw, brutish power. His brow was heavy and glowering, his neck as thick and pink as a leg of lamb, his shoulders a bullish mass of bone and muscle. Dressed in his uniform, he conveyed an air of hostility, danger and mortal threat.
And all of it was directed at Johanne.
She looked around the room to get some idea of what he had in store for her. Schultz had spent countless hours in the basement cells of the SS headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, Berlin, torturing confessions out of suspects. He knew what he was doing. Her eyes passed over the portrait of the Führer that hung on the wall, past the locked cases in which Schultz kept his equipment – locked so that she would never know the full extent of what was in store for her – and came to rest on a heavy wooden chair, fashioned from solid oak, which had cuffs on each arm and at the bottom of the front two legs.
Beside the chair was a worktable, on which sat a flat wooden paddle and an assortment of chains, gags, masks and blindfolds. Johanne could cope with any of them. And then she saw something that made her belly tighten and her pulse begin to race. It was a simple black box device bearing control dials and output meters, from which snaked a pair of black cables with clamps like metal clothes pegs on the end.
Her husband had only brought the box out once before, but the sense-memory of the unendurable agony it had inflicted was as fresh as ever. This was Johanne’s punishment for begging him not to be cruel. Even as sh
e had said the words, she had known there would be a price to pay. Why else say them? But this . . . She raised her right arm across her breasts and flinched at the thought of the clamps.
There was always a moment for Johanne when the acting stopped, the fear became real and her desire to flee was genuine. This was that moment.
‘Sit in the chair,’ Schultz commanded.
She was his prisoner. She would do what he wanted.
‘No!’ Johanne gasped. ‘No . . . I can’t . . . Please . . .’
She took a couple of steps backwards, then turned and dashed for the stairs, her ankles buckling and twisting as the heels scrabbled for purchase on the floor.
But as she ran, Johanne knew that the attempt at escape was futile. Her husband could move much more easily than her and he was stronger. Once he had her in his grasp she would be helpless.
He would place her in the chair. He would lock the cuffs around her wrists and ankles.
He would order her, ‘Tell me your name.’
She would refuse at first. She would try with all her might to resist. But once he had applied the clamps and switched on the electric current, there would come a point when she would crack and he would ask her one last time, ‘What is your name?’
And she would answer, as she always did, ‘Courtney . . . My name is Saffron Courtney.’
Timo Riel was the detective the late Fritz Werner had christened ‘the muscle’. As a young uniformed cop he had been the heavyweight boxing champion of the Württemberg police. He’d gone undefeated from 1928 through to ’33 before he quit the ring. He wanted to transfer to the Criminal Police, the detective branch of law enforcement, and that meant swapping his boxing gloves for a smart suit.
Almost twenty years later, Riel’s imposing bulk and battered face still came in handy. The obvious advantage was that only the cockiest or dumbest criminals considered taking him on in a fight. But the physical threat he posed was so obvious that no one stopped to think that there might be a brain hidden beneath his Neanderthal skull and cauliflower ears.