Rage (58 page)

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Authors: Wilbur Smith

BOOK: Rage
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Again Shasa had him off balance for a moment, and he aimed another kick at the transmitter. He landed solidly and it went skidding across the floor and crashed into the wall beyond the desk. The plastic case split open at the
impact, the wire tore loose from the terminal and the red bulb flickered and then extinguished.
Moses gave a wild despairing cry and sent Shasa flying backwards over the desk. As he lay sprawled across the desk top, Moses scooped up the pistol from the carpet and staggered to the open doorway. There he turned and raised the Tokarev and aimed at Shasa.
‘You!' he gasped. ‘You!' but his hands were shaking and the pistol wavered. He fired and the bullet thudded into the desk top beside Shasa's head, tearing up a blur of splinters.
Before Moses could fire again, Manfred De Le Rey bulked in the doorway behind him. He had seen Shasa's agitation and followed him up from the chamber.
He took in the situation at first glance, and he reacted instantly. He swung the big hard fist that had won him an Olympic gold medal, and it crashed into the side of Moses Gama's neck below the ear.
The pistol fell from Moses' hand and he toppled forward unconscious on top of it.
Shasa dragged himself off the desk and tottered across to Blaine.
‘Here,' he whispered, as he dropped to his knees beside him. ‘Let me have a look.'
Tara was blubbering incoherently. ‘Daddy, I'm sorry. I didn't mean this to happen. I only did what I thought was right.'
Shasa tried to pull her away, but she clung to Blaine, blood on her hands and down the front of her dress.
‘Let him alone,' Shasa said, but she was hysterical now, and tugged at her father so that his head jerked from side to side loosely. ‘Daddy, speak to me, Daddy.'
Shasa leaned back and slapped her hard, knocking her head across.
‘Leave him, you murderous bitch,' he hissed at her, and she crawled away from him, her face beginning to redden
and swell from the blow. Shasa ignored her and gently opened the jacket of Blaine's dark suit.
Shasa was a hunter, and he recognized the bright clear colour of arterial blood seething with tiny bubbles from the torn lungs.
‘No,' he whispered. ‘Please, no!'
Only then he realized that Blaine was watching his face, reading in it his own death.
‘Your mother—' he said, and the wind of his lungs puffed through the bullet hole in his chest. ‘Tell Centaine—' He could not go on.
‘Don't talk,' Shasa said. ‘We will get a doctor.' He shouted over his shoulder at Manfred who was already on the telephone, ‘Hurry, man. Hurry!'
But Blaine gripped his sleeve, tugging it urgently. ‘Love—' He choked on his own blood. ‘Tell her – love – tell her I love her.' He got it out at last, and panted as the blood gurgled in his chest – and then he gathered himself for his last great effort.
‘Shasa,' he said. ‘Shasa, my son – my only son.'
The noble silver head fell forward, and Shasa held it to his chest, hugging him as he had never been able to before.
Then still holding him, Shasa wept for the man who had been his friend and his father. The tears squeezed out of his empty eyesocket and trickled from under the silk eye-patch down his face to mingle with his own blood and drip from his chin.
When Tara crawled forward on her knees, and reached out to touch her father's corpse, Shasa lifted his head and looked at her.
‘Don't touch him,' he said softly. ‘Don't you dare soil him with your touch.' There was such a look in his single eye, such contempt and hatred in his face, that she recoiled from him and covered her face with both hands. Still on her knees, she began to sob hysterically. The sound of it
rallied Shasa. Gently he laid Blaine on his back and closed his eyes with his fingertips.
In the doorway Moses groaned and shuddered, and Manfred slammed the telephone back on its cradle and crossed to him. He stood over him, with those huge fists clenched and asked, ‘Who is he?'
‘Moses Gama.' Shasa stood up, and Manfred grunted.
‘So, we have been looking for him for years. What was he doing?'
‘I'm not sure.' Shasa went to where Tricia lay and stooped over her. ‘But I think he has laid explosives somewhere in the House. That is the transmitter. We'd better clear the place and have the Army bomb-disposal—' He didn't have to finish, for at that moment there was the sound of running men in the corridor and three of the security guards burst into the suite.
Manfred took over immediately, snapping orders at them. ‘Get the handcuffs on that black bastard.' He pointed at Moses. ‘And then I want the building cleared.'
Shasa freed Tricia, leaving the gag until last, but the instant her mouth was clear Tricia pointed at Tara where she still knelt sobbing beside Blaine's corpse.
‘She—' Shasa did not let her finish. He seized her wrist and jerked Tricia to her feet.
‘Quiet!' he snarled at her, and his fury silenced the girl for a moment. He dragged her through into the outer office and closed the door.
‘Listen to me, Tricia.' He faced her, still holding both her wrists.
‘But she was with him.' Tricia was trembling. ‘It was her—'
‘Listen to me.' Shasa shook her into silence. ‘I know. I know all about it. But I want you to do something for me. Something for which I will always be grateful. Will you do it?'
Tricia sobered and stared at him. She saw the blood and the tears on his face and thought her heart might break for him. Shasa took the handkerchief from his top pocket and wiped his face.
‘For me, Tricia, Please,' he repeated and she gulped noisily and nodded.
‘If I can,' she agreed.
‘Don't say anything about my wife's part in this until the police take a formal statement from you. That won't be until much later. Then you can tell them everything.'
‘Why?' she asked.
‘For me and for my children. Please, Tricia.'
Again she nodded and he kissed her forehead. ‘You are a good brave girl,' he said and left her.
He went back into the inner office. The security police were grouped around Moses Gama. He was manacled but he lifted his head and stared at Shasa for a moment. It was a smouldering gaze, dark and filled with outrage. Then they led him away.
The office was crowded and noisy. White-uniformed ambulance attendants were bringing a stretcher through the doorway. A doctor, a member of parliament summoned from the chamber, was working over Blaine as he lay on his back, but now he stood up, shook his head and gestured at the stretcher bearers to take Blaine's body. The uniformed guards, supervised by Manfred De La Rey, were already gathering up the pieces of the smashed transmitter and beginning to trace the wire to its source.
Tara was sitting in the chair behind his desk, weeping silently into her hands. Shasa went past her to the wall safe hidden behind one of the paintings.
He tumbled the combination and swung open the steel door, screening it with his own body. Shasa always kept two or three thousand pounds in banknotes against an emergency. He stuffed the wads into his pockets, and then quickly he sorted through the stack of family passports until
he found Tara's. He relocked the safe, went to where she sat and pulled her to her feet.
‘Shasa, I didn't—'
‘Keep quiet,' he hissed at her, and Manfred De La Rey glanced at him across the office.
‘She's had a terrible shock,' Shasa said. ‘I'm taking her home.'
‘Come back here as soon as you can,' Manfred nodded. ‘We'll need a statement.'
Still gripping her arm, Shasa marched her out of the office and down the corridor. The fire alarm bells were ringing throughout the building and members and visitors and staff were streaming out through the front doors. Shasa joined them, and as soon as they were out in the sunlight he led Tara to the Jaguar.
‘Where are we going?' Tara asked, as they drove away. She sat very small and subdued in her corner of the bucket seat.
‘If you talk to me again, I may lose control,' he warned her tightly. ‘I may not be able to stop myself strangling you.'
She did not speak again until they reached Youngsfield Airport, and Shasa pushed her up into the cockpit of the silver and blue Mosquito.
‘Where are we going?' she repeated, but he ignored her as he went through the start-up procedures and taxied out to the end of the runway. He did not speak until they had climbed to cruise altitude and were flying straight and level.
‘The evening flight for London leaves Johannesburg at seven o'clock. As soon as we are in radio contact, I will reserve your seat,' he told her. ‘We will get there with an hour or so to spare.'
‘I don't understand,' she whispered into her oxygen mask. ‘Are you helping me to escape? I don't understand why.'
‘For my mother, firstly. I don't want her to know that you murdered her husband – it would destroy her.'
‘Shasa, I didn't—' She was weeping again, but he felt no twinge of compassion.
‘Shut up,' he said. ‘I don't want to listen to your blubbering. You will never know the depths of my feelings for you. Hatred and contempt are gentle words that do not describe them.' He drew a breath. Then went on, ‘After my mother, I am doing it for my children. I don't want them to live their lives with the knowledge of what their mother truly was. That is too much for a young man or woman to be burdened with.'
Then they were both silent, and Shasa allowed the terrible grief of Blaine's death, which up until then he had suppressed, to rise up and engulf him. In the seat beside him Tara was mourning her father also, spasms of weeping shook her shoulders. Her face above the mask was chalky and her eyes were like wounds.
As strong as his grief was Shasa's hatred. After an hour's flying, he spoke again.
‘If you ever return to this country again, I will see you hanged. That is my solemn promise. I will be divorcing you for desertion as soon as possible. There will be no question of alimony or maintenance or child custody. You will have no rights nor privileges of any kind. As far as we are concerned, it will be as though you have never existed. I expect you will be able to claim political asylum somewhere, even if it is in Mother Russia.'
Again he was silent, gathering himself, regaining full control.
‘You will not even be at your father's funeral, but every minute of every day his memory will stalk you. That is the only punishment I am able to inflict upon you – God grant it is enough. If He is just, your guilt will slowly drive you mad. I pray for that.'
She did not reply, but turned her face away. Later, when
they were on approach to Johannesburg, descending through ten thousand feet, with the skyscrapers and the white mine dumps glowing in the late sunlight ahead of them, Shasa asked:
‘You were sleeping with him, weren't you?'
Instinctively, she knew it was the last chance she would ever have to inflict pain upon him, and she turned in the seat to watch his face as she replied.
‘Yes, I love him – and we are lovers.' She saw him wince, but she wanted to hurt him more and she went on. ‘Apart from my father's death, there is nothing I regret. Nothing I have done of which I am ashamed. On the contrary, I am proud to have known and loved a man like Moses Gama – proud of what I have done for him and for my country.'
‘Think of him kicking and choking on the rope, and be proud of that also,' Shasa said quietly, and landed. He taxied the Mosquito to the terminal buildings and they climbed down onto the tarmac and faced each other. There was a bruise on her face where he had struck her, and the icy highveld wind pulled at their clothing and ruffled their hair. He handed her the little bundle of bank notes and her passport.
‘Your seat on the London flight is reserved. There is enough here to pay for it and to take you where you want to go.' His voice broke as his rage and his sorrow took control of him again. ‘To hell or the gallows, if my wish for you comes true. I hope never to see or hear of you again.'
He turned away from her, but she called after him.
‘We were always enemies, Shasa Courtney, even in the best times. And we will be enemies to the very end. Despite your wish, you will hear of me again. I promise you that much.'
He climbed into the Mosquito and it was minutes before he had himself sufficiently in hand to start the engines. When he looked out through the windshield again, she was gone.
C
entaine would not let them bury Blaine. She could not bear the thought of him lying in the earth, swelling and putrefying.
Mathilda Janine, Blaine's younger daughter, came down from Johannesburg with David Abrahams, her husband, in the company Dove, and they sat with the family in the front row of the memorial chapel at the crematorium. Over a thousand mourners attended the service and both Dr Verwoerd and Sir De Villiers Graaff, the Leader of the Opposition, were amongst them.
Centaine kept the little urn of Blaine's ashes on the table beside her bed for almost a month, before she could get up her courage. Then she summoned Shasa, and the two of them climbed the hill to her favourite rock.
‘Blaine and I used to come here so often,' she whispered. ‘This will be the place where I shall come when I need to know that he is still close to me.'
She was nearly sixty years old, and when Shasa studied her with compassion, he saw that for the first time she truly looked that old. She was letting the grey grow out in the thick bush of her hair and he saw that soon there would be more of it than the black. Grief had dulled her gaze and weighed down the corners of her mouth, and that clear youthful skin which she so carefully cherished, seemed overnight to have seamed and puckered.
‘Do it for me, please Shasa,' she said, and handed him the urn.
Shasa opened it and stepped out of the lee of the rock, into the full force of the south-easter. The wind fluttered his shirt like a trapped bird, and he turned to look back at her.
Centaine nodded encouragement, and he held the urn high and upended it. The ashes streamed away like dust in the wind, and when the urn was empty, Shasa turned to her once more.
‘Break it!' she commanded, and he hurled the vessel
against the rock face. It shattered, and she gasped and swayed on her feet.
Shasa ran to her and held her in his arms.
‘Death is the only adversary I know I shall never overcome. Perhaps that is why I hate it so,' she whispered.
He led her to her seat on the rock and they were silent for a long while, staring out over the wind-speckled Atlantic, and then Centaine said, ‘I know you have been protecting me. Now tell me about Tara. What was her part in this?'
So he told her, and when he finished Centaine said, ‘You have made yourself an accessory to murder. Was it worth it?'
‘Yes. I think so,' he answered without hesitation. ‘Could any of us have survived her trial if I had allowed her to be arrested and charged?'
‘Will there be consequences?'
Shasa shook his head. ‘Manfred – he will protect us again. Just as he did with Sean.'
Shasa saw her pain at the mention of Sean's name. Like him she had never recovered from it, but now she said quietly, ‘Sean was one thing, but this is murder and treason and attempting to assassinate a head of state. It is fostering bloody revolution and attempting by force to overthrow a government. Can Manfred protect us from that? And if he can, why should he?'
‘I don't know the answers to that, Mater.' Shasa looked at her searchingly. ‘I thought that perhaps you did.'
‘What do you mean?' she asked, and he thought that he might have taken her unawares, for there was fear and confusion in her eyes for an instant. Blaine's death had slowed her and weakened her. Before that, she would never have betrayed herself so readily.
‘In protecting us, me in particular, Manfred is protecting himself and his political ambitions,' Shasa reasoned it out carefully. ‘For if I am destroyed, then – I am his
protégé
–
his own career would be blighted. But there is more than that. More than I can fathom.'
Centaine did not reply, but she turned her head away and looked out to sea.
‘It's as though Manfred De La Rey feels some strange loyalty to us, or a debt that he must repay – or even a sense of deep guilt towards our family. Is that possible, Mater? Is there something that I do not know of that would put him under an obligation to us? Have you withheld something from me all these years?'
He watched her struggle with herself, and at one moment it seemed she might burst out with some longhidden truth, or with a terrible secret that she had carried too long alone. Then he saw her expression firm and it was almost possible to watch the strength and force which had been drained from her since Blaine's death flow back into her.
It was a little miracle. Age seemed to fall away from her. Her eyes brightened and her carriage of head and shoulders was once more erect and perky. Even the lines and creases around her eyes and mouth seemed to smooth away.
‘Whatever gave you that idea?' she asked crisply, and stood up. ‘I've been moping and pining far too long. Blaine would never have approved of that.' She took Shasa's arm. ‘Come along. I've still got a life to live and work to do.'
Halfway down the hill, she asked suddenly, ‘When does the trial of Moses Gama begin?'
‘The tenth of next month.'
‘Do you know he once worked for us, this Moses Gama?'
‘Yes, Mater. I remembered him. That was how I was able to stop him.'
‘He was a terrible troublemaker even in those days. We must do all we can to ensure that he pays the extreme penalty. That is the least we can do for Blaine's memory.'

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