Authors: Wilbur Smith

Rage (16 page)

BOOK: Rage

4.86Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

A long time later she wiped away her tears. âWe are going to get on just fine together, you and me,' she declared. âOur minds work the same way.'

âOur bodies don't do too badly either,' he pointed out, and she unclipped her oxygen mask and leaned across to offer him her mouth again. Her tongue was sinuous and slippery as an eel.

T
heir time in the desert together passed too swiftly for Shasa, for since they had become lovers he found her a constant joy to be with. Her quick and curious mind stimulated his own, and through her observant eyes he saw old familiar things afresh.

Together they watched and filmed the elephantine yellow caterpillar tractors ripping the elevated terraces that had once been the ocean bed. He explained to Kitty how in the time when the crust of the earth was soft and the molten magma still burst through to the surface, the diamonds, conceived at great depth and heat and pressure, were carried up with this sulphurous outpouring.

In the endless rains of those ancient times the great rivers scoured the earth, running down to the sea, washing the diamonds down with them, until they collected in the
pockets and irregularities of the seabed closest to the river mouth. As the emerging continent shrugged and shifted, so the old seabed was lifted above the surface. The rivers had long ago dried up or been diverted, and sediment covered the elevated terraces, concealing the diamond-bearing pockets. It had taken the genius of Twentyman-Jones to work out the old river courses. Using aerial photography and an inherent sixth sense, he had pinpointed the ancient terraces.

Kitty and her team filmed the process by which the sand and rubble churned up by the dozer blades was screened and sieved, and finally dry-blown with great multi-bladed fans, until only the precious stones â one part in tens of millions â remained.

In the desert nights the mine hutments, lacking air-conditioning, were too hot for sleep. Shasa made a nest of blankets out amongst the dunes, and with the faint peppery smell of the desert in their nostrils they made love under a blaze of stars.

On their last day Shasa commandeered one of the company jeeps and they drove out into a land of red dunes, the highest in all the world, sculptured by the incessant winds off the cold Benguela Current, their ridges crested like living reptiles as they writhed high against the pale desert sky.

Shasa pointed out to Kitty a herd of gemsbok, each antelope large as a pony, but with a marvellously patterned face mask of black and white and slender horns, straight and long as they were tall, that were the original unicorn of the fable. They were beautiful beasts, so adapted to their harsh country that they need never drink from surface water, but could survive only on the moisture they obtained from the silvery sun-scorched grasses. They watched them dissolve magically into the heat mirage, turning to squirming black tadpoles on the horizon before they disappeared.

âI was born here. Somewhere in these deserts,' Shasa
told her as they stood hand in hand on the crest of one of the dunes and looked down a thousand feet to where they had left the jeep in the gut of the sand mountains.

He told her how Centaine had carried him in her womb through this terrible terrain, lost and abandoned, with only two little Bushmen as her guides and companions, and how the Bushwoman, for whom the Hâani Mine was named, acted as midwife at his birth and named him Shasa â âGood Water' â after the most precious substance in her world.

The beauty and the grandeur affected them both so they drew close together in the solitude, and by the end of that day Shasa was sure that he truly loved her and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

Together they watched the sun sink towards the red dunes and the sky turned to a screen of hot hammered bronze, dented with flecks of blue cloud as though by blows from a celestial blacksmith's hammer. As the sky cooled, the colours chameleoned into puce and orange and lofty purples until the sun sank behind the dunes â and at the instant it disappeared, a miracle occurred.

They both gasped in wonder as in a silent explosion the entire heavens flared into electric green. It lasted only as long as they held their breath, but in that time the sky was as green as the ocean depths or the ice in the gaping cracks of a high mountain glacier. Then it faded swiftly into the drab gun-metal of dusk, and Kitty turned to him with a silent question in her eyes.

âWe saw it together,' Shasa said softly. âThe Bushmen call it the Green Python. A man can live a lifetime in the desert without seeing it. I have never witnessed it, not until this moment.'

âWhat does it mean?' Kitty asked.

âThe Bushmen say it is the most fortunate of all good omens.' He reached out and took her hand. âThey say that those who see the Green Python will be specially blessed â and we saw it together.'

In the fading light they went down the slip face of the dune to where Shasa had parked the jeep. They sank almost knee-deep in the fluffy sun-warm sand, and laughing they clung to each other for support.

When they reached the jeep, Shasa took her by the shoulders, turned her to face him and told her, âI don't want it to end, Kitty. Come with me. Marry me. I'll give you everything that life has to offer.'

She threw back her head to laugh in his face. âDon't be daft, Shasa Courtney. What I want from life isn't yours to give,' she told him. âThis was fun, but it wasn't reality. We can be good friends for as long as you want, but our feet are set on different paths, and we aren't going in the same direction.'

The next day when they landed at Windhoek airport, a telegram addressed to her was pinned to the board in the crew room. Kitty read it swiftly. When she looked up she wasn't seeing Shasa any longer.

âThere is another story breaking,' she said. âI have to go.'

âWhen will I see you again?' Shasa asked, and she looked at him as though he were a complete stranger.

âI don't know,' she said, and she and her crew were on the commercial flight that left for Johannesburg an hour later.

S
hasa was angry and humiliated. He had never offered to divorce Tara for any other woman â had never even contemplated it â and Kitty had laughed at him.

There were well-explored avenues down which he knew he could cure his anger; one was the hunt. For Shasa nothing else existed in the world when the hunter's passion thrilled in his blood, when a bull buffalo, big as a mountain and black as hell, came thundering down upon him, bloody
saliva drooling from its raised muzzle, the polished points of its curved horns glinting, and murder in its small piglike eyes. However, this was the rainy season and the hunting grounds in the north would be muggy wet and malarial, and the grass high above a man's head. He could not hunt, so he turned to his other sure panacea, the pursuit of wealth.

Money held endless fascination for Shasa. Without that obsessive attraction he could not have accumulated such a vast store of it, for that required a devotion and dedication that few men are capable of. Those that lack it console themselves with old platitudes about it not buying happiness and being the root of all evil. As an adept, Shasa knew that money was neither good nor evil, but simply amoral. He knew that money had no conscience, but that it contained the most powerful potential for both good and evil. It was the man who possessed it who made the ultimate choice between them, and that choice was called power.

Even when he had believed himself to be totally absorbed with Kitty Godolphin, his instinct had been in play. Almost subconsciously he had noticed those tiny white specks way out on the green Benguela Current of the Atlantic. Kitty Godolphin had not been gone from his life for an hour before he stormed into the offices of Courtney Mining and Finance in Windhoek's main street and started demanding figures and documents, making telephone calls, summoning lawyers and accountants, calling in favours from men in high places in government, dispatching his minions to search the archives of the registrar and the local newspapers, assembling the tools of his trade, facts, figures and influence, and then losing himself happily in them, like an opium-eater with his pipe.

It was another five days before he was ready to bring it all together, and make the final weighing up. He had kept
David Abrahams with him, for David was an excellent sounding-board in a situation like this one, and Shasa liked to bounce ideas off him and catch the returns.

âSo this is what it looks like,' Shasa began the summing up. There were five of them in the boardroom, sitting under the magnificent Pierneef murals that Centaine had commissioned when the artist was in his prime, Shasa and David, the local manager and the secretary of Courtney Mining, and the German lawyer based in Windhoek whom Shasa kept on permanent retainer.

âIt looks like we have been asleep on our feet. In the last three years an industry has sprung up under our noses, an industry that last year alone netted twenty million pounds, four times the profits of the H'ani Mine, and we have let it happen.'

He glowered cyclops-eyed at his local manager for an explanation.

âWe were aware of the recommencement of the fishing industry at Walvis Bay,' that unfortunate gentleman sought to explain. âThe application for pilchard trawling licences was gazetted, but I didn't think that fishing would match up with our other activities.'

âWith due respect, Frank, that's the kind of decision I like to make myself. It's your job to pass on all information, of whatever nature, to me.' It was said quietly, but the three local men had no illusions as to the severity of the reprimand and they bowed their heads over their notepads. There was silence for ten seconds while Shasa let them suffer.

âRight, Frank,' Shasa ordered him. âTell us now what you should have told us four or five years ago.'

âWell, Mr Courtney, the pilchard-fishing industry was started in the early 1930s at Walvis Bay, and although initially successful it was overtaken by the Depression, and with the primitive trawling methods of those days was
unable to survive. The factories closed down and became derelict.'

As Frank spoke, Shasa's mind went back to his childhood. He remembered his first visit to Walvis Bay and blinked with the realization that it had been twenty years ago. He and Centaine had driven down in her daffodil-coloured Daimler to call in the loan she had made to De La Rey's canning and fishing company and to close down the factory. Those were the desperate years of the Depression when the Courtney companies had survived only through his mother's pluck and determination â and ruthlessness.

He remembered how Lothar De La Rey, Manfred's father, had pleaded with his mother for an extension of the loan. When his trawlers lay against the wharf, loaded to the gunwales with their catch of silver pilchards, and the sheriff of the court, on Centaine's orders, had put his seals on the factory doors.

That was the day he had first met Manfred De La Rey. Manfred had been a bare-footed, cropped-head hulk of a lad, bigger and stronger than Shasa, burned dark by the sun, dressed in a navy-blue fisherman's jersey and khaki shorts that were smeared with dried fish-slime, while Shasa had worn immaculate grey slacks, white open-neck shirt and a college sweater with polished black shoes on his feet.

Two boys from different worlds, they had come face to face on the main fish wharf and their hostility had been instantaneous, their hackles rising like dogs, and within minutes, gibes and insults had turned to blows and they had flown at each other furiously, punching and wrestling down the wharf while the coloured trawlermen had egged them on delightedly. He remembered clearly even after all this time Manfred De La Rey's pale ferocious eyes glaring into his as they fell from the wharf on to the slippery, stinking cargo of dead pilchards, and he felt again the
dreadful humiliation as Manfred had forced his head deeply into the quagmire of cold dead fish and he had begun to drown in their slime.

He jerked his mind back to the present, to hear his manager saying, âSo the position is now that the government has issued four factory licences to catch and process pilchards at Walvis Bay. The Department of Fisheries allocates an annual quota to each of the licensees, which is presently two hundred thousand tons.' Shasa contemplated the enormous profit potential of those quantities of fish. According to their published accounts, each of those four factories had averaged two million pounds profit in the last fiscal year. He knew he could improve on that, probably double it, but it didn't look as though he was going to get the chance.

âApproaches to both the Fisheries Department, and to higher authority' â Shasa had taken the administrator of the territory himself to dinner â âhave elicited the firm fact that no further licences will be issued. The only way to enter the industry would be to buy out one of the licensees.' Shasa smiled sardonically for he had already sounded out two of the companies. The owner of the first one had told Shasa in movingly eloquent terms to commit an unnatural sexual act on himself and the other had quoted a figure at which he might be prepared to negotiate which ended with a string of zeros that reached to the horizon. Despite his gloomy expression, it was the kind of situation in which Shasa revelled, seemingly hopeless, and yet with the promise of enormous rewards if he could find his way around the obstacles.

âI want a detailed breakdown of balance sheets on all four companies,' he ordered. âDoes anybody know the Director of Fisheries?'

âYes, but he's straight up and down,' Frank warned him, knowing how Shasa's mind worked. âHis fists are tight
closed, and if we try to slip him a little gifty, he'll raise a stink they'll smell in the High Court in Bloemfontein.'

âBesides which the issue of licences is outside his jurisdiction,' the company secretary agreed with him. âThey are granted exclusively by the ministry in Pretoria, and there won't be any more. Four is the limit. That is the decision of the Minister himself.'

Five more days Shasa remained in Windhoek, covering every possible lead or chance with a total dedication to detail that was one of his strengths, but at the end of that time he was no closer to owning a factory licence at Walvis Bay than he had been when he had first spotted the little white trawlers out on the green ocean. The only thing he had achieved was to forget that malignant little sprite Kitty Godolphin for ten whole days.

However, when at last he admitted to himself that there was nothing more to be gained by staying on in Windhoek and he climbed into the pilot's seat of the Mosquito, Kitty Godolphin's memory mocked him from the empty seat beside him. On impulse, instead of laying a course direct to Cape Town, he detoured westwards, heading for the coast and Walvis Bay, determined to have one long look at the site before finally abandoning the idea.

There was something else besides Kitty's memory that plagued him as the Mosquito dropped down the escarpment towards the sea. It was a burr of doubt, a prickle of discomfort that he had overlooked something important in his investigations.

He saw the ocean ahead, wreathed in tendrils of fog where the cold current brushed the land. The high dunes writhed together like a nest of razor-backed vipers, the colour of ripe wheat and copper, and he banked the Mosquito and followed the endless beaches upon which the surf broke in regular snowy lines until he saw the horn of the bay spike into the restless ocean and the
lighthouse on Pelican Point winked at him through the fog banks.

He throttled back the Rolls-Royce Merlins and went down, brushing the tops of the scattered fog banks and in the gaps he saw the trawler fleet at work. They were close in to the land, on the edge of the current line. Some of the boats had their nets full, and he saw the silver treasure glittering through the water as the trawlermen raised it slowly to the surface, while over them hung a shimmering white panoply of seabirds, greedy for the feast.

Then a mile away he picked out another boat hunting, cutting a foaming arabesque with its wake as it stalked yet another pilchard shoal.

Shasa pulled on flap and banked the Mosquito steeply, turning above the trawler to watch the hunt develop. He saw the shoal, a dark shadow as though a thousand gallons of ink had been spilled into the green waters, and he was amazed by its size, a hundred acres of solid fish, each individual no longer than his hand, but in their multitudes dwarfing leviathan.

âMillions of tons in one shoal,' he whispered. As he translated it into terms of wealth, the acquisitive passion flared up in him again. He watched the trawler beneath him throw its net around a tiny part of the gigantic shoal, and then he levelled out and flew at a hundred feet, skimming the fog banks, towards the maw of the bay. There were the four factory buildings, standing on the edge of the water, each with its own jetty thrusting out into the shallow waters, and black smoke billowing from the chimney stacks of the furnaces.

âWhich one belonged to old De La Rey?' he wondered. On which of those flimsy structures had he fought with Manfred and ended with his ears and nose and mouth filled with fish slime? He grinned ruefully at the memory.

âBut surely it was further north,' he puzzled, trying to cast his mind back twenty years. âIt wasn't down here so
close to the hook of the bay.' He banked the Mosquito and flew back parallel to the beach, and then a mile ahead he saw the line of palings, rotted and black, running in an irregular line out into the waters of the bay, and on the beach the roofless old ruins of the factory.

âIt's still there,' he realized, and instantly his skin prickled with excitement. âIt's still there, deserted and forgotten all these years.' He knew then what he had overlooked.

He made two more passes, so low that the blast of his propellers raised a miniature sandstorm from the tops of the dunes. On the seaward wall of the derelict factory whose corrugated iron covering was gnawed and streaked with red rust, he could still make out the faded lettering: SOUTH WEST AFRICAN CANNING AND FISHING CO. LTD.

He pushed on throttle and lifted the Mosquito's nose into a gentle climbing turn, bringing her out of the turn on course for Windhoek. Cape Town and his promise to his sons and Isabella to be home before the weekend were forgotten. David Abrahams had flown the Dove back to Johannesburg, leaving a few minutes before Shasa that morning, so there was nobody in Windhoek whom Shasa would trust to conduct the search. He went down to the registrar of deeds himself and an hour before the deed office closed for the weekend he found what he was looking for.

The licence to capture and process pilchards and all other pelagic fish was dated 20 September 1929 and signed by the administrator of the territory. It was made out in favour of one Lothar De La Rey of Windhoek, and there was no term of expiry. It was good now and for all time.

Shasa stroked the crackling, yellowing document, smoothing out the crumples in it lovingly, admiring the crimson revenue stamps and the administrator's fading signature. Here in these musty drawers it had lain for over twenty years â and he tried to put a value on this scrap of paper. A million pounds, certainly â five million pounds,
perhaps. He chuckled triumphantly and took it to the deeds clerk to have a notorized copy made.

âIt will cost you a pretty penny, sir,' the clerk sniffed. âTen and six for the copy and two pounds for the attestation.'

âIt's a high price,' Shasa agreed, âbut I can just afford it.'

BOOK: Rage

4.86Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Read Book Download Book

ads