Power of the Sword

I can't see him, she waited.

He's not out yet, Shasa reassured her. They are running the hundred metres first, I But he was as strung out as she was. in the semifinal heat of the 200-metre dash, David Abrahams had run second to the great American athlete Jesse Owens, the Ebony Antelope, and so had secured his place in the final event.

I'm so nervous I think I am going to have a fit of the vapours. Mathilda Janine gasped without lowering the binoculars, on Shasa's other side Tara was as agitated, but for different reasons.

It's outrageous, she said, so vehemently that Shasa turned to her surprised.

What is? Haven't you been listening to a word? You know David will be coming out at any moment. I'm sorry,, He was drowned out by a deafening thunder of applause and the banks of spectators rose to their feet as the finalists in the hundred-metre dash sprang from the blocks and sped down their lanes; as they crossed the finish line, the quality of the sound changed, groans mixed with the ovation for the winner.

There! Tara caught Shasa's arm. Listen to them. Near them in the crowd a voice called, Another American negro wins. And closer still, The Americans should be ashamed to let the black animals wear their colours. These bigots are disgusting. Tara glared around her, trying to identify the speakers in the sea of faces that surrounded them and when she failed turned back to Shasa. The Germans are threatening to disallow all medals won by what they call the inferior races, the blacks and the Jews, she said in a loud voice. They are disgusting. Cool down, Shasa whispered.

Don't you care? Tara challenged him. David is a Jew. Of course I care, he said quietly, glancing around in embarrassment. But do shut up, Tara, there's a brick., I think, Tara's voice rose in direct response to Shasa's appeal, but Mathilda Janine screamed even more piercingly.

There he is, there's David! With relief Shasa spran& to his feet. There he is, go it, Davie boy. Run like a hairy springbok! The finalists for the 200-metre dash had clustered at the far end of the arena and were jogging on the spot, windmilling their arms and going through their warm-up routines.

Isn't David just indescribable? Mathilda Janine demanded.

think that describes him perfectly, Shasa agreed, and she punched his arm.

You know what I mean. Then the group of athletes spread out to their blocks and the starter stepped forward. once more silence descended on the vast arena, and the runners were crouched down, frozen in a rigour of concentration.

The pistol fired, at this distance a pop of sound, and the athletes hurled themselves forward in a perfect line, long legs flashing, arms pumping high, they sped away on a rising wave of sound, and the line lost its perfection, bulged in the centre; a lean dark panther of a man pulled out ahead and the roar of the crowd became articulate.

JesSe Owens! repeated in a soaring chant, while the dark man flashed over the finish line pulling a bunch of other runners behind him.

What happened? Mathilda Janine screamed.

Jesse Owens won, Shasa shouted to make himself heard in the uproar.

I know that, but David, what happened to David? I don't know. I couldn't see. It was all so close. They waited in a fever until the loudspeakers boomed their stentorian command.

Achtung! Achtung! and they heard the names in the jumble of German.

Jesse Owens, Carter Brown, David Abrahams. Mathilda Janine shrieked. Catch me, I'm going to faint.

David got the bronze! She was still shrieking, and hopping up and down on the spot, tears of wild joy running unheeded down her cheeks and dripping off her chin, while on the green field below a thin gangling figure in shorts and running vest climbed up onto the inferior step of the victors pyramid and bowed his head as the ribbon with the bronze medal dangling from it was draped around his neck.

The four of them began their celebration that evening in the salon of Centaines suite at the Bristol. Blaine made a short speech of congratulation while David stood in the middle of the floor looking bashful and self-conscious as they toasted him in champagne. Because it was for David, Shasa drank the whole glass of the magnificent 1929 Bollinger that Centaine provided for the occasion.

He drank another full glass of Sekt at the Caf& am Kudamm, on the corner of the Kurfarstendamm, just down the street from the hotel and then the four of them linked arms and set off down Berlin's notorious fun street. All the signs of decadence that the Nazis had banned, the Coca-Cola bottles on the sidewalk tables, and the strains of jazz from the cafe bands, the movie posters of Clark Gable and Myma Loy, were once more in evidence, allowed back under special dispensation for the duration of the Olympics only.

They stopped at another cafe, and this time Shasa ordered a schnapps.

Slow down,David whispered to him, he knew that Shasa seldom drank alcohol, and then never more than a single glass of wine or beer.

Davie my boy, it's not every day that an old mate of mine wins an Olympic medal. He was flushed under his tan and his eyes had a feverish glitter.

Well, I for one refuse to carry you home, David warned.

They went on down the Ku-damm. and Shasa had the girls in fits of giggles at his nonsense humour.

and then, stunningly,

Ach so, meine lieblings, dis is de famousa Kranzlers coffee house, no? We will enter and drink a leetle champagne, yes? That's Italian, not German,Tara pointed out. And I think you are sloshed. 'Sloshed is a foul word on fair lips,, Shasa told her, and marched her into the elegant coffee shop.

Not more champagne, Shasa, David protested.

My dear boy, you don't suggest I should drink everlasting life to you in beer, now do you? Shasa snapped his fingers to summon the waitress and she poured four tulip glasses of the seething yellow wine.

They were all four laughing and chattering so that for some seconds none of them was aware of the sudden tense silence that had descended on the crowded coffee shop.

Oh dear, Tara murmured. Here come the cavalry., Six brown-uniformed storm troopers had entered the room. They had obviously been to some ceremony or function of their regiment, for two of them carried furled banners. It was just as obvious that they had already been drinking; their attitude was bellicose and swaggering and some of the other customers of the coffee shop hurriedly gathered their hats and coats, paid their bills and left the room.

The six troopers came strutting across to the vacant table next to where the four of them were sitting, and ordered tankards of beer from the waitress. The owner of the coffee shop, anxious to avoid trouble, came to their table, and greeted them obsequiously. They talked for a short while.

Then the proprietor took his leave of them by standing at attention and giving the Nazi salute. Immediately the six storm troopers jumped to their feet and returned the salute, cracking the heels of their jackboots together and shouting, Heil Hitler! Mathilda Janine, who had drunk at least one full glass of champagne, let out a shriek of laughter and dissolved into helpless giggles, and the full attention of all the troopers was instantly focused upon her.

Shut up, Matty, David implored, but that only made it Mathilda Janine rolled her eyes and went scarlet in the face with the effort of trying to contain her giggles, but in the end they exploded out of her with a wild snorting whoop and the storm troopers exchanged glances and then moved across in a bunch and stood shoulder to shoulder surrounding their table.

The leader, a hefty middle-aged sergeant, said something and Tara answered in school-girl German.

Ah, said the sergeant in heavily accented English, you are English! My sister is very young and silly. Tara glared at Mathilda Janine who let out another muffled snort through her handkerchief. i They are English, said the sergeant, an explanation of all madness, and would have turned away, but one of the younger troopers had been staring at David.

Now he asked in passable English, You are the runner? You are the winner of the bronze medal. David Abrahams. David looked bashful and nodded.

You are David Abrahams, the Jew runner. The trooper enlarged on the theme, and David's face went pale and set.

The two English-speaking storm troopers explained to the others, the word juden was repeated, and then they all stared at David with hostile faces and fists clenched on their hips as the sergeant asked loudly, Are not the English and Americans ashamed to let the Jews and the negroes win their medals for them? Before they could answer Shasa had risen to his feet, smiling politely.

I say, you chaps are barking up the wrong tree. He isn't a Jew at all, he's a Zulu.

How is this possible? The sergeant looked puzzled.

Zulus are black. Wrong again, old chap. Zulus are born white. They only go black when they've been left out in the sun. We've always kept this one in the shade. You are joking, accused the sergeant.

Of course I am choking! Shasa imitated his pronunciation. 'Wouldn't you be, looking at what I'm looking at? Shasa, for goodness sake sit down, David told him. There is going to be trouble. But Shasa was inebriated with champagne and his own wit and he tapped the sergeant on the chest.

Actually, my dear fellow, if you are looking for Jews, I am the only Jew here. You are both Jews? the sergeant demanded, narrowing his eyes threateningly.

Don't be a clot. I've explained already, he's the Zulu and I'm the Jew. That is a lie, said the sergeant.

By this time the entire clientele of the coffee shop was listening to this exchange with full attention, and for those who did not understand English their companions were translating.

Shasa was encouraged by all this attention, and reckless with champagne. I see I shall have to prove my case to you.

Therefore to convince you that I am privy to all the age-old secrets of Judaism, I will reveal one of our best-kept secrets to you. Have you ever wondered what we do with that little piece the rabbi snips off the end of us? Shut up, Shasa, said David, What is he talking about? Mathilda Janine asked with interest.

Shasa Courtney, don't be disgusting, said Tara.

Bitte? said the storm trooper, looking uneasy, but the other customers of the coffee house were grinning with anticipation. Bawdy hurnour was common currency on the Ku-damm and they were revelling in the unaccustomed discomfiture of the storm troopers.

Very well, I shall tell you. Shasa ignored David and Tara.

We pack them in salt, like kippers, and send them off to Jerusalem. There in the sacred grove on the Mount of Olives on the day of the Passover, the chief rabbi plants them in rows and makes a magic sign over them and a miracle takes place, a miracle! They begin to grow., Shasa made a gesture to describe the growing, Higher and higher, they grow# The storm troopers watched his hand rise with mystified expressions. Then do you know what happens? Shasa asked and the sergeant shook his head involuntarily.

When they have grown into really big thick schmucks, we send them to Berlin where they join the Nazi storm troopers. They gaped at him, not believing what they had heard and Shasa ended his recital, And they teach them to say, he raised his right hand, Heil, what is sprang to attention an that fellow's name again? The sergeant let out a bellow and swung a wild righthanded punch. Shasa ducked, but unsteady with champagne he lost his balance and went down with a crash pulling the tablecloth with him, and the glasses shattered. The champagne bottle rolled across the floor, spurting wine, and two storm troopers jumped on top of Shasa and rained punches on his head and upper body.

David leaped up to go to his assistance, and a storm trooper grabbed his arms from behind. David wrenched his right arm free, swung round and belted a beautiful righthander into the trooper's nose. The man howled and released David to clutch his injured organ, but instantly two other troopers seized David from behind and twisted his arms up behind his back.

Leave him alone! screamed Mathilda Janine and with a flying leap landed on the shoulders of one of the troopers.

She knocked his cap over his eyes and grabbed a double handful of his hair. Leave David, you pig! She tugged at his hair with all her strength and the trooper spun in a circle trying to dislodge her.

Women were screaming, and furniture was shattering. The proprietor stood in the doorway of his kitchen, wringing his hands, his face working pitifully.

Shasa Courtney, Tara yelled furiously. You are behaving like a hooligan. Stop this immediately. Shasa was half buried under a pile of brown uniforms and swinging fists and made no audible reply. The storm troopers had been taken by surprise, but now they rallied swiftly.

Street fighting was their game.

Mathilda was dislodged with a heave of broad brown-shirted shoulders and sent flying into the corner. Three troopers jerked Shasa to his feet, arms twisted up behind his back, and hustled him towards the kitchen door. David received the same treatment, a trooper on each of his arms. The one with the injured nose following close behind, bleeding down his shirt front and cursing bitterly.

The proprietor stood aside hurriedly, and they ran Shasa and David through the kitchens, scattering chefs and serving maids, and out into the alley behind the coffee house, knocking over the garbage cans as Shasa struggled ineffectually.

None of the storm troopers spoke, There was no need to give orders. They were professionals engaged in the sport they loved. Expertly they pinned the two victims to the brick wall of the alley, while a trooper went to work on each of them, switching punches from face to body and back to the face, granting like pigs at the trough in time to the rhythm of their blows.

Mathilda Janine had followed them out and again she tried to rush to David's defence, but a casual shove sent her reeling back, tripping and falling amongst the garbage cans, and the trooper returned to his task.

Tara in the kitchen was shouting angrily at the cafe proprieter call the police, this instant. Do you hear, They are killing two innocent people out there. But the proprietor made a helpless gesture. No use, Fraulein. The police will not come. Shasa doubled over and they let him fall. Then all three of them started in with the boot. The steel-shod jackboots crashed into his belly and back and flanks.

The storm trooper working on David was sweating and panting with exertion. Now he stepped back, measured the shot carefully, and sent a final upper cut smashing into David's dangling head. It took David full in the mouth and his head jerked backwards, cracking against the brickwork and they let him collapse, face down onto the paving stones.

David lay slack and unmoving, making no effort to avoid the boots that smashed into his inert body, and the storm troopers tired of the sport. It was no fun to kick somebody who was not writhing and doubling up and screaming for mercy. Swiftly they gathered up their caps and banners and in a group trotted away, past the two police constables who were standing at the mouth of the alley trying to look disinterested.

Mathilda Janine dropped on her knees beside David and lifted his battered head into her lap.

Speak to me, Davie, she wailed, and Tara came out of the kitchen with a wet dishcloth and stooped over Shasa, trying not to show her anxiety.

It was some minutes before there were signs of life from the victims. Then Shasa sat up and put his head between his knees, shaking it groggily. David pulled himself up on one elbow, and spat out a tooth in a drool of blood-stained spittle.

Are you all right, Davie my boy? Shasa asked through crushed lips.

Shasa, don't ever come to My rescue again, David croaked. Next time you'll get me killed. Mathilda Janine helped them to their feet, but now that Shasa had revived, Tara was bleak and disapproving.

That was the most despicable display I have ever seen, Shasa Courtney. You were obscene and rowdy, and you asked for everything that you got. That's a bit hard, old girl, Shasa protested, and he and David leaned heavily on each other as they limped down the alley. One of the constables waiting at the corner snarled at them as they passed What did he say? Shasa asked Tara.

He says, quite rightly, she translated frostily, that next time you will be arrested for public violence. As the two of them made their painful way back down the Ku-damm, bloodied and battered, Mathilda Janine hovering close at hand and Tara marching a dozen paces ahead of them, trying to disassociate herself, they drew the quick horrified glances of passersby who looked away immediately and then hurried on.

As the four of them rode up in the elevator of the Bristol, Mathilda Janine asked thoughtfully, That story of yours, Shasa, you know about growing things on the Mount of Olives. I didn't understand it. Tell me, what is a schmuck? David and Shasa doubled over with agonized mirth, clutching their injuries. Please, Matty, don't say anything more, David pleaded. It hurts so when I laugh. Tara turned on her sternly. You just wait until I tell Daddy about your part in all this, young lady. He is going to be livid. She was right, he was, but not as furious as Centaine Courtney.

It turned out that Shasa had broken four ribs and a collar bone and ever afterwards he maintained that his absence from the team accounted directly for the Argentinian victory over them by ten goals to four in the polo quarter-finals two days later. Apart from two missing teeth, David's injuries were superficial contusions, sprains and lacerations.

Not too much harm done, Centaine conceded at last. At least there will be no publicity,, one of those horrid little newspaper men writing gloating spiteful articles. She was wrong. Amongst the clientele at the Kranzler coffee house had been the South African correspondent for Reuters, and his article was picked up by the South African Jewish Times.

It played heavily upon Shasa Courtney's part in defending his Jewish friend, the bronze medalist sprinter, and when they finally got back to Cape Town, Shasa found himself a minor celebrity. Both Shasa and David were asked to speak at a luncheon of the Friends of Zion.

The law of unforeseen consequence, Blaine pointed out to Centaine.

How many Jewish voters do you suppose there are on the rolls? Centaine squinted slightly as she calculated, and Blaine chuckled.

You truly are incorrigible, my sweeting!

The boxing hall in the great complex of the Reichssportfeld was filled to capacity for the final bout in the light heavyweight division, and there were ranks of brown-uniformed storm-troopers lining each side of the aisle from the dressingrooms, forming an honour guard for the contenders as they came down to the ring.

We thought it might be necessary to have them, Colonel Boldt explained to Heidi Kramer as they sat in their ringside seats, and he glanced significantly at the four judges. All of them were Germans, all members of the party, and it had taken some delicate negotiation and trading on Colonel Boldt's part to arrange it so.

Manfred De La Rey was the first contender to enter the ring. He wore green silk shorts and a green vest with the springbok emblem on his chest and his hair was freshly cropped into a golden stubble. He swept a quick glance around the ringside seats as he clasped both gloved fists over his head to acknowledge the tremendous burst of applause that greeted him. The German sporting public had accepted him as one of their heroes; this evening he was the champion of white racial supremacy.

He picked out Heidi Kramer almost immediately, for he knew where to expect her, but he did not smile. She looked back at him as seriously, but he felt the strength flow into his body, absorbed from her presence. Then suddenly his gaze switched away from her, and he scowled, rage mingling with the strength of his love.

That woman was here. He always thought of Centaine Courtney as 'that woman'. She sat only three seats away from his beloved Heidi. Her dense dark plume of hair was unmistakable, and she wore yellow silk and diamonds, elegant and poised; he hated her so strongly that he could taste it in his mouth, like gall and alum.

Why does she always come to hound me? he wondered.

She had been there in the crowd more than once during the other matches he had fought, and always that tall arrogant man, with large nose and ears, sat beside her.

Centaine was watching him with that disconcerting enigmatic expression in her dark eyes that he had come to recognize so well. He turned his back on her deliberately, trying to convey the full force of his contempt and hatred, and watched Cyrus Lomax climb into the ring across from where he stood.

The American had a well-muscled body the colour of milk chocolate, but his magnificent head was all African, like one of those antique bronze castings of an Ashanti Prince, with deep-domed brow and wide-spaced eyes, thick lips sculpted into the shape of an Assyrian war bow, and a broad flat nose.

He wore the red, white and blue stars and stripes on his chest and there was an air of menace about him.

This one is the worst you will ever meet, Uncle Tromp had warned Manfred. If you can beat him, you can beat them all. The referee called them to the centre of the ring and announced them and the crowd roared at Manfred's name.

He felt strong and indomitable as he went back to his corner.

Uncle Tromp smeared Vaseline on his cheeks and eyebrows and slipped the red gumshield into his mouth.

He slapped Manfred's shoulder, an open-handed stinging blow that was like the goad to the bull and he hissed in his ear.

Fast as a mamba! Brave as a ratel! Manfred nodded, mouthing the bulky rubber shield, and went out to the chime of the gong, into the hot white glare of lights. The American came to meet him, stalking him like a dark panther.

They fought matched and equal, they fought close and hard, blows with the power to maim and stun slipping by just a shade wide, sensing each other's intention with almost supernatural concentration and shifting the head, pulling back, ducking, using the spring of the ropes, blocking with forearm and glove and elbows, neither ever quite connecting but both of them hostile and quick and dangerous.

The gong tolled the rounds, five, six and seven, Manfred had never been forced to fight this long. Always his victories had come swiftly, ending in that sudden barrage of blows that smashed his opponent into the canvas. However, the hard training that Uncle Tromp had imposed upon him had given him long wind, and toughened his legs and arms. He felt strong and invulnerable still, and he knew it had to come soon. He had only to wait it out. The American was tiring. His punches no longer snapped with quite the same velocity. The mistake must come and Manfred waited for it, containing his passionate hunger to see the American's blood.

it came halfway through the seventh round.

The American threw one of those straight hissing lefts, and not even seeing it, sensing it with animal instinct, Manfred reared back pulling in his chin and the blow brushed his face but stopped short.

Manfred was poised on the balls of his feet, with his weight back but ready to move forward, his right arm was cocked, the fist clenched like a blacksmith's hammer, and the American was a hundredth part of a second slow on the recovery. Seven hard rounds had tired him and he dragged a fraction, and his right side was open. Manfred could not see the opening, it was too minute, too fleeting, but again that instinct triggered him and experience guided his arm; he knew by the set of the American's shoulders, the angle of his arm and the cock of his head where the opening was.

it was too quick for conscious decision, and the punch was already launched before he could think but the decision was made instinctively and it was to end it in one.

Not his usual two-handed, swarming battering finish, but the single stroke, decisive and irretrievable, that would end it all.

It began in the great elastic muscles of his calves and thighs, accelerating like a stone in the swing of a slingshot through the twist of his pelvis and spine and shoulders, all of it channelled into his right arm like a wide roaring river trapped in a narrow canyon; it went through the American's guard and burst into the side of his dark head with a force that made Manfred's teeth clash together in his own skull.

It was everything he had, all his training and experience, all his strength, all his guts and his heart and every finely tuned muscle was behind that blow, and it landed solid and cleanly.

Manfred felt it go. He felt the bones of his right hand break, snapping and crackling like dry twigs, and the pain was a white electric thing that flared back up his arm and filled his head with flames. But in the pain was triumph and soaring joy for he knew it was over. He knew he had won.

The flames of agony cleared from his vision and he looked to see the American crumpled on the canvas at his feet, but the wild soaring of his heart stopped and turned to a plunging stone of despair. Cyrus Lomax was still on his feet. He was hurt and staggering, his eyes dull and sightless, his legs filled with cotton waste and his skull with molten lead, tottering on the very brink, but he was still on his feet.

Kill him! screamed the crowd. Kill him! Manfred could see how little it needed, just one more with the right hand, for the American was out on his feet, just one more. But there was no more, nothing left. The right hand was gone.

The American was reeling about drunkenly, bouncing off the ropes, knees sagging and then by some immense effort of will recovering again.

The left hand. Manfred summoned it all, everything that remained. I've got to take him with the left. And through his own agony he went after him again.

He threw the left hand, going for the head, but the American smothered it with an uncoordinated forward lunge, and he threw both arms around Manfred's shoulders and clinched him, clinging to him like a drowning man. Manfred tried to throw him off and the crowd noise was a berserk thunder, the referee shouting above it Break! Break! but the American held on just long enough.

When the referee got them apart, Cyrus Lomax's eyes were sighted and focused; and he backed away in front of Manfred's desperate efforts to land with the left hand, and the bell rang.

What is it, Manie? Uncle Tromp seized him and guided him to his corner. You had him beaten. What went wrong? My right, Manfred mumbled through the pain, and Uncle Tromp touched it, just above the wrist and Manfred almost screamed. The hand was ballooning, the swelling spreading up the arm even as they stared at it.

I'm throwing in the towel, Uncle Tromp whispered. You can't fight with that hand! Manfred snarled at him, No! His eyes were fierce and yellow as he looked across the ring to where they were working on the dazed American, cold compresses and sal volatile, slapping his cheeks, talking to him, talking him round.

The bell rang for the start of the eighth round and Manfred went out and saw with despair the new strength and coordination with which the American was moving. He was still afraid and uncertain, backing off, waiting for Manfred's attack, but getting stronger every minute, obviously puzzled at first by Manfred's failure to use the right hand again, and then realization dawning in his eyes.

You all gone, he growled in Manfred's ear in the next clinch. 'No right hand, white boy. I'm going to eat you up now! His punches started hurting, and Manfred began to back away. His left eye was closing up and he could taste the coppery salt of blood in his mouth.

The American shot out a hard straight left-hander, and instinctively Manfred blocked with his right, catching the blow on his glove; the pain was so intense that blackness shaded his vision and the earth tipped under him, and the next time he was afraid to block with the right and the American's punch got through and slammed into his injured eye. He could feel the swelling hanging on his face like a bloated blood-sucking tick, a fatpurple grape that closed the eye completely and the bell rang to end the eighth round.

Two more rounds, Uncle Tromp whispered to him, compressing the swollen eye with an ice-pack. Can you see it out, Manie? Manfred nodded and went out to the gong for the ninth and the American came eagerly to meet him, too eagerly, for he dropped his right hand for the big punch and Manfred beat him to it, slamming in a hard left-hander that jolted Lomax back on his heels.

If he had had the use of his right hand Manfred could have taken him yet again, following up in that raging cross storm of blows that no opponent could survive, but the right was maimed and useless, and Lomax ducked away, backing off, recovering and circling in again, working on Manfred's eye, trying to cut it open and with the last punch of the round he succeeded. He slashed the fat purple sac that closed the eye with a glancing left, catching it with the inside of the glove, ripping it open with the cross hatching of the laces, and it burst. A sheet of blood poured down Manfred,s face and splashed over his chest.

Before the referee could hold them up to examine the damage, the gong sounded and Manfred staggered back to his corner as Uncle Tromp rushed out to meet him.

I'm going to stop it,he whispered fiercely as he examined the terrible wound. You can't fight with that, you could lose the eye., 'If you stop it now, Manfred told him, I will never forgive you. His voice was low, but the fire in his yellow eyes warned Tromp Bierman that he meant every word. The old man grunted. He cleaned the wound, and applied a styptic pencil. The referee came to examine the eye, turning Manfred's face to the light.

Can you go on? he asked quietly.

For the Volk and the Ffthrer, Manfred answered him softly, and the referee nodded.

You are a brave man! he said and signalled for the fight to continue.

That last round was an eternity of agony, the American's blows sledge-hammered Manfred's body, laying bruises on top of deep seeping bruises, each of them sapping Manfred further, reducing his ability to protect himself from the blows that followed.

Each breath was fresh agony as it stretched the torn muscles and ligaments of his chest and burned the soft tissue of his lungs. The pain in his right hand flowed up his arm and mingled with the pain of each new blow, and darkness lapped the vision of his single remaining eye so that he could not see the punches coming. The agony roared like a rushing wind in his eardrums, but still he stayed on his feet. Lomax pounded him, smashing his face to raw meat, and still he stayed on his feet.

The crowd was outraged, their blood lust turned to pity and then to horror. They were shouting for the referee to stop this atrocity, but still Manfred stayed on his feet, making pathetic fumbling efforts to punch back with his left hand, and the blows kept crashing into his blind face and broken body.

At last, too late, much too late, the gong rang to end it and Manfred De La Rey was still on his feet. He stood in the centre of the ring, swaying from side to side, unable to see, unable to feel, unable to find his way back to his own corner, and Uncle Tromp ran out to him and embraced him tenderly. Uncle Tromp was weeping, tears running shamelessly into his beard as he led Manfred back.

My poor Manie, he whispered. I should never have let you. I should have stopped it!

On the opposite side of the ring Cyrus Lomax was surrounded by a crowd of well-wishers. They laughed and slapped his back, and Lomax did a weary little dance of triumph, waiting for the judges to confirm his victory, but shooting troubled glances across the ring at the man he had destroyed.

As soon as the announcement was made he would go to him, to express his admiration for such a show of raw courage.

Achtung! Achtung! The referee had the judges cards in one hand and the microphone in the other. His voice boomed over the loudspeakers. Ladies and gentlemen. The winner of the Olympic Gold Medal on points is, Manfred De La Rey of South Africa. There was a tense incredulous silence in the vast hall that lasted for three beats of Manfred's racing heart, and then a storm of protest, a roar of outrage and anger, of booing and foot-stamping. Cyrus Lomax was rushing around the ring like a madman, shaking the ropes, shouting at the judges, dancing with dismay, and hundreds of spectators were trying to climb into the ring to stage an impromptu demonstration against the decision.

Colonel Boldt nodded at somebody near the back of the hall and the squads of brown-shirted storm troopers moved quic backkly down the aisles and surrounded the ring, driving the angry mob and clearing a corridor to the dressingrooms down which Manfred was hustled.

Over the loudspeaker the referee was attempting to justify the decision. Judge Krauser scored five rounds to De La Rey, one round drawn and four rounds to Lomax, but nobody was listening to him, and the uproar almost drowned out the full volume of the loudspeakers.

The woman must be five or six years older than you are,, Uncle Tromp said carefully, choosing his words. They were walking in the Tegel Gardens and autumn's first chill was in the air.

She is three years older than I am, Manfred replied. But that makes no difference, Uncle Tromp. All that matters is that I love her and she loves me. His right hand was still in plaster and he carried it in a sling.

Manie, you are not yet twenty-one years of age, you cannot marry without the permission of Your guardian. You are my guardian, Manfred pointed out, turning his head to watch him steadily with that disconcerting topazyellow gaze and Uncle Tromp dropped his eyes.

How will you support your wife? he asked.

The Reich's Department of culture has granted me a scholarship to finish my law degree here in Berlin. Heidi has a good job in the Ministry of Information and an apartment, and I will box professionally to earn enough to live on until I can begin my career as a lawyer. Then we will return to South Africa. You have planned it all, Uncle Tromp sighed, and Manfred nodded; his eyebrow was still knotted with crusty black scab, and he would be scarred for life. He touched the injury now as he asked, You will not deny me your permission, will you, Uncle Tromp? we will marry before you leave to go home, and we both want you to be the one to marry us. I am flattered. Uncle Tromp looked distraught. He knew this lad, how stubborn he was once he had set on a course.

To argue further would merely confirm his decision.

You are a father to me, Manfred said simply. And yet more than a father. Your blessing would be a gift without price. Manie! Manie! said Uncle Tromp. You are the son I never had, I want only what is best for you. What can I say to persuade you to wait a little - not to rush into this thing. There is nothing which will dissuade me. Manie, think of your Aunt Trudi, I know she would want me to be happy, Manfred cut in.

Yes, I know she would. But, Manie, think also of little Sarah, 'What of her? Manfred's eyes went fierce and cold and he thrust out his jaw, defiant with his own guilt.

Sarah loves you, Manie. She has always loved you, even I have been able to see that. Sarah is my sister, and I love her. I love her with a brother's love. I love Heidi with the love of a man, and she loves me as a woman loves. I think you are wrong, Manie. I have always thought that you and Sarah, Enough, Uncle Tromp. I don't want to hear any more. I will marry Heidi, I hope with your permission and blessing.

Will you make those your wedding gifts to us, please, Uncle Tromp? And the old man nodded heavily, sadly. I give you both my permission and my blessing, my son, and I will marry you with a joyous heart.

Heidi and Manfred were married on the bank of the Havel

Lake in the garden of Colonel Sigmund Boldt's home in the Granewald. It was a golden afternoon in early September with the leaves turning yellow and red at the first touch of autumn. To be there both Uncle Tromp and Roelf Stander had stayed over when the Olympic teams scattered for home, and Roelf stood up with Manfred as his best man while Uncle Tromp conducted the simple ceremony.

Heidi was an orphan so Sigmund Boldt gave her away, and there were a dozen or so of Heidi's friends, most of them her superiors and colleagues in the Ministry of Propaganda and Information, but there were others, her cousins and more distant relatives in the black dress uniforms of the elite SS divisions, or the blue of the Luftwaffe or the field grey of the Wehrmacht, and pretty girls, some of them in the traditional peasant-style dirndls of which the Nazi Party so strongly approved.

After the short and simple Calvinistic ceremony that Uncle Tromp conducted, there was an al fresco wedding banquet provided by Colonel Boldt, under the trees, with a four-piece band wearing Tyrolean hats and lederhosen. They played the popular Party-approved music of the day, alternating with traditional country airs, and the guests danced on the temporary wooden floor which had been laid over the lawn.

Manfred was so absorbed with the lovely new wife in his arms that he did not notice the sudden excitement amongst the other guests, or the way that Colonel Boldt hurried to greet the small party that was coming down from the house, until suddenly the band broke into the stirring marching song of the Nazi Party, the Horst Wessel song, All the wedding guests were on their feet, standing rigidly to attention, and though he was puzzled, Manfred stopped dancing and stood to attention with Heidi at his side. As the small party of new arrivals stepped onto the temporary wooden dance floor, all the guests raised their arms in the Nazi salute and cried together, Heil Hitler! Only then did Manfred realize what was happening, the incredible honour that he and Heidi were being accorded.

The man coming towards him wore a white jacket buttoned high at the throat with the simple Iron Cross for valour its only decoration. His face was pale, square and strong; his dark hair was brushed forward over his high forehead, and there was a small clipped moustche under the large well-shaped nose. it was not an extraordinary face, but the eyes were like no others Manfred had ever seen, they seared his soul with their penetrating intensity, they reached to his heart and made him a slave for ever.

His right hand was still encased in plaster as he held the Nazi salute and Adolf Hitler smiled and nodded. I have heard that you are a friend of Germany, Herr De La Rey, he said.

I am of German blood, a true friend and your most ardent admirer.

I can find no words to describe the great but humble honour I feel in your presence. I congratulate you on your courageous victory over the American negro. Adolf Hitler held out his hand. And I congratulate you also on your marriage to one of the lovely daughters of the Reich. Manfred took the Fuhrrer's hand in his own undamaged left hand and he was trembling and filled with awe by the significance of the moment. 'I wish you great joy, Hitler continued, and may your marriage forge iron links between yourself and the German people. The Fahrer's hand was cool and dry, the strong yet elegant hand of an artist, and Manfred's emotions welled up to choke him. Always, my Fuhrer, the links between us will last for ever. Adolf Hitler nodded once more, shook hands with Heidi, smiled at her joyous tears, and then he was leaving as suddenly as he had arrived, with a word and a smile for a few of the most important guests.

I never dreamed -'whispered Heidi, clinging to Manfred's arm. 'My happiness is complete. That is greatness, Manfred said, watching him go. That is true greatness. It is hard to think he is mere mortal, and not a god!

Sarah Bester pedalled down the main street of the little village of Stellenbosch, weaving through the light traffic, smiling and waving at anybody she recognized on the sidewalks. Her school books were strapped on the carrier behind the saddle of her bicycle. The skirt of her gymshp billowed up almost as high as her knees, and she had to keep clutching at her school hat.

That morning her class had been given the results of the previous term's work and she was bursting with the need to tell Aunt Trudi that she had pulled up from fifth to second place. The headmistress had noted on her school report, Well done, Sarah, keep up the good work. It was her last year, in October she would be seventeen and she would write her matriculation the next month.

Manie would be so proud of her. It was his inspiration and encouragement which had done so much to make her one of the top girls in the school. She started to think about him now, daydreaming as she pedalled along under the oaks. He had been away so long, but soon he would be home; then she would tell him and it would all be all right. She wouldn't have to worry and cry alone at night. Manie would be back - strong, kind, loving Manie would make it all right again.

She thought of being married to him, cooking his breakfast, washing his shirts, darning his socks, walking to church at his side, calling him Meneer the way Aunt Trudi called Uncle Tromp, lying beside him every night, waking beside him every morning and seeing his beautiful blond head on the pillow beside her, and she knew there was nothing else in all the world she wanted.

Only Manie, she whispered. Always and only Manie. He is all I have ever had, all I have ever longed for. Ahead of her she saw the postman at the gate of the manse and she jumped down off the bicycle and called, Have you got anything for us, Mr Grobler? The postman grinned at her and took a buff-coloured envelope from his leather purse.

A telegram, he told her importantly. A telegram from overseas, but it's not for you, little one, it's for your aunt., I'll sign for it! Sarah scribbled in his receipt book, propped her bicycle on the gate of the manse and flew up the front steps.

Aunt Trudi! she screamed. A telegram! Where are you? She smelt cooking odours, and knew where to look.

It's a telegram! Sarah rushed into the kitchen. Aunt Trudi was standing over the long yellow-wood table with the rolling-pin in her hands, flour to her elbows and wisps of silverblond hair tickling her nose so that she blew at them as she straightened. She was glowing moistly from the heat of the kitchen range, and great pots of peach and fig jam bubbled over the flames.

Goodness me! What a to-do! You must learn to act like a lady, Sarie, you are not a child- A telegram! Look, a real telegram! It's the first we've ever had. Even Aunt Trudi was impressed. She reached for it and then paused.

My hands are covered with flour. Open it, Sarie. Sarah tore open the envelope. Shall I read it out? she demanded.

Yes. Yes, read it, who is it from? It's from Uncle Tromp, he signs it "Your dutiful husband Tromp Bierman". Silly old man! He has paid for four unnecessary words, Aunt Trudi grumbled. Read what he says. He says, "I have to inform you that Manfred was Sarah's voice tailed off into silence and her bright expectant expression crumbled as she stared at the sheet in her hands.

Go on, child, Aunt Trudi urged her. Read it out. Sarah began again, her voice small and whispery. "'I have to inform you that Manfred was today married to a German girl named Heidi Kramer. He plans to study at the University of Berlin and will not be returning home with me. I am sure you wish him happiness as I do. Your dutiful husband Tromp Bierman." Sarah lifted her eyes from the form and they stared at each other.

I cannot believe, Aunt Trudi breathed. Not our Manfred. He wouldn't, he couldn't desert us., Then she noticed Sarah's face. The child had gone grey as the ashes in the fireplace.

Oh, my little Sarie. Aunt Trudi's Plump features collapsed with compassion and shared agony and she reached for the girl, but Sarah let the telegram flutter from her fingers to the kitchen floor and whirled and raced from the kitchen.

She snatched up her bicycle from the gate and stepped up into the saddle. She stood up on the pedals so as to drive harder, and her legs pumped to the beat of her heart. Her hat flew off her head and dangled down her back, suspended on the elastic around her neck. Her eyes were wide and dry, her face still grey with shock, as she raced out of the village, turning up past the old Lanzerac estate, heading instinctively for the mountains.

When the track became too steep and rough she dropped the bicycle and went on upwards on foot, through the pine forest until she reached the first crest. There she stumbled off the track and threw herself full length on the damp bed of pine needles, on the exact spot where she had given her love and her body and her soul to Manfred.

Once she had recovered her breath after the hard run up the Mountainside, she lay quietly, neither sobbing nor weeping, merely pressing her face into the curve of her own arm.

As the afternoon wore on, so the wind veered into the north west and the clouds gathered on the high peaks above where Sarah lay. At dusk it began to rain, and the darkness came on prematurely. The air turned icy, and the wind whimpered in the pines, shaking down droplets onto her prostrate body until her gymslip was soaked through. She never lifted her head, but lay and shivered like a lost puppy and her heart cried out in the darkness.

Manfred, Manfred, where did you go to? Why did I have to lose you? A little before morning broke, one of the search parties from the village, which had scoured the mountainsides all night, stumbled upon her and they carried her down the Mountainside.

It's pneumonia, Mevrou Bierman, the doctor told Aunt Trudi when she called him to the manse for the second time that next night. You are going to have to fight for her life she doesn't seem to want to fight herself. Aunt Trudi would not allow them to take Sarah to the new town hospital. She nursed the girl herself, tending her day and night in the small back bedroom, sponging the sweat and heat from her body while the fever mounted, sitting beside the bed and holding her hot hand through the crisis, not leaving her even when it had broken and Sarah lay pale and wasted with the flesh melted off her face so that her features were bony and gaunt and her lacklustre eyes too large for the bruised cavities into which they had sunk.

On the sixth day, when Sarah was able to sit up and drink a little soup without Aunt Trudi's assistance, the doctor made his final call and behind the closed bedroom door gave Sarah a detailed examination. Afterwards he found Aunt Trudi in the kitchen and spoke to her quietly and seriously.

Once he had left the manse Aunt Trudi went back to the bedroom and sat beside the bed, in the same chair on which she had conducted her long vigil.

Sarah., She took the girl's thin hand. it was light and frail and cold. When did you last have your courses? she asked.

Sarah stared at her without replying for long seconds, and then for the first time she began to weep. Slow, almost viscous tears welled up from the depths of those haunted bruised eyes and her thin shoulders shook silently.

Oh, my little girl. Aunt Trudi reached for her and held her to the bulky pillow of her bosom. My poor little girl who did this to you? Sarah wept silently and Aunt Trudi stroked her hair. You must tell me, Suddenly the gentling hand froze on Sarah's head in midstroke, as understanding crashed in upon her.

Manie, it was Manie! It was not a question, but the confirmation was immediate as a painful sob came exploding up Out Of Sarah's tortured chest.

Oh Sarie, oh my poor little Sarie. Involuntarily Aunt Trudi turned her head towards a small framed photograph which stood on the table beside the sick girl's bed. It was a studio photograph of Manfred De La Rey in boxer's shorts and vest, crouched in the classic purilists pose with the silver championship belt around his waist.

The inscription read, To little Sarie. From your big brother, Manie. What a terrible thing! Aunt Trudi breathed. What will we do now? The following afternoon while Aunt Trudi was in the kitchen, larding a leg of venison which was a gift from one of the parishioners, Sarah came in on bare feet.

You should not be out of bed, Sarie, Aunt Trudi told her sternly, then was silent as Sarah did not even glance in her direction.

The thin white cotton nightdress hung loosely on her wasted frame, and she had to steady herself on the back of a kitchen chair for she was weak from her sick bed.

Then she gathered herself and crossed like a sleepwalker to the kitchen range. With the tongs she lifted the round black cast-iron cover off the fire box, and orange points of flame flickered through the opening. Only then did Aunt Trudi realize that Sarah had the photograph of Manfred in her hand. She had removed it from the frame and she held it up in front of her eyes and studied it for a few seconds.

Then dropped it into the opening of the firebox.

Rapidly the square of cardboard curled and blackened. The image upon it faded to ghostly grey and then was obscured by flames. With the points of the fire-tongs Sarah stabbed at the scrap of soft ash that remained, crushing and pounding it to powder. Even then she went on striking the irons into the flames with unnecessary force, until there was nothing left. Then she replaced the cast-iron cover over the firebox and dropped the tongs. She swayed on her feet and might have toppled forward onto the hot stove, but Aunt Trudi caught her and steered her to a kitchen chair.

Sarah sat staring across the kitchen at the stove for many minutes before she spoke.

I hate him! she said softly, Aunt Trudi bowed her head over the haunch of venison to hide her eyes.

We have to talk, Sarie, she said softly. We have to decide what to do. I know what to do, Sarah said and the tone chilled Aunt Trudi. it was not the voice of a bright sweet child, but that of a woman hardened and embittered and coldly angry with what life had offered her.

Eleven days later Roelf Stander returned to Stellenbosch, and six weeks later he and Sarah were married in the Dutch Reformed Church. Sarah's son was born on the 16th March 1937. It was a difficult birth, for the infant was big-boned and she was small-hipped and her body still not fully recovered from the pneumonia.

Roelf was allowed into the delivery room immediately

after the birth. He stood over the cot staring down at the mottled swollen face of the newborn infant.

Do you hate him, Roelf? she asked from the bed. Sarah's hair was sodden with sweat and she was drawn and exhausted. Roelf was silent for a few moments while he considered the question. Then he shook his head.

the qu

He is a part of you, he said. I could never hate anything that is you

she held out her hand to him, and he came to stand beside

the bed and took it. ou, Roelf.

You are a kind person. I will be a good wife to you I promise you that. I know exactly what you are going to say, Daddy. mathilda Janine sat opposite Blaine in his panelled ministerial office in the Parliament building.

You do, do you? Blaine asked. Then let's hear from you exactly what I'm going to Say. Firstly, Mathilda Janine held up her index finger, you are going to say that David Abrahams is a fine young man, a brilliant law student and a sportsman of international reputation who won one of the only two medals which this country was awarded at the Berlin Olympics. You are then about to say that he is gentle, considerate and kind, that he has a marvelous sense of humour and dances beautifully, that he is handsome in a funny sort of way and would make any girl a wonderful husband. Then you will say "but" and look grave!

I was going to say all that, was I? Blaine shook his head with wonder. All right. Now I say "but" and look grave.

Please continue for me, Matty!

But, you say gravely, he is Jewish. You will notice the inflexion, and now you look not only grave but significantly grave. 'This puts a certain amount of strain on my facial muscles, significantly grave. Very well, continue. My darling Daddy would not be so callow as to add, "Don't get me wrong, Matty, some of my best friends are Jews." You would never be as gauche as that, would you? 'Never! Blaine tried not to grin, even though he was still seriously worried by the proposition. He could never resist the impishness of his plain carrot-headed but beloved youngest daughter. I would never say that!

"'But," you would say, "mixed marriages are very difficult, Matty.

Marriage is a hard business without complicating it by different religions and customs and ways of life." How wise of me, Blaine nodded. And how would you reply? I would tell you that for the past year I have been taking instruction with Rabbi Jacobs and by the end of next month I will be a Jewess!

Blaine winced. You have never kept anything from me before, Matty!

I told Mummy!

I see!

still trying to make a game of it.

She smiled cheerily, Then you would say, "But, Matty, you are still a baby."

Amd you would reply, "I will be eighteen next birthday." you would look gruff and say, "What are David's prospects?"

And you would tell me, "David starts work with Courtney Mining and Finance at the end of the year with a salary

of two thousand a year.

How did you know that? Matty was stunned. David only told me, She broke off as she realized what his source had been and she fidgeted in her seat. Her father's relationship with Centaine Courtney troubled her more than she could ever tell him.

Do you love him, Matty? Yes, Daddy. With all my heart. And you have already obtained your mother's permission that I can be sure of. Over the years both Mathilda Janine and Tara had become adept at playing Isabella and Blaine off against each other.

mathilda Janine nodded guiltily, and Blaine selected a cheroot from the humidor on his desk. While he prepared it, he frowned thoughtfully.

It's not a thing to go into lightly, Matty. I am not going into it lightly. I've known David two years. I always thought you might make a career- I am, Daddy. My career is going to be making David happy and giving him lots and lots of babies. He lit the cheroot and grumbled. Well then, you'd better send your David to see me. I want to warn him what will happen to him if he doesn't look after my little girl. Mathilda Janine shot round the desk, dumped herself into his lap and flung both arms around his neck. You are the most wonderful father any girl ever had! When I give in to you! he qualified the compliment, and she hugged him until her arms and his neck ached.

Shasa and David flew up to Windhoek in the Rapide to fetch Abe Abrahams and his wife down for the wedding. The rest of David's family and most of his friends, including Dr TWentyman-jones, came down by train. Together with the friends and family of Mathilda Janine Malcomess this made up a multitude that filled the great synagogue in the Gardens suburb to capacity.

David would dearly have liked Shasa to act as his best man. However, it had taken some delicate persuasion to get the strictly orthodox Rabbi Jacobs to perform the ceremony for a bride who had clearly converted to the Faith for the express purpose of marriage rather than out of purely religious commitment. David could not therefore try to smuggle a gentile best man into the schul, and Shasa had to be content with the position of pole-holder at one corner of the huppah canopy. However, Shasa made a hilariously funny speech at the reception which Blaine gave at the house in Newlands Avenue, with David as the butt of his wit.

The wedding reception provided Shasa with an opportunity to effect one of his periodic reconciliations with Tara Malcomess. Their relationship over the two years since the Berlin Olympics had been storm and sunny weather alternating so rapidly that even the two protagonists themselves were not always certain as to how matters stood between them at any given time.

They managed to occupy opposing grounds on almost every issue; though politics was their favourite subject of dissension, the plight of the poor and oppressed in a land where there were plenty of both of these classes was another perennial winner.

Tara could usually find plenty to say about the insensitivity of the privileged rich white ruling classes, and the iniquity of a system which enabled a young man, whose only proven distinctions were a beautiful face and a rich and indulgent mother, to number amongst his playthings fifteen polo ponies, an SS Jaguar in British racing green with the special three and a half litre engine, and a De Havilland Tiger Moth biplane, while thousands of black children had their little bellies bloated with malnutrition and their legs bowed and deformed by rickets.

These subjects did not exhaust their genius at finding contentious issues. Tara had strong views on so-called sportsmen who went out into the veld armed with high-powered rifles to blast the innocent and beautiful animals and birds; nor did she approve of the obvious relish with which some witless young men regarded the slow but inexorable approach of war clouds for the promise of excitement that they seemed to offer. She was scornful of anyone who was satisfied with a second-class degree when it was apparent that with just a little application they could have finished an expensive education, denied to tens of thousands of others, with a cum laude degree in engineering.

On the other hand, Shasa thought it sacrilege that a girl who had the face and body of a goddess should try to disguise these facts in an attempt to be taken for a daughter of the proletariat. Nor did he approve of this same young woman spending most of her waking hours either in study, or in the slums and shanty towns that had sprung up on the Cape Flats, dishing out to snot-nosed piccaninnies free soup the ingredients of which she had helped obtain by standing on street corners with a beggar's box.

He especially did not like the medical students and newly qualified young doctors, bolsheviks one and all, with whom she spent so much time in her capacity as an unpaid and untrained nurse in the volunteer clinics, tending unwashed and highly infectious brown and black patients suffering from tuberculosis, syphilis, infant dysentery, scabies, the secondary effects of chronic alcoholism and all the other unlovely consequences of poverty and ignorance.

St Francis of Assisi was lucky he didn't have you to compete with - you'd have made him look like Attila the Hun. He found her friends boring in their serious singlemindedness, and ostentatious in their left-wing beards and shoddy dress.

They just lack any style or class, Tara. I mean, how can you bear to walk in the street with one of them?

Their style is the style of the future, and their class is the class of all humanity., Now you are even talking like one of them, for cat's sake! However, these differences were mild and without real substance when compared to their truly monumental disagreement on the subjects of Tara Malcomess chastity and virginity.

For God's sake, Tara, Queen Victoria has been dead for thirty-seven years. This is the twentieth century. Thank you for the history lesson, Shasa Courtney, but if you try to get your hand into my bloomers again I am going to break your arm in three separate and distinct places., What you have got in there isn't so bloody special. There are plenty of other young ladies, I "'Ladies" is a euphemism, but let that pass. I suggest that in the future you confine your attentions to them and leave me alone. That is the only sensible suggestion you have made all evening, Shasa told her in an icy fury of frustration and started the Jaguar sports car with a thunder of exhausts and superchargers that echoed through the pine forests and startled all the other couples parked in the darkness about the pseudo-Greek temple that was the memorial to Cecil John Rhodes.

They drove down the winding mountain road at a savage pace, and Shasa skidded the big sports car to a halt in the gravel in front of the double mahogany doors of the Malcomess home.

Don't bother to hold the door for me, Tara said coldly, and slammed it so hard that he flinched.

That had been two months before, and there hadn't been a day since then that Shasa hadn't thought of her. When he was sweating in the heat of the great pit of the H'ani Mine or poring over a contract with Abe Abrahams in the Windhoek office or watching the muddy brown waters of the Orange river being transformed into sheets of silver by the spinning overhead sprinklers of the irrigation equipment, Tara's image would pop uninvited into his mind.

He tried to erase it by flying the Tiger Moth so low that the landing wheels raised puffs of dust from the surface of the Kalahari, or by absorbing himself in precise and intricate acrobatic evolutions, the spin and barrel roll and stall turn, but as soon as he landed Tara's memory was waiting for him.

He hunted the red-maned Kalahari lions in the desert wilderness beyond the mystic hills of the H'ani, or immersed himself in the multifarious affairs of the Courtney compantudying under his mother, watching her methods and ies, s absorbing her thinking, until she trusted him sufficiently to put him in control of some of the smaller subsidiaries.

He played the game of polo with almost angry dedication, pushing himself and the horses under him to the outer limits, and brought the same single-minded determination to the pursuit and seduction of a daunting procession of women young and not so young, plain and pretty, married and single, more and less experienced, but when he saw Tara malcomess again he had the strange hollow feeling that he had only been half alive during those months of separation.

For her sister's wedding, Tara had put aside the pretentiously drab uniform of the left-wing intellectual, and as a bridesmaid she was dressed in grey silk with a blue sheen to it which, beautiful as it was, could not quite match the steely grey of her eyes. She had changed her hairstyle, cutting it short; the thick smoky curls formed a neat cap around her head, leaving the back of her long neck bare, and this seemed to emphasize her height and the length and perfection of her limbs.

They looked at each other for a moment across the length of the crowded marquee, and it seemed to Shasa that lightning had flashed across the tent; for an instant he knew that she had missed him as much and thought about him as often. Then she nodded politely and turned her full attention back to the man beside her.

Shasa had met him once before. His name was Hubert Langley and he was one of Tara's bleeding-heart brigade. He wore a shabby tweed jacket with leather elbow patches when most of the other male guests were in morning dress. He was an inch shorter than Tara, with steel-rimmed spectacles and prematurely thinning blond hair. His beard was the colour and texture of the plumage of a day-old chicken, and he lectured in sociology at the university.

Tara had once confided in Shasa. Huey is actually a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, isn't that remarkable? Her voice was awed. He is totally committed and he has an absolutely brilliant mind. One might call him a shining jewel in a greasy and grubby setting, Shasa remarked, thereby precipitating another of their periodic estrangements.

Now he watched as Huey laid one of his freckled paws on Tara's unblemished forearm, and when he touched Tara's cheek with his wispy moustaches and whispered one of the gems from that absolutely brilliant mind into her pink shelllike ear, Shasa realized that slow strangulation was too good for him.

He sauntered across the tent to intervene and Tara greeted him coolly, perfectly hiding the fact that her pulse was thumping loudly in her ears. She hadn't realized how intensely she had missed him until she watched him making his speech, urbane and self-assured, amusing and so infuriatingly good-looking.

However, we are not climbing on the same old merry-goround again, she warned herself, and put up all her defences as he took the chair on the other side of her and smiled at her and teased her lightly while looking at her with open admiration, which was so hard to resist. They had shared so much together, friends and places and fun and fights, and he knew exactly how to tickle her sense of humour. She realized that once she started to laugh it was all over, and she held out against it, but he worked on her defences with skill and perfect timing, adroitly breaking them down as swiftly as she set them up, until at last she surrendered with a tinkle of laughter which she could no longer contain, and he followed up swiftly, cutting her out from Huey's side.

From the balcony Mathilda Janine singled out her elder sister and tossed her bouquet directly at her. Tara made no effort to catch it but Shasa snatched it out of the air and handed it to Tara with a bow, while the other wedding guests applauded and looked knowing.

As soon as David and Matty had departed, dragging a bunch of old shoes and tin cans behind David's old bullnosed Morris, Shasa worked Tara out of the marquee and spirited her away in the Jaguar. He didn't make the mistake of taking her back up the mountain to the Rhodes memorial, the scene of their last historic battle. Instead he drove out to Hout Bay and parked on the top of the precipitous cliffs.

While the sun set in a silent bomb-burst of orange and red into the sombre green Atlantic, they fell upon each other in a frenzy of reconciliation.

Tara's body was divided into two zones by an invisible but distinct line around her waist. On occasions of extreme goodwill such as this, the area above the line was, after a suitable show of resistance, made available to him. However, the area south of the line was inviolate, a restriction that left them both strung up with nervous tension when in the dawn they finally and reluctantly parted with one last lingering kiss at Tara's front door.

This latest reconciliation lasted four months which was a new record for them, and after preparing an emotional balance-sheet on which the many advantages of bachelorhood were overbalanced by one single weighty consideration, I cannot live without her, Shasa formally proposed marriage to Tara Malcomess and was devastated by her reply.

Don't be silly, Shasa, apart from a sort of vulgar animal attraction, you and I have absolutely nothing in common. That is the most utter bilge, Tara, he protested. We come from the same backgrounds, we speak the same language, laugh at the same jokes, 'But Shasa you don't care. You know that I plan to enter Parliament. 'That is a career decision, not a thing of the heart, that isn't caring for the poor and the needy and the helpless.

I care for the poor

You

care for Shasa Courtney, that's who you really care for. Her voice rasped like a stiletto drawn from its sheath.

For you the poor is anybody who can afford to ran only five polo ponies. Your papa had fifteen nags in training at the last count, he pointed out tartly.

You leave my father out of this,, she flashed at him.

Daddy has done more for the black and brown people of this country He held up both hands to stop her. Come on, Tara! You know I am Blaine Malcomess's most ardent admirer. I was not trying to insult him, I was simply trying to get you to marry me. It's no good, Shasa.

It's one of my unshakable convictions that the vast wealth of this land must be redistributed, removed from the hands of the Courtneys and the Oppenheimers and given That's Hubert Langley speaking, not Tara Malcomess.

Your little Commie pal should think of generating new wealth rather than dividing up the old. When you take everything we have, the Courtneys and the Oppenheimers, and share it out equally, there would be enough for a square meal for everybody, twenty-four hours later we would all be starving again, the Courtneys and the Oppenheimers included., There you are! I She was triumphant. You are quite happy to see everybody starve but yourself. He gasped at the injustice, and rallied to launch a fullscale counterattack, but just in time he saw the steely grey battle light in her eyes and checked himself.

If you and I were married,he made his voice humble, you could influence me, persuade me to your way of thinking She had been poised for one of their marvelously exhilarating shouting matches, and now she looked slightly crestfallen.

You crafty little capitalist she said. That's not fighting fair.

I don't want to fight with you, my dear girl. In fact,

what I want to do with you is diametrically the opposite of fighting. Despite herself, she giggled. That's another thing I have against you, you carry your mind around in your underpants. You still haven't answered my question: will you marry me? to hand in by nine o'clock tomorrow I have an essay morning, and I am on duty at the clinic from six o'clock this evening. Please take me home now, Shasa. 'Yes or no? he demanded.

Perhaps, she said, but only after I detect a vast improvement in your social conscience, and certainly not before I have obtained my master's degree. That's another two years. Eighteen months, she corrected him. And even then it's not a promise, it's only a big fat "perhaps"., I don't know if I can wait that long. Then bye-bye, Shasa Courtney. They never extended their record beyond four months, for three days later Shasa received a phone call. He was at a meeting with his mother and the new winemaker that Centaine had recently brought out to Weltevreden from France.

They were discussing the designs for the labels on the latest vintage of Cabernet Sauvignon when Centaine's secretary came through to her office.

There is a phone call for you, Master Shasa. I can't come now. Take a message and I'll call back. Shasa did not even look up from the display of labels on Centaine's desk.

It's Miss Tara, and she says it's urgent. Shasa glanced sheepishly at Centaine. it was one of her strict maxims that business came first, and did not mix with any of his social or sporting activities, but this time she gave him a nod.

I won't be a minute. He hurried out and was back within seconds.

What on earth is it? Centaine stood up quickly when she saw his face.

Tara, he said. It's Tara., Is she all right? She's in jail. In December of the year 1838 on a tributary of the Buffalo river, the Zulu King Dingaan had sent his impis of warriors armed with rawhide shield and assegai against the circle of wagons of the Voortrekkers, the ancestors of the Afrikaner people.

The wheels of the wagons were bound together with trekchains and the spaces between them blocked with thorn branches. The Voortrekkers stood to the barricade with their long muzzle loaders, all of them veterans of a dozen such battles, brave men and the finest marksmen in the world.

They shot down the Zulu hordes, choking the river from bank to bank with dead men and turning its waters crimson, so that for ever after it was known as Blood river.

On that day the might of the Zulu empire was shattered, and the Voortrekker leaders, standing bare-headed on the battlefield, made a covenant with God to celebrate the anniversary of the victory with religious service and thanksgiving for all time.

This day had become the most holy date in the Calvinistic Afrikaner calendar after the day of Christ's birth. It celebrated all their aspirations as a people, it commemorated their sufferings and honoured their heroes and their forefathers.

Thus the hundredth anniversary of the battle had peculiar significance for the Afrikaners and during the protracted celebrations the leader of the Nationalist Party declared, We must make South Africa safe for the white man. It is shameful that white men are forced to live and work beside lesser breeds; coloured blood is bad blood and we must be protected from it. We need a second great victory if white civilization is to be saved. Over the months that followed, Dr Malan and his Nationalist Party introduced a series of racially orientated bills to the House. These ranged from making mixed marriages from a crime, to the physical segregation of the whites from men of colour, whether Asiatic or African, and disenfranchising all coloured persons who already had the vote while ensuring that those who did not have it, remained without it. Up until the middle of 1939 Hertzog and Smuts had managed to head off or defeat these proposals.

The South African census distinguished between the various racial groups, the Cape-coloured and other mixed breeds'. These were not, as one might believe, the progeny of white settlers and the indigenous tribes, but were rather the remnants of the Khoisan tribes, the Hottentots and Bushmen and Damaras, together with descendants of Asiatic brought out to the Cape of Good Hope slaves who had been in the ships of the Dutch East India Company.

Taken together they were an attractive people, useful and productive members of a complex society. They tended to be small-boned and light-skinned with almond eyes in faintly oriental features. They were cheerful, clever and quickwitted, fond of pageant and carnival and music, dextrous and willing workers, good Christians or devout Muslims.

They had been civilized in Western European fashion for centuries and had lived in close and amiable association with the whites since the days of slavery.

The Cape was their stronghold and they were better off than most other coloured groups. They had the vote, albeit on a separate roll from the whites, and many of them, as skilled craftsmen and small traders, had achieved a standard of living and affluence surpassing that of many of their white neighbours. However, the majority of them were domestic servants or urban labourers surviving just above or below subsistence level. These people now became the subject of Dr Daniel Malan's attempts to enforce segregation in the Cape as well as every other corner of the land.

Hertzog and Smuts were fully aware that many of their own followers sympathized with the Nationalists, and that to oppose them rigidly might easily bring down the delicate coalition of their United Party. Reluctantly they put together a counter-proposal, for residential segregation, which would disrupt the delicate social balance as little as possible and which, while making law a situation which already existed, would appease their own party and cut the ground from under the Nationalist opposition's feet.

We aim to peg the present position, General Jan Smuts explained, and a week after this explanation a large orderly crowd of coloured people, joined by many liberal whites, gathered in the Greemnarket Square in the centre of Cape Town peaceably to protest against the proposed legislation.

Other organizations, the South African Communist Party and the African National Congress, the Trotsky National Liberation League and the African Peoples Organization, scented blood in the air and their members swelled the ranks of the gathering, while in the front row centre, right under the hastily erected speakers stand, auburn hair shining and grey-blue eyes flashing with righteous ardour, stood Tara Malcomess. At her side, but slightly below her level, was Hubert Langley, backed by a group of Huey's sociology students from the University. They stared up at the speaker, enthralled and enchanted.

This fellow is very good, Hubert whispered. I wonder why we have never heard of him before. He is from the Transvaal, one of his students had overheard and leaned across to explain. One of the top men in the African National Congress on the Witwatersrand. Hubert nodded. Do you know his name? Gama, Moses Gama. Moses, the name suits him, the one to lead his people out of captivity., Tara thought that she had seldom seen a finer-looking man, black or white. He was tall and lean, with the fare of a young pharaoh, intelligent, noble and fierce.

We live in time of sorrow and great danger, Moses Gama's voice had a range and timbre that made Tara shiver involuntarily. A time that was foreseen in the Book of Proverbs., He paused and then spread his hands in an eloquent gesture as he quoted. There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords and there jaw teeth as knives to devour the poor from the earth, and the needy from among men. d again.

That's magnificent! Tara shivered again. MY friends, we are the poor and the needy. When each of us stands alone we are weak, alone we are the prey for those with teeth like swords. But together we can be strong.

if we stand together, we can resist them. Tara joined in the applause, clapping until the palms of her hands were numb, and the speaker stood calmly waiting for silence. Then he went on, The world is like a great pot of oil slowly heating. When it boils over there will be turmoil and steam and it will feed the fire beneath it. The flames will fly up to the sky and afterwards nothing will be the same again. The world we know will be altered for ever, and only one thing is certain, as certain as the rise of tomorrows sun. The future belongs to the people, and Africa belongs to the Africans. Tara found she was weeping hysterically as she clapped and screamed her adulation.

After Moses Gama, the other speakers were dull and halting and she was angry with their ineptitude, but when she looked for him in the crowd Moses Gama had disappeared.

A man like him dare not stay too long in one place, Hubert explained. They have to move like the will o' the wisp to keep ahead of the police. A general never fights in the front line. They are too valuable to the revolution to be used as cannon-fodder. Lenin only returned to Russia after the fighting was over. But we will hear of Moses Gama again mark my words. Around them the crowd was being marshalled to form up into a procession behind a band, a fifteen-piece marching band, any gathering was an excuse for the Cape-coloured people to make music, and in ranks four and five abreast the demonstration began to snake out of the square. The band played 'Alabama', setting a festive mood, and the crowd was laughing and singing; it seemed a parade rather than a demonstration.

We will be peaceful and orderly, the organizers reinforced their previous orders, passing them down the column. No trouble, we want no trouble with the police. We are going to march to the Parliament building and hand a petition to the prime minister. There were two or three thousand in the procession, more than they had hoped for. Tara marched in the fifth rank just behind Dr Goollarn Gool and his daughter Cissie and the other coloured leaders.

With the band leading them, they turned into Adderley Street, the main city thoroughfare. As they marched up towards the Parliament building, the ranks of the procession were swelled by the idlers and the curious, so that as their leaders attempted to turn into Parliament Lane, they were followed by a column of five thousand, a quarter of a mile long, almost half of whom were there for the fun and the excitement, rather than from any political motives.

At the entrance to Parliament Lane a small detachment of police was waiting for them. The road had been barricaded, and there were more police armed with batons and sjamboks, those long black whips of hippohide, being held in reserve further up the road in front of the fence of castiron palings which protected the Parliament building.

The procession came to a ragged halt at the police barrier and Dr Gool signalled the band to silence, then went forward to parley with the white police inspector commanding the detail while the photographers and reporters from local newspapers crowded around them to record the negotiations.

I wish to present a petition to the prime minister on behalf of the coloured people of the Cape Province, Dr Gool began.

Dr Gool, you are conducting an unlawful assembly and I must ask you to get your people to disperse, the police inspector countered. None of his men had been issued with firearms and the atmosphere was almost friendly. One of the trumpet-players blew a loud raspberry and the inspector smiled at the insult and wagged his finger like a schoolmaster at the culprit; the crowd laughed. This was the kind of paternal treatment which everybody understood.

Dr Gool and the inspector haggled and argued in a goodnatured fashion, undeterred by pleasantries from the wags in the crowd, until finally a parliamentary messenger was sent for. Dr Gool handed him the petition and then returned to address the procession.

By this time many of the idlers had lost interest and drifted away; only the original nucleus of the procession remained.

MY friends, our petition has been conveyed to the prime minister, Dr Gool told them. We have achieved our object and we can now rely on General Hertzog, as a good man and a friend of the people, to do the just thing. I have promised the police that we will all go home quietly now, and that there will be no trouble. We have been insulted, Hubert Langley called out loudly.

They will not even deign to speak to us. Make them listen to us, another voice called and there was loud agreement and equally loud dissent. The procession began to lose its orderly form and to heave and sway.

Please! My friends -'Dr Gool's voice was almost drowned in the uproar, and the police inspector called an order and the reserves moved down the street and formed up behind the barricade, batons at the ready, facing the head of the procession.

For some minutes the mood was ugly and confused, and then the coloured leaders prevailed and the procession began to break up and disperse, except for a hard core of three or four hundred. All of these were young, many of them students, both black and white, and Tara was one of the few females amongst them.

The police moved forward and firmly herded them away from the barricade, but spontaneously they re-formed into a smaller but more cohesive band and began marching back towards District Six, the almost exclusively coloured area of the city which abutted onto the central commercial area, but whose diffuse and indistinct boundaries would be one of the subjects of the proposed legislation physically to segregate the racial groups.

The younger, more aggressive marchers linked arms and began to chant and sing, and the police detachments shadowed them, firmly frustrating their efforts to turn back into the central area of the city, shepherding them towards their own areas.

Africa for the Africans, they chanted as they marched.

We are all the same colour under the skin. Bread and freedom., Then Hubert Langley's students became more lyrical and picked up the ancient refrain of the oppressed that he had taught them: When Adam delved and Eve span Who was then the gentleman?

The band began to play the more modern protest: Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord., And after that they launched into: Nkosi sikelela Africa God Save Africa. As they entered the narrow lanes and higgledy-piggledy alleys of District Six, the street gangs emerged to watch with interest, and then to join the fun. In the crowded streets were those with personal scores to settle, and there were also the blatantly criminal and opportunistic gang members.

A half brick came sailing in a high arc out of the packed ranks and crashed through the plate-glass window front of one of the white general dealers, a man notorious for overcharging and restricting credit. The crowd was galvanized, a woman screamed, men began to howl like wolves in a pack.

Somebody reached through the jagged hole in the shop window and grabbed an armful of men's suits. Further down the street another window went with a shattering of glass shards, and the police grouped more tightly and moved forward.

Tara was trying desperately to help restore order, pleading with the laughing looters as they stampeded into the shops, but she was shoved aside and almost knocked down and trampled underfoot.

Go home, whitey, one of the gang members shouted in her face. 'We don't want you here. Then he ducked into the doorway of the shop and picked up a new Singer sewingmachine in his arms.

Stop it! Tara met him as he came back through the door of the shop. ]Put it back. You are spoiling everything. Don't you see that's what they want you to do? She beat her clenched fists on the man's chest, and he recoiled before her fury. However, the lane was jammed with humanity, looters, gang members, ordinary citizens and political protesters confused and angry and afraid. From the end of the lane the police charged in a phalanx; batons rising and falling, siamboks swinging, they began to sweep the mob down the street.

Tara ran out of the looted store just at the moment when a large constable in dark blue uniform was laying on his baton with a will, his target a skinny little Malay tailor who had scampered out of his shop to try to retrieve a bolt of looted cloth.

The constable hit the tailor with a full swing of the baton, crushing his red pillbox fez, and when the little man dropped on the paving stones, stooped over him to aim another blow at his head. Tara launched herself at the policeman. It was a reflex action, like a lioness protecting one of her cubs. The policeman was bent forward, his back to her, and Tara took him off balance. He went down sprawling, but Tara had a death grip on his baton and the wrist-strap parted.

Suddenly she found herself armed and triumphant with the blue-jacketed enemy of the proletariat, minions of the bourgeoisie, before her.

She had come in behind the rank of advancing police as they passed the shop, and their backs were turned to her.

The thuds of the swinging batons and the terrified squeals of the victims infuriated her. There were the poor and the needy and the oppressed and here were the oppressors, and here also with raised baton was Tara Malcomess.

Normally it would have taken Shasa little over half an hour to drive the Jaguar from the Anreith gates of Weltevreden to the charge office in Victoria Street. This afternoon it took him almost an hour and a good deal of fast talking.

The police had cordoned off the area from Observatory Main Road right to the old fort on the extreme south end of the Grand Parade. An ominous shroud of black smoke hung over District Six and drifted out over Table Bay and the police at the roadblocks were tense and on edge.

You can't go in there, sir, a sergeant flagged down the Jaguar. 'Nobody allowed in there. Those black bastards are throwing bricks and burning everything in sight. Sergeant, I have just had a message. My fiance is in there and she needs me. She's in terrible trouble, you have to let me go to her. Orders, sir, I'm sorry. There were half a dozen constables at the barricade, four of them coloured municipal police.

Sergeant, what would you do if it were your wife or mother who needed you? The sergeant glanced around him sheepishly. I tell you what I'll do, sir. My men are going to open the roadblock for one minute and we are going to turn our backs. I never saw you and I don't know nothing about you. The streets were deserted but littered with debris, loose stones and bricks and broken glass that crunched under the tyres of the Jaguar. Shasa drove fast, appalled at the destruction he saw around him, slitting his eyes against the drifts of smoke that obscured his vision every few hundred yards.

Once or twice he saw figures lurking in the alleys, or watching from the upper windows of the undamaged buildings, but nobody attempted to stop him or attack him.

Nevertheless, it was with intense relief that he reached the police station in Victoria Road, and the protection of the hastily marshalled police riot squads.

Tara Malcomess. The sergeant at the front desk of the charge office recognized the name immediately. Yes, you could say that we know about her! After all, it took four of my men to carry her in here.

What are the charges, Sergeant? Let me see, He consulted the charge sheet. So far we have only got attending an unlawful assembly, wilful destruction of property, inciting to violence, using abusive and threatening language, obstructing the police in the execution of their duty, assaulting a policeman and,or policemen, common assault, assault with an offensive weapon and,or assault with intent. I will put up her bail. That, sir, will cost a pretty penny, I should say. Her father is Colonel Malcomess, the cabinet minister. Well, why didn't you say so before? Please wait here, sir. Tara had a blackened eye and her blouse was torn; her auburn hair stood up in tangled disarray as she peered out at Shasa between the bars of her cell.

What about Huey? she demanded.

Huey can cook in Hades for I care. Then I'm going to cook with him, Tara declared truculently. I'm not leaving here without him. Shasa recognized the obstinate set of her madonna-like features, and sighed. So it cost him one hundred pounds fifty for Tara and fifty for Huey.

I'll be damned if I will give him a lift though, Shasa declared.

Fifty quid is enough for any little bolshevik. He can walk back to his kennel from here. Tara climbed into the front seat of the Jaguar and folded her arms defiantly. Neither of them spoke as Shasa gunned the motor and pulled away with unnecessary violence, burning blue smoke off the bac tyres.

Instead of heading back towards the affluent white southern suburbs, he sent the Jaguar roaring up the lower slopes of Devil's Peak and parked at one of the viewpoints overlooking the smoking and damaged buildings of District Six.

What are you doing? she demanded, as he switched off the engine.

Don't you want to have a look at your handiwork? he asked coldly. Surely you are proud of what you have achieved.

She shifted uneasily in her seat. That wasn't us, she muttered. 'That was the skollie boys and the gangsters. My dear Tara, that is how revolution is supposed to work.

The criminal elements are encouraged to destroy the existing system, to break down the rule of law and order, and then the leaders step in and restore order again by shooting the revolutionaries. Haven't you studied the teachings of your idol Lenin? It was the fault of the police Yes, it's always the fault of the police, that's also part of Lenin's plan. It isn't like that Shut up, he snapped at her. Just for once shut up and listen to me. Up to now I've put up with your Joan of Arc act. It was silly and naive but I tolerated it because I loved you. But when you start burning down people's homes and throwing bricks and bombs, then I don't think it's so funny any more. Don't you dare condescend to me, she flared.

Look, Tara, look down there at the smoke and flames.

Those are the people you pretend to care for, those are the people who you say you want to help. Those are their homes and livelihoods that you have put the torch to. I didn't think, I No, you certainly didn't think. But I am going to tell you something now and you'd better remember it. if you try to destroy this land I love and make its people suffer, then you become my enemy and I will fight you to the death., She was silent for a long time, her head turned away from him and then at last she said softly, Will you take me home, Please? He took the long way home over Kloof Nek and along the Atlantic coast, circling around the far side of Table Mountain to avoid the riot-torn areas and they never spoke again until he parked at last in front of the Malcomess home in Newlands.

Perhaps you are right, Tara said. Perhaps we really are enemies. She climbed out of the Jaguar and stood looking down at him as he sat behind the wheel in the open cockpit.

Goodbye Shasa, she said softly, sadly, and went into the house.

Goodbye, Tara, he whispered. Goodbye, my beloved enemy!

All the Courtneys were gathered in the front room of Weltevreden.

Sir Garrick and Anna sat on the long sofa which was covered with striped Regency patterned damask. They had come down from Natal for Sir Garry's birthday, and the week before they had all climbed Table Mountain for the traditional birthday picnic. it had been a merry occasion and the Ou Baas, General Ian Christian Smuts, had been with them, as he nearly always was.

Sir Garry and Lady Anna had planned to return home a few days reviously, but then the ghastly news of the German invation of Poland had broken and they had stayed on at Weltevrede. It was only right that the family should be together in these desperate days.

The two of them held hands like young lovers as they sat close together. Since his last birthday, Sir Garry had grown a small silver goatee beard, perhaps in unconscious imitation of his old friend General smuts. it increased his scholarly mien and added a little touch of distinction to his pale aesthetic features. He leaned slightly forward on the sofa, inclined towards his wife but with his attentionontheradio cabinet over which Shasa Courtney was fussing, twiddling the tuning knobs and frowning at the crackle and whine of static.

The BBC is on the forty-one-metre band, Centaine told him sharply and glanced at her diamond-studded wristwatch. Do be quick, cheri, or we will miss the transmission!

,Ah! Shasa smiled as the static cleared and the chimes of Big Ben rang out clearly. As they died away the announcer spoke.

Twelve hundred hours Greenwich Mean Time and in place of the news we are broadcasting a statement by Mr Neville Chamberlain the prime minister,, Turn it up, cheri, Centaine ordered anxiously, and the fateful words, measured and grave, boomed into the elegant room.

They listened to it all in complete silence. Sir Garry's beard quivered, and he took the steel-rimmed spectacles off his nose and absentmindedly chewed on one of the side frames. Beside him Anna wriggled forward onto the edge of the sofa, her thick thighs spread under their own weight; her face slowly turned a deeper shade of brick and her grip on her husband's hand tightened as she stared at the radio in its mahogany cabinet.

Centaine sat in the tall wingbacked chair beside the huge stone fireplace. She looked like a young girl in a white summer dress with a wide yellow ribbon around her slim waist. She was thirty-nine years old, but there was not yet a single thread of silver in the dense dark curls of her hair and her skin was clear, the faint crow's feet at the corners of her eyes smoothed almost entirely by expensive oils and creams. She leaned an elbow on the arm of the chair, and while with one finger she touched her cheek, she never took her eyes off her son.

Shasa paced the long room, moving from the radio cabinet in its niche between the long flowered curtains, across the highly polished parquet floor with its scattering of oriental carpets until he reached the grand concert piano that stood against the main wall of bookcases at the far end of the room, then turning and coming back with quick restless paces, his hands clasped behind his back, his head bowed in concentration.

She thought how he looked so much like his father.

Though Michael had been older and not quite so handsome, yet they had the same quality of grace. She remembered how she had believed Michael to be immortal, a young god, and she felt the terror enter her soul again, that same helpless crippling terror, as she heard the words of war echo through this beautiful home that she had built as a fortress against the world.

We are never safe, there is no refuge, she thought. It is coming again, and I cannot save those I love. Shasa and Blaine, they will both go and I cannot keep them from it.

Last time it was Michael and Papa, this time it's Shasa and Blaine - and, oh God, I hate it. I hate war and I hate the evil men who make it. Please God spare us this time. You took Michael and Papa, please spare Shasa and Blaine. They are all I have, please don't take them from me. The deep slow voice spoke into the room, and Shasa froze in the centre of the floor, turning his head to stare over his shoulder at the radio as the voice said: And so, it is with the deepest regret that I have to inform you that a state of war now exists between Great Britain and Germany. The transmission ended and was replaced by the slow sad strains of chamber music.

Turn it off, cheri, Centaine said softly, and there was complete silence in the room.

Nobody moved for many seconds. Then abruptly Centaine rose to her feet. She was smiling gaily as she linked her arm through Shasa's.

Lunch is ready everybody, she cried lightly. in such lovely weather we will eat on the terrace. Shasa will open a bottle of champagne, and I have managed to get the first oysters of the season. She kept up a bright and cheery monologue until they were all seated at the table and the wine glasses were filled and then suddenly her act collapsed, and she turned to Sir Garry with a tortured expression.

We won't have to go in, will we Papa? General Hertzog promised he would keep us out. He says it's an English war.

We won't have to send our men again, not this time, will we Papa? Sir Garry reached across and took her hand. You and I know what the price was last time,, his voice choked off and he could not mention Michael's name. After a moment he gathered himself. I wish I could give you comfort, my dear. I wish I could say what you want to hear. It's not fair, said Centaine miserably. It just isn't fair. 'No, I agree it isn't fair. However, there is a monstrous tyranny abroad, a great evil which will swallow us and our world if we do not resist it., Centaine sprang up from the table and ran into the house.

Shasa rose quickly to follow her, but Sir Garry restrained him with a hand on his arm, and ten minutes later Centaine came out again. She had washed her face and refreshed her make-up and she was smiling, but there was a feverish glitter in her eyes as she took her place at the head of the table.

We are all going to be gay, she laughed. That's an order.

No brooding, no morbid thoughts or words, we are all going to be happy, she broke off and the laughter wobbled. She had been about to say, for it may be the last time we will all be happy together ever again. On 4 September 1939, the day after Great Britain and France had declared war on Nazi Germany, General Barry Hertzog rose to address the Parliament of the Union of South Africa.

It is my sad and painful duty to inform the house that the cabinet of the Government is divided on the question of this country's position in the state of war that exists at present between Britain and France on the one hand and Germany on the other hand. He paused and replaced his spectacles to scrutinize the faces of the men who sat beside him on the government front benches, and then went on gravely.

It is my firm belief that the ultimatum given to Germany by the British Government concerning the occupation of Poland by the German Wehrmacht is not binding upon this country, nor does the German occupation of Poland constitute a threat to the security of the Union of South Africa, A great roar of approval went up from the opposition benches and Dr Daniel Malan, froglike and bespectacled, smiled benignly, while on the government benches Smuts and his supporters registered their protest as loudly.

It is rather a local matter between Germany and Poland, Hertzog went on, and it gives this country no cause to join in the declaration of war. Accordingly I propose that South Africa remain neutral; that it cede the naval base at Simonstown to Britain, but in all other respects continue its present relationship with all the belligerents as if no war were being waged. The ageing prime minister was a fluent and persuasive speaker and as he continued enlarging his case for neutrality, Blaine Malcomess on the front bench of the government side was covertly watching the reaction of the Smuts supporters around him.

He knew which of them were as firmly committed as himself and the Ou Baas to stand by Britain, and which of them were wavering and uncertain. As Hertzog continued speaking, he sensed the swing of emotions towards the old general's side, and with a sense of disbelief and rising shame he foresaw the ignominious decision that the House was about to take. His anger rose to keep pace with his shame.

General Hertzog was still speaking, and Blaine was now only listening with half an ear as he scribbled a note to pass across to the Ou Baas, when abruptly his full attention flashed back to what the prime minister was saying.

Finally, coming to the ethics of the German invasion of Poland, a case could very well be made out for the justification of this action if it were taken into consideration that the security of the German state Blaine felt his spirits soar, and he sensed rather than saw the sudden shock and revulsion of feeling amongst those who had begun to waver towards the side of neutrality.

He has gone too far, Blaine wrote on a fresh sheet of his notepad. He is defending Hitler's aggression. We have won. He tore the sheet from the pad and handed it to General Smuts, who read it and nodded slightly, and rose to his feet to put the other side of the argument.

Britain is our friend, our oldest and our best friend. We must stand by her to the end, he said in his high-pitched voice, rolling his r's in his distinctive NIalmesbury bray.

Far from being a local dispute, the Polish invasion has consequences that reach far beyond Danzig and the corridor, into the hearts and souls of free men in every corner of the globe. When, at last, the motion, for war or neutrality, was put to the vote, Dr Malan's Nationalists voted as a block for neutrality, and one third of Hertzog's own party, together with three of his cabinet ministers, followed his lead.

However, Smuts and his own men, Reitz and Malcomess and Stuttaford and the others, carried the day and by the slim margin of eighty votes to sixty-seven, South Africa declared war on Nazi Germany.

in a last desperate bid to thwart the declaration, General Hertzog called for dissolution of Parliament and a general election, but the governor-general, Sir Patrick Duncan, refused the request and instead accepted the old general's resignation and invited General Jan Christian Smuts to form a new government and take the nation to war.

The Ou Baas won't let me go, Blaine said bitterly, and Centaine ran to him across the bedroom of their cottage and stood on tiptoe to embrace him.

Oh thank God, Blaine my darling. I prayed and prayed and He answered me. I couldn't bear to lose you both. Not you and Shasa, I could never have survived it., I'm not proud that I will stay at home while others go., You have fought once, bravely, unselfishly, she told him.

You are a thousand times more valuable here than lying dead on a battlefield in a foreign land. The Ou Baas has convinced me of that, he sighed. With an arm around her waist he led her through to the sittingroom, and she knew that tonight for once they would not make love. His distress was too great. She knew that tonight he wanted only to talk, and it was her duty to listen to him while he poured out his doubts and fears and regrets.

They came out in a jumble, without logical sequence, and she sat close to him so he could touch her merely by stretching out a hand as she listened quietly.

Our position is so precarious, how can we wage a war when we command a majority of only thirteen votes in the House, while against us we have a solid opposition who hate the Ou Baas and what they call his English war? They will fight us every step of the way, while the people also are deeply divided against us, We have within our own borders an enemy as vicious as the Nazis, the Ossewa Brandwag and the Black Shirts and the Grey Shirts, the Deutsche Bund in South West Africa, enemies within and without. She poured him another whisky and soda and brought him the Stuart crystal tumbler. It was his second drink that evening and she had never before seen him take more than one.

Pirow has betrayed us. He is one of them now, but for all those years he has been in a position of trust. Oswald Pirow had been the Minister of Defence under the Hertzog govemtment. We gave him a defence budget of fifty-six million and a brief to built up an affective modern army, but instead he treacherously gave us a paper army. We believed his reports and his assurances, but now that he has gone we find ourselves without modern weapons, a handful of obsolete tanks and venerable aircraft and an army of fewer than fifteen hundred in the permanent force. Pirow refused to arm the nation for a war which he and Hertzog were determined we would never fight. The night wore on but both of them were too strung up to think of sleeping, and when he refused a third whisky she went through to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee and he followed her. He stood behind her with his arms around her waist while they waited for the water to come to the boil.

General Smuts has given me the Interior Ministry in the new cabinet. One of the reasons he chose me was that I have already chaired the commission of enquiry into the Ossewa Brandwag and the other subversive organizations.

It will be one of my major concerns to suppress their efforts to disrupt our preparations for war. The Ou Baas himself has taken the Ministry of Defence, and he has already promised Britain an army of fifty thousand volunteers ready to fight anywhere in Africa. They took the coffee tray through to the sitting-room and as Centaine poured, the telephone rang, shrill and shocking in the silent cottage. She started and spilled steaming coffee over the tray.

What time is it, Blaine? Ten minutes to one. I won't answer it, let it ring, Centaine shook her head, staring at the insistent instrument, but he stood up.

Only Doris knows I'm here, he said. I had to let her know in case, He didn't have to explain further. Doris was his secretary, the only one in their confidence, and of course she had to know where to find him. Centaine picked up the telephone.

Mrs Courtney speaking. She listened for a moment. Yes, Doris, he is here. She handed the telephone to Blaine and turned away. He listened for a few moments, then said quietly, Thank you, Doris, I'll be there in twenty minutes. He hung up and looked up at Centaine.

I'm sorry, Centaine. I'll fetch your coat. She held it for him and he slipped his arms into the sleeves and turned to face her, buttoning it as he said, It's Isabella. He saw her surprise and went on, The doctor is with her.

They need me. Doris wouldn't say more, but it sounds serious. After Blaine had gone, she took the coffee pot and cups through to the kitchen, and rinsed them in the sink. Seldom had she felt so lonely. The cottage was silent and cold and she knew she could not sleep. She went back into the lounge and put a gramophone record on the turntable.

it was an aria from Verdi's Aida, always one of her favourites, and as she sat and listened to it the memories it aroused came stealing back out of the past, Michael and Mort Homme and the other long-ago war, and her melancholy swamped her.

She slept at last, sitting in the armchair with her legs curled up under her, and the telephone woke her with a start. She reached for it before she was properly awake.

Blaine! She recognized his voice instantly. What time is it? 'It's four o'clock, a few minutes after. Is something wrong, Blame? She came fully awake.

,Isabella, he said. She is asking for you. For me? Centaine was confused.

She wants you to come here. I can't, Blaine. That's not possible, you know that. She's dying, Centaine. The doctor says she won't last out the day. Oh God, Blaine, I'm so sorry. And with wonder at herself, she realized she truly was. Poor Isabella Will you come? Do you want me to, Blaine? It is her last request. If we refuse it, our guilt will be so much harder to bear. I'll come, she said and hung up.

She took only a few minutes to bathe her face and change and put on light make-up. She drove through the almost deserted streets, and Blaine's big gabled home was the only one in Newlands Avenue with lights burning.

He met her at the mahogany double front doors and he did not embrace her, but said simply, Thank you, Centaine. Only then she saw his daughter standing in the hall behind him.

Hello, Tara, she greeted her. The girl had been weeping.

Her big grey eyes were puffy and swollen and rimmed with red, and her face was so pale that her dark auburn hair seemed to burn like a bush fire. I'm so sorry to hear about your mother."

No, you aren't. Tara stared at her with a flat hostile expression which suddenly wavered and cracked. She sobbed and ran down the passageway. A door slammed in the back of the house.

She's very upset, Blaine said. I apologize for her., I understand, Centaine answered. I deserve at least part of that. He shook his head to deny it, but said simply, Please come with me. They climbed the circular staircase side by side and Centaine asked softly, 'What is it, Blaine? ,A degeneration of the spine and nervous system, a process that has been going on slowly over the years. Now there is pneumonia, and she can no longer resist. Pain? Centaine asked.

Yes, he replied. She has always had pain, more than the average person could bear. They went down the wide carpeted passageway and Blaine tapped on the door at the end and then opened it.

Come in, please. The room was large and furnished in cool restful greens and blues. The curtains were closed and a night lamp burned on the bedside table. The man standing beside the bed was clearly a doctor. Blaine led Centaine to the four-poster bed and though she had tried to prepare herself, still she started when she saw the figure that lay upon the banked pillows.

She remembered Isabella Malcomess serene and gentle beauty. Now a death's head stared at her from sunken eye-sockets, and the fixed grin of yellowish teeth, the rictus of shrunken lips, was somehow obscene. The effect was heightened by the contrast of thick auburn hair which formed a cloud about the ravaged head.

It was kind of you to come. Centaine had to lean closer to the bed to hear the thin voice.

I came as soon as I heard you wanted me., The doctor intervened quietly. You may stay only a few minutes, Mrs Malcomess must rest. But Isabella fluttered her hand impatiently, and Centaine saw that it was a bird's claw of fragile bones covered with skin the colour of tallow and a ropy network of blue veins.

I wish to speak in private, she whispered. Please leave us, Doctor. Blaine leaned over her to adjust the pillows under her head.

Please don't tire yourself, dear, he said, and his gentleness towards the dying woman gave Centaine a jealous pang she could not suppress.

Blaine and the doctor left quietly, and closed the door with a click of the latch. They were alone together for the first time. Centaine was overcome by a sense of unreality. For so many years this woman had bulked large in her life, her very existence had meant that Centaine had to suffer all the vile emotions from guilt to jealousy, from anger to hatred.

But now that she stood beside her deathbed, they had all evaporated. All she felt was a vast sense of pity.

Come nearer, Centaine, Isabella whispered, beckoning her with another feeble flutter of her wasted hand. Talking is such an effort. Impulsively Centaine went down on her knees beside the bed so that their eyes were only inches apart. She felt a terrible need to repent for all the unhappiness she had caused and to ask for Isabella's forgiveness, but Isabella spoke first.

I told Blaine that I wanted to make my peace with you, Centaine. I told him I understood that the two of you had not been able to help falling in love, and that I realized you had tried to spare me as much as possible. I told him I knew that you were never vindictive, that although you could have taken him away, you never inflicted that final humiliation upon me, that although I was no longer a woman, you allowed me to retain the last shreds of my dignity. Centaine felt the pity flood her soul and fill her eyes. She wanted to take this frail dying creature in her arms and hold her, but something in Isabella's eyes prevented her, it was a fierce proud light and Centaine simply bowed her head and remained silent.

I told Blaine that you had filled his life with the happiness I could not give him, but despite that and because of your generosity, I was still able to keep part of him for myself., Oh, Isabella, I don't know how to tell you, I Centaine's voice choked and Isabella gestured her to silence.

She seemed to be gathering herself for some enormous effort. A faint flush of colour came back into her cheeks and the fierce light in her eyes flared up. Her breath quickened and when she spoke again her voice was stronger, harsher.

I told him all these things to persuade him to bring you here. If he had guessed what I truly intended, he would not have allowed you to come. She raised her head from the pillow and her voice became a serpent's hiss.

Now I can tell you how deeply I have hated you every waking hour of every long year, how my hatred kept me alive this long so that I could prevent you from having him as your husband, and now that I am dying that hatred is magnified a hundred times, She broke off and panted for breath, as Centaine recoiled before her glare. She realized that Isabella was a woman driven to madness by the agony she had endured, by the long corrosion of hatred and jealousy.

If a dying woman's curse has any force, Isabella spoke again, 'then I curse you, Centaine Courtney, with my last breath. May you experience the same torture you have inflicted upon me, may you know pain as I have known it.

The day you stand before the altar with my husband I will reach out to you from beyond the grave, No! Centaine stumbled to her feet, and backed towards the door. Stop it! Please, stop it! Isabella laughed, a shrill and taunting sound. I curse you, and let my curse blight your adulterous passion. I curse every minute the two of you spend together when I have gone. I curse whatever seed he places in your womb, I curse each kiss and touch, I curse you and I curse your brat. I curse all your issue. An eye for an eye, Centaine Courtney.

Heed my words, an eye for an eye! Centaine ran across the room and flung herself against the door. Throwing it open, she ran down the passage. Blaine was coming up the staircase at a run. He tried to hold her, but she tore herself from his grasp and rushed out through the front doors to where the Daimler was parked.

She had been driving for many hours, driving fast with the accelerator pressed to the floorboards, keeping the great seven-litre engine at a long sustained bellow, sending a tall pale column of dust into the sky behind her, before she consciously realized she was going back into the desert, back to the dreaming mystical hills that the little Bushmen called The Place of all Life'.

it was two months before Centaine came back out of the Kalahari Desert. For all that time she had thwarted Blaine's efforts to contact her, refusing to reply to the letters he wrote or the telephone calls he made to both Abe Abrahams and Dr Twenty-man-jones.

She read the death notices for Isabella Malcomess in the obituary columns of the newspapers which reached the H'ani Mine only weeks after publication, but they served to increase her feeling of isolation and the brooding premonition of disaster and tragedy which Isabella's death curse had left with her.

She returned to Weltevreden in the end only at Shasa's insistence.

When she arrived her hair was floury with dust from the long journey and she was darkly tanned by the Kalahari sun, but tired and dispirited still.

Shasa must have received her telegram and been expecting her. He must have heard the Daimler's motor as she came up the avenue to the chateau, but he was not on the front steps to meet her, and she realized why when she went into her study. He turned from the window from where he had watched her arrival and now he crossed the room to meet her. He was in uniform.

She stopped in the doorway, and an icy stillness froze her.

She watched him come towards her, and in her memory she was carried back down the years and across space to another meeting with a tall and impossibly handsome young man in the same khaki tunic, with the polished belt and Sam Browne cross-strap, the peaked cap set at a jaunty angle, and the airman's wings on his chest.

Thank God, you've come, Mater, Shasa greeted her. I had to see you before I left. When? she breathed the question, terrified to hear the answer. When do you go? Tomorrow. Where? Where are they sending you? First we go to Roberts Heights, that was the air-force training base in the Transvaal, for conversion to fighters, and after that wherever they send us. Wish me luck, Mater. She saw that he wore orange flashes on the epaulettes of his tunic, the insignia of those who had volunteered to fight beyond the country's borders.

Yes, my darling, I wish you luck,, she said, and knew that her heart would break to see him go.

The roar of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine filled his head even through the earphones of the radio telephone that Shasa wore over his leather flying helmet. The cockpit canopy of the Hawker Hurricane fighter aircraft was open, so the slipstream buffeted his head, but it gave him an uninterrupted view of the blue African sky around him. The three fighters flew in a loose arrowhead formation. The dun-coloured desert camouflage could not disguise their beautiful deadly lines.

Shasa led the flight. His promotion had been rapid. Command came naturally to him, he had learned that lesson well from Centaine Courtney. It had taken only eighteen months for him to reach the rank of squadron leader.

He flew in a short-sleeved khaki tunic, khaki shorts and with velskoen on his bare feet, for the summer heat of Abyssinia was brutal.

Around his waist was belted a Webley service revolver, an archaic weapon for the pilot of a modern pursuit aircraft, but all of them had taken to wearing sidearms since the intelligence section had circulated those obscene photographs. one of the motorized recce units had overrun a village in the mountains and found the remains of two South African pilots who had been forced down and captured by the Abyssinian irregulars, the shufta, wild hill bandits. The pilots had been given to the women of the village. They had first been emasculated, then flayed with hot irons and disembowelled so skilfully that they were still living as their viscera was drawn from them. Finally, their jaws had been wedged open with Thorn branches and the women had urinated into their open mouths until they drowned. So all the pilots carried sidearms now, to defend themselves first, and then to make certain they were never captured alive.

Today the air was clear and bright under a cloudless azure sky, and visibility was unlimited. Below and ahead stretched the rugged Abyssinian highlands, precipitous Ambas, the huge table-topped mountains, the dark deep gorges between, desert and rock, dry and sun-bleached to the dun colour of an old lion's scarred hide.

The three fighters bored upwards, striving for height. They had scrambled from the dusty forward airstrip at Yirga Alem only minutes before, in response to a faint but desperate appeal over the field radio from the advancing infantry, and Shasa wheeled the flight onto the northern heading and picked out the thin pate thread of the road winding through the mountains far below them.

immediately he resumed the fighter pilot's scan, his head pivoting and turning, eyes darting and flicking, never allowed to fix and focus short, up and around and down in a regular never ceasing motion and he saw them first.

They were tiny specks, a cloud of black midges against the aching blue.

Popeye flight, this is leader. Tally ho! he said into the microphone of his radio telephone. Eleven o'clock high! Ten plus, and they look like Capronis. Buster! Buster! Buster was the order to go to full throttle.

I have them! Dave Abrahams answered immediately. It was extraordinary that they had been able to keep together, from the training days at Roberts Heights through all the vagaries of the East African campaign, until now they were fighting with Dan Pienaar's South African Corps, driving the Duke of Aosta's Italians back through the mountains towards Addis Adaba.

Shasa glanced across at him. David had brought his Hurricane up on Shasa's starboard wingtip. He also had his canopy open, and they flashed a grin across at each other. David's large beaky nose had been burned raw and pink by the sun, and the straps of his helmet hung unbuckled under his chin.

It was a good feeling to have him on his wing. Then both of them closed their canopies in preparation for the attack and looked ahead. Shasa brought the flight around into a gentle turn, climbing up into the sun, the classic fighter tactics.

The distant midges resolved swiftly into the familiar silhouettes of three-engined Caproni bombers. Shasa counted twelve, four sticks of three. They were going for the crossroads at Kerene again, where the South African advance was bottled into the pass between the soaring walls of the high Ambas, and at that moment Shasa saw the bombs drop away from below the leading bombers.

Still under full throttle, the Rolls-Royce engines screamed in protest as they climbed out, turning into the sun that blinded the Italian gunners. Shasa winged over and went down into the attack.

He could see the bomb-bursts now, tiny fountains of pale dust, spurting up around the crossroads, falling amongst the antlike column of vehicles in the gut of the hills. Those poor bastards down there were taking a pounding, and as they tore down the sky the second flight of Capronis released their bombloads. The fat grey eggs, finned at one end, went down with a deceptively slow wobbling motion, and Shasa twisted his head around in one last sweep of the heavens, squinting into the sun, checking that the Italian fighters were not waiting up there, lying in ambush; but the sky was unsullied blue, and he switched his full attention back to his gunsight.

He picked out the leading Caproni in the third flight, hoping his attack would spoil the bomb-layer's aim, and he touched left rudder and rotated the Hurricane's nose downwards a hair's breadth until the silver and blue Caproni swam gently in the rose of his gunsight.

Six hundred yards and he held his fire. He could see the insignia of the fasces on the fuselage, the bundled rods and axe of imperial Rome. The heads of the two pilots in the cockpit were inclined earthwards, watching for the fall of the bombs. The twin machine-guns in the revolving power turret were trained aft.

Five hundred yards. He could see the head and shoulders of the turret gunner. The back of his helmet was towards Shasa. He had not yet spotted the three deadly machines screaming down onto his starboard quarter.

Four hundred yards, so close that Shasa could see the scorching of fumes around the exhaust ports of the Caproni's engines, and the gunner still was unaware.

Three hundred yards. The bomb bay of the Caproni began to open under her swollen belly, pregnant with death. Now Shasa could make out the rows of rivet heads along the silver fuselage and on the wide blue wings. He settled his grip on the joystick between his knees and slipped the saf etylock on the firing button, readying the eight Browning machine-guns in his wings.

Two hundred yards. He played the rudder bars with his toes and the gunsight drifted over the Caproni's fuselage. He stared through it, frowning slightly with concentration, his lower lip caught between his front teeth. Suddenly a line of bright fiery phosphorescent beads strung across the nose of his Hurricane. The gunner of the second Caproni had spotted him at last, and fired a warning burst across his nose.

One hundred yards. The gunner and both pilots in the leading Caproni, alerted by the burst of fire, had looked round and seen him. The turret gunner was traversing frantically trying to bring his guns to bear. Through the gunsight Shasa could see his white face, contorted with terror.

Eighty yards. Still frowning, Shasa pressed down with his thumb on the firing-button. The Hurricane shuddered and slowed to the recoil of eight Brownings, and Shasa was thrown gently forward against his shoulder-straps by the deceleration. Bright streams of tracer, sparkling like electricity, hosed into the Caproni, and Shasa watched the strike of shot, directing it with quick subtle touches of his controls.

The Italian gunner never fired his turret guns. The Perspex canopy disintegrated around him and concentrated fire tore him to shreds. Half his head and one of his arms were pulled off like those of a careless child's rag doll, and went spinning and bouncing away in the propeller wash. Instantly Shasa switched his aim, picking up the silver coin of the spinning propeller and the vulnerable wing root of the Caproni in his sights. The crisp silhouette of the wing dissolved like wax in a candle-flame. Glycerine and fuel vapour poured from the motor in liquid sheets, and the whole wing pivoted slowly backwards on its root, and then tore away and spun off, a dead leaf in the slipstream. The bomber flipped over on its back and went down in a flat inverted spiral, unbalanced by the missing wing, weaving irregular zigzag patterns of smoke and vapour and flame down the sky, and Shasa turned all his attention to the next formation of bombers.

He brought the Hurricane round still under full throttle, and he pulled his turn so tightly that the blood drained away from his brain and his vision turned grey and shadowy. He tensed his belly muscles and clenched his jaw to resist the drainage of blood, and levelled out on a head-on course with the next Caproni in line.

The two aircraft raced together with terrifying speed. The nose of the Caproni swelled miraculously to fill all Shasas vision, and he fired into it at pointblank range and then pulled up his nose and they flashed past each other so close that he felt the bump and jar of the bomber's slipstream. He came round again, hard and furiously, breaking up the Italian formations, scattering them across the sky, turning and diving and firing until with that abruptness that is so much part of aerial combat, they were all gone.

He was alone in an enormously blue and empty sky and he was sweating with adrenalin reaction. His grip on the control column was so tight that it hurt his knuckles. He throttled back and checked his fuel gauge. Those desperate minutes at full throttle had burned over half a tankful.

Popeye flight, this is leader. Come in all units. He spoke into his microphone and the response was immediate.

Leader, this is three! That was the third Hurricane, with young Le Roux at the controls. I'm down to quarter of a tank. All right, three, return independently to base, Shasa ordered. And then he called again. Popeye two, this is leader.

Do you read me? Shasa was searching the sky around him, trying to pick up David's aircraft, feeling the first prickle of anxiety.

Come in, Popeye two, he repeated, and looked down, searching for smoke rising from a wrecked aircraft in the broken brown land below. Then his pulse jumped as David's voice came in clearly through his headphones.

Leader, this is two, I have damage. David, where the hell are you? Approximately ten miles east of Kerene crossroads, at eight thousand feet. Shasa glanced into the easterly quarter and almost instantly picked out a thin grey line being swiftly drawn above the blue horizon towards the south. it looked like a feather.

David, I see smoke in your area. Are you on fire? Affirmative.

I have an engine fire. I'm coming, David, hold on! Shasa flung the Hurricane's wing up in a steep turn and rammed the throttle open to its stop.

David was a little below him, and he went screaming down the sky.

David, how bad is it! Roast turkey, David said laconically, and ahead of him Shasa made out the burning Hurricane.

David had his stricken machine in a steep side slip, so that the flames were not streaming back over the cockpit canopy but were being blown out to one side. He was going down fast, trying to build up speed to the critical point when the fire would be starved of oxygen and would extinguish itself spontaneously.

Shasa bore down on him and then eased back his own speed and kept slightly above and two hundred yards off. He could see the bullet holes in the other machine's engine cowling and wing. One of the Italian gunners had got in a good burst at David. The paintwork was blackening and blistering back down the Hurricane's fuselage, almost as far as the cockpit, and David was struggling with the Perspex canopy, trying to open it.

,A jammed canopy and David will cook, Shasa thought, but at that moment the canopy came free and slid back easily and David looked across at him. The air around his head was distorted by the shimmering heat of invisible flames and a brown patch appeared on the sleeve of David's tunic as the khaki cotton scorched.

No good! I'm hitting the silk, Shasa. He saw David's lips move and his voice echoed in Shasa's earphones, but before he could reply, David pulled the helmet from his head and released his shoulder-straps.

He lifted one hand in a farewell salute, and then turned the burning Hurricane onto its back and fell out of the open cockpit.

He went down with arms and legs spread in an untidy sprawling starfish, beginning to turn like a cartwheel until suddenly a cascade of silk burst from his parachute pack, bloomed into a glistening snowy flower over him and he was jerked backwards, his fall broken, and he drifted away towards the parched, dung-coloured earth five thousand feet below, the light breeze carrying his parachute away towards the south.

Shasa throttled his Hurricane back until he was losing height at the same rate as the descending parachute, and he circled David slowly, keeping two or three hundred yards separation from his dangling body, craning his head over the side of his open cockpit, trying to estimate where David would land, and then glancing anxiously at the fuel gauge

on his instrument panel. The needle hovered just above the

red line.

David's burning Hurricane smashed into the dusty plain below the soaring Ambas and exploded in a quick dragon's breath of smoke, and Shasa surveyed the ground.

Directly below were ridges of iron grey Which peaked into cones of darker rock. Between the ridges were stony hollows, rough as a crocodile's skin, and then, just beyond the last ridge, a softer smoother valley; as they descended he made out the regular furrows of primitive cultivation on the gentle slopes of the valley. David would come down on or very close to the final ridge. Shasa's eyes narrowed. Human habitation! There was a tiny group of thatched huts at the end of the valley, and for a moment his spirits rose. Then he remembered the photographs, those mutilated and desecrated lumps of human flesh, and his jaw clenched as he looked across at David, swaying and swinging on the parachute shrouds.

He banked the Hurricane away, turning and dropping down towards the valley, and he levelled out at fifty feet above the ground, and flew back between the rock ridges up the shallow valley. He roared over the rude fields of cultivation, scraggly stalks of sorghum standing in ragged lines, stunted and browned by drought, and then ahead of him he saw human figures.

A group of men were running down the valley from the village, twenty or more figures in long dirty grey robes that flapped around their bare black legs as they ran. Their hair was teased up into fuzzy dark bushes, and all of them were armed, some with modern carbines probably looted from the battlefield, others with the long muzzle-loading jezails.

As the Hurricane roared low over their heads, three or four of them stopped running and threw their rifles to their shoulders, pointing them up at Shasa. He saw the flash of black powder smoke as they fired, but he did not feel the bullets hit his aircraft.

Shasa needed no further evidence of their hostile intentions. The armed men were streaming along the bottom of the ridge, waving their rifles, racing to intercept the tiny figure on the floating parachute.

Shasa dropped down again, lined up the running group and at five hundred yards, opened up with the eight Brownings.

Sheets of tracer and dust flew up around the group of robed figures in a raging storm, an saw four or five of them picked up and flung down again by the hail of machine-gun fire.

Then he was forced to climb out to miss the hills at the head of the valley, and as he came around once more he saw that the shufta had regrouped and were once again running to intercept David who was at less than a thousand feet now. It was clear that he would fall on the slope of the ridge.

Shasa dropped in for a second attack, but this time the shufta scattered before the approaching Hurricane and from the cover of the rocks they turned a furious fusillade on Shasa as he roared over their heads. His own machine-gun fire threw up clouds of dust and rock fragments, but did little execution.

He climbed up and levelled out, swivelling his head to watch David land. The parachute drifted over the ridge, missing it by only a few feet, then it hit the down-draught of the back slope and dropped sharply.

He saw David land heavily and tumble head over heels, bumping across the rocky slope until the parachute jerked him to his feet again. He struggled with the tangled shrouds and the billowing folds of silk, sawing and tipping it, spilling air from it until the parachute collapsed in a silvery heap and David threw off the harness.

He stood and stared down the slope towards the band of running howling shufta and Shasa saw him unbuckle the flap of his holster and draw his service pistol, then shade his eyes and look up at the circling Hurricane.

Shasa dropped down almost to his level, and as he passed he pointed urgently down the slope. David stared up at him without comprehension. He looked very small and abandoned on the desert hillside, and Shasa was close enough to see the resignation on his face as he waved farewell to Shasa and turned to face the savage band coming up to take him.

Shasa fired another burst at the shufta as he roared towards them, and again they scattered for cover. They were still half a mile from David; he had delayed them for precious seconds. He put the Hurricane into a maximum-rate turn, his wingtip brushing the thorn scrub of the ridge as he came around, and the instant he levelled out he let down his undercarriage. With landing-wheels hanging he roared back over the spot where David stood and repeated his urgent signal, pointing down into the valley.

He saw understanding lighten David's face. He turned and ran down the slope with long bounding strides, so that he seemed to float above the dark rocks, skimming them lightly.

Shasa turned at the bottom end of the valley and lined up on the roughly ploughed strip of land at the foot of the slope.

He saw that David was already halfway down and that the shufta were trying to head him off, but then he needed all his wits for the touch down.

At the last moment he pulled on full flap and held the Hurricane off, letting her float in, bleeding off speed, back, back, back with the stick. Two feet off the ploughed earth she stalled and dropped in with a crash, bounced and hit again, and bounced, caught a wheel in the rough and her tail went up. She almost nosed in, then checked and ran out, kicking and jolting, throwing Shasa cruelly against his shoulder-straps.

He was down. He had given himself even odds on getting her down without breaking her, but here he was down and David had almost reached the bottom of the ridge.

David wasn't going to make it, he realized almost immediately. Four of the strongest runners amongst the shufta had pulled ahead, and they were going to cut David off before he reached the ploughed land. The other shufta had stopped and were shooting at long range. Shasa saw bullets kick up little dust feathers along the slope, some of them fell frighteningly close to David's racing form.

Shasa turned the Hurricane, standing on one rudder to force her wheels over the rough furrows. When her nose was pointed directly at the four leading shufta, he gave the Hurricane a burst of full throttle and her tail lifted. For a moment she was level and her Brownings could bear. He fired a full burst, and a tornado of shot swept across the field, scything down the dry sorghum stalks and catching the group of running men, blowing two of them into sodden bundles of red rags, spinning a third in a giddy little danse macabre veiled by a curtain of flying dust. The remaining bandit threw himself flat to the earth, and the Hurricane's tail dropped back onto the tail wheel. The machine-guns could no longer bear.

David was only a few hundred yards away now, coming on fast, his long legs flying and Shasa swung the Hurricane to point back down the valley. The down slope would add speed to their take-off run.

Shasa leaned out of the cockpit.

Come on, Davie, he yelled. Gold medal this time, boyo!

Something hit the cowling just in front of the canopy with a metallic twang and then went screaming off in ricochet, leaving a silver smear through the paintwork. Shasa looked back. The shufta were into the edge of the field, running forward, then stopping to kneel and fire. Another bullet cracked past his head, forcing him to flinch and duck.

Come on, Davie! He could hear David's panting breath above the idling beat of the Rolls-Royce engine, and a bullet slapped into the wing, punching a neat round hole through the fabric.

Come on, Davie. Sweat had stained David's tunic and greased his flushed face. He reached the Hurricane and jumped up onto the wing. The aircraft dipped under his weight.

On my lap, Shasa yelled. Get in! David scrambled in on top of him, grunting for breath.

I can't see ahead, Shasa shouted. You take the stick and the throttle, I'll work the rudders. He felt David's hands on the joystick and the throttle lever, and relinquished both of them. The engine beat quickened and the Hurricane began to roll forward.

A touch of left rudder, David called, his voice broken and rough with fatigue, and Shasa pushed on an inch of left rudder.

In a gale of sound and dust the Rolls-Royce engine built up to full power, and they were bumping and bouncing over the field, steering an erratic course as Shasa worked the

rudders blindly, over-correcting to David's instructions.

Shasa could not see ahead. David was crushing him down in the seat and totally obscuring his forward vision. He twisted his head and looked over the edge of the cockpit, watching the ground begin to blur past him as their speed built up, responding quickly to David's calls for left or right rudder. The dry sorghum stalks whipped against the leading edges of the wings; the sound they made was almost as ugly as the snap and flute of bullets passing close. All the remaining shufta were still firing at them, but the range was opening rapidly.

The Hurricane hit a hump in the field and it kicked them into the air. The jolting and thudding ceased abruptly and they were airborne, climbing away.

We made it! Shasa shouted, amazed at their achievement, and as the words left his lips something hit him in the face.

The bullet was a piece of hammered-iron pot-leg, as long and thick as a man's thumb. It had been fired from a 1779

Tower musket by a handful of black powder. It struck the metal frame of the canopy beside Shasa's head, and the pot leg mushroomed and tumbled as it ricocheted. Spinning, it smashed into the side of Shasa's face, its velocity sharply reduced by the impact on the frame. Striking side-on, it did not penetrate to the brain.

Shasa did not even lose consciousness. It felt as though he had been hit in the outer corner of his left eye with a full swing of a hammer. His head was knocked across so that it struck the opposite side of the canopy.

He felt the supra-orbital margin of the frontal bone of his skull shatter, and hot blood drenched his eye and tatters of his own skin and flesh hung down over his face like a curtain.

David! he screamed. I'm hit! I can't see! David twisted around and looked back at Shasa's face and he cried out in horror. Blood was spurting and dribbling and splashing, blown by the slipstream into pink veils that spattered into David's face.

I can't see, Shasa kept repeating. His face was raw meat running red. I can't see, oh God Davie, I can't see. David pulled the silk scarf from around his own neck and pushed it into one of Shasa's groping hands.

Try and stop the bleeding, he shouted above the roar of the engine, and Shasa bundled the scarf and pressed it into the hideously ragged wound, while David gave all his attention to getting them home, keeping low, skimming the wild brown hills.

It took them fifteen minutes back to the airstrip at Yirga Alem and they came in at treetop level. David slammed the Hurricane onto the dusty strip and taxied tail up to the waiting field ambulance that he had called for from the air.

They lifted Shasa out of the blood-spattered cockpit. Then David and a medical orderly half-carried, half-led him, stumbling like a blind man to the ambulance. Within fifteen minutes Shasa was anaesthetized and laid out on the operating table in the hospital tent and an air-force doctor was working over him.

When he came round from the anaesthetic, all was dark.

He lifted his hand and touched his face. it was swathed in bandages, and panic rose in him.

David" he tried to scream, but it came out in a drunken slur from the chloroform.

All right, Shasa, I'm here. The voice was close by and he groped for him.

Davie! Davie! It's all right, Shasa, it's all going to be just fine. Shasa found his hand and clung to it. I can't see. I'm blind., The bandages, that's all, David assured him. The doctor is delighted with you. You're not lying to me, David? Shasa pleaded. 'Tell me I'm not blind. You are not blind, David whispered, but mercifully Shasa could not see his face as he said it. Shasa's desperate grip relaxed slowly, and after a minute the pain-killers took effect and he drifted back into unconsciousness.

David sat beside his cot all that night; even in darkness the tent was hot as an oven. He wiped the glistening sweat from Shasas neck and chest, and held his hand when he whimpered in his sleep and muttered, Mater? Are you there, Mater? After midnight the doctor ordered David to leave him and get some rest, but David refused.

I have to be here when he wakes, I have to be the one to tell him. I owe him that much at least. outside the tent the jackals yipped at the dawn, and when the first glow struck through the canvas, Shasa woke again, and asked immediately, David? I'm here, Shasa. 'It hurts like hell, Davie, but you told me it's going to be all right.

I remember that, you did tell me, didn't you? Yes, that's what I said. We'll be flying together soon, won't we, Davie boy? The old team, Courtney and Abrahams back in business? He waited for the reply, but when it did not come Shasa's tone changed. I'm not blind, am I? We will be flying again? You are not blind, David said softly. But you won't be flying again. You're going home, Shasa. Tell me! Shasa ordered. Don't try and spare me, that will only make it worse. All right, I'll tell you straight. The bullet burst your left eyeball. The doctor had to remove it. Shasa lifted his hand and touched the left side of his face disbelievingly.

You will still have full vision in the right eye, but you won't be flying Hurricanes again. I'm sorry, Shasa. Yes, Shasa whispered. 'So am I. David came to visit him again that evening. The CO has put you up for the DFC. You'll get it, for sure. That's charming of him, Shasa said. Bloody charming. And they were silent for a while, then David spoke again.

You saved my life, Shasa. Oh shut up, Davie, don't be a bore., 'They are flying you down to the coast tomorrow morning in the transport Dakota. You'll be in Cape Town for Christmas. Give Matty and the baby a kiss for me, you lucky sod., I'd change places any day, Shasa told him. But we'll give you one hell of a party when you come home. Is there anything I can do for you, anything you need? David asked as he stood up.

As a matter of fact, there is. Do you think you could get your hands on a bottle of whisky for me, Davie? The commander of the submarine straightened up from the eye-piece of the telescope and nodded to Manfred De La Rey.

Look, please! he said, and Manfred took his place at the telescope, pressing his forehead against the rubber pad and staring into the lens.

They were lying two miles offshore and on the surface it was late evening. The sun was setting behind the land.

Do you recognize the landmarks? the U-boat commander asked in German and Manfred did not answer immediately, for he found it difficult to speak. His emotions were too strong, five years, five long years since he had set eyes on this beloved coast, and his joy was abundant. He knew that he could never be truly happy anywhere but in his Africa.

However, the intervening years had not been unhappy.

There had always been Heidi, and in this last year his son, Lothar, named after his own father. The two of them had formed the pivot of his existence. And there had also been his work, two tasks running side by side, each of them demanding and utterly fulfilling.

His law studies had cuhninated in a Master's degree in Roman Dutch Law and International Law at the University of Berlin.

There had also been his military preparations. Sometimes these had kept him from his new family for months at a time, but now he was a highly trained and dedicated operative of the German Abwehi. He had acquired unusual and diverse skills. He had become a radio operator, and an expert in explosives and small arms; he had made ten parachute jumps, five of these in darkness, and he could pilot a light aircraft; he was versed in cipher and coding, he was a deadly marksman with rifle or sidearms, an exponent of unarmed combat, a trained assassin, both body and mind honed to a razor's edge of preparedness. He had learned the art of persuasive public speaking and rhetoric, and had studied the political and military structures of South Africa until he knew all the vulnerable areas and how to exploit them. He was now ready in every way that he and his masters could foresee for the task that lay ahead of him. Not one man in a million, he knew, would ever have an opportunity such as he was being given, the opportunity to mould history and to turn the detestable order of the world upon its head. Greatness had been thrust upon him, and he knew himself equal to that challenge.

Yes, he replied in German to the U-boat commander, I recognize the landmarks. He had spent one happy, carefree summer holiday on this sparsely populated stretch of the southeastern coast of Africa. Here Roelf Stander's family owned five thousand hectares, and five miles of this fore-shore.

Manfred and Roelf had fished from that rocky headland, pulling the big silver kabeljou from the creaming green surf that broke over the black boulders. They had climbed that low range of hills to hunt the speckled bushbuck amongst the flowering ericas and magnificent blooms of the wild protea shrubs. In that quiet cove with its rind of smooth yellow sand they had swum naked, and afterwards lain on the beach to discuss the future and fantasize about their

own particular roles in it. There below the hills, gleaming in the last rays of the sun, stood the whitewashed walls of the small holiday cottage in which they had lived.

Yes,he repeated. This is the rendezvous. "We will wait for the agreed time, the U-boat commander said, and gave the order to lower the periscope.

Still two miles offshore, the submarine lay twenty metres below the surface, suspended in the dark waters with its engines stopped, while above it the sun sank below the horizon and night fell over the African mainland. Manfred went down the narrow passageway to the tiny cubicle he shared with two of the U-boat's junior officers and began his final preparations for landing.

In the weeks since they had left Bremerhaven, he had come to hate this sinister craft. He hated the cramped quarters and the close intimate proximity of other men, he hated the motion an the ceaseless vibration of the engines. He had never become accustomed to the knowledge that he was locked in an iron box deep under the cold oceanic waters, and he hated the stink of diesel and oil and the reek of the other men trapped down here with him. He longed with all his soul for the clean night air in his lungs and the hot African sun on his face.

Quickly he stripped off the white rollneck jersey and the navy blue peajacket and dressed instead in the worn and shapeless clothing of a country Afrikaner, a bywoner or poor white squatter. He was still darkly tanned from his training in the mountains and he had allowed his hair to grow out over his collar and his beard to become thick and curly, adding many years to his age. He looked at himself now in the small mirror on the bulkhead above his bunk.

They will never recognize me, he said aloud. Not even own family. He had dyed his hair and beard black, the same colour as his eyebrows, and his nose was thickened and twisted. It had never set properly after the American Cyrus Lomax had broken it in the Olympic final, and one eyebrow was lumpy and scarred. He looked entirely different from the young, clean-cut, blond athlete who had sailed from Africa five years before. He pulled the stained felt hat low over his eyes and nodded at his image with satisfaction, then turned from the mirror and went down on his knees to reach the equipment that had been stowed beneath his bunk.

It was packed in rubber waterproofed containers and sealed with tape. He checked off each numbered package on his list, and a German seaman carried them away and stacked them at the foot of the ladder in the submarine's conning tower.

Manfred checked his watch. There was just time for a quick meal and then he would be ready. The bosun called him from the galley, and with a mouth still full of bread and sausage, Manfred hurried to the U-boat's control room.

There are lights ashore. The captain stood up from the periscope and gestured Manfred to take his place.

It was fully dark on the surface and through the lens Manfred picked out immediately the three beacon fires, one on each horn of the headlands and one on the sheltered beach.

That is the correct recognition signal, Captain. He straightened up and nodded. We should surface now and make the reply. To the thunder and crackle of compressed air purging the diving tanks, the U-boat rose up like Leviathan through the dark depths and burst out through the surface.

While the submarine still wallowed in her own froth, the captain and Manfred climbed the ladder and went out onto the bridge. The night air was cool and sweet, and Manfred drew deep breaths of it as he peered through his binoculars at the black loom of the shore.

The captain gave a quiet order to the signals yeoman, and he worked the handle of the Addis lamp, clattering out quick beams of yellow light across the dark silver-flecked ocean, spelling out the Morse letters W S', the abbreviation of White Sword'. After a short pause one of the beacon fires on the headland was snuffed out, and a few minutes later the second fire was extinguished, leaving only the one on the beach still burning.

That is the correct response, Manfred grunted. Please have my equipment brought on deck, Captain. They waited almost half an hour until out of the darkness close at hand a voice hailed them.

White Sword? Come alongside, Manfred called back in Afrikaans, and a small open fishing-boat crept towards them on its long oars.

Quickly Manfred shook hands with the U-boat captain and gave him the Nazi salute, Heil Hitler! Then he scrambled down onto the lower deck. The moment the wooden hull of the fishing-boat touched, Manfred leapt lightly across and balanced easily on the central thwart.

The rower in the forward seat rose to greet him.

Manie, is that you? Roelf! Manfred embraced him briefly. 'It's so good to see you! Let's get my equipment aboard. The rubber canisters were swung across by the U-boat's deck crew and stowed in the bottom of the fishing-boat, and at once they pushed off. Manfred took the oar beside Roelf and they gave way swiftly, then rested on their oars to watch the black submarine shark below the surface and disappear in a rash of white water.

Once again they began pulling towards the shore, and Manfred asked softly, Who are the others? He indicated the three other oarsmen with his chin.

All our people, local farmers from the district. I've known them since I was a child. They are completely trustworthy., They did not speak again until they had run the boat in through the low surf to the beach, dragged it up the sand and hidden it amongst the salt bush.

I will fetch the truck, Roelf muttered, and a few minutes later the yellow headlights came down the rough track to the beach. Roelf parked the battered green four-tormer beside the fishing-boat.

The three farmers helped them transfer Manfred's equipment to the back of the truck and cover the canisters with bales of dried lucerne and a tattered old tarpaulin. Then they climbed up on top of the load while Manfred took the passenger seat in the cab.

Tell me all the news of my family, first, Manfred burst out. We have plenty of time for business later. Uncle Tromp is just the same, What a sermon that man can preach! Sarie and I go every Sunday How is Sarah? Manfred demanded. And the baby? You are out of date, Roelf laughed. Three babies now.

Two boys and a little girl of three months. You'll meet them all soon. One at a time they dropped the other men off along the winding dirt road with a word of thanks and a quick handshake, until at last they were alone. A few miles further on they reached the main coastal road near the village of Riversdale, and turned westwards towards Cape Town two hundred miles away, and ran on through the night, stopping only to refuel the truck at the little town of Swellendarn and to spell each other at the wheel of the truck.

Four hours later they crossed the mountains and went down the steep narrow pass to the wide littoral. They stopped again a few miles outside Stellenbosch, at one of the cooperative winery companies. Although it was three o'clock in the morning, the manager was waiting for them and he helped them unload the rubber canisters and carry them down into the cellar.

This is Sakkie Van Vuuren, Roelf introduced the manager. He is a good friend, and he has prepared a safe place for your equipment. He led them to the rear of the cellar, to the last row of wooden casks. These were massive oak containers each holding a thousand gallons of immature red wine, but the manager thumped the palm of his hand against one of them and when it gave out a hollow sound, he smiled.

I did the work myself, he said and opened the front of the cask. It was hinged like a door and the cask beyond was empty. Nobody will ever find the goods here., They packed the rubber canisters into the cask and closed the hinged lid. It was indistinguishable from any other of the massive wine-filled casks in the row.

We will be ready to move when the time is ripe, the winemaker told Manfred. When will it be? Soon, my friend, Manfred promised him. Very soon, and he and Roelf drove on into the village of Stellenbosch.

It's good to be home. You will only stay here tonight, Manie, Roelf told him.

Even with your new black beard and broken nose, you are too well-known. You will be recognized. He parked the truck in the yard of a secondhand car dealer down near the railway tracks and left the key under the floor mat. Then the two of them walked the last mile, through the deserted streets to Roelf's home, a cottage in a row of small thatched cottages. Roelf let them in through the back door into the kitchen, and a familiar figure rose up from his seat at the kitchen table to greet them.

Uncle Tromp! Manfred cried. The old man held open his arms, and Manfred ran into his embrace.

What a terrible ruffian you are with that beard, Uncle Tromp laughed. And I see the American did a permanent job on your nose. Manfred looked over Uncle Tromp's shoulder and there was a woman standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

That was what misled him, a woman, not a girl. Her face was marked by a kind of sad wisdom, and her expression was pinched and without joy.

Sarah? Manfred left Uncle Tromp and went towards her.

How are you, my little sister? I was never your little sister, Manfred, she said. But I am very well, thank you. She made no effort to embrace him and Manfred was clearly disturbed by the coolness of her welcome.

Are you happy, Sarah? I have a fine man and three beautiful babies, she said, and looked at Roeff.

You will be hungry now, she told him. Sit down. You can talk while I make your breakfast. The three men seated themselves at the kitchen table and every once in a while Manfred glanced surreptitiously at Sarah as she worked over the stove, and his expression was troubled, ridden by old memories and guilt. Then he gathered himself and concentrated once more on what the others were saying.

The news is all good, the British smashed and broken at Dunkirk, France has fallen and the Netherlands. The German U-boats are winning the battle of the Atlantic and even the Italians are victorious in North Africa- I did not know you were one of us, Uncle Tromp, Manfred cut in on the discussion.

Yes, my son. I am a patriot as you are. The Ossewa Brandwag is forty thousand strong now. Forty thousand picked men in positions of power and authority, while Jannie Smuts has sent one hundred and sixty thousand of the English-lovers with their little orange tabs on their shoulders out of the country. He has put himself at our mercy. Our leaders know of your arrival, Manie, Roelf told him.

They know that you bring a message from the Fahrer himself, and they are eager to meet you. Will you arrange a meeting, Manfred asked, as soon as possible? There is much work to do. Glorious work to do. Sarah Stander stood quietly at the kitchen stove, breaking eggs into the frying pan, turning the chops under the grill.

She did not look round or draw attention to herself, but she thought: You have come to bring sadness and suffering into my life again, Manfred De La Rey. With your every word and look and gesture you open the wounds I thought had healed.

You have come to destroy what little life has left me. Roelf will follow you blindly into folly. You come to threaten my husband and my babies, And her hatred of him was made stronger and more venomous as it fed on the corpse of the love that he had murdered.

Manfred travelled alone. There was no control of personal movement, there were no roadblocks, police searches or demands for identification papers. South Africa was so far from the main war centres that there were not even significant shortages of consumer goods, apart from petrol rationing and a ban on the milling of white flour, therefore no need for ration books or other documentation existed.

Carrying a small valise, Manfred merely purchased a second-class railway ticket for Bloemfontein, the capital town of the Orange Free State province, and he shared a compartment with five other travellers on the five hundred mile journey.

Ironically, the meeting to subvert the elected government of the nation took place in the provincial government building at the foot of Artillery Hill. When Manfred entered the imposing administrator's office, he was reminded how wide was the influence of their secret organization.

The commander of the OB came to meet him at the door.

He had changed little since he had administered the bloodoath to Manfred in that midnight torchlit ceremony. Still paunchy and craggy-featured, he was now dressed in a sombre double-breasted civilian suit. He greeted Manfred warmly, clasping his hand and patting his shoulder, smiling broadly.

I have been expecting you, brother, but first let me congratulate you on your achievements since last we met, and the magnificent work you have accomplished so far., He led Manfred into the room and introduced him to the five other men seated at the long table.

All of us have taken the blood oath. You may speak freely, he told Manfred who knew now that he was addressing the highest council of the brotherhood.

He sat at the bottom of the table facing the commander and gathered his thoughts for a moment before beginning.

Gentlemen, I bring you personal greetings from the Fithrer of the German people, Adolf Hitler. He has asked me to assure you of the close friendship that has always existed between the Afrikaner and the German nation, and to tell you that he is ready to support us in every possible way in our struggle to win back what is rightfully ours, to regain for the Afrikaner the land that belongs to him by right of birth and conquest. Manfred spoke forcefully and logically.

He had prepared this address with the help of the experts of the German propaganda department and had rehearsed it until his delivery was perfect; he could judge his success by the rapt expressions of the men listening to him.

The Fuhrer is fully aware that this country has been stripped of almost all men of military age who have sympathy with the Smuts government and the British. Almost one hundred and sixty thousand men have been sent north to serve beyond our borders. This makes the task easier. Smuts has called in all weapons in private hands, one of the men interrupted him. He has taken the sporting rifles and shotguns, even the memorial cannons from the town squares. There will be no rising without weapons. You have seen to the centre of the problem, Manfred agreed. To succeed we need money and weapons. We will get those. The Germans will send them to us? No. Manfred shook his head. This has been considered and rejected. The distance is too great, the difficulty of landing great quantities of arms on an inhospitable coast is not acceptable and the ports are well guarded. However, immediately we have control of the ports, supplies of heavy arms will be rushed to us by U-boats of the German navy, and in return we will throw open our harbours to the German Uboats. We will deny the Cape route to the British. Then where will we get the arms we need for the rising? From Jannie Smuts, Manfred told them, and they stirred uncomfortably and glanced at one another doubtfully.

With your approval, naturally, I will recruit and train a small elite striking force of our stormjagters. We will raid the government arms and ammunition dumps and seize what we need, the same with money.

We will take it from the banks. The enormity of the concept, the boldness and sweep of it, amazed them. They stared in silence and Manfred went on.

We will act swiftly and ruthlessly, seize the arms and distribute them. Then at a given signal we will rise, forty thousand patriots, to seize all the reins of power, the police and the army, the communications system, the railways, the harbours. In all of these we have our people already in place.

All of it will be done at the prearranged signal., What will that signal be? asked the commander of the O B.

It will be something that will turn the entire country on its head, something staggering but it is too early to speak of it. It is necessary only to say that the signal has been chosen and the man who will give the signal., Manfred looked at him steadily, seriously. I will have that honour. I have trained for the task, and I will do it alone and unaided.

After that it will only remain for you to take up the reins, to swing our support to the side of the victorious German army, and to lead our people to the greatness that has been denied them by our enemies. He was silent then as he studied their expressions, and he saw the patriotic fervour on their faces and the new light in their eyes.

Gentlemen, do I have your approval to proceed? he asked, and the commander looked at each of them in turn, and received a curt nod of the head.

He turned back to Manfred. You have our approval and our blessing. I will see that you have the support and assistance of every single member of the brotherhood. Thank you, gentlemen, Manfred said quietly. And now if I may give you the words of Adolf Hitler himself from the great book Mein Kampf, "Almighty God, bless our arms when the time is ripe. Be just as Thou has always been.

judge now whether we be deserving of freedom. Lord, bless our battle."

Amen! they cried, leaping to their feet and giving the O B salute of clenched fist across the chest. Amen! The green Jaguar was parked in the open, beside the road where it skirted the top of the cliff. The vehicle looked abandoned, as though it had stood here for days and weeks.

Blaine Malcomess parked his Bentley behind it and walked to the cliff's edge. He had never been here before, but Centaine had described the cove to him and how to find the pathway. He leaned out now and looked down the cliff. It was very steep but not sheer; he could make out the path zigzagging down three hundred feet to Smitswinkel Bay, and at the bottom he saw the roofs of three or four rude huts strung out along the curve of the bay, just as Centaine had described.

He shrugged out of his jacket and threw it onto the front seat of the Bentley. The climb down the pathway would be warm work. He locked the door of the car and set off down the cliff path. He had come, not only because Centaine had pleaded with him to do so, but because of his own affection and pride and sense of responsibility towards Shasa Courtney.

At various times in the past he had anticipated that Shasa would be either his stepson or his son-in-law. As he climbed down the pathway he felt again the deep regret, no, more than regret, the deep sorrow, that neither expectation had been fulfilled thus far.

He and Centaine had not married, and Isabella had been dead for almost three years now. He remembered how Centaine had fled from him on the night Isabella died, and how

for many months afterwards she had avoided him, frustrating all his efforts to find her. Something terrible had happened that night at Isabella's deathbed. Even after they had been reconciled, Centaine would never talk about it, never even hint at what had taken place between her and the dying woman. He hated himself for having put Centaine in Isabella's power. He should never have trusted her, for the damage she had done had never healed. It had taken almost a year of patience and gentleness from Blaine before Centaine had recovered from it sufficiently to take up again the role of lover and protectress which she had so revelled in before.

However, she would not even discuss with him the subject of marriage, and became agitated and overwrought when he tried to insist. It was almost as if Isabella were still alive, as if she could from her long-cold grave assert some malevolent power over them. There was nothing in life he wanted more than to have Centaine Courtney as his lawful wife, his wife in the eyes of God and all the world, but he was coming to doubt it would ever be so.

Please Blaine, don't ask me now. I cannot, I just cannot talk about it. No, I can't tell you why. We have been so happy just the way we are for so many years. I can't take the chance of mining that happiness. I am asking you to be my wife. I'm asking you to confirm and cement our love, not to ruin it. Please, Blaine. Leave it now. Not now. When, Centaine, tell me when? I don't know. I honestly don't know, my darling. I only know I love you so. Then there were Shasa and Tara. They were like two lost souls groping for each other in darkness. He knew how desperately they needed each other, he had recognized it from the very beginning, and how close they had come to linking hands. But always they failed to make that last vital contact, and drifted, pining, apart. There seemed to be no reason for it, other than pride and pigheadedness, and without each other they were diminishing, neither of them able to fulfill their great promise, to take full advantage of all the rare blessings that had been bestowed upon them at birth.

TWo beautiful, talented young people, full of strength and energy, frittering it all away in a search for something that never existed, wasting it on impossible dreams or burning it up in despair and despondency.

I cannot let it happen, he told himself with determination. 'Even if they hate me for it, I have to prevent it. He reached the foot of the path and paused to look around.

He did not need to rest, for although the descent had been arduous and although he was almost fifty years old, he was harder and fitter than most men fifteen years younger.

Smitswinkel Bay was enclosed by a crescent of tall cliffs; only its far end was open to the wider expanse of False Bay.

Protected on all sides, the water was lake-calm and so clear he could follow the stems of the kelp plants down thirty feet to where they were anchored on the bottom. It was a delightful hidden place and he took a few moments longer to appreciate its tranquil beauty.

There were four shacks built mostly of driftwood, each of them widely separated from the others, perched upon the rocks above the narrow beach. Three were deserted, their windows boarded up. The last one in the line was the one he wanted, and he set off along the beach towards it.

As he drew closer he saw the windows were open, but the curtains, faded and rotted by salt air, were drawn. There were crayfish nets hanging over the railing of the stoep and a pair of oars and a cane fishing-rod propped against one wall. A dinghy was drawn up on the beach above the highwater mark.

Blaine climbed the short flight of stone steps and crossed the stoep to the front door. It was open and he stepped into the single room.

The small Devon stove on the far wall was cold, and a frying pan stood on it, greasy with congealed leftovers. Dirty plates and mugs cluttered the central table, and a column of black ants was climbing one leg to reach them. The wooden floor of the shack was unswept, gritty with beach sand. There were two bunks set against the side wall, opposite the window. The bare boards of the upper bunk were without a mattress, but in the lower bunk was a jumble

along

of grey blankets and a hard coir mattress with a stained and torn cover. On top of it all lay Shasa Courtney.

It was a few minutes before noon and he was still asleep.

An almost empty bottle of whisky and a tumbler stood on the sandy floor within reach of Shasa's dangling arm. He wore only a pair of old rugby shorts and his body was burned to the colour of oiled mahogany, a dark beachcomber's tan; the hair on his arms was sun bleached to gold, but on his chest it remained dark and curly. It was obvious that he had not shaved in many days and his hair was long and unkempt on the dirty pillow. Yet the deep tan covered all the more obvious signs of debauchery.

He slept quietly, no sign on his face of the turmoil which must have driven him from Weltevreden to this squalid shack. He was still in all respects but one a magnificentlooking young man, that was why the left eye was even more shocking. The top ridge of the eye-socket was depressed on the outside corner where the bone had shattered; the scar through his dark eyebrow was shiny white and ridged. The empty eye-socket was sunken, and the eyelids drooped apart, exposing wet red tissue in the gap between his thick dark lashes.

It was impossible to look on the hideous injury without feeling pity, and it took Blaine a few seconds to steel himself to what he had to do.

Shasa! He made his voice harsh. Shasa groaned softly and the lid of his empty eye twitched.

Wake up, man. Blaine went to the bunk and shook his shoulder. 'Wake up. We've got some talking to do. Go away, Shasa mumbled, not yet awake. Go away and leave me alone. Wake up, damn you! Shasa's good eye flickered open and he peered up at Blaine blearily. His eye focused and his expression altered.

What the hell are you doing here? He rolled his head away, hiding the bad eye as he groped amongst the tangled bedclothes until he found a scrap of black cloth on a black elastic band. With his face still averted, he fitted the patch over the damaged eye and looped the band over his head k before he turned back to look at Blaine again. The eye-patch gave him a piratical panache, and in some perverse way highlighted his good looks.

Got to pump ship, he blurted and tottered out onto the stoep.

While he was away Blaine dusted one of the stools and set it against the wall. He sat down on it, leaned back, and lit one of his long black cheroots.

Shasa came back into the shack, pulling up the front of his rugby shorts, and sat down on the edge of the bunk, holding his head with both hands. My mouth tastes like a polecat pissed in it, he muttered, and he reached down for the bottle between his feet and poured what remained of the whisky into the glass, licked the last drop from the neck and trundled the empty bottle across the floor in the general direction of the overflowing garbage bucket beside the stove.

He picked up the glass. Offer you one? he asked, and Blaine shook his head. Shasa looked at him over the rim.

That look on your face can mean only one of two things, Shasa told him. Either you have just smelled a fart or you don't approve of me. I take it the coarse language is a recent accomplishment, like your new drinking habits. I congratulate you on both.

They suit your new image. Bugger you, Blaine Malcomess! Shasa retorted defiantly, and raised the glass to his lips. He swished the whisky through his teeth, rinsing his mouth with it. Then he swallowed and shuddered as the raw spirit went down his throat and he exhaled the fumes noisily.

Mater sent you, he said flatly.

She told me where I could find you, but she didn't send me. 'Same thing Shasa said, and held the glass to his lips, letting the last drop run onto his tongue. She wants me back, digging diamonds out of the dirt, picking grapes, growing cotton, pushing paper damn it, she just doesn't understand., She understands much more than you give her credit for. Out there men are fighting. David and my other mates.

They are in the sky, and I am down here in the dirt, a cripple, grovelling in the dirt. You chose the dirt. Blaine looked around the filthy shack scornfully. And you are doing the whining and grovelling Get the hell out of here, sir! Shasa told him.

You'd better Before I lose my temper. A pleasure, I assure you. Blaine stood up. I misjudged you. I came to offer you a job, an important war job, but I can see that you are not man enough for it. He crossed to the door of the cottage and paused. I was going to issue an invitation as well, an invitation to a party on Friday night.

Tara is going to announce her engagement to marry Hubert Langley. I thought it might amuse you, but forget it. He went out with his long determined stride and after a few seconds Shasa followed him out onto the stoep and watched him climb the cliff path. Blaine never looked back once, and when he disappeared over the top, Shasa felt suddenly abandoned and bereft.

He had not until that moment realized how large Blaine Malcomess bulked in his life. How much he had relied on Blaine's good counsel and experience, both on and off the polo field.

I wanted to be like him so much, he said aloud. And now I never will be. He touched the black patch over his eye.

Why me? He gave the eternal cry of the loser. Why me? And he sank down onto the top step and stared out over the calm green waters to the entrance of the bay.

Slowly the full impact of Blaine's words sank home. He thought about the job he had offered, an important war job then he thought about Tara and Hubert Langley. Tara, he saw her grey eyes and smoking red hair, and self-pity washed over him in a cold dark wave.

Listlessly he stood up and went into the shack. He opened the cupboard above the sink. There was a single bottle of Haig left. 'What happened to the others? he asked himself.

Mice? He cracked the cap on the bottle, and looked for a glass.

They were all dirty, piled in the sink. He lifted the bottle to his lips, and the fumes made his eye smart. He lowered the bottle before he drank and stared at it. His stomach heaved and he was filled with a sudden revulsion, both physical and emotional.

He tipped the bottle over the sink, and watched the golden liquid chug and spurt into the drainhole. When it was gone, once it was too late, his need for it returned strongly and he was seized by dismay. His throat felt parched and sore and the hand that held the empty bottle began to shake. The desire for oblivion ached in every joint of his bones, and his eye burned so that he had to blink it clear.

He hurled the bottle against the wall of the shack and ran out into the sunshine, down the steps to the beach. He stripped off the eye-patch and his rugby shorts and dived into the cold green water and struck out in a hard overarm crawl. By the time he reached the entrance to the cove, every muscle ached and his breathing scorched his lungs.

He turned and without slackening the tempo of his stroke headed back to the beach. As soon as his feet touched bottom he turned again, and swam out to the headland, back and forth he ploughed, hour after hour, until he was so exhausted that he could not tift an arm clear of the surface and he was forced to struggle back the last hundred yards in a painful side-stroke.

He crawled up the beach, fell face down on the wet sand and lay like a dead man. it was the middle of the afternoon before he had recovered the energy to push himself upright and limp up to the shack.

He stood in the doorway and looked around at the mess he had created. Then he took the broom from behind the door and went to work.

It was late afternoon before he had finished. The only thing he could do nothing about was the dirty bed linen. He bundled the soiled blankets with his dirty clothes for the dhobi waRah at Weltevreden to launder. Then he drew a kettle of fresh water from the rainwater tank beside the back door and heated it over the stove.

He shaved carefully, dressed in the cleanest shirt and slacks he could find and adjusted the patch over his eye. He locked the shack and hid the key; then, carrying the bundle of dirty laundry he climbed the pathway to the top. His Jaguar was dusty and streaked with sea salt. The battery was flat and he had to run it down the hill and start it on the fly.

Centaine was in her study, seated at her desk, poring over a pile of documents. She sprang to her feet when he came in and would have rushed to him, but with an obvious effort she restrained herself.

Hello, cheri, you look so well. I was worried about you it's been so long. Five weeks. The patch over his eye still horrified her.

Every time she saw it she remembered Isabella Malcomess last words to her: An eye for an eye, Centaine Courtney. Heed my words an eye for an eye. As soon as she had herself under control again she went calmly to meet him and lifted her face for his kiss.

I'm glad you are home again, cheri. Blaine Malcomess has offered me a job, a war job. I'm thinking of taking it. I am sure it is important, Centaine nodded. I am happy for you. I can hold the fort here until you are ready to return., I am sure you can, Mater, he grinned wryly. After all you have been doing pretty well for the last twenty-two years, holding the fort. The long line of goods trucks drawn by a double coupling of steam locomotives climbed the last slope of the pass. On the steep gradient, the locomotives were sending bright silver columns of steam spurting from their valves, and the Hex river mountains echoed to the roar of their straining boilers.

With a final effort they crested the head of the pass and burst out onto the high plateau of the open karoo; gathering speed dramatically they thundered away across the flatlands and the line of closed trucks snaked after them.

Forty miles beyond the head of the pass the train slowed and then trundled to a halt in the shunting yards of the intermediate railway junction of Touws river.

The relief crews were waiting in the stationmaster's office and they greeted the incoming crews with a little light banter and then climbed aboard to take their places on the footplates. The leading locomotive was uncoupled and shunred onto a side spur. It was no longer needed, the rest of the run, a thousand miles northwards to the goldfields of the Witwatersrand, was across comparatively flat land. The second locomotive would return down the mountain pass to link up with the next goods train and assist it up the steep gradients.

The incoming crews, carrying their lunch pails and overcoats, set off down the lane towards the row of railway cottages, relieved to be home in time for a hot bath and dinner. only one of the drivers lingered on the platform and watched the goods train pull out of the siding, gathering speed swiftly as it headed northwards.

He counted the trucks as they passed him, verifying his previous count. Numbers twelve and thirteen were closed trucks, painted silver to distinguish them and to deflect the heat of the sun's rays. On the side of each was blazoned a crimson cross, and in letters six feet tall that ran the full length of each truck, the warning: EXPLOSiVES. They had each been loaded at the Somerset West factory of African Explosives and Chemical Industries with twenty tons of gelignite consigned to the gold mines of the Anglo American Group.

As the guard's van passed him the driver sauntered into the stationmaster's office. The stationmaster was still at the far end of the platform, his pillbox cap on his head and his furled flags of red and green under his arm. The driver lifted the telephone off its bracket on the wall and spun the handle.

Central, he said into the voice-piece, speaking in Afrikaans, 'give me Matjiesfontein eleven sixteen. He waited while the operator made the connection. You are through. Go ahead. But the driver waited for the click of the operator going off the line before he said, 'Van Niekerk here. This is White Sword. The reply, though he had been expecting it, made the hair on the back of his neck prickle.

She is running twenty-three minutes late. She left here two minutes ago. The trucks are numbers twelve and thirteen. Well done. Manfred De La Rey replaced the telephone and checked his wrist-watch before he smiled at the two women who watched him apprehensively across the farmhouse kitchen.

Thank you, Mevrou, he addressed the older of the two.

We are grateful for your help. No trouble will come to you out of this, I give you my word. Trouble is an old acquaintance, Meneer, the proud old woman replied. In ninety-nine the rooinekke burned my farm and killed my husband. Manfred had parked the motorcycle behind the barn. He started it and rode back down the track a mile or so until he joined the main road. He turned north, and a few miles further on he was riding parallel to the railway line. At the base of a rocky hill the lines and the road diverged. The railway tracks climbed the shoulder of the hill and then disappeared behind it.

Manfred stopped the motorcycle and checked that the road was clear, ahead and behind, then he turned off onto another farmtrack, and followed the railway tracks around the back of the hill. Again he stopped, propped the bike on its foot rest, and checked the locale.

They were far enough from the widow's farmhouse not to attach suspicion to the old woman. The hill hid this section of the tracks from the main road, but the road was close enough to offer a swift escape route in either direction. The gradient would slow the approaching locomotive to almost walking pace. He had watched while other goods trains passed the spot.

He turned the cycle off the road, following the tracks of other wheels that had flattened the grass. In the first fold of the land, hidden in a cluster of thorn trees, the trucks were parked. Four of them, a three-tonner, two four-tonners and a big brown Bedford ten-tonner. Getting fuel rationing coupons to fill their tanks had been difficult.

It was a mere hundred paces to the railway line from where the trucks stood and his men were waiting beside them, resting, lying in the grass, but they scrambled up as the motorcycle bumped and puttered over the fold of ground and they crowded around him eagerly. Roelf Stander was at their head.

She'll be here at nine-thirty, Manfred told him. The trucks are twelve and thirteen. Work that out. One of his band was a railway man, and he made the calculations of distance between the locomotive and the explosive trucks. Roelf and Manfred left the others hidden and went out onto the line to mark out the distances. Manfred wanted to stop the goods train so that the two laden trucks were directly opposite the waiting vehicles in the clump of thorn trees.

They paced it out from this point and Manfred set the charges under the fish plates in a joint of the tracks. Then he and Roelf went back and laid the red warning flares, using 0, the railwayman's calculations of speed and distance as a guide.

It was dark by the time they had finished, so they could proceed to the next step. They moved the men out into their positions. They were all young, picked for their size and physical strength. They were dressed in rough clothing of dark colours and armed with a motley collection of weapons that had survived the call-in by the Smuts government shotguns and old Lee Enfields and Marmlichers from other long-ago wars. Only Roelf and Manfred were armed with modern German Lugers, part of the contents of the rubber canisters from the U-boat.

Manfred took charge of the smaller group while Roelf waited with the work party that would unload the trucks, and they settled down in darkness to wait.

Manfred heard it first, the distant susurration in the night, still far off, and he roused them with three sharp blasts on his whistle. Then he armed the battery box and connected the wires to the brass screw terminals. The huge Cyclops eye of the approaching locomotive glared across the plain below the hill. The waiting men adjusted their face masks and lay hidden in the grassy ditch beside the railway line.

The beat of the locomotive engine slowed and became deeper as it ran onto the slope. It climbed laboriously, running past the first group of waiting men, and then it hit the first of the warning flares. The flare ignited with a sharp crack and lit the veld for fifty yards around with red flickering light.

Manfred heard the metallic squeal of brakes, and he relaxed slightly. The driver was acting reflexively, it would not be necessary to blow out the tracks. The second flare ignited, shooting out long tongues of red flame from under the driving wheels, but by now the locomotive was pulling up sharply, brakes grinding metal on metal and steam flying from the emergency vacuum tubes in screaming white jets.

While it was still moving, Manfred leapt onto the footplates, and thrust the Luger into the astonished faces of the driver and his fireman.

Shut her down! Switch off the headlight! he yelled through his mask. Then get down from the cab! With the brakes locked, the railwaymen scrambled down and lifted their hands high. They were immediately searched and trussed up. Manfred ran back down the train, and by the time he reached the explosives trucks, Roelfs men had already forced the doors and the wooden cases of gelignite were being handed along a human chain to be loaded into the first lorry.

What about the guard at the rear of the train? Manfred asked.

We have got him tied up, Roelf answered, and Manfred ran back to the head of the train. Swiftly he defused and lifted the explosive charges he had laid, delighted that it had not been necessary to fire them. By the time he got back, the first lorry was fully loaded with cases of explosives.

Take her away! Roelf yelled, and one of his men climbed into the cab, started the engine and with lights extinguished, drove it away.

The second vehicle reversed up to the explosives trucks and they began to load it.

Manfred checked his watch. Twelve minutes, he muttered. They were ahead of schedule.

The driver, the guard and the fireman were tied securely and locked in the guard's van while the loading of explosives went on smoothly and swiftly.

All finished, Roelf shouted. We can't load any more. 'Forty-eight minutes, Manfred told him. Well done. All right, move out everybody! Manfred ordered. What about you? I'll look after myself. He watched the Bedford truck pull away and waited until it reached the farm road and switched on its headlights. The sound of its engine dwindled. He was alone. If Roelf or the others had known what he intended to do now, they might have baulked and tried to prevent it.

Manfred climbed into the open door of the explosives truck. it was half filled with the white wooden cases. They had only been able to carry away a part of the load, while the second truck had not been touched. There were still at least twenty-five tons of explosive remaining on board.

He set the timing device with a delay of fifteen minutes and placed it in the gap between the stacked cases and the steel side of the truck, pushing it far back where it could not be readily seen. Then he jumped down to the ground and ran forward to the locomotive. None of the three men locked in the caboose of the guard's van were members of the Ossewa Brandwag. Left alive they would be certain to give damaging evidence to the police. He felt little pity for them. They were casualties of war.

He climbed into the cab of the locomotive and disengaged the wheel brakes; then he opened the throttle gradually.

The wheels spun, then found purchase and the train jolted forward with the couplings clanking. It began to pull away jerkily up the slope.

Manfred eased the throttle open to the halfway notch and locked it there. Then he jumped down to the ground, and watched the trucks rumble past where he stood. They were gaining speed gradually. When the caboose passed, he walked back down the tracks to the clump of thorn trees, and sat astride the seat of the motorcycle.

He waited impatiently, glancing at his watch every few minutes.

The explosion, when at last it came, was a brief orange flare, like sheet lightning over the northern horizon, followed after a long pause by the puff of the shock-wave against his face and a sound like distant surf breaking on a rocky shore.

Manfred kick-started the motorcycle and drove southwards into the night.

It was a good beginning, he thought, but there was so much still to do.

Blaine looked up as Shasa entered his office and hesitated in the doorway. He was neatly dressed in airforce uniform, medal ribbons on his chest, DFC and Africa Star, and the badges of rank on his shoulders.

Morning, Shasa,Blaine nodded bleakly. Ten o'clock. May I offer you a whisky? Shasa winced. I came to apologize for my behaviour the other day, sir. It was inexcusable. Sit down. Blaine pointed at the buttoned leather armchair against the bookcase. We all act like blathering idiots at some time in our lives. The trick is to know when you are doing it. Apology accepted. Shasa sat down and crossed his legs, then uncrossed them.

You mentioned a job, sir? Blaine nodded and stood up. He moved to the window and stood staring down into the gardens. An old woman was feeding the pigeons from a paper bag. He watched her as he made his final decision. Was he letting his concern for Centaine Courtney and her son cloud his sense of duty? What he had in mind was critical to the welfare of the state.

Was Shasa too young and inexperienced for the task? he wondered. But he had gone over this many times already, and he turned back to his desk.

He picked up a plain uninarked black folder. This is highly classified, he said as he weighed the folder in his right hand. A most secret and sensitive report and appreciation. He handed it to Shasa. It is not to leave this office.

Read it here. I have a meeting with Field Marshal Smuts. He Pulled back his sleeve and glanced at his watch. I will be back in an hour. We'll talk again then. He was longer than an hour, and when he returned Shasa was still reading. He looked up at Blaine from the armchair with the open folder in his hands, and his expression was troubled and grave.

What do you make of it? Blaine asked.

Of course, I have heard of the O B, Shasa replied. But I had no idea it was anything like this. It's a secret army, sir, right in our midst. If it were ever to be fully mobilized against us, he shook his head, trying to find the words.

A revolution, a civil war, while most of our own fighting men are up north. They have begun to move, Blaine said softly. Until now they have been procrastinating, in typical Afrikaner style, squabbling amongst themselves, but something has happened recently to give them new purpose, he broke off, thought for a moment, then went on. It goes without saying, Shasa, that nothing we discuss must be repeated to anybody, not even closest family. Of course, sir. Shasa looked aggrieved.

You read about the explosion of a dynamite train on the Touws river line two weeks ago? Yes, sir, a frightful accident. The driver and his crew went up with it. We have new evidence. We don't believe it was an accident. The crew were all in the guard's van, and there are indications that at least one of them was bound hand and foot. We believe that a large quantity of explosives was hijacked from the train, and afterwards the remainder was detonated to cover the theft. Shasa whistled softly.

I believe this was merely a beginning. I believe that a new phase has begun and that it is going to escalate swiftly from now onwards. As I said, something has happened to trigger it, we have to find out what it is and crush it. How can I help, sir? This thing is big, nationwide. I have to keep close contact with the police chiefs of each of the various provinces together with military intelligence. The entire operation must be closely coordinated. I need a personal assistant, a liaison officer. I'm offering you the job. I'm honoured, sir, but I can't see why you have chosen me. There must be dozens of other better qualified,, We know each other well, Shasa, Blaine interrupted him.