Текст книги "Power of the Sword"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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Suddenly Tara Courtney leapt to her feet beside Shasa.

Flushed with anger, her grey eyes hard and glittering as bayonets, she yelled at them, What kind of men are you?

Is this fair? You call yourselves Christians? Where is your Christian charity? Give the man a chance! Her voice carried, and her furious beauty checked them.

Their inherent sense of chivalry began to take effect, one or two of them sat down and grinned sheepishly, the noise began to abate, but a big dark-haired man leapt up from the audience and rallied them.

Kom kerels, come on, boys, let's see the Soutie back to England where he belongs., Shasa knew the man, he was one of the local Party organizers. He had been on the Olympic team back in 1936 and had spent most of the war in an internment camp. He was a senior lecturer in Law at Stellenbosch University and Shasa challenged him in Afrikaans: Does Meneer Roelf Stander believe in the rule of law and the right of free speech? Before he could finish, the first missile was thrown. it came sailing in a high parabola from the back of the hall and burst on the table in front of Tara, a brown paper bag filled with dog turds, and immediately there was a bombardment of soft fruit and toilet rolls, dead chickens and rotten fish.

From the front of the hall the United Party supporters stood up and shouted for order, but Roelf Stander waved his men forward and joyously they surged up to give battle.

Seats were overturned, and women screamed, men were shouting and swearing and wrestling and falling over one another.

Keep close behind me, Shasa told Tara. Hold onto my coat! He fought his way towards the door, punching any man who stood in his way.

One of them went down before Shasa's right hook, and protested plaintively from the floor, Hey, man, I'm on your side, but Shasa dragged Tara out of the side door and they ran to the Packard.

Neither of them spoke until Tara had them back on the main road, headlights pointing towards the dark bulk of Table Mountain. Then she asked, How many of them did you get? Three of theirs, one of ours, and they burst into nervously relieved laughter.

It looks as though this is going to be a lot of fun. The election of 1948 was fought with increasing acrimony as across the land a realization began to dawn that the nation had reached some fateful crossroads.

The Smuts men were flabbergasted by the depth of feeling the Nationalists had managed to engender amongst the Afrikaner people, and they were totally unprepared for the almost military mobilization of all the forces at the command of the Nationalist Party.

There were few black voters and of all white South Africans the Afrikaners formed a small majority. Smuts had relied for his support upon the English-speaking electorate together with the moderate Afrikaner faction. As polling day drew closer, this moderate support was slowly seduced by the wave of Nationalistic hysteria, and the gloom in the United Party deepened.

Three days before polling day, Centaine was in her new garden, supervising the marking out and planting of a hundred additional yellow rose bushes when her secretary came hurrying down from the house.

Mr Duggan is here, ma'am. Andrew Duggan was the editor of the Cape Argus, the English-language newspaper with the largest readership in the Cape. He was a good friend of Centaine's, a regular house guest, but still it was most inconsiderate of him to call unannounced. Centaine's hair was a bushy fright, despite her headscarf, and she was flushed and sweaty and without make-up.

Tell him I'm not at home, she ordered.

Mr Duggan sends his apologies, but it's a matter of extreme urgency. He used the term "life and death", ma'am. Oh, very well. Go tell him I will be with him in five minutes. She changed from slacks and sweater into a morning dress and made a few perfunctory dabs with a powder puff, then she swept into the front room where Andrew Duggan stood by the french doors looking out over the Atlantic. Her welcome to him was less than effusive, and she did not offer her cheek for him to kiss, a small token of her displeasure.

Andrew was apologetic.

I know how you feel, Centaine, this is damned cheeky of me barging in here, but I simply had to speak to you and I couldn't use the telephone. Tell me I am forgiven, please., She softened and smiled. You are forgiven and I'll give you a cup of tea to prove it. She poured the orange pekoe tea, brought the paper-thin Royal Doulton cup to him and sat beside him on the sofa.

Life and death? she asked.

More correctly, life and birth. You intrigue me. Please go on, Andy. Centaine, I have received the most extraordinary allegations, supported by documents which appear on the surface to be genuine. If they are, then I shall be obliged to print the story. The allegation concerns you and your family, but especially you and Shasa. They are most damaging allegations, he trailed off and looked at her for permission to continue.

Go on, please, Centaine said with a calm she did not feel.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Centaine, we have been told that your marriage to Blaine was your first and only marriage, Centaine felt the leaden weight of dismay crush down upon her which, of course, means that Shasa is illegitimate. She held up her hand to stop him. Answer me one question. Your informant is the Nationalist Party candidate in the Hottentots Holland constituency or one of his agents. is my guess correct! He bowed his head slightly in assent but said, We do not reveal our sources. It's not the policy of our newspaper. They were silent for a long while and Andrew Duggan studied her face. What an extraordinary woman she was, indomitable even in the face of catastrophe. It saddened him to think that he must be the one who would destroy her dream. He had guessed at her ambitions and empathized with them. Shasa Courtney had much of value to give the nation.

You have the documents, of course? Centaine asked, and he shook his head.

,MY informant is holding them against my firm undertaking to print the story before polling day. Which you will give him? If I cannot have something from you to refute the allegations, then I must print. It is material and in the public interest. Give me until tomorrow morning, she asked, and he hesitated. As a personal favour, please Andy. Very well, he agreed. I owe you that at least. He stood up. 'I'm sorry, Centaine, I have taken too much of your time already. Immediately Andrew Duggan had left, Centaine went upstairs and bathed and changed. Within half an hour she was in the Daimler and heading for the town of Stellenbosch.

It was long after five when she parked in front of the law offices of Van Schoor and De La Rey, but the front door opened to her touch and she found one of the partners working late.

Meneer De La Rey left a little early today. He took a brief home to work undisturbed. My business is most urgent. Can you give me his home address? It was a pleasant modest gabled house on an acre of ground on the banks of the river, adjoining the spreading Lanzerac estate. Somebody had taken a great deal of care with the garden and it was filled with flowers even this late in the year, with the first snows of winter on the mountains.

A woman opened the door to Centaine, a big blond woman with a heavily handsome head and a high full bosom. Her Smile was reserved and she opened the door only halfway.

I would like to speak to Meneer De La Rey, Centaine told her in Afrikaans. Will you tell him Mrs Malcomess is here. My husband is working. I do not like to disturb him but come in, I will see if he will speak to you. She left Centaine in the front room with its flocked wallpaper of dark red, velvet curtains and heavy Teutonic furniture. Centaine was too keyed up to sit down, She stood in the centre of the floor and looked at the paintings on the fireplace wall without really seeing them, until she became aware of being observed herself.

She turned quickly and a child stood in the doorway, studying her with unblinking frankness. He was a lovely boy, probably seven or eight years old, with a head of blond curls but with incongruously dark eyes under dark brows.

The eyes were her own, she recognized them immediately.

This was her grandchild, she knew it instinctively, and the shock of it made her tremble. They stared at each other.

Then she gathered herself and approached him slowly. She held out her hand and smiled.

Hello, she said. What is your name? I am Lothar De La Rey, he answered importantly. And I am nearly eight years old. Lothar! she thought, and the name brought all the memories and heartaches back to swamp her emotions. Still she managed to hold the smile.

What a big fine boy, she began, and she had almost touched his cheek when the woman appeared in the door behind him.

What are you doing here, Lothie? she scolded. You have not finished your dinner. Back to the table this instant, do you hear? The child bolted from the room and the woman smiled at Centaine.

I'm sorry. He is at the inquisitive age, she apologized.

My husband will see you, Mevrou. Please come with me. Still shaken from her brief encounter with her grandchild Centaine was unprepared for the additional shock of meeting her son face to face. He stood behind a desk that was strewn with documents and he glared at her with that disconcerting yellow gaze.

I cannot tell you that you are welcome in this house, Mrs Malcomess. He spoke in English. You are a blood enemy of my family, and of mine. That is not true. Centaine found her voice was breathless, and she tried desperately to regain control.

Manfred made a dismissive gesture. You robbed and cheated my father, you crippled him, and through you he has spent half his life in prison. If you could see him now, an old man broken and discarded, you would not come here seeking favours from me. Are you certain I came for a favour? she asked, and he laughed bitterly.

For what other reason? You have hounded me, from the day I first saw you in the courtroom at my father's trial. I have seen you watching me, following me, stalking me, like a hungry lioness. I know you seek to destroy me as you destroyed my father. No! She shook her head vehemently, but he went on remorselessly.

Now you dare to come and beg my favour. I know what you want. He pulled open the drawer of his desk and lifted out a file. He opened it and let the papers it contained spill upon the desktop. Amongst them she recognized French birth certificates and old newspaper clippings.

Shall I read all these to you or will you read them yourself? What other proof do I need to show the world that you are a whore and your son a bastard? he asked, and she flinched at the words.

You have been very thorough, she said softly.

Yes, he agreed. Very thorough. I have all the evidence No, she contradicted him. Not all the evidence. You know about one bastard son of mine, but there is another bastard. I will tell you about my second bastard. For the first time he was uncertain, staring at her, at a loss for words. Then he shook his head.

You are shameless, he marvelled. You flaunt your sins before the world. Not before the world, she said. Only before the person they concern most. Only before you, Manfred De La Rey. I do not understand. Then I shall explain why I followed you, as you put it hounded and stalked you like a lioness. It was not the way a lioness stalks her prey, it was the way a lioness follows her cub. You see, Manfred, you are my other son. I gave birth to you in the desert and Lothar took you away before I had seen your face. You are my son and Shasa is your halfbrother. If he is a bastard, so are you. If you destroy him with that fact, you destroy yourself., I do not believe you! He recoiled from her. Lies! All lies!

My mother was a German woman of noble birth. I have her photograph. There! Look there on the wall! Centaine glanced at it. 'That was Lothar's wife,, she agreed. She died almost two years before you were born. No. It's not true. It cannot be true. Ask your father, Manfred, she said softly. Go to Windhoek. The date of that woman's death will be registered there. He saw it was true, and he slumped down into his chair and buried his face in his hands.

if you are my mother, how can I hate you so bitterly? She went and stood over him. Not as bitterly as I have hated myself for renouncing and abandoning you. She bent and kissed his head. If only – she whispered.

But now it is too late, far too late. As you have said, we are enemies separated by a void as wide as the ocean. Neither of us can ever cross it, but I do not hate you, Manfred, my son. I have never hated you. She left him slumped at his desk and walked slowly from the room.

At noon the following day Andrew Duggan telephoned her.

My informant has retracted his allegations, Centaine. He tells me that the papers, all the papers connected to the case, have been burned. I think somebody got at him, Centaine, but I cannot for the life of me think who. On 25 May 1948, the day before polling for the general election, Manfred addressed a huge crowd in the Dutch Reformed Church hall in Stellenbosch. All of them were staunch Nationalist supporters. No opposition was allowed to enter the hall, Roelf Stander and his action squad saw to that.

Yet when Manfred rose to speak, he also was prevented from doing so. The standing ovation that the crowd gave him kept him silent for fully five minutes. However, when it was over, they sat and listened in attentive silence as he gave them a vision of the future.

Under Smuts this land of ours will become peopled by a coffee-coloured race of half-bred mongrels, the only white ones left will be the Jews, those same Jews who at this very moment in Palestine are murdering innocent British soldiers at every turn. As you well know, Smuts has hastened to recognize the new state of Israel. That is only to be expected. His paymasters are the Jewish owners of the gold mines, Now the crowd cried: Skande, Scandal! and he paused impressively before he went on.

What we offer you instead is a plan, nay more than a plan, a vision, a bold and noble vision which will ensure the survival of the pure untainted bloodlines of our VoLk. A vision that will at the same time protect all the other people of this land, the Cape coloureds, the Indians, the black tribes.

This grand concept has been drawn up by clever men working with dedication and without self-interest, men like Dr Theophilus Donges and Dr Nicolaas Diederichs and Dr Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, brilliant men every one of them. The crowd roared their agreement, and he sipped a glass of water and shuffled his notes until they quieted.

It is an idealistic, carefully worked out and completely infallible concept that will allow all the different races to live in peace and dignity and prosperity and yet allow each of them to retain its separate identity and culture. For this reason we have named the policy Separateness. That is our vision that will carry our land to greatness, a vision at which the world will wonder, an example to all men of good will everywhere. That is what we call Apartheid. That, my beloved people, is the glorious mantle which we have prepared to place upon our country. Apartheid, my dear friends, that is what we offer you, the shining vision of Apartheid. He could not speak for many minutes, but when there was silence, he went on in a brisker more businesslike tone.

Of course, it will first be necessary to disenfranchise those black and coloured people who are already registered on the voters roll When he ended an hour later they carried him on their shoulders from the hall.

Tara stood close beside Shasa as they waited for the electoral officers to finish counting the votes and announce the result in the Hottentots Holland constituency.

The hall was filled with an excited crowd. There was laughter and singing and horseplay. The Nationalist candidate was at the far side of the hall with his tall blond wife beside him, surrounded by a restless overwrought knot of his supporters all sporting Nationalist rosettes.

One of the United Party organizers beckoned frantically at Shasa over the heads of the crowd, but he was chatting gaily to a bevy of fernale enthusiasts, and Tara slipped away to answer the summons. She came back only seconds later and when Shasa saw her face he broke off his conversation and went to meet her, forcing his way through the throng.

What is it, darlings You look as though you have seen a ghost. 'It's the Ou Baas, she whispered. A telephone call from the Transvaal. Smuts has lost Standerton. The Nationalists have won it. 'Oh God, no. Shasa was appalled. The Ou Baas has held that seat for twenty-five years. They cannot discard him now. The British discarded Winston Churchill, Tara said.

They don't want heroes any more. It's a sign, Shasa muttered. 'If Smuts goes, we all go with him. Ten minutes later the news was telephoned through.

Colonel Blaine Malcomess had lost the Gardens by almost a thousand votes.

A thousand votes, Shasa tried to accept it, but that's a swing of almost ten percent. What happens now? The electoral officer climbed onto the stage at the end of the hall. He had the results in his hand, and the crowd fell silent but edged forward eagerly.

Ladies and gentlemen, the results of the election for the constituency of Hottentots Holland, he intoned. Manfred De La Rey, Nationalist Party: 3,126 votes. Shasa Courtney, United Party: 2,012 votes. Claude Sampson, Independent: 196 votes. Tara took Shasa's hand and they went out to where the Packard was parked. They sat side by side on the front seat, but Tara did not start the engine immediately. They were both shaken and confused.

I just cannot believe it, Tara whispered.

I feel as though I am on a runaway train,, Shasa said.

Heading into a long dark tunnel, no means of escape, no way of stopping it. He sighed softly. Poor old South Africa, he murmured. 'God alone knows what the future holds for you. Moses Gama was surrounded by men. The small room with walls of galvanized corrugated iron was packed with them.

They were his praetorian guard, and Swart Hendrick was chief amongst them.

The room was lit only by a smoky paraffin lamp, and the yellow flame highlighted Moses Gama's features.

He is a lion among men, Hendrick thought, reminded again of one of the old kings, of Chaka or Mzilikazi, those great black elephants. Thus must they have called the war chiefs to council, thus they must have ordered the battle.

Even now the hard Boers vaunt their victory across the land, Moses Gama said. But I tell you, my children, and I tell you true that below the leaping flames of their pride and avarice lie the ashes of their own destruction. It will not be easy and it may be long. There will be hard work, bitter hard work and even bloody work, but tomorrow belongs to us. The new Deputy Minister of Justice left his office and went down the long corridor in the Union Buildings, that massive fortresslike complex designed and built by Sir Herbert Baker on a low kopje overlooking the city of Pretoria. It was the administrative headquarters of the South African Government.

Outside it was dark, but there were lights burning in most of the offices. All of them were working late. Taking over the reins of power was an onerous business, but Manfred De La Rey revelled in every tedious detail of the task he had been given. He was sensible of the honour for which he had been selected. He was young, some said too young, for the post of a deputy minister, but he would prove them wrong.

He knocked on the minister's door and opened it to the command, 'Kom binne, enter! Charles Robberts Blackie Swart was tall almost to the point of deformity with huge hands that now lay on the desk top in front of him.

Manfred. He smiled like a crack appearing in a granite slab. 'Here is the little present I promised you. He picked up an envelope embossed with the crest of the Union of South Africa and handed it across the desk.

I will never be able to express my gratitude, Minister. Manfred took the envelope. I hope only to demonstrate it to you by my loyalty and hard work in the years ahead. Back in his own office Manfred opened the envelope and unfolded the document it contained. Slowly savouring each word of it, he read through the free pardon granted to one Lothar De La Rey, convicted of various crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Manfred folded the document and slipped it back into its envelope.

Tomorrow he would deliver the pardon to the prison governor in person, and he would be there to take his father's hand and lead him out into the sunshine again.

He stood up and went to his safe, tumbled the combination and swung open the heavy steel door. There were three files lying on the top shelf, and he took them down and laid them on his desk. One file was from military intelligence, the second from CID headquarters, the third from his own Department of justice. it had taken time and careful planning to have all three on his desk and all record of their existence removed from the archive registers. They were the only existing files on White Sword'.

He took his time and read each one through carefully. It was long after midnight when he finished, but now he knew that nowhere in those files had any person made the connection between White Sword and Manfred De La Rey, Olympic gold medallist and now Deputy Minister of justice.

He picked up the three files and carried them through to the outer office where he switched on the shredding machine. As he fed each separate page into the shredder and watched the thin strips of paper come curling out the far side like spaghetti, he considered what he had learned from them.

So there was a traitoress, he murmured. I was betrayed.

A woman, a young woman, speaking in Afrikaans. She knew everything, from the guns in Pretoria to the ambush on the mountain. There is only one young woman who knew all that. There would be retribution in time, but Manfred was in no hurry, there were many scores to settle, many debts to pay.

When the last page of the reports was reduced to minute slivers, Manfred locked his office and went down to where the new black Ford sedan that went with his rank was parked.

He drove back to his sumptuous official residence in the elegant suburb of Waterkloof. As he went upstairs to the bedroom he was careful not to wake Heidi. She was pregnant again, and her sleep was precious.

He lay in the darkness unable to sleep himself. There was too much to think about, too much planning to do, and he smiled and thought, So at last the sword of power is in our hands, and we will see, with a vengeance, who are the underdogs now.

The End

The novels of Wilbur Smith

The Courtney Novels:

When the Lion Feeds

The Sound of Thunder

A Sparrow Falls

The Burning Shore

Power of the Sword

Rage

A Time to Die

The Ballantyne Novels:

A Falcon Flies

Men of Men

The Angels Weep

The Leopard Hunts in Darkness

Also:

The Dark of the Sun

Shout at the Devil

Gold Mine

The Diamond Hunters

The Sunbird

Eagle in the Sky

The Eye of the Tiger

Cry Wolf

Hungry as the Sea

Wild justice

Golden Fox

Elephant Song

River God

Power of the Sword

Wilbur Smith was born in Central Africa in 1933. He was educated at Michaelhouse and Rhodes University. He became a full-time writer in 1964 after the successful publication of When the Lion Feeds, and has since written twenty-four novels, meticulously researched on his numerous expeditions worldwide. His work is now translated into twenty-five languages. He normally travels from November to February, often spending a month skiing in Switzerland, and visiting Australia and New Zealand for sea fishing. During his summer break he visits environments as diverse as Alaska and the dwindling wilderness of the African interior. He has an abiding concern for the peoples and wildlife of his native continent, an interest strongly reflected in his novels.

He is married to Danielle, to whom his last twenty books have been dedicated.