Rage (56 page)

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Authors: Wilbur Smith

BOOK: Rage
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‘Not much profit,' he mused aloud, ‘but the power! To be able to influence the minds of people!'
In South Africa the English press was hysterically anti-government, while the Afrikaans press was fawningly and abjectly the slave of the National Party. A thinking man could trust neither.
‘What about an English-language paper that was aimed at the business community and politically uncommitted,' he wondered, as he had before. ‘What if I were to buy one of the smaller weaker papers and build it up? After the Silver River Mine's next dividend is declared, we are going to be sitting on a pile of money.' Then he grinned. ‘I must be getting senile, but at least I'll be able to guarantee a job for my drop-out journalist son!' And the idea of Michael as editor of a large influential newspaper had an increasing appeal, the longer he thought about it. ‘Still, I wish the little blighter would get himself a decent education first,' he grumbled, but he had almost forgiven him for his treachery by the time he parked the Jaguar in the parking area reserved for cabinet ministers. ‘Of course, I'll keep him on a decent allowance,' he decided. ‘That threat was just a little bluff.'
A sense of excited expectation gripped the House as Shasa went up the stairs to the front entrance. The lobby was crowded with senators and members of parliament. The knots of dark-suited men formed and dissolved and reformed, in the intricate play of political cross-currents that fascinated Shasa. As an insider he could read the significance of who was talking to whom and why.
It took him almost twenty minutes to reach the foot of the staircase for as one of the prime actors he was drawn inexorably into the subtle theatre of power and favour. At
last he escaped and with only minutes to spare hurried up the stairs and down the passage to his suite.
Tricia was hovering anxiously. ‘Oh, Mr Courtney, everybody is looking for you. Lord Littleton telephoned and the Prime Minister's secretary left a message.' She was reading from her pad as she followed him into the inner office.
‘Try to get the PM's secretary first, then Lord Littleton.' Shasa sat at his desk, and frowned as he noticed some chalky white specks on his blotter. He brushed them away irritably, and would have given Tricia an order to speak to the cleaners, but she was still reading from her pad and he had less than an hour to tackle the main items on her list before the joint sitting began.
He dealt with the queries that Verwoerd's secretary had for him. The answers were in his head and he did not have to refer to anybody in his department – and then Littleton was on the line. He wanted to discuss an addition to the agenda for their meeting that afternoon, and once they had agreed that, Shasa asked tactfully, ‘Have you found out anything about the speeches this morning?'
‘Afraid not, old man. I'm as much in the dark as you are.'
As Shasa reached across the desk to replace the receiver, he noticed another white speck of chalk on his blotter that had not been there a minute before; he was about to brush that away also, when he paused and looked up to see where it had come from. This time he scowled as he saw the small hole in his ceiling and the hair-line cracks around it. He pressed the switch on his intercom.
‘Tricia, please come in here a moment.'
When she stood in the doorway, he pointed at the ceiling. ‘What do you make of that ?'
Tricia looked mystified and came to stand beside his chair. They both peered at the damage.
‘Oh, I know,' Tricia looked relieved, ‘but I'm not supposed to tell you.'
‘Spit it out, woman!' Shasa ordered.
‘Your wife, Mrs Courtney, said she was planning some renovations to your office as a surprise. I suppose she has asked Maintenance to do the work for her.'
‘Damn!' Shasa didn't like surprises which interfered with the comfortable tenor of his existence. He liked his office the way it was and he didn't want anybody, particularly anyone of Tara's
avant-garde
taste, interfering with something that worked extremely well as it was.
‘I think she is planning to change the curtains also,' Tricia added innocently. She didn't like Tara Courtney. She considered her shallow, insincere and scheming. She didn't approve of her disrespectful attitude to Shasa, and she wasn't above sowing a few seeds of dissension. If Shasa was free, there was just a chance, a very small and remote chance that he might see her clearly and realize just how much she, Tricia, felt for him, ‘And she was talking about altering the light fittings,' she added.
Shasa jumped up from his desk and went to touch his curtains. He and Centaine had studied at least a hundred samples of fabric before choosing this one. Protectively he rearranged the drapes, and then he noticed the second hole in the ceiling and the thin insulated wire that protruded from it. He had difficulty controlling his fury in front of his secretary.
‘You get on to Maintenance,' he instructed. ‘Talk to Odendaal himself, not one of his workmen, and you tell him I want to know exactly what is going on. Tell him whatever it is, it's damned shoddy workmanship and that there is plaster all over my desk.'
‘I'll do that this morning,' Tricia promised, and then, placatingly, ‘It's ten minutes to, Mr Courtney – you don't want to be late.'
Manfred De La Rey was just leaving his own office as Shasa came down the passage, and they fell in side by side.
‘Have you found out anything?'
‘No – have you?'
Manfred shook his head. ‘It's too late anyway – nothing we can do now.'
Shasa saw Blaine Malcomess at the door of the dining-room and went to greet him. They filed into the panelled dining-room together.
‘How is Mater?'
‘Centaine is fine – looking forward to seeing you for dinner tomorrow evening.' Centaine was holding a dinner party in Littleton's honour out at Rhodes Hill. ‘I left her giving the chef a nervous breakdown.' They laughed together and then found their seats in the front row of chairs. As a minister and Deputy Leader of the Opposition, they both warranted reserved seats.
Shasa swivelled in his seat and looked to the back of the large hall where the press cameras had been set up. He picked out Kitty Godolphin, looking tiny and girlish beside her camera crew, and she winked at him mischievously. Then the two Prime Ministers were taking their places at the top table and Shasa leaned across to Manfred De La Rey and murmured, ‘I hope this isn't all a hoo-ha over nothing – and that Supermac has really got something of interest to tell us.'
Manfred shrugged. ‘Let's hope it isn't too exciting either,' he said. ‘Sometimes it's safer to be bored—' but he broke off as the Speaker of the House called for silence and rose to introduce the Prime Minister of Great Britain, and the packed room, filled with the most powerful men in the land, settled into attentive and expectant silence.
Even when Macmillan, tall and urbane and strangely benign in expression, rose to his feet, Shasa had no sense of being at the anvil while history was being forged and he crossed his arms over his chest and lowered his chin in the attitude of listening and concentration in which he followed all debate and argument.
Macmillan spoke in an unemotional voice, but with
weight and lucidity, and his text had all the indications of having been carefully prepared, meticulously polished and rehearsed.
‘The most striking of all the impressions I have formed since I left London a month ago,' he said, ‘is the strength of this African national consciousness. In different places it may take different forms, but it is happening everywhere. The wind of change is blowing through the continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact. Our national policies must take account of it.'
Shasa sat up straight and unfolded his arms, and around him there was a similar stirring of incredulity. It was only then that Shasa realized with a clairvoyant flash that the world he knew had altered its shape, that in the fabric of life that had held together their diverse nation for almost three hundred years, the first rent had been torn by a few simple words, a rent that could never be repaired. While he attempted to grasp the full extent of the damage, Macmillan was going on in those plummy measured tones.
‘Of course, you understand this as well as anyone. You are sprung from Europe, the home of nationalism.' Cunningly, Macmillan was including them in his new sweeping view of Africa. ‘Indeed, in the history of our times yours will be recorded as the first of the African nationalisms.'
Shasa glanced at Verwoerd beside the British Prime Minister and he could see that he was agitated and alarmed. He had been caught unawares by Macmillan's stratagem of withholding his text from him.
‘As a fellow member of the Commonwealth, it is our earnest desire to give South Africa our support and encouragement, but I hope you won't mind me saying frankly that there are some aspects of your policies which make it impossible for us to do this without being false to our own deep convictions about the political destinies of free men.'
Macmillan was announcing nothing less than a parting
of ways and Shasa was devastated by the idea. He wanted to leap to his feet and shout, ‘But I am British also – you cannot do this to us.' He looked around him almost pleadingly and saw his own deep distress echoed on the faces of Blaine and most of the other English members of the House.
Macmillan's words had devastated them.
Shasa's mood persisted over the remainder of that day and the next. The atmosphere at the meetings with Littleton and his advisers was one of mourning, and though Littleton himself was apologetic and conciliatory, they all knew that the damage was real and irreparable. The fact was undeniable. Britain was dropping them. She might go on trading with them, but at arm's length. Britain had chosen sides.
Late on the Friday a special session of the House was announced for the following Monday, when Verwoerd would make his accounting to his parliament and his people. They had the weekend to brood over their fate. Macmillan's speech even cast a shadow over Centaine's dinner party on the Friday evening, and Centaine took it as a personal insult.
‘The man's timing is atrocious,' she confided to Shasa. ‘The day before my party! Perfidious Albion!'
‘You French have never trusted the British,' Shasa teased her, his first attempt at humour in forty-eight hours.
‘Now I know why,' Centaine retorted. ‘Look at the man – typically English. He hides expediency in a cloak of high moral indignation. He does what is best for England and makes himself a saint while he does it.'
It was left for Blaine Malcomess to sum up after the women had left the men to their port and cigars in Rhodes Hill's magnificent dining-room.
‘Why are we so incredulous?' he asked. ‘Why do we feel it so impossible that Britain would reject us, simply because we fought two wars for her?' He shook his head. ‘No, the
caravan moves on and so must we. We must ignore the gloating of the London press, we must ignore their delight in this unprecedented rebuke and repudiation of all of us, the Nationalists and those that strenuously oppose them. From now on we will be increasingly alone, and we must learn to stand on our own feet.'
Shasa nodded. ‘Macmillan's speech was a huge political gain for Verwoerd. There is only one way for us to go now. The bridge has been chopped down behind us. No retreat is possible. We have to go along with Verwoerd. South Africa will be a republic before the year is out, mark my words, and after that—' Shasa drew on his cigar while he considered ‘– and after that only God and the Devil know for certain.'
‘
A
t times it seems that God and fate take a direct hand in our petty affairs,' Tara said softly. ‘But for a tiny detail, the choice of the dining-room rather than the chamber, we might have destroyed the man who had brought us a message of hope.'
‘For once it does seem that your Christian God favours us.' Moses watched her in the driving-mirror as he drove the Chevrolet through the Monday rush-hour traffic. ‘Our timing has been perfect. At the moment when the British Government, supported by the British press and the nation, has recognized our rights, the political destinies of free men, as Macmillan put it, we will deliver our first hard blow for the promised freedom.'
‘I am afraid, Moses, afraid for you and for all of us.'
‘The time for fear has passed,' he told her. ‘Now is the time for courage and resolution, for it is not oppression and slavery that breeds revolution. The lesson is clear. Revolution rises out of the promise of better things. For three hundred years we have borne oppression in weary resignation,
but now this Englishman has shown us a glimpse of the future and it is golden with promise. He has given our people hope, and after today, after we have struck down the most evil man in Africa's dark and tormented history, when Verwoerd is dead, the future will at last belong to us.' He had spoken softly, but with that peculiar intensity that made her blood thrill through her veins and pound in her eardrums. She felt the elation, but also the sorrow and the fear.
‘Many men will die with him,' she whispered. ‘My father. Is there no way he can be spared, Moses?'
He did not reply, but she saw the reflection of his gaze in the mirror and she could not bear the scorn. She dropped her own eyes and murmured.
‘I'm sorry – I will be strong. I will not speak of it again.' But her mind was racing. There must be some way to keep her father out of the chamber at the fateful moment, but it would have to be compelling. As Deputy Leader of the Opposition, he must attend such solemn business as Verwoerd's speech. Moses disturbed her thoughts.
‘I want you to repeat your duties to me,' he said.
‘We have gone over it so often,' she protested weakly.
‘There must be no misunderstanding.' His tone was fierce. ‘Do as I tell you.'
‘Once the House is in session – so that we are certain Shasa will not intercept us – we will go up to his suite in the usual way,' she began, and he nodded confirmation as she went over the arrangements, correcting her when she omitted a detail. ‘I will leave the office at exactly ten thirty and go to the visitors' gallery. We must be certain that Verwoerd is there.'
‘Do you have your pass?'
‘Yes.' Tara opened her handbag and showed him. ‘As soon as Verwoerd rises to begin his address, I will return to the office, using the panel door. By that time you will have …' Her voice faltered.
‘Go on,' he ordered harshly.
‘You will have connected the detonator. I will confirm that Verwoerd is in his seat, and you will …' Again her voice dried up.
‘I will do what has to be done,' he finished for her and then went on, ‘After the explosion there will be a period of total panic and confusion – with enormous damage to the ground floor. There will be no control, no organized police or security effort. That period will last sufficiently long for us to go downstairs and leave the building unchallenged, just as most other survivors will be doing.'
‘When you leave the country, can I come with you, Moses?' she pleaded.
‘No.' He shook his head firmly. ‘I must travel swiftly and you would impede us and put us in danger. You will be safer here. It will only be for a short time. After the assassination of the white slave-masters, our people will rise. The young comrades of
Umkhonto we Sizwe
are in position and ready to call the nation to revolution. Millions of our people will spontaneously fill the streets. When they have seized power, I will return. Then you will have a place of high honour by my side.'
It was amazing how naïvely she accepted his assurances, he thought grimly. Only a besotted woman could doubt that afterwards the security police would take her away, and her interrogation would be brutal. It did not matter. It did not matter if they tried and hanged her. Her husband would be dead with Verwoerd and Tara Courtney's usefulness would be at an end. One day, when the people's democratic government of the African National Congress ruled the land, they would name a street or a square after her, the white woman martyr, but now she was expendable.
‘Give me your promise, Moses,' she begged him.
His voice was a deep reassuring rumble. ‘You have done well, everything I have required of you. You and your son
will have a place at my side just as soon as that is possible. I give you my promise.'
‘Oh, Moses, I love you,' she whispered. ‘I shall always love you.' Then she sat back in her seat and adopted the role of cool white madam, as Moses turned the Chevrolet out of Parliament Lane into the members' carpark and the constable at the gate saw the sticker on the windshield and saluted respectfully.
Moses parked in the reserved bay and switched off the engine. They had fifteen minutes to wait before the House went into session.

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