Power of the Sword

We have worked together over many years. We make a good team. I trust you. I know you have both brains and guts. I don't need a policeman. I need someone who understands my thinking and who I know will follow my orders implicitly. Suddenly Blaine grinned. Besides which, you need a job. Am I right? You are right, sir. Thank you. 'You are on convalescent leave at the moment, but I will have you seconded from the airforce to the Department of the interior immediately. You will keep your rank and pay as squadron leader, but you will report directly to me from now on. I understand, sir. 'Shasa, have you flown since you lost your eye? He came right out and spoke about the eye without evasion. Nobody, not even Mater, had done that. Shasa's regard for him was reinforced.

No, sir,he said.

Pity. You may be required to move around the country pretty damned quickly. He watched Shasa's face, saw his jaw clench determinedly.

It's only a matter of judging distance accurately, Shasa muttered. Just practice. Blaine felt a glow of gratification.

Try hitting a polo ball again, he suggested off handedly.

Good practice in developing judgement, but let's discuss more serious business now. The police officer in overall charge of the investigation is Chief Inspector Louis Nel, here at the Cape Town Central Station. I'll introduce you. He's a first-rate chap, you'll like him. They talked and planned for another hour before Blaine dismissed him. That's enough for you to get on with. Report back to me here at eight-thirty tomorrow morning. But when Shasa reached the door he stopped him.

By the way, Shasa, Friday night. The invitation is still open. Eight o'clock. Black tie or mess kit. Try and make it, won't you? Sarah Stander lay alone in the brass-framed bed in the darkness. The older children were sleeping in the next room.

The baby in the cot beside her bed snuffled contentedly in her sleep.

The town hall clock struck four o'clock. She had listened to it chime every hour since midnight. She thought she would go through to the other room to make sure the children were covered, little Petrus always kicked off his blankets, but at that moment she heard the kitchen door open stealthily and she went rigid and held her breath to listen.

She heard Roelf come through and begin undressing in the bathroom, the double thump-thump as he dropped his boots, then a little later the bedroom door creaked and the bed tipped under his weight. She pretended to be sleeping. It was the first time he had ever stayed out this late. He had changed so much since Manfred had returned.

She lay unsleeping in the darkness and thought, He is the bringer of trouble. He will destroy us all. I hate you, Manfred De La Rey. Beside her she knew Roelf was not sleeping either. He was restless and strung up. The hours passed slowly, and she forced herself to lie still. Then the baby whimpered and she took her into the bed and gave her one of her breasts.

Sarah's milk had always been strong and good, and the baby drank and burped and dropped back to sleep. She returned her to the cot, and the moment she slipped back under the sheet Roelf reached for her. Neither of them spoke, and she steeled herself to accept him. She hated this. It was never like it had been on those well-remembered occasions with Manfred. However, tonight Roelf was different. He mounted her quickly, almost brutally, and ended swiftly with a hoarse wild cry and he fell off her into a deep sleep. She lay and listened to him snore.

At breakfast she asked him quietly, Where were you last night? instantly he was angry. Hold your mouth, woman, he shouted at her, using the word bek, the mouth of an animal not a human being. You are not my keeper. You are involved in some dangerous foolishness. She ignored the warning. You have three little ones, Roelf. You cannot afford stupidity Enough, woman! he yelled at her. This is man's business.

You keep out of it. Without another word he left for the university, where he was a lecturer in the law faculty. She knew that in ten years he could have the chair, if only he didn't get into trouble before that.

After she had cleaned the house and made the beds, she put the children into the big double pram and pushed them down the sidewalk towards the centre of the village. She stopped once to talk with one of the other university wives, and again to buy sugar suckers for the two big children.

Then, as she was paying for the candy, she noticed the headlines of the newspapers piled on the counter.

I'll take a Burger as well. She crossed the road and sat on a park bench while she read the story of the explosion of a goods train somewhere in the karoo. Then she folded the paper neatly and sat thinking.

Roelf had left after lunch the previous day. The explosion had occurred at a little before ten-thirty p.m. She worked out times and distances, and slowly a cold crippling dismay made her belly cramp. She put the children back in the pram and crossed to the post office. She parked the pram beside the glass telephone booth where she could keep an eye on it.

Central, please give me the main police station in Cape Town. 'Hold the line. Suddenly the enormity of what she was about to do broke m upon her. How could she turn Manfred De La Rey over to the police without betraying her own husband to them at the same time, and yet she knew it was her duty to stop Roelf doing these terrible things that must lead to disaster.

It was her duty to her husband and to her babies.

This is the Cape Town central police station. May I help you? 'Yes, Sarah stuttered, and then No, I'm sorry. It doesn't matter. It isn't important. She hung up, ran out of the booth and wheeled the pram determinedly back towards the cottage. She sat at the kitchen table and wept softly, bewildered and alone and uncertain. Then after a while she wiped her eyes on her apron and made herself a cup of coffee Shasa parked the Jaguar across the road from Blaine Malcomess home, but he did not get out at once. He sat and considered what he was about to attempt.

Probably make an idiot of myself again, he thought, and tilted the rearview mirror so that he could see himself in it.

He ran a comb through his hair and adjusted the eye-patch carefully. Then he climbed out.

Vehicles were parked bumper to bumper down both sides of Newlands Avenue. It was a big party, two or three hundred guests, but then Blaine Malcomess was a big man and his daughter's engagement an important event.

Shasa crossed the road. The front doors were wide open, but still it was difficult to get into the house. Even the lobby was crowded, and the party was in full swing. A coloured band was belting out The Lambeth Walk and Shasa could see into the lounge where the dancers were prancing around merrily. He pushed his way through to the bar. Even Blaine Malcomess couldn't offer whisky, it just wasn't obtainable any longer. Nowadays it was considered patriotic to drink Cape brandy, but Shasa ordered a ginger ale.

My drinking days have come and gone,he thought wryly and, glass in hand, eased his way through the packed rooms, shaking hands with old friends, kissing the cheeks of the women, many of whom he had at one time or another kissed with more purpose.

So good to see you back, Shasa. They tried not to notice the black eye-patch, and after a few seconds he moved on, searching for her.

She was in the dining-room with the coloured chef and two maids, supervising the final touches to the elaborate buffet dinner.

She looked up and saw him and froze. She was wearing a filmy light evening dress the colour of ash of roses, and her hair was down to her shoulders. He had forgotten how her eyes could shine like mother-of-pearl, grey mother-ofpearl.

She made a gesture dismissing the servants, and he went slowly to meet her.

Hello, Tara, I'm back,he said.

Yes, I heard. You've been back five weeks. I thought you might, she stopped and studied his face. I heard you were decorated, she touched the ribbon on his chest. And that you were wounded. She studied his face frankly, not avoiding looking at his left eye. Then she smiled. It makes you look very dashing. it doesn't make me feel dashing. I can sense that, she nodded. You have changed. Do you think so? she shook her head, irritated that she could not find the precise word. Yes, you aren't so, Not so brash, so cock-sure. I want to talk to you, he said. Seriously. All right, she nodded. 'What is it? Not here, he said. Not with all these people. No 'Tomorrow? Tomorrow will be too late. Come with me now.

Shasa, are you mad? This is my party, my engagement party. 'I'll bring the jag around to the tradesmen's entrance, he said. 'You'll need a wrap, it's cold out. He parked the jag close in against the wall. This was where they used to conduct those long lingering farewells.

He switched off the headlights. He knew she would not come, but nevertheless, he waited.

His surprise was genuine, his relief intense when she pulled open the door and slid into the passenger's seat. She had changed into slacks and a rollneck sweater. She wasn't going back to the party.

Drive! she said. Get away from here. They were silent for a while, and he glanced at her every time a street lamp lit the interior.

She was looking straight ahead smiling faintly, and at last she spoke.

You never needed anything or anyone before. That was the one thing I couldn't stand about you. He did not reply.

I think you need me now. I sensed it the very moment I saw you again. You truly need me at last. He was silent, words seemed superfluous. Instead he reached across and took her hand.

I'm ready for you now, Shasa, she said. Take me somewhere we can be alone, entirely alone. There was enough moon to light the pathway. She clung to him for support and they laughed breathlessly with excitement and stopped halfway down the cliff to kiss.

He let them into the shack and lit the paraffin lamp. With relief Shasa saw that the servants from Weltevreden had followed his orders. There was fresh linen on the bunk, and the floor had been polished.

Tara stood in the centre of the floor, her hands clasped protectively in front of her, her eyes huge and luminous in the lamplight, and she began to tremble when he took her in his arms.

Shasa, please be gentle, she whispered. I'm so scared. He was patient and very gentle, but she had no yardstick by which to recognize how immensely skilled and certain he was. She only knew that he seemed to sense each nuance of change in her feelings, anticipating each response of her body so that she felt no shame at her nakedness, and all her other fears and doubts dissolved swiftly under his tender hands and soft loving lips. At last she found herself running ahead of him, learning swiftly to guide and encourage him with subtle little movements and small gasps and cries of approval.

So that at the end she gazed up at him with wonder, and whispered, huskily, I never thought, I never dreamed it would be like that. Oh, Shasa, I'm so glad you came back to me. The Fordsburg branch of the Standard Bank serviced all the gold mines of the Central Rand complex. all the wages of the tens of thousands of weekly paid black mine workers were drawn from this branch and the senior accountant was a member of the O B.

His name was Willem De Kok, a small pasty-faced runt of a man with myopic misty eyes behind thick lenses, but his looks were deceptive. Within a few minutes of their meeting Manfred De La Rey found he had a quick mind, a complete dedication to the cause and almost too much courage for his small body.

The money comes in on Thursday afternoon, between five and six o'clock. They use an armoured car and there is a police escort on motorcycles. That isn't the time to do it.

There would almost certainly be shooting. I understand, Manfred nodded. Before you go on, please tell us how much money is usually transferred. Between fifty thousand and seventy thousand pounds Thursday of each month, when we make except on the last provision for the monthly paid workers on the mine properties. Then it will be closer to a hundred thousand. In addition there is always our ordinary cash float of approximately twenty-five thousand. They were gathered in the home of one of the mine officials of the Crown Deep gold mines. The same man had recruited the local stormiagers for the operation. He was a big red-faced man named Lourens, with the look of a heavy drinker. Manfred was not entirely happy with him; although so far he had found no real cause for his mistrust, he felt the man would be unreliable under stress.

Thank you, Meneer De Kok, please go on. The bank manager, Mr Cartwright, opens the back door of the building and the money is brought in. Of course, at this time in the afternoon the bank is closed to normal business. Mr Cartwright and I, together with our two senior tellers, count the money and issue a receipt. it is then deposited in the vault and locked up for the night. I have one key and half of the combination. Mr Cartwright keeps the other key and has the other half of the combination. That would be the time, Manfred anticipated. After the police escort has left, but before the vault is locked. That is a possibility, De Kok nodded. However, at that time it will still be light. Many people on the streets. Mr Cartwright is a difficult man, many things could go wrong.

May I tell you how I would arrange it, if I were in command? ,Thank you, Meneer De Kok. I'm glad of your assistance. It was ten minutes before midnight when Mr Peter Cartwright left the Freemason hall at the end of the meeting. He was the master of the lodge and he was still wearing his apron over his dinner jacket. He always parked his Morris in the lane behind the hall, but tonight as he sat in the driver's seat and fumbled with the ignition key, something hard was pressed into the back of his neck and a cold voice said quietly, This is a pistol, Mr Cartwright. If you do not do exactly as you are told, you will be shot in the back of the head. Drive to the bank, please. Terrified for his life and following the instructions of the two masked men in the back seat of the Morris, Peter Cartwright drove to the bank building and parked the Morris near the back door. There had been a spate of bank robberies over the last few months, at least four on the Witwatersrand and during one of them a bank guard had been shot dead.

Cartwright was in no doubt as to the danger of his position or the ruthlessness of his captors.

As soon as he climbed out of the Morris, they closed on each side of him, pinning his arms and hustling him to the back door of the bank.

One of them tapped upon it with the butt of his pistol and to Cartwright's astonishment it opened immediately. Only when he was inside did he realize how the robbers had gained access. His senior accountant Willem De Kok was already there, in pyjamas and dressinggown, his hair tousled and his face slack and ashen with terror. He had obviously been dragged from his bed.

I'm sorry, Mr Cartwright,he blubbered. They forced me. Pull yourself together, man, Cartwright snapped at him, his own fear making him brusque, then his expression changed as he saw the two women: De Kok's fat little wife and his own beloved Mary in hair curlers and pink fulllength dressing-gown with artificial pink roses down the front.

Peter, she wailed. Oh Peter, don't let them do anything. Stop that, Mary. Don't let them see you like that. Cartwright looked around at his captors. There were six of them, including the two who had waylaid him, but his training in character judgement enabled him to pick out the leader almost immediately, a tall, powerfully built man with a dense black beard curling out from under his cloth face-mask, and above the mask a pair of strangely pale eyes, like those of one of the big predatory cats. His fear turned to real terror when he looked into those yellow eyes, for he sensed that there was no compassion in them.

Open the vault, the man said. His English was heavily accented.

I don't have the key, Cartwright said, and the man with yellow eyes seized Mary Cartwright by the wrist and forced her to her knees.

You wouldn't dare, Cartwright blustered, and the man placed the muzzle of his pistol to Mary's temple.

MY wife is going to have a baby, Cartwright said.

Then you will want to spare her any further unpleasantness. open it for them, Peter. Let them have it. It's not our money, Mary screamed. It's the bank's. Give it to them, And she began to urinate in little spurts that soaked through the skirts of her dressing-gown.

Cartwright went to the green Chatwood steel door of the vault and drew his watch chain from his fob pocket with the key dangling on the end of it. Anger and humiliation seethed in him as he tumbled the combination and turned the key. He stood back while De Kok came forward to do the same. Then, while all their attention was on the vault door as it swung open, he glanced across at his desk. He kept the pistol in the top right-hand drawer. It was a .455 service Webley and there was always a round under the hammer.

By now his outrage at the treatment of his wife outweighed his terror.

Get the money! the leader with the pale eyes ordered and three of the robbers, carrying canvas kit bags, hurried into the vault.

My wife, Cartwright said, I must see to her. Nobody interfered as he lifted her to her feet and helped her to the desk. Tenderly he settled her into the chair, keeping up a flow of reassurance that covered the soft scrape as he opened the drawer.

He lifted the pistol and slipped it into the pocket of his masonic apron.

Then he backed away, leaving his wife at the desk. He had both hands raised to shoulder level in an attitude of surrender as he rejoined De Kok against the far wall. Both women were out of the line of his fire, but he waited until the three robbers re-emerged from the vault, each of them lugging a kitbag stuffed with wads of banknotes. Again all attention was on those bulging canvas bags, and Cartwright reached into the pocket of his white leather apron, brought out the pistol and his first shot crashed across the room in a long spurt of blue gunsmoke. He kept firing as the Luger bullets smashed into his body, and he was flung back against the wall. He fired until the hammer of the Webley snapped down on a spent cartridge, but his last bullet had gone into the concrete floor between his feet, and he was dead as he slumped down the bullet-pocked wall and huddled at the foot of it, with his blood puddling under him.

SHOOT-OUT AT RAND BANK TWO DEAD ROBBERY LINKED TO O B The letters OB caught Sarah Stander's eye on the placard outside the news-stand. She went in and bought candy for the children, as she always did, and then, as an apparent afterthought, she took a copy of the newspaper.

She crossed to the park and while the two toddlers romped on the lawn and she absently rocked the pram. with her foot to keep the baby quiet, she read the front-page article avidly.

Mr Peter Cartwright, the manager of a bank in Foraisburg, was last night shot dead while attempting to prevent a robbery at the bank's premises. One of the robbers was also shot dead, while a second man was seriously wounded and taken into custody by the police.

First estimates are that the four remaining robbers fled with cash in excess of 5,100,000.

police spokesman said this morning that preliminary interrogation of the wounded robber had established definite involvement by members of the Ossewa Brandwag in the outrage.

The Minister of the Interior, Colonel Blaine Malcomess, announced from his office in the House of Parliament in Cape Town that he had ordered an enquiry into the subversive activities of the O B and that any member of the public with information to offer should contact the nearest police station or telephone the following numbers: Johannesburg 78I 4, Cape Town 42444. The minister gave the assurance that all information would be treated in the strictest confidence.

She sat for almost an hour, trying to reach a decision, torn between loyalty to her family and her patriotic duty to her own people.

She was confused, terribly confused. Was it right to blow up trains and rob banks and kill innocent people in the name of freedom and justice? Would she be a traitoress if she tried to save her husband and her babies?

And what about those other innocents who were certain to die if Manfred De La Rey were allowed to continue? She could readily imagine the strife and chaos that would result if the entire country were to be plunged into civil war. She looked at the newspaper again and memorized the telephone number.

She stood up, called the children and wheeled the pram across the road. As she reached the far sidewalk and started towards the post office, she noticed old Mr Oberholster, the postmaster, watching her from the window of his office. She knew that he was one of them, she had seen him in OB I uniform when he came to the cottage to pick Roelf up for one of their meetings.

immediately she felt panicky with guilt. All telephone calls went through the post office exchange. Oberholster might easily listen in on her conversation, or the operator might recognize her voice. She turned away and pushed the pram down towards the butcher as though that had originally been her intention. She bought two pounds of pork chops, Roelf's favourite dinner, and hurried back to the cottage, eager to be off the street, to be alone so she could think.

As she let herself into the kitchen she heard men's voices in the front room that Roelf used as a study. He was back early from the university today, and then her pulse quickened as she heard Manfred's voice. She felt guilty and disloyal that he could still have that effect upon her. Manfred had not been to the cottage for almost three weeks, and she realized that she had missed him and thought about him almost every day with feelings that oscillated from bitter hatred and resentment to tremulous physical arousal.

She began to prepare dinner for Roelf and the children, but the men's voices carried quite clearly from the front room. Occasionally Sarah paused to listen, and once she heard Manie say, While I was in Jo'burg, I So he had been in Johannesburg. The bank robbery had taken place the night before last, time enough since then for him to come down by road or on the mail train. She thought about the two men who had been killed. She had read in the paper that the bank manager had a pregnant wife and two small children. She wondered how the woman felt now, with her husband gone, and three little ones to care for.

Then she was distracted by the men's voices again, and she paused to listen. What she heard filled her with foreboding, Where will this thing end? she brooded. Oh I wish they would stop. I wish Manie would go away and leave us alone, But the thought of that filled her with a sense of hopelessness.

Shasa flew down alone from the Witwatersrand in the Rapide and landed at Youngsfield after dark. He drove directly from the airfield to Blaine's home in Newlands Avenue.

Tara opened the door to him, her face lighting when she realized it was him. Oh, darling, I missed you! They kissed rapturously until Blaine's voice made them start apart.

Look here, Shasa, I don't like to interrupt anything important, but when you can spare a moment I'd like to hear your report. Tara was blushing furiously. Daddy, you were spying on us! Public display, my dear. No spying necessary. Come along, Shasa. He led the way to his study and waved Shasa to a chair.

Drink? I'd like a ginger ale, sir. How are the mighty fallen! Blaine poured a little of his hoarded whisky for himself and handed Shasa the ginger ale. Now what is it that you couldn't talk about on the telephone? We just might have had a bit of luck at last, sir. On Blaine's orders Shasa had flown up to Johannesburg as soon as the Fordsburg bank robbery had been linked to the Ossewa Brandwag. He had been at Marshall Square, the headquarters of the CID, while the captured bank robber was being interrogated. As you know, the fellow is an official on the Crown Mines. Thys Lourens is his name, and sure enough he was on our list of known OB members. Not one of the big fish, however, but quite a formidable-looking chap, although I'd expect him to be a bit of a boozer. I told the police inspector that you wanted answers No rough stuff. Blaine frowned.

No, sir. It wasn't necessary. Lourens wasn't as tough as he looked. We only had to point out that the penalty for armed robbery and accessory to murder was the gallows, but that we were prepared to do a deal and he started to gush. I gave you most of what he told us when I telephoned you this morning. Yes. Go on. Then he gave us the names of the other men involved in the robbery, that is, three of them. We were able to make the arrests before I left Johannesburg. However, the leader of the gang was a man he had only met three days before the

robbery. He did not know his name, or where we could find him. Did he give you a description? Yes. Big man, black hair and beard, crooked nose, scar over one eye, a pretty detailed description, but he gave us some thing else which may be vital. What is that? A code name. The leader is known only as Die Wit Swaard, the White Sword, and they were ordered to cooperate with him from the very top level of the stormjagers!

White Sword, Blaine mused. Sounds like something out of Boys Own Paper. Unfortunately not so childish, Shasa went on. I impressed upon the inspector in charge that the code name and the description must be withheld until he had orders from you personally. 'Good. Blaine sipped his drink, pleased that his trust in Shasa Courtney had been so soon vindicated. White Sword, I wonder if this is the trigger we have been looking for, the catalyst that has at last brought the O B to the point of action. It could very well be, sir. All the arrested members of the gang are obviously very much in awe of the man. He was clearly the force behind the entire thing, and he has disappeared completely. There is no trace of the missing money, incidentally, we have established that it is over one hundred and twenty-seven thousand I pounds., A tidy sum, Blaine murmured, and we must presume that it has gone into the war chest of the O B, probably along with the gelignite from the railway hijacking., As far as this code name goes, sir, I would like to suggest that we continue to keep it from the press and everybody not directly concerned with the investigation. I agree. However, let me hear your reasons, see if they are the same as mine. Firstly, we don't want to alert the quarry. We don't want him to know that we are on his track. Blaine nodded. Quite so. The other reason is that it will confirm the reliability of any informant who uses the code name. I don't follow you, Blaine frowned.

Your appeal to the public for assistance has resulted in a flood of telephone calls, but unfortunately most of them are bogus. if we let the code name become general knowledge, they'll all be using it. ,I see. Use of the code name will establish the callers credentials. 'That's it, sir. All right then, we'll keep it under the hat for the time being. Is there anything else? Not at present. Then let me tell you what has happened here while you were away. I have met the prime minister and we have decided to declare the O B a political organization. All civil servants, including the police and the army, will be obliged to resign their membership immediately. That won't alter their sympathies, Shasa pointed out.

Of course not, Blaine agreed. We will still have something like forty or fifty percent of the country against us and for Nazi Germany. It can't go on like this, sir. You and the Ou Baas will have to force a showdown. Yes, we know that. As soon as our investigations are complete, as soon as we have a pretty comprehensive fist of the ringleaders, we will swoop. Arrest them? Shasa was startled.

Yes. They will be interned for the duration of the war as enemies of the state. Shasa whistled softly. Pretty drastic, sir. That could lead to real trouble., That is why we have to scoop them all up in the net at one time, we cannot afford to miss any of them. Blaine stood up. I can see you are exhausted, Shasa, and I am sure there are a few things that Mademoiselle Tara has to say to

you. I'll expect you at my office at eight-thirty sharp tomorrow

morning. They moved to the study door and Blaine added as an afterthought, By the way, your grandfather, Sir Garry, arrived at Weltevreden this morning., He has come down for his birthday, Shasa smiled. I look forward to seeing him. I hope you and Field Marshal Smuts will be coming to the birthday picnic as usual., Wouldn't miss it for the world! Blaine opened the study door and across the lobby Tara was hovering innocently, pretending to be selecting a book from the shelves in the library.

Blaine grinned, Tara, you let Shasa get some sleep tonight, do you hear me? I refuse to work with a zombie tomorrow. The meeting in Blaine's office the following morning lasted longer than either of them expected, and later moved down the passageway to the prime minister's office where Field Marshal Smuts personally questioned Shasa. His questions were so searching that Shasa felt drained by the effort of keeping pace with the Ou Baas mercurial mind. He escaped with relief, Smuts's admonition following him.

We want this fellow "White Sword" whoever he is, and we want him before he can do any more damage. Get that message across to everybody involved. Yes, sir. And I want those lists on my desk before the weekend.

We must have these fellows locked up and out of harm's way.

It was mid-morning before Shasa arrived at CID headquarters and parked the Jaguar in the reserved bay that had been set aside for him in.

The special operations room had been set up in one of the extensive basement areas. There was a constable on duty at the door and Shasa signed the register. Entry was restricted to persons on the list. Many of the police force were known OB members, or sympathizers.

Inspector Louis Nel had chosen his team with extreme care.

He was a balding, taciturn man whose age and job classification had prevented him from volunteering for overseas military service, a fact that he bitterly resented. However, Shasa had soon discovered that he was an easy man to like and respect, though a difficult one to please. They had quickly established a working rapport.

Nel was in his shirt-sleeves, a cigarette dangling from his lips as he talked into the telephone, but he covered the mouthpiece and summoned Shasa with an imperious wave.

Where the hell have you been? I was going to send out a search party, he reprimanded him. Sit down. I want to talk to you. Shasa perched on the corner of his desk while the inspector continued his telephone call, and he stared through the window into the busy operations room. Inspector Nel had been allocated eight detectives and a bevy of female stenographers. The room was full of cigarette smoke and the clatter of typewriters as they worked. One of the other telephones on the inspector's desk rang, and he glanced up at Shasa. 'Take that, damned switchboard keeps putting everything through to me. Shasa picked up the receiver. Good morning, this is CID headquarters. May I help you? he said, and when there was silence, he repeated it in Afrikaans.

Hello, I want to talk to somebody, the caller was a woman, a young woman and very agitated, she was speaking Afrikaans, and her voice was breathless and uncertain. In the paper they said you wanted to know about the Ossewa Brandwag. I want to talk to somebody. My name is Courtney, Shasa said in Afrikaans. Squadron-Leader Courtney. I am grateful that you want to assist the police. You can tell me everything. He tried to make his voice warm and reassuring. He could sense that the woman was afraid, perhaps on the point of changing her mind and ringing off. Take your time. I'm here to listen to you.$ ',Are you the police? Yes, madam. Would you like to give me your name? No! I won't tell you- He realized his mistake. That's perfectly all right. you don't have to give your name, he told her quickly, and there was a long silence. He could hear her breathing.

Take your time, he repeated gently. You just tell me what you want to. They are stealing the guns. The woman's voice sank to a whisper.

Can you tell me what guns? Shasa asked carefully.

From the gun factory in Pretoria, the railway workshop. Shasa sat up straighter and held the telephone receiver with both hands. Almost all the military arms and munitions manufacture was being undertaken in the railway workshops in Pretoria. It was the only establishment with the heavy equipment, highspeed lathes and steam presses, capable of turning out barrels and blocks for rifles and machineguns. The cartridge cases for the munitions were being stamped out at the Pretoria Mint, but they were despatched to the railway workshops for final processing.

What you are saying is important, he told her carefully.

Can you tell me how they are stealing the guns? They are putting scrap iron in the cases, and stealing the guns, the woman whispered.

Can you tell me who is doing this, please? Do you know who is responsible? I don't know the people in the workshop, but the one who is in charge. I know who he is., We must know his name, Shasa told her persuasively, but she was silent. He could sense that she was struggling with herself, and that if he pushed her now he would lose her.

Do you want to tell me who he is? he asked. Just take your time. His name, the woman hesitated, was silent a moment longer, and then she blurted out, they call him wit Swaard White Sword. Shasa felt his skin crawl as though it were infested with vermin, and his heart seemed to check, miss a beat, then race away wildly.

What did you say? White Sword, his name is White Sword, the woman repeated and there was a crackle and click as the connection was broken.

Hello! Hello! Shasa shouted into the receiver. Are you there? Don't hang up! But the hiss of static on the empty line mocked him.

Shasa stood beside Blaine Malcomess desk while he made the call to the commissioner of police at Marshall Square in Johannesburg.

As soon as you have the search warrant you are to close the workshops. No one allowed to enter or leave. I have already spoken to the military commander of the Transvaal.

He and his quartermaster-general will give you full cooperation. I want you to begin the search right away, open all the weapons cases in the stores and check every item against the factory production sheets. I will be flying up, leaving immediately. Please have a police car meet me at Roberts Heights airfield at, he glanced at Shasa for a time, five o'clock this evening. In the meantime, I want you to impress utter secrecy on all your men involved in the search. One other thing, Commissioner, please select only men who you are satisfied are not members of any subversive organizations, particularly the Ossewa Brandwag. Shasa drove them out to Youngsfield in the Jaguar and as they parked behind the hangar Blaine unfolded his long legs and climbed out of the sports car.

Well, at least the most gruelling part of the journey is over with, he remarked.

There was a police inspector waiting for them on the hard stand below the Roberts Heights control tower as Shasa taxied the Rapide in and cut the engines. He came forward to meet them as Blaine and Shasa came down the landing steps.

How is the investigation going? Blaine demanded immediately after they had shaken hands. What have you found so far? Nothing, Minister. The inspector shook his head. We have checked over six hundred cases of rifles. it's a timeconsuming job. But so far everything seems to be in order. How many cases in the stores? Nine hundred and eighty., So you have checked over half. Blaine shook his head.

Let's go and have a look anyway., He settled his hat on his head and buttoned his overcoat to the neck for there was a cold wind sweeping across the airstrip, bringing memories of the snows of the Drakensberg mountains, and the highveld grass was bleached silvery by the frosts of late winter. He and Shasa climbed into the back seat of the black police Packard and neither of them spoke on the short journey into the centre of Pretoria.

At the gates to the railway workshops there was a double guard of police and military personnel. They checked the occupants of the Packard carefully, not visibly impressed by Blaine's status.

The chief inspector in charge of the investigation was in the office of the workshop manager and his report had little to add to what they already knew. They had so far been unable to find any irregularity in the production or packaging of weapons.

Give me the tour, Blaine ordered grimly, and the entire party, Blaine, Shasa, the chief inspector and the workshop manager, went out on to the main production floor.

Workshop, was hardly a correct description of the large factory that they entered. Originally built to service and repair the rolling stock of the state-owned railway, it had been expanded and modernized until it was capable of building its own locomotives from scratch. Now the long production line along which they picked their way was turning out armoured cars for the desert war in North Africa.

The working of the factory had not been halted by the police investigation and the cavernous sheds roofed with

corrugated iron echoed to the thunder of the steam presses and the cacophony of the lathes and turret head drills.

How many men do you employ? Blaine had to shout to make himself heard in the uproar.

Almost three thousand altogether, we are working three shifts now. Wartime production. The manager took them through to the furthest building.

This is where we turn out the small arms, he shouted.

Or rather the metal parts. Barrel and blocks. The woodwork is manufactured by outside contractors. Show us the finished articles and the packing, Blaine ordered. That's where the trouble is, if there is trouble. After assembly and checking, the completed rifles, British Long Service No 4 Mark 1 in .303 calibre, were greased and wrapped in yellow grease-proof paper, then packed in the long WD green wooden cases, ten rifles to a case. Finally the cases were loaded onto steel pallets and trundled through to the despatch stores.

When they entered the despatch area there were a dozen uniformed police constables working with at least fifty factory employees in blue overalls. Each case was being taken down from the tall stacks and opened by one of the constables, then the wrapped rifles were taken out and counted, repacked and the case lids relocked.

The checked cases were being stacked at the far end of the storehouse, and Shasa saw immediately that only about fifty cases remained to be opened and inspected.

The chief storekeeper hurried across from his desk and challenged Blaine indignantly. I don't know who you are but if you are the bloody fool who ordered this, you need your arse kicked. We have lost a day's production. There is a goods train at the siding and a convoy waiting in Durban harbour to take these weapons to our boys up north. Shasa left the group and went across to watch the working constables. 'No luck? he asked one of them.

We're wasting our time, the man grunted without looking up, and Shasa silently reviled himself. A day's war production lost because of him, it was a dire responsibility and his sense of despondency increased as he stood and watched the remaining cases opened, checked and resealed.

The constables assembled at the door of the stores and the overalled factory employees went out through the tall sliding doors to resume their posts on the production line.

The police inspector came back to where they stood in a small disconsolate group.

Nothing, Minister. I'm sorry. We had to do it, Blaine said, glancing at Shasa. Nobody is to blame. Too bloody true somebody is to blame, the chief storeman broke in truculently. Now that you've had your fun, can I get on with loading the rest of the shipment? Shasa stared at him. There was something about the man's behaviour that set off a little warning tingle down his spine, the blustering defensive manner, the shiftiness of his gaze.

Of course, he thought. If there was a switch, this is where it would take place, and this fellow would be in it to his neck. His mind was starting to slough off the inertia of disappointment and anti-climax.

All right, Blaine agreed. It was a wild-goose chase. You can get on with your work. Hold on, sir, Shasa intervened quietly, and he turned back to the storeman. How many railway trucks have you loaded already? There it was again, the shift of the man's eyes, the slight hesitation. He was going to lie. Then he glanced involuntarily at the sheaf of papers in the clipboard that lay on his desk beside the doors that led out onto the loading bays.

Shasa crossed quickly to the desk and picked up the sheaf of loading manifests. Three trucks have already been loaded, he read from the manifest. Which are they? They have been shunted away, the storeman muttered sulkily.

Then let's have them shunted back here right away, Blaine intervened briskly.

Blaine and Shasa stood together under the arc lamps on the concrete loading quay while the first of the closed railway goods trucks was unlocked and the sliding door opened.

The interior of the truck was loaded to the roof with green rifle cases.

if they are here, they will be at the bottom of the load, Shasa suggested. Whoever is responsible would get rid of the evidence as soon as possible. He'd make damned sure they were the first cases loaded. Get down to the bottom cases, Blaine ordered sharply, and the top cases were carried out and stacked on the quay.

Right! Blaine pointed to the back of the truck. Get that case out and open it. The lid came up and the constable let it fall to the concrete floor with a clatter.

Sir! he exclaimed. Look at this. Blaine stepped up beside him and stared down into the open box, and then he looked up again quickly.

The chief storekeeper was hurrying across the floor of the shed towards the doors at the far end.

Arrest that man! Blaine shouted urgently, and two constables ran forward and seized him. He was struggling angrily as they dragged him out onto the loading quay.

Blaine turned to Shasa, his expression grim and his eyes flinty. 'Well, my boy, I hope you are satisfied. You've given us a mountain of work and a lot of sleepless nights ahead, he said.

Fifteen grave men sat around the long polished stinkwood table in the panelled cabinet office and listened silently as Blaine malcomess made his report.

There is no way of establishing with any certainty exactly how many weapons are missing. other large shipments have been sent out since the first of the month and as yet neither of these has reached its destination in Cairo. They are still in transit but we must expect that weapons are missing from both shipments. I estimate some two thousand rifles together with a million and a half rounds of ammunition. The men around the table stirred uneasily, but nobody spoke.

This is alarming, of course. However, the truly disturbing aspect of the business is the theft of some thirty to fifty Vickers machine-guns from the same source. This is incredible, Deneys Reitz muttered. That is enough to launch a nationwide rebellion. it could be 1914

all over again. We must make sure no word of this gets out.

It will cause panic. We should also consider, Blaine went on, 'the tons of explosives hijacked in the karoo. Those would almost certainly be used to disrupt communications and prevent deployment of our limited military strength. If there was to be a rebellion Please tell us, Blaine, the prime minister held up a finger.

Firstly, do we have any indication of when we can expect them to come out into the open and attempt their coup d'dtat? No, Prime Minister. The best I can do is an estimate based on our probable discovery of the weapons theft. They must have realized that the theft would be discovered as soon as the first consignment reached Cairo, and almost certainly they plan to move before that time. When would the shipment have reached Cairo? Two weeks from now approximately. So we must expect that they will make the attempt within days, rather than weeks? I'm afraid so, Prime Minister. My next question, Blaine. How complete is your investigation? Do you have a full list of the ringleaders of the OB and the stormjagers? Not a full list, we have only about six hundred names so far. I think it includes almost all their key men, but, of course, we can't have any way of being sure of that. Thank you, Blaine. The prime minister tugged thoughtfully at his small silver goatee beard. His expression was almost serene, his blue eyes calm and unworried. They all waited for him to speak again.

How sensitive are the names on the list? he asked.

There is the administrator of the Orange Free State. Yes, we know about him. ,Welve members of Parliament, including one former cabinet minister. Parliamentary privilege, Field-Marshal Smuts murmured.

We can't touch them. Then there are church leaders, at least four high-ranking army officers, top civil servants, one assistant police commissioner. Blaine read the list through, and by the time he had finished, the prime minister had already made up his mind.

We can't afford to wait, he said. With the exception of the members of parliament, I want detention and internment orders prepared for all the others on the list of suspects. I'll sign them as soon as they are drafted. in the meantime I want you to plan the simultaneous arrests of all of them, and make provision for their incarceration. 'There are the concentration camps built for Italian prisoners of war at Baviaanspoort and Pietermaritzburg, Blaine pointed out.

Good, Field-Marshal Smuts agreed. I want these men all safely behind barbed-wire as soon as possible. And I want the missing weapons and explosives found, and found quickly. We cannot afford to wait! Manfred De La Rey said carefully.

Every hour is dangerous, every day brings us closer to the brink, a week could spell disaster. We are not ready. We need time, one of the other men in the first-class railway compartment cut in. There were eight men, including Manfred, in the compartment. They had boarded the southbound express separately at different stops over the last two hundred miles. The conductor of the train was a sympathizer, and there were stormiagters in the corridors outside the compartment, acting as sentries. Nobody could reach them or eavesdrop on their conversation.

You promised us another ten days in which to complete the final preparations. We haven't got ten days, man. Haven't you listened to what I am telling you? It can't be done, the man repeated stubbornly.

It can be done, Manfred raised his voice. It has to be done! The administrator intervened sternly. Enough of that, gentlemen. Let's keep the fighting for our enemies. With an obvious effort Manfred moderated his tone. I apologize for my outburst. However, I repeat that we have no time to spare. The removal of the weapons from the railway workshops has been discovered, ten of our men there have been arrested. One of our men at Marshall Square has told us that they have received detention orders for over two hundred of our senior members and that these are to be served on Sunday, that is four days from now., We are aware of all that, the administrator intervened again. What we must do now is decide whether we can afford to put the entire plan forward, or if it should be abandoned. I will listen to each of your opinions and then we will vote. We shall stand by the majority decision. Let us hear first from Brigadier Koopman. They all looked to the army general. He was in civilian clothing but his military bearing was unmistakable. He spread a large-scale map on the fold-down table, and used it to illustrate his report in a professionally dispassionate voice. First he set out the order of battle of the army, and the dispositions of the troops, aircraft and armoured cars that remained in the country and then went on, So you see that the two main troop concentrations are at the infantry training barracks at Roberts Heights and at Durban awaiting shipment for overseas duty. With almost one hundred and sixty thousand outside the country, these do not amount to more than five thousand men. There are no modern aircraft, other than the fifty Harvard trainers. This makes it feasible to immobilize the troops at their present positions at least for the first few crucial days that it will take to seize control. This can be achieved by destroying all major road and railway bridges, particularly those over the Vaal river, the Orange river and the Umzindusi river. He went on talking for another ten minutes, and then summed up, We have our men placed in positions of command, right up to the general staff, and they will be able to cushion us from any forthright action by the army. After that they will arrest and hold the Smuts men on the general staff and bring the army in on our side to support the new republican government. One after another the other men present made their reports. Manfred was last to speak.

Gentlemen, he began. Within the last twelve hours I have been in direct radio contact with the German Abwehr through their representative in Portuguese Angola. He has relayed to us the assurances of the German High Command and of the Fuhrer himself. The German submarine supply vessel Altmark is at present within three hundred nautical miles of Cape Town carrying over five hundred tons of armaments. She awaits only the signal to steam to our aid. He spoke quietly but persuasively, and he sensed the mood swing in his favour.

When he finished there was a short but profound silence and then the administrator said, We have all the facts before us now. We must make the decision. It is this. Before the government can arrest and imprison us and the other legitimate leaders of the Volk, we put into effect the plan. We rise and depose the present government and take the power into our own hands to put our nation back on the course to freedom and justice. I will ask each of you in turn, do you say "Yes" or do you say "No? Ja, said the first man.

Ek stern ja. I say yes. Ek stern ook ja, I also say yes. At the end the administrator summed up for them. We are all agreed, there is not one of us against the enterprise!

He paused and looked at Manfred De La Rey. You have told us of a signal to launch the rising. Something that will turn the country on its head. Can you tell us now what that signal will be? The signal will be the assassination of the traitor Jan Christian Smuts, Manfred said.

They stared at him in silence. It was clear that even though they had anticipated something momentous, none of them had expected this.

The details of this political execution have been carefully planned, Manfred went on to assure them. Three different contingency plans were drawn up in Berlin, each for a different date, depending on the dictates of circumstances. The first plan, the earliest date, suits our present purpose exactly.

Smuts will be executed this coming Saturday. Three days from now - the day before the detention orders are served on our leaders. The silence drew out a minute longer, then the administrator asked, Where?

How will it be done? You do not need to know that. I will do what is necessary, alone and unaided. It will be up to you to act quickly and forcibly as soon as the news of Smuts death is released. You must step into the void he leaves and seize the reins of power., Let it be so, said the administrator quietly. We will be ready for the moment when it comes, and may God bless our battle. Of the eight men in the compartment, only Manfred remained aboard when the express pulled out of Bloemfontein station and began its long run southwards towards Cape Town.

I have a permit to keep a firearm on the estate, Sakkie Van Vuuren, the winery manager, told Manfred. We use it to shoot the baboons that come down from the mountains to raid the vineyards and orchards. He led the way down the steps into the cool gloom of the cellars.

Anybody who hears a few shots coming from the mountains will take no notice of them, but if you are challenged, tell them you are employed by the estate and refer them to me. He opened the false front of the wine cask and stood aside as Manfred opened one of the waterproof canisters.

First he lifted out the radio transmitter and connected the new batteries which Van Vuuren had procured for him. The radio was fitted into a canvas rucksack and was readily portable.

He opened the second canister and brought out the rifle case. In it was a sniper's model 98 Mauser, with that superb action which permitted such high breech pressure levels that the velocity of the 173 grain bullet could be pushed UP over 2500 feet per second. There were fifty rounds of the 7-57 mm ammunition which had been specially hand-loaded by one of the expert technicians at Deutsche Waffen und munitionsfabrik, and the telescopic sight was by Zeiss. Manfred fitted the telescopic sight to the rifle and filled the magazine. The rest of the ammunition he repacked and then stowed the canisters away in the false-fronted cask.

Van Vuuren drove him up into one of the valleys of the Hottentots Holland mountains

in his battered old Ford half tonner, and when the track at last petered out, he drove back down the rocky winding trail.

and left him there

an Manfred watched him out of sight and then hefted his pack and rifle and began to climb upwards. He had plenty of time, there was no need to hurry, but the hard physical exertion gave him pleasure and he went up with long elastic strides, revelling in the flood of sweat on his face and body.

He crossed the first range of the foothills, went down into the wooded valley and then climbed again to one of the main peaks beyond. Near the crest he stopped and set up the radio, stringing his aerials from the tops of two cripplewood trees and orientating them carefully towards the north.

Then he settled down with his back to a boulder and ate the sandwiches that little Sarah had made for him. The contact time with the Abwehr agent in Luanda, the capitol of Portuguese Angola, 1500 hours Greenwich Mean Time, and he had almost an hour to wait.

After he had eaten he took the Mauser in his lap and handled it lovingly, refamiliarizing himself with the weapoWs feel and balance, working the bolt action, bringing the butt to his shoulder and sighting through the lens of the telescope at objects down the slope.

in Germany he had practised endlessly with this same rifle, and he knew that at any range up to three hundred metres he could choose in which eye he would shoot a man.

However, it was essential that he check the rifle to make absolutely certain that the sights were still true. He needed a target as close to that of a human form as possible, but he could find nothing suitable from where he sat. He laid the rifle carefully aside, checked his wristwatch and transferred his attention to the radio.

He set up the Morse key and turned to the page of his notebook on which he had already reduced the message to code. He flexed his fingers and began to send, tapping the brass key with a fluid rapid movement, aware that the operator at Luanda far in the north would recognize his style and would accept that rather than his code name as proof of his identity.

Eagle Base, this is White Sword. On the fourth call he was answered. The signal in his headphones was strong and clear.

Go ahead, White Sword!

Confirm plan one in force. Repeat plan one.

Acknowledge. There was no need for a long message that could increase the chances of being traced or intercepted. Everything had been arranged with Teutonic attention to detail before he left Berlin.

Understand plan one. Good luck. Over and out from Eagle Base. 'Over and out White Sword!

He rolled the aerial wires, repacked the transmitter, and was about to swing it on his shoulder when an explosive barking cough echoed along the cliffs and Manfred sank down flat behind the rock and reached for the Mauser. The wind favoured him and he settled down to wait.

He lay for almost half an hour without moving, still and intent, scanning the valley floor below, before he saw the first movement amongst the jumbled lichen-covered rocks and stunted protea bushes.

The baboons were moving in their usual foraging order, with half a dozen young males in the van, the females and young in the centre, and three huge grey patriarchal males in the rear guard. The infants were slung upside down below their mothers bellies, clinging with tiny paws to the thick coarse belly fur and peering out with pink hairless faces.

The larger youngsters rode like jockeys perched on the backs of their dams. The three fighting bulls at the rear of the troop followed them, swaggering arrogantly, knuckling the ground as they moved forward on four legs, their heads held high, almost doglike, their muzzles long and pointed, their eyes close-set and bright.

Manfred chose the largest of the three apes and watched him through the lens of the sight. He let him come on up the slope until he was only three hundred metres from where he lay.

The bull baboon suddenly loped forward and with an agile bound reached the top of a grey boulder the size of a small cottage. He sat there, perched on his hindquarters, resting his elbows on his knees, almost human in his pose, and he opened his jaws in a cavernous yawn. His fangs were pointed and yellow and as long as a man's forefinger.

Carefully Manfred took up the slack in the rear trigger until he felt the hair trigger engage with an almost inaudible click, then he settled the cross hairs of the telescopic sight on the baboon's forehead, and held his aim for the hundredth part of a second. He touched the front trigger, while he still concentrated fixedly on the baboon's sloping furry forehead and the rifle slammed back into his shoulder. The shot crashed out across the valley. The echoes rang back from the cliffs in a descending roll of thunder.

The bull baboon somersaulted backwards from his seat on the boulder, and the rest of the troop fled back down the slope in screaming panic.

Manfred stood up, hoisted the pack onto his shoulders and picked his way down the slope. He found the ape's carcass huddled at the base of the rock. It still twitched and quivered in reflex but the top of the animal's skull was missing. It had been cut away as though by an axe stroke at the level of the eyes and bright blood welled up through the base of the brain pan and dribbled over the rocks.

Manfred rolled the carcass over with his foot and nodded with satisfaction. The special hollow-tipped bullet would decapitate a man just as neatly, and the rifle had held true to within a finger's breadth at three hundred metres.

Now I am ready as I will ever be, Manfred murmured and went down the mountain.

Shasa had not been home to Weltevreden, nor had he seen Tara since he and Blaine had flown home from Pretoria in the Rapide after the discovery of the stolen weapons.

He had not left CID headquarters during that time. He ate at the police canteen and snatched a few hours, sleep in the dormitory that had been set up on the floor above the operations room. The rest of the time he had been engrossed entirely in the preparations for the planned police swoop.

There were almost a hundred and fifty suspects to be dealt with in Cape Province alone, and for each the warrant had to be drawn, the expected whereabouts of subjects charted, and police officers delegated to make each separate arrest.

Sunday had been selected deliberately for almost all of the subjects were devout Calvinists, members of the Dutch Reformed Church, and would attend divine service that morning. Their whereabouts could be anticipated with a high degree of certainty and they would in all probability be unsuspecting, in a religious frame of mind, and not in the mood to offer any resistance to the arresting officers.

It was midday Friday before Shasa remembered that his grandfather's birthday picnic was the following day and he rang Centaine at Weltevreden from the police operations room.

,oh cheri, that is terrible news, Sir Garry will be so disappointed. He has asked for you every day since he arrived and we are all so looking forward to seeing you. I'm sorry, Mater. Can't you get away to join us, even for an hour? That's just not possible.

Believe me, Mater, I am as disappointed as anyone. You don't have to come up the mountain, Shasa. just drink a glass of champagne with us at Weltevreden before we leave. You can go back immediately and do whatever it is you are doing that is so important. For my sake, cheri, won't you try? She sensed that he was wavering. Blaine and Field-Marshal Smuts will be here. They have both promised. If you come at eight o'clock, just to wish your grandfather a happy birthday, I promise you can leave again before eight-thirty. O all right mater, he capitulated, and grinned into the telephone. 'Don't you find it boring always to get your own way?, It is something I have learned to bear, cheri, she laughed back at him. Until tomorrow. ,Until tomorrow, he agreed.

I love you, cheri. I love you too, Mater. He hung up, feeling guilty at having given in to her, and was about to ring Tara to tell her that he wouldn't be able to escort her to the picnic when one of the sergeants across the room called him.

Squadron Leader Courtney, this call is for you. Who is it? 'She didn't say, it's a woman, and Shasa smiled as he crossed the room.

Tara had anticipated him and called him first.

Hello, is that you Tara? he said into the mouthpiece, and there was silence except for the soft sound of somebody breathing nervously. His nerves snapped tight, and he lowered his voice, trying to make it friendly and encouraging as he switched into Afrikaans.

This is Squadron Leader Courtney speaking. Is that the lady I spoke to before? Ja. It is me. He recognized her voice, young, breathless and afraid.

I am very grateful to you. What you have done has saved many lives, the lives of innocent people. I saw nothing about the guns in the newspapers, the woman whispered.

You can be proud of what you have done, he told her, and then on inspiration added, Many people would have died, perhaps even women and little children. The words little children seemed to decide her and she blurted out, There is still great danger. They are planning something terrible, White Sword is going to do something.

Soon, very soon. I heard him say that it will be the signal, and it will turn the nation on its head-, Can you tell me what it is? Shasa asked, trying not to frighten her, keeping his voice low and reassuring. What is this thing he plans? I don't know. I only know it will be very soon. Can you find out what it is? I don't know, I can try. For the sake of everybody, the women and little children, will you try to find out what it is? Yes, I will try. I will be here at this telephone- then suddenly he remembered his promise to Centaine, or at this other number, and he gave her the number at Weltevreden. Try here first, and the other number if I am not here. 'I understand., Can you tell me who White Sword is? He took a calculated risk. Do you know his real name? Immediately the connection crackled and was broken. She had hung up. He lowered the telephone and stared at it. He sensed that he had frightened her off for good with that last question, and dismay overwhelmed him.

Something that will turn the nation on its head. Her words haunted him, and he was filled with an ominous sense of impending disaster.

Manfred drove sedately along the De Waal Drive past the university buildings. it was past midnight, and the streets were almost deserted except for a few Friday-night revellers wending their unsteady way homeward. The car he was driving was a nondescript little Morris and the rifle was in the boot under a tattered piece of tarpaulin. He was dressed in a railwayman's blue overalls over which he wore a thick fisherman's jersey and a heavy greatcoat.

He was moving into position now to avoid the danger of being seen on the mountain during daylight carrying a rifle.

favoured On a weekend the slopes of Table Mountain were by hikers and rock climbers, birdwatchers and picnickers, boy scouts and lovers.

He passed the forestry station and turned into Rhodes Avenue, then followed the road up past the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens with the bulk of the mountain blotting out half the starry night sky. The road wound around the bottom slopes through the dark forests. Before he reached the Constantia Nek pass he slowed down, and checked in his rearview mirror to make certain there was no vehicle following him. Then he switched off his headlights and turned off sharply onto the forestry track.

He drove at a walking pace, keeping in low gear until he reached the forestry gate. Then he stopped and, leaving the engine idling, went to the gate and tried his key in the lock.

Roelf had given him the key and assured him that the forester was a friend. it turned easily, and Manfred drove the Morris through and closed the gate behind him. He hooked the staple of the padlock through the chain, but did not lock it.

He was on the bottom stretch of the bridle path now and drove on up the narrow track as it ascended the slope in a series of tight hairpins. He passed the contour path that girdled the mountain three hundred metres above sea level.

A mile further on, just below the summit he reversed the Morris off the bridle path so that it was out of sight of a casual hiker. From the boot he took the Mauser and wrapped it carefully in a light tarpaulin. Then he locked the doors of the Morris and went back down towards the contour path carrying the rifle across his shoulder. He used his flashlight as little as possible and then only for quick glimpses of the pathway, shielding the beam with his body.

Within twenty minutes he intercepted the pathway that climbed directly up Skeleton Gorge and he flashed his light onto the square concrete signpost and read the legend printed on it.

SMUTS TRACK

The concrete block resembled a tombstone rather than a signpost, and he smiled grimly at the appropriateness of the name upon it. The old field-marshal had made this ascent the most famous of all routes to the summit.

Manfred climbed quickly, without resting, 1200 feet up Skeleton Gorge until he came up past Breakfast Rock over the crest, onto the tableland. Here he paused for a moment to look back. Far below him the Constantia valley huddled in the night, lit by only a star dusting of lights. He turned his back upon it and began his final preparations. He had scouted the site two days previously, and he had chosen the stance from which he would fire and paced out the exact range from there to the point on the pathway where a man would become visible as he came out onto the summit.

Now he moved into his stance. It was a hollow between two boulders, lightly screened by mountain scrub. He spread the tarpaulin over the low wiry bracken and then lay full length upon it, flattening the plants into a comfortable mattress under him.

He wriggled into firing position, cradled the butt of the

Mauser into his cheek and aimed at the head of the pathway 250 metres away. Through the Zeiss lens he could make out the individual branches of the bush that grew beside the path starkly silhouetted against the soft glow of light from the valley beyond.

He laid the weapon on the tarpaulin in front of him, ready for instant use. Then he pulled the collar of the greatcoat up around his ears and huddled down. It was going to be a long cold wait, and to pass the time he reviewed all the planning that had led him to this place, and the odds that tomorrow morning, at a little before or a little after ten-thirty, his quarry would come up the path that bore his name and step into the cross hairs of the Zeiss scope.

The dossier on Jan Christian Smuts meticulously assembled by the Abwehr in Berlin, which he had studied so avidly, had shown that for the last ten years, on every anniversary of this date, the field-marshal had kept this arrangement with an old friend, and now the fate of a nation depended on him doing so once again.

Shasa drove through the Anreith gates and up the long driveway to the chAteau. There were a dozen motor cars parked in front of Weltevreden, Blaine's Bentley amongst them. He parked the jag beside it and checked his wristwatch. It was ten minutes past eight o'clock. He was late and Mater was going to be huffed, she was an absolute stickler for punctuality.

She surprised him again by springing up from the long table in the dining-room and running to embrace him. The entire party of twenty was assembled for one of Weltevreden's celebrated breakfasts. The buffet sideboard groaned under the weight of silver and food. The servants in their long white kanzas and red pillbox fezes burst into beaming grins when they saw Shasa and a welcoming buzz of pleasure went up from the guests seated at the stinkwood table.

They were all there, everybody Shasa loved, Grandpa Garry at the head of the table, sprightly as a phrie; Anna beside him, her red face creasing into an infinity of smiles like a friendly bulldog; Blaine; Tara, as lovely as this spring morning; Matty, all freckles and carroty red hair; the ou Baas; and of course Mater. Only David was missing.

Shasa went to each of them in turn, laughing and exchanging banter, embracing and shaking hands and kissing. There were whoops and whistles when he pecked Tara's blushing cheek. He handed Grandpater Garry his present and stood beside him as he unwrapped the specially bound first editions of Burchell's Travels and exclaimed with delight.

He shook hands with the Ou Baas respectfully and glowed with pleasure at his quiet commendation, Good work you are doing, Kerel. Finally he exchanged a quick word with Blaine before loading his plate at the sideboard and taking the chair between Tara and Mater.

He refused the champagne. -we got work to do today, and played with Tara's foot under the table while he joined in the hilarity that resounded around the long table.

Too soon they were all rising and the women went to get their coats while the men went out to the cars and made certain that the rugs and picnic baskets were loaded.

I'm sorry you can't come with us, Shasa. Grandpater Garry took him aside. I hoped we could have a chat, but I've heard from Blaine how important your work is. I'll try and get back here tomorrow night. The pressure should be off by then. I won't go back to Natal until we've been able to spend a little time together. You are the one to carry on the Courtney name, my one and only grandson. Shasa felt a rush of deep affection for this wise and gentle old man; in some strange way the fact that they had both suffered mutilation, Sir Garry's leg and Shasa's eye, seemed to have forged an even stronger bond between them.

It's years since I have been up to visit you and Anna at Theuniskraal, Shasa burst out impulsively. May I come to spend a couple of weeks with you? Nothing would give us greater pleasure, Sir Garry hugged him, and at that moment Field-Marshal Smuts came across.

Still talking, old Garry, do you ever stop? Come along now, we have a mountain to climb, and the last one to the top will be sent to an old-age home. The old friends smiled at each other. They could have been brothers, both slight of build but wiry and dapper, both with little silver goatee beards and disreputable old hats upon their heads.

Forward! Sir Garry brandished his cane, linked his arm through the field-marshal's and led him to the back seat of Centaine's yellow Daimler.

The Daimler led the procession, followed by Blaine's Bentley and Tara blew Shasa a kiss as it passed. He stood on the front steps of Weltevreden and it was very quiet after they had all gone.

He turned back into the house and went upstairs to his own room, selected a batch of clean shirts, socks and underpants from his drawers and stuffed them into a grip.

On the way downstairs he turned aside, went into Centaine's study and picked up the telephone. One of the duty sergeants in the operations room at CID headquarters answered.

Hello, Sergeant. Have there been any messages for me? Hold on, sir, I'll have a look. He was back in a few seconds. Only one, sir, ten minutes ago. A woman wouldn't leave her name. Thank you, Sergeant, Shasa hung up quickly. He found that his hand was trembling and his breath had shortened.

A woman, wouldn't leave her name. It had to be her. Why hadn't she called him here? She had the number.

He stood over the phone, willing it to ring. Nothing happened. After five minutes he began to pace the floor moving restlessly between the wide french windows and the huge ormolu. Louis Quatorze desk, watching the silent telephone. He was undecided, should he go back to CID headquarters in case she called there again, but what if she came through here? Should he ring the sergeant, but that would block the line.

Come on! he pleaded. Come on! He glanced at his wristwatch, thirty-five minutes he had wasted in indecision.

I'll have to pack it up. Can't stand here all day., He went to the desk. He reached for the instrument, but before he could touch it, it rang. He hadn't been ready for it, the sound raked his nerves shrilly, and he snatched it up.

Squadron Leader Courtney, he spoke in Afrikaans. Is it you, Mevrou? I forgot the number, I had to go back to the house to fetch it, she said. Her voice was rough with exertion, she had been running.

I couldn't call before, there were people, my husband, she broke off. She had said too much.

That is all right. Don't worry, everything is all right., No, she said. It's terrible what they are going to do. It's just terrible. Do you want to tell me? They are going to kill the field-marshal The field-marshal? The Ou Baas, Field-Marshal Smuts. He could not speak for a moment, and then he rallied. Do you know when they plan to do it? Today. They will shoot him today. 'That's not possible, he did not want to believe it. The Ou Baas has gone up Table Mountain today. He's on a picnic with, Yes! Yes! The woman was sobbing. On the mountain.

White Sword is waiting for him on the mountain., Oh my God! Shasa whispered. He felt as though he were paralysed. His legs were filled with concrete and a great weight crushed his lungs so that for a moment he could not breathe.

You are a brave woman, he said. Thank you for what you have done. He dropped the telephone onto its cradle and snatched open the drawer of Centaine's desk. The gold-engraved Beretta pistols were in their presentation case. He lifted one of them out of its nest of green baize and checked the load.

There were six in the magazine and an extra magazine in a separate slot in the case. He thrust the pistol into his belt and the magazine into his pocket and turned for the door.

The pistol was useless at anything farther than point-blank range, but the hunting rifles were locked in the cabinet in the gunroom, the ammunition was kept separately, his key was in the jag, it would take precious minutes to fetch it, open the cabinet, unchain his 9.3 Marmlicher, find the ammunition, he could not afford the time. The picnic party had a start of nearly forty minutes on him. They might be halfway up the mountain by now. All the people he loved were there, and an assassin was waiting for them.

He sprinted down the steps and sprang into the open cockpit of the jag. She started with a roar; he spun her in a tight circle, gravel spraying from under the back tyres, and went down the long drive with the needle climbing quickly to the eighty mph notch. He went out through the Anreith gates, and into the narrow curves and dips as the road skirted the base of the mountain. More than once he nearly ran out of road as the jag snarled and screeched through the turns, but it was fully fifteen minutes before he snaked her in through the gates of Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens and at last pulled into the parking area behind the curator's office. The other vehicles were there, parked in a straggling line, the Daimler and the Bentley and Deneys Reitzs Packard, but the parking area was deserted.

He took one quick look up at the mountain that towered 2000 feet above him. He could make out the path as it climbed out of the forest and zigzagged up the gut of Skeleton Gorge, passing the pimple of Breakfast Rock on the skyline and then crossing the rim onto the tableland.

There was a line of moving specks on the pathway, just emerging from the forest. The Ou Baas and Grandpater were setting their usual furious pace, proving to each other how fit they were, and as he shaded his eyes he recognized Mater's yellow dress, and Tara's turquoise skirt, just tiny flecks of colour against the grey and green wall of the mountain. They were trailing far behind the leaders.

He began to run. He took the first easy slope at a trot, pacing himself. He reached the 300-metre contour path and paused beside the concrete signpost to draw a few long breaths. He surveyed the track ahead.

It went up very steeply from here, jigging through the forest, following the bank of the stream, a series of uneven rocky steps. He went at it fast, but his town shoes had thin leather soles and gave him little purchase. He was panting wildly and his shirt was soaked through with sweat as he came out of the forest. Still almost 1000 feet to the top, but he saw immediately that he had gained on the picnic party.

They were strung out down the pathway. The two figures leading were Grandpater and the Ou Baas, at this distance it was impossible to distinguish between them, but that was Blaine a few paces behind them. He would be hanging back so as not to force the older men to a pace beyond their strength. The rest of the party were in groups and singles, taking up half the slope, with the women far in the rear.

He drew a deep breath and shouted. The women paused and looked back down the slope.

Stop! he yelled with all his lung power. Stop! One of the women waved, it was probably Marty, then they began to climb again. They had not recognized him, nor had they understood the command to stop. They had taken him for another friendly hiker. He was wasting time, the leaders were just under the crest of the summit.

Shasa began to climb with all his strength, leaping over the uneven footing, forcing himself to ignore the burning of his lungs and the numbing exhaustion of his legs, driving himself upwards by sheer force of will.

Tara looked back when he was only ten feet below her.

Shasa! she cried, delighted but surprised. What are you doing - ? He brushed past her. Can't stop, he grunted, and went on up, passing Anna and then Mater.

What is it, Shasa? Later! There was no wind for words, his whole existence was in his agonized legs, and the sweat poured into his eye, blurring his vision.

He saw the leaders make the last short traverse before going over the top, and he stopped and tried to shout again.

it came out as an agonized wheeze, and as he watched Grandpater and the Ou Baas disappeared over the crest of the slope with Blaine only twenty paces behind them.

The shot was dulled by distance, but even so Shasa recognized the sharp distinctive crack of a Mauser.

From somewhere he found new strength and he flew at the slope, leaping from rock to rock. The single shot seemed to echo and re-echo through his head, and he heard somebody shouting, or perhaps it was only the wild sobbing of his breath and the thunder of his blood in his own eardrums.

Manfred De La Rey lay all that night in his hide. At sunrise he stood up and swung his arms, squatted and twisted to loosen his muscles and banish the chill that had soaked through the overcoat into his bones. He moved a few paces back and emptied his bladder.

Then he stripped off the overcoat and the jersey,, both had been bought from a second-hand clothes dealer on the Parade. They were unmarked and could never be traced to him. He bundled them and stuffed them under a rock. Then he settled back in his hide, stretched out on the tarpaulin.

A few blades of grass were obscuring his line of fire and he broke them off and aimed at the head of the path.

His aim was clear and uninterrupted. He worked a cartridge from the magazine into the breech of the Mauser, checking it visually as it slid home, and he locked the bolt down.

Once more he took his aim, and this time he curled his finger round the rear trigger and carefully set the hair trigger with that crisp satisfying little click. Then he pushed the safety-catch over with his thumb and laid the rifle on the tarpaulin in front of him.

He froze into immobility. Patient as a leopard in a tree above a water-hole, only his yellow eyes alive, he let the hours drift by, never for an instant relaxing his vigil.

When it happened, it happened with the abruptness that might have taken another watcher by surprise. There was no warning, no sound of footsteps or voices. The range was too long for that. Suddenly a human figure appeared on the head of the path, silhouetted against the blue of the sky.

Manfred was ready for it. He lifted the rifle to his shoulder with a single fluid movement and his eye went naturally to the aperture of the lens. He did not have to pan the telescopic sight, the image of the man appeared instantly in his field of vision, enlarged and crisply focused.

It was an old man, with thin and narrow shoulders, wearing an open-neck white shirt and a Panama hat that was yellow with age. His silver goatee beard sparkled in the bright spring sunshine. The unwavering cross hairs of the telescope were already perfectly aligned on the exact centre of his narrow chest, a hand's breadth below the vee of his open shirt. No fancy head shot, Manfred had decided, take him through the heart.

He touched the hair trigger and the Mauser clapped in his eardrums, and the butt drove back into his shoulder.

He saw the bullet strike. It flapped the loose white shirt against the skinny old chest and Manfred's vision was so heightened that he even saw the bullet exit. It flew out of the old man's back on a long pink tail of blood and living tissue like a flamingo's feather, and as the frail body was plucked out of sight into the grass, the cloud of blood persisted, hanging in the clear morning air for the thousandth part of a second before it settled.

Manfred rolled to his feet and started to run. He had plotted every yard of his escape route to the Morris, and a savage elation gave strength to his legs and speed to his feet.

Behind him somebody shouted, a plaintive bewildered sound, but Manfred did not check or look back.

Shasa came over the crest at a full run. The two men were

kneeling beside the body that lay in the grass at the side of the track. They looked up at Shasa, both their faces stricken.

Shasa took one look at the body as it lay face down. The bullet must have been a dum-durn to inflict such a massive exit wound. It had carved a hole through the chest cavity into which he could have thrust both his fists.

There was no hope. He was dead. He hardened himself.

There would be time for grief later. Now was the time for vengeance.

Did you see who did it? he gasped.

Yes. Blaine jumped to his feet. I got a glimpse of him.

He cut back around Oudekraal Kop, he said, dressed in blue. Shasa knew this side of the mountain intimately, every path and cliff, every gorge and gully between Constantia Nek and the Saddle.

The killer had turned around the foot of the kop, he had a start of less than two minutes.

The bridle path, Shasa gasped He is heading for the bridle path.

I'll try and cut him off at the top of Nursery Ravine. He started to run again, back towards Breakfast Rock.

Shasa, be careful Blaine yelled after him. He has the rifle with him, I saw it. The bridle path was the only way a vehicle could reach the tableland, Shasa reasoned as he ran, and this had been so carefully planned that the killer must have an escape vehicle. it had to be parked somewhere on the bridle path.

The footpath made a wide loop around Oudekraal Kop, then came back to the edge and ran along the cliff top past the head of Nursery Ravine until it intersected the bridle path half a mile farther on. There was another rough, littleused path that cut this side of the Kop, along the cliff top.

The beginning was difficult to find and a mistake would lead into a dead end against the precipice, but if he found it he could cut a quarter of a mile off the route.

He found the path and turned off onto it. At two places the track was overgrown and he had to struggle through interlaced branches, at anot. at a spot at the edge the track had washed away. He had to back up and take a run at it, jumping over the gap with five hundred feet of open drop below him. He landed on his knees, clawed himself to his feet and kept running.

He burst out unexpectedly into the main footpath and collided at full tilt with the blue-overalled killer coming in the opposite direction.

He had a fleeting impression of the man's size and the breadth of his shoulders, and then they were down together, locked chest to chest, grappling savagely, rolling down the slope of the path. The impact had knocked the rifle out of the killer's hand, but Shasa felt the springy hardness and the bulk of his muscle, and the first evidence of the man's strength shocked him. He knew instantly that he was out-matched. Against his fiercest resistance the man rolled him onto his back and came up on top of him, straddling him.

Their faces were inches apart. The man had a thick dark curling beard that was sodden with sweat, his nose was twisted and his brows were dense and black, but it was the eyes that struck terror into Shasa. They were yellow and somehow dreadfully familiar. However, they galvanized Shasa, transforming his terror into superhuman strength.

He wrenched one arm free and rolled the killer over far enough to yank the Beretta pistol from his own belt. He had not loaded a cartridge into the chamber, but he struck upwards with the short barrel, smashing it into the man's temple, and he heard the steel crack on the bone of the skull.

The man's grip slackened and he fell back. Shasa wriggled to his knees, fumbling to load the Beretta. With a metallic snicker the slide pushed a cartridge into the chamber, and he lifted the barrel. He had not realized how close they had rolled to the clifftop. He was kneeling on the very brink, and as he tried to steady his aim on that bearded head, the killer jack-knifed his body and drove both feet into Shasa's chest.

Shasa was hurled backwards. The pistol fired but the shot

went straight into the air, and he found himself falling free as he went over the edge of the cliff. He had a glimpse down the precipice; there was open drop for hundreds of feet, but he fell less than ten of those before he wedged behind a pine sapling that had found a foothold in a cleft of the rock.

He hung against the cliff face, his legs dangling free, winded and dazed, and he looked up. The killer's head appeared over the edge of the cliff, those strange yellow eyes glared at him for an instant and then disappeared. Shasa heard his boots scrabble on the pathway, and then the unmistakable sound of a rifle bolt being loaded and cocked.

He is going to finish me off, he thought, and only then realized that he still had the Beretta in his right hand.

Desperately he hooked his left elbow over the pine sapling and pointed the Beretta up at the rim of the cliff above his head.

Once more the killer's head and shoulders appeared against the sky, and he was swinging the long barrel of the Mauser downwards; but the weapon was awkward to point at this angle and Shasa fired an instant before it could bear.

He heard the light bullet of the pistol strike against flesh, and the killer grunted and disappeared from view. A moment afterwards he heard someone else shout from a distance, and recognized Blaine's voim Then the killer's running footsteps moved swiftly away as he set off along the path once more, and a minute later Blaine looked down at Shasa from the clifftop.

Hold on! Blaine's face was flushed with exertion and his voice unsteady. He pulled the thick leather belt from his trouser top and buckled it into a loop.

Lying flat on his belly at the top of the cliff, he lowered the looped belt and Shasa hooked his arm through it. Even though Blaine was a powerful man with abnormal arm and chest development from polo practice, they struggled for minutes before he could drag Shasa over the top of the cliff.

They lay together for a few moments; and then Shasa pulled himself unsteadily to his feet and staggered off along the pathway in pursuit of the fugitive. Within a dozen paces Blaine pulled ahead of him, running strongly and his example spurred Shasa. He kept up, and Blaine gasped over his shoulder.

Blood! He pointed to the wet red speckles on a flat stone in the pathway. You hit him" They came out onto the wide bridle path, and started down, running shoulder to shoulder now, helped by the gradient of the descent, but they had not reached the first hairpin bend when they heard an engine start in the forest below.

He's got a car! Blaine panted as the engine whined into a crescendo, then the sound of it receded swiftly. They pulled up and listened to it dwindle into silence. Shasa's legs could hold him up no longer. He sank into a heap in the middle of the road.

There was a telephone at the Cecilia Forestry Station and Shasa got through to Inspector Nel at CID headquarters and gave him a description of the killer.

You'll have to move fast. The man has obviously got his escape planned. The mountain club kept a lightweight stretcher at the forestry station, for this mountain took many human lives each year. The forester gave them six of his black labourers to Carry it, and accompanied them back up the bridle path and along the mountain rim to the head of Skeleton Gorge.

The women were there. Centaine and Anna were in tears, clinging to each other for comfort. They had spread one of the rugs over the dead man.

Shasa knelt beside the body and lifted the corner of the rug. In death Sir Garry Courtney's features had fallen in, so that his nose was arched and beaky, his closed eyelids were in deep cavities, but there was about him a gentle dignity so that he resembled the death mask of a fragile Caesar.

Shasa kissed his forehead and the skin was cool and velvety smooth against his lips.

When he stood up, Field-Marshal Smuts laid a hand of comfort on his shoulder. I'm sorry, my boy, the old fieldMarshal said. That bullet was meant for me., Manfred De La Rey pulled off the road, steering with one hand. He did not leave the driver's seat of the Morris, and he kept the engine running while he unbuttoned the front of his overalls.

The bullet had entered just below and in front of his armpit, punching into the thick pad of the pectoral muscle and it had angled upwards. He could find no exit wound, the bullet was still lodged in his body, and when he groped gently around the back of his own shoulder, he found a swelling that was so tender that he almost screamed involuntarily as he touched it.

The bullet was lying just under the skin, it did not appear to have penetrated the chest cavity. He wadded his handkerchief over the wound in his armpit and buttoned the overalls. He checked his watch. It was a few minutes before eleven o'clock, just twenty-three minutes since he had fired the shot that would set his people free.

A sense of passionate soaring triumph overrode the pain of his wound. He pulled back onto the road and drove sedately around the base of the mountain, down the main road through Woodstock. At the gates of the railway yards he showed his pass to the gatekeeper and went through to park the Morris outside the restrooms for off-duty firemen and engine drivers.

He left the Mauser under the seat of the Morris. Both the weapon and the vehicle would be taken care of. He crossed quickly to the back door of the restroom and they were waiting for him inside.

Roelf leapt to his feet anxiously as he saw the blood on the blue overalls.

you all right? What happened? Smuts is dead, Manfred said, and his savage joy was transmitted to them. They did not cheer or speak, but stood quietly, savouring the moment on which history would hinge.

Roelf broke the silence after a few seconds. You are hurt. While one of the stormjagers went out and drove the

Morris away, Roelf helped Manfred strip off his soiled overalls.

There was very little blood now, but the flesh around the wound was swollen and bruised. The bullet-hole itself was a black puncture that wept watery pink lymph. Roelf dressed and bound it up with bandages from a railway firstaid kit.

Because Manfred had very little use of his left arm, Roelf lathered the black beard and shaved it off with a straight razor for him. With the beard gone Manfred was years younger, handsome and clean-cut once again, but pale from loss of blood and the weakness of his wound. They helped him into a clean pair of overalls and Roelf set the fireman's cap on his head.

We will meet again soon, Roelf told him. And I am proud to be your friend. From now on glory will follow you all the days of your life. The engine driver came forward. We must go, he said.

Roelf and Manfred shook hands and then Manfred turned away and followed the driver out of the restroom and down the platform to the waiting locomotive.

The police stopped the northbound goods train at Worcester Station. They opened and searched all the trucks and a constable climbed into the cab of the locomotive and searched that also.

What is the trouble? the engine driver demanded.

There has been a murder. Some bigwig was shot on Table Mountain this morning. We've got a description of the killer.

There are police roadblocks on all the roads and we are searching every motor vehicle and ship and train. Who was killed? Manfred asked, and the constable shrugged.

I don't know, my friend, but judging by the fuss it's somebody important. He climbed down from the cab, and a few minutes later the signals changed to green and they rolled out of the station heading north.

By the time they reached Bloemfontein, Manfred's shoulder had swollen into a hard purple hump and the pain was insupportable. He sat hunched in a corner of the cab, moamng softly, teetering on the brink of consciousness, the rustle of dark wings filling his head.

Roelf had telephoned ahead, and there were friends to meet him and smuggle him out of the Bloemfontein railway yards.

Where are we going? A doctor, they told him, and reality broke up into a patchwork of darkness and pain.

He was aware of the choking reek of chloroform, and when he woke he was in a bed in a sunny but monastically furnished room. The shoulder was bound up in crisp white bandages, and despite the lingering nausea of the anaesthetic, he felt whole again.

There was a man sitting in the chair beside the window, and as soon as he realized Manfred was awake, he came to him.

How do you feel? Not too bad. Has it happened, the rising? Have our people seized power? The man looked at him strangely. You do not know? he asked.

I only know that we have succeeded,, Manfred began, but the man fetched a newspaper and laid it on the bed. He stood beside Manfred as he read the headlines:

ASSASSINATION ON TABLE MOUNTAIN

OB BLAMED FOR KILLING OF PROMINENT HISTORIAN

SMUTS ORDERS ARREST AND INTERNMENT OF 600

Manfred stared uncomprehendingly at the news-sheet, and the man told him, You killed the wrong man. Smuts has the excuse he wanted. All our leaders have been seized, and they are searching for you. There is a man-hunt across the land.

You cannot stay here. We expect the police to be here at any minute. Manfred was passed on and he left the city riding in the back of a truck under a load of stinking dry hides. The Ossewa Brandwag had been decimated by the arrests, and those members remaining at liberty were shaken and afraid, all of them running for cover. None of them wanted to take the risk of harbouring the fugitive. He was passed on again and again.

The plan had seen no further ahead than the assassination and successful revolt, after which Manfred would have emerged as a Volk hero and taken his rightful place in the councils of the republican government. Now it was run and hide, sick and weak, a price of five thousand pounds on his head. Nobody wanted him; he was a dangerous risk and they passed him on as quickly as they could find someone else to take him.

in the published lists of those arrested and interned in the government crackdown, he found many names he knew, and with dismay he read Roeffs name, and that of the Reverend Tromp Bierman amongst them. He wondered how Sarah, Aunt Trudi and the girls would fare now, but he found it difficult to think or concentrate, for despair had unmanned him, and he knew the terror of a hunted and wounded animal.

it took eight days to make the journey to Johannesburg.

He had not deliberately set out for the Witwatersrand, but circumstances and the whim of his helpers led him that way. By rail and truck and, later, when the wound began to heal and his strength returned, at night and on foot across the open veld, he at last reached the city.

He had an address, his last contact with the brotherhood and he took the tramcar from the main railway station along the Braamfontein ridge and watched the street numbers as they passed.

The number he needed was 36. It was one in a row of semi-detached cottages, and he started to rise to leave the tramcar at the next stop.

Then he saw the blue police uniform in the doorway of number 36 and he sank down in his seat again and rode the tramcar to its terminus.

He left it there and went into a Greek cafe across the road.

He ordered a cup of coffee, paying for it with his last few coins, and sipped it slowly, hunched over the cup, trying to think.

He had avoided a dozen police roadblocks and searches in these last eight days, but he sensed that he had exhausted his luck. There was no hiding-place open to him any longer.

The road led from here on to the gallows.

He stared out of the greasy plate-glass window of the cafe

and the street sign across the road caught his eye. Something stirred in his memory, but it eluded his first efforts to grasp it. Then suddenly he felt the lift of his spirits and another weak glimmer of hope.

He left the cafe and followed the road whose name he had recognized. The area deteriorated quickly into a slum of shanties and hovels and he saw no more white faces on the rutted unmade street. The black faces at the windows or in the reeking alleyways watched him impassively across that unfathomable void which separates the races in Africa.

He found what he was looking for. It was a small general dealer's store crowded with black shoppers, noisy and laughing, the women with their babies strapped upon their backs, bargaining across the counter for sugar and soap, paraffin and salt, but the hubbub descended into silence when a white man entered the shop, and they gave way for him respectfully, not looking directly at him.

The proprietor was an elderly Zulu with a fluffy beard of white wool, dressed in a baggy Western-style suit. He left the black woman he was serving and came to Manfred, inclining his head deferentially to listen to Manfred's request.

Come with me, Nkosi. He led Manfred through to the storeroom at the back of the shop.

You will have to wait, he said, perhaps a long time, and he left him there.

Manfred slumped down on a pile of sugar sacks. He was hungry and exhausted and the shoulder was starting to throb again. He fell asleep and was roused by a hand on his shoulder and a deep voice in his ear.

How did you know where to look for me? Manfred struggled to his feet. My father told me where to find you, he answered. Hello, Swart Hendrick It has been many years, little Manie. The big Ovambo grinned at him through the black gap of missing teeth; his head, laced with scars, was black and shiny as a cannonball.

Many years, but I never doubted we would meet again.

Never once in all those years. The gods of the wilderness have bound us together, little Manie. I knew you would come. The two men sat alone in the back room of Swart Hendrick's house. it was one of the few brick-built dwellings in the shanty town of Drake's Farm. However, the bricks were unbaked and the building was not so ostentatious as to stand out from the hovels that crowded close around it. Swart Hendrick had long ago learned not to draw the attention of the white police to his wealth.

In the front room the women were cooking and working, while the children bawled or shouted with laughter round their feet. As befitted his station in life, Swart Hendrick had six town wives who lived together in an amiable symbiotic relationship. The possessive jealousy of monogamistic western women was totally alien to them. Senior wives took a major part in the selection of the junior wives and gained considerable prestige from their multiplicity, nor did they resent the maintenance sent to the country wives and their offspring or their spouse's periodic visits to the country kraal to add to the number of those offspring. They considered themselves all part of one family. When the children from the country were old enough to be sent into the city for the furtherance of their education and fortune, they found themselves with many fostermothers and could expect the same love and discipline as they had received in the kraal.

The smaller children had the run of the house and one of them crawled mother-naked into Swart Hendrick's lap as he sat on his carved stool the sign of rank of a tribal chieftain.

Although he was deep in discussion with Manfred, he fondled the little one casually, as he would a favourite puppy, and when the beer pot was empty, he clapped his hands and one of the junior wives, the pretty moon-faced Zulu or the nubile Basuto with breasts as round and hard as ostrich eggs would bring in a new pot and kneel before Hendrick to present it to him.

So, little Manie, we have spoken of everything, and said all that is to be said, and we come back to the same problem. Swart Hendrick lifted the beer pot and swallowed a mouthful of the thick white bubbling gruel. He smacked his lips, then wiped the half moon of beer from his upper lipwith the back of his forearm and handed the pot across to Manfred.

That problem is this. At every railway station and on every road the white police are searching for you. They have even offered a price for you, and what a price, little Manie. They will give five thousand pounds for you. How many cattle and women could a man buy with that amount of money? He broke off to consider the question and shook his head in wonder at the answer. You ask me to help you to leave Johannesburg and to cross the great river in the north. What would the white police do if they caught me? Would they hang me on the same tree as they hang you, or would they only send me to break rocks in the prison of Ou Baas Smuts and King Georgy? Swart Hendrick sighed theatrically. It is a heavy question, little Manie. Can you give me an answer? You have been as a father to me, Hennie, Manfred said quietly. Does a father leave his son for the hyena and the vultures? 'if I am your father, little Manie, why then is your face white and mine black? Hendrick smiled. There are no debts between us, they were all paid long ago. My father and you were brothers. How many summers have burned since those days, Hendrick mourned the passage of time with a sorrowful shake of his head. And how the world and all those in it have changed. There is one thing that never changes, not even over the years, Hennie. What is that, oh child with a white face who claims my paternity? A diamond, my black father. A diamond never changes., Hendrick nodded. Let us speak then of a diamond. Not one diamond, Manfred said. Many diamonds, a bagful of diamonds that lie in a faraway place that only you and I know of. The risks are great, Hendrick told his brother. And doubt lurks in my mind like a man-eating lion lying in thick bush.

Perhaps the diamonds are where the white boy says they are, but the lion of doubt still waits for me. The father was a devious man, hard and without mercy, I sense that the son has grown to be like the father. He speaks of friendship between us, but I no longer feel the warmth in him., Moses Gama stared into the fire; his eyes were dark and inscrutable. He tried to kill Smuts, he mused aloud. He is of the hard Boers like those of old, the ones that slaughtered our people at Blood river and shattered the power of the great chiefs. They have been defeated this time, as they were in 1914, but they have not been destroyed. They will rise to fight again, these hard Boers, when this white men's war across the sea ends, they will call out their impis and carry the battle to Smuts and his party once again. It is the way of the white man, and I have studied his history, that when peace comes, they often reject those who fought hardest during the battle. I sense that in the next conflict the whites will reject Smuts and that the hard Boers will triumph, and this white boy is one of them., You are right, my brother, Hendrick nodded. I had not looked that far into the future. He is the enemy of our people. If he and his kind come to power then we will learn a bitter lesson in slavery. I must deliver him to the vengeance of those who seek after him. Moses Gama raised his noble head and looked across the fire at his elder brother.

It is the weakness of the multitudes that they cannot see the horizon, their gaze is fixed only as far ahead as their bellies or their genitals, Moses said. You have admitted to that weakness, why, my brother, do you not seek to rise above it? Why do you not raise your eyes and look to the future? I do not understand!

The greatest danger to our people is their own patience and passivity. We are a great herd of cattle under the hand of a cunning herdsman. He keeps us quiescent with a paternal despotism, and most of us, knowing no better, are lulled into an acceptance which we mistake for contentment. Yet the herdsman milks us and at his pleasure eats of our flesh.

He is our enemy, for the slavery in which he holds us is so insidious that it's impossible to goad the herd to rebel against it. 'If he is our enemy, what of these others that you call the hard Boers? Hendrick was perplexed. Are they not a fiercer ?

enemy Upon them will depend the ultimate freedom of our people. They are men without subtlety and artifice. Not for them the smile and kind word that disguises the brutal act.

They are angry men filled with fear and hatred. They hate the Indians and the Jews, they hate the English, but most of all they hate and fear the black tribes, for we are many and they are few. They hate and fear us because they have what is rightly ours, and they will not be able to conceal their hatred. When they come to power, they will teach our people the true meaning of slavery. By their oppressions, they will transform the tribes from a herd of complacent cattle into a great stampede of enraged wild buffalo before whose strength nothing can stand. We must pray for this white boy of yours and all he stands for. The future of our people depends upon him. Hendrick sat for a long time staring into the fire, and then slowly raised his great bald head and looked at his brother with awe.

I sometimes think, son of my father, that you are the wisest man of all our tribe, he whispered.

Swart Hendrick sent for a sangoma, a tribal medicine man.

He made a poultice for Manfred's shoulder that when applied, hot and evil-smelling, proved highly efficacious and within ten days Manfred was fit to travel again.

The same sangoma provided a herbal dye for Manfred's skin which darkened it to the exact hue of one of the northern tribes. The eyes, Manfred's yellow eyes, were not a serious handicap. Amongst the black mine workers who had worked out their Wenela contract and were returning home, there were certain symbols which confirmed their status as sophisticated men of the world, tin trunks to hold the treasures they had acquired, the pink post office savings books filled with the little numbers of their accumulated wealth, the silver metal mine helmets which they were allowed to retain and which would be worn with pride everywhere from the peaks of Basutoland to the equatorial forests, and lastly a pair of sunglasses.

Manfred's travel papers were issued by one of Hendrick's Buffaloes, a clerk in the pay office of ERPM, and they were totally authentic. He wore his dark sunglasses when he boarded the Wenela train and his skin was dyed the same hue as the black workers who surrounded him closely. All these men were Hendrick's Buffaloes, and they kept him protected in their midst.

He found it strange but reassuring that the few white officials that he encountered on the long slow journey back to South West Africa, seldom looked at him directly. Because he was black, their gaze seemed to slide by his face without touching it.

Manfred and Hendrick left the train at Okahandja and with a group of other workers climbed onto the bus for the final hot dusty miles to Hendrick's kraal. Two days later they set out again, this time on foot, heading north and east into the burning wilderness.

There had been good rains during the previous season and they found water in many of the pans in the southern Kavango and it was two weeks before they saw the kopjes humped like a caravan of camels out of the blue heat haze along the desert horizon.

Manfred realized as they tramped towards the hills how alien he was in this desert. Hendrick and his father had belonged here, but since childhood Manfred had lived in towns and cities. He would never have been able to find his way back without Hendrick's guidance; indeed he would not have survived more than a few days in this harsh and unforgiving land without the big Ovambo.

The kopje that Hendrick led Manfred towards seemed identical to all the others. It was only when they scaled the steep granite side and stood upon the summit, that the memories came crowding back. Perhaps they had been deliberately suppressed, but now they emerged again in stark detail. Manfred could almost see his father's features ravaged by fever and smell again the stench of gangrene from his rotting flesh. He remembered with fresh agony the harsh words of rejection with which his father had driven him to safety, but he closed his mind to the ache of them.

Unerringly he went to the crack that split the granite dome and knelt over it, but his heart sank when he peered down and could distinguish nothing in the deep shadows that contrasted with the sunlight and its reflection from the rock around him.

,so they have gone, these famous diamonds, Hendrick chuckled cynically when he saw Manfred's dismay. Perhaps the jackals have eaten them. Manfred ignored him and from his pack brought out a roll of fishing-line. He tied the lead sinker and the stout treble fish hook to the end and lowered it into the crack, Patiently he worked, jigging the hook along the depth of the crack while Hendrick squatted in the small strip of shade under the summit boulders and watched him without offering encouragement.

The hook snagged something deep in the crack, and cautiously Manfred applied pressure on the line. It held and he took a twist around his wrist and pulled upwards with gradually increasing strength.

Something gave, and then the hook pulled free. He drew the line in hand over hand. One point of the treble hook had opened under the strain, but there was a shred of rotted canvas still attached to the barb.

He bent the tine of the hook back into shape and lowered it once again into the crack. He plumbed the depths, working each inch from side to side and up and down. Another half hour of work and he felt the hook snag again.

This time the weight stayed on it, and he eased the line in, an inch at a time. He heard something scraping on the rough granite, then slowly a shapeless lumpy bundle came into view deep down. He lifted it slowly, holding his breath as it came up the last few feet. Then as he swung it clear, the canvas of the old rucksack burst open and a cascade of glittering white stones spilled onto the granite top around him.

They divided the diamonds into two equal piles as they had agreed, and drew lots for the first choice. Hendrick won and made his selection. Manfred poured his share into the empty tobacco pouch he had brought for the purpose.

You told the truth, little Manie, Hendrick admitted. I was wrong to doubt you. The following evening they reached the river and slept side by side beside the fire. in the morning they rolled their blankets and faced each other.

Goodbye, Hennie. Perhaps the road will bring us together again. 'I have told you, little Manie, that the gods of the wilderness have linked us together. We will meet again, that I am certain of. I look forward to that day. The gods alone will decide whether we meet again as father and son, as brothers, or as deadly enemies, Hendrick said and slung his pack over his shoulder. Without looking back he walked away into the southern desert.

Manfred watched him out of sight, then he turned and followed the bank of the river into the north-west. That evening he came upon a village of the river people. Two of the young men in their dugout canoe ferried him across to the Portuguese side. Three weeks later Manfred reached Luanda, capital of the Portuguese colony, and rang the bell on the wrought-iron gates of the German consulate.

He waited in Luanda three weeks for orders from the German Abwehr in Berlin, and slowly it dawned upon him that the delay was deliberate.

He had failed in the task they had set him, and in Nazi Germany failure was unforgivable.

He sold one of the smallest diamonds from his hoard at a fraction of its real value and waited out his punishment.

Each morning he called at the German consulate and the military attached turned him away with barely concealed contempt.

No orders yet, Herr De La Rey. You must be patient. Manfred spent most of his days in one of the water-front cafes and his nights in his cheap lodgings, endlessly going over each detail of his failure, or thinking about Uncle Tromp and Roelf in the concentration camp, or about Heidi and the child in Berlin.

His orders came at last. He was issued a German diplomatic passport and he sailed on a Portuguese freighter as far as the Canary islands. From there he flew on a civilian Junkers aircraft with Spanish markings to Lisbon.

In Lisbon he encountered the same deliberate contempt.

He was dismissed casually to find his own lodgings and await those orders which seemed never to come. He wrote personal letters to Colonel Sigmund Boldt and to Heidi.

Although the consulate attache assured him that these had gone out in the diplomatic bag to Berlin, he received no reply.

He sold another small diamond and rented pleasant spacious; lodgings in an old building on the bank of the Tagus river, passing the long idle days in reading, study and writing.

He began work on two literary projects simultaneously, a political history of southern Africa and an autobiography, both for his own edification and with no intention of ever publishing. He learned Portuguese, taking lessons from a retired schoohnaster who lived in the same building. He kept up a rigorous physical training schedule, as though he were still boxing professionally, and he came to know all the secondhand book stores of the city where he purchased every law book he could find and read them in German, English and Portuguese. But still the time hung heavily on his hands and he chafed at his inability to take part in the conflict that raged around the globe.

The conflict swung against the Axis powers. The United States of America had entered the war and Flying Fortresses were bombing the cities of Germany. Manfred read of the terrible conflagration that had destroyed Cologne and he wrote again to Heidi for perhaps the hundredth time since he had arrived in Portugal.

Three weeks later, on one of his regular calls at the German consulate, the military attache handed him an envelope and with a surge of joy he recognized Heidi's handwriting upon it. It told him that she had received none of his previous letters and had come to believe that he was dead. She expressed her wonder and thankfulness at his survival and sent him a snapshot of herself and little Lothar. In the photograph he saw that she had put on a little weight, but in a stately manner she was even more handsome than when last he had seen her, and in a little over three years his son had grown into a sturdy youngster with a head of blond curls and features that showed promise of strength as well as beauty. The photograph was black and white and did not show the colour of his eyes. Manfred's longing for them both threatened to consume him. He wrote Heidi a long passionate letter explaining his circumstances and urging her to make all possible efforts to procure a travel pass and to join him with the child in Lisbon. Without being specific, he was able to let her know that he was financially able to

take care of them, and that he had plans for a future that included them both.

Heidi De La Rey lay awake and listened to the bombers.

They had come on three successive nights. The centre of the city was devastated, the opera house and the railway station totally destroyed, and from the information which she had access to in the Department of Propaganda, she knew of the Allied successes in France and Russia, she knew the truth of the hundred thousand German troops captured by the Russians at Minsk.

Beside her Colonel Sigmund Boldt slept restlessly, rolling over and grunting so she was even more disturbed by him than by the distant American bombers. He had reason to worry, she thought. All of them were worried since the abortive attempt to assassinate the Fuhrer. She had seen the films of the execution of the traitors, every minute detail of their agony as they hung on the meat hooks, and General Zoller had been one of them.

Sigmund Boldt had not been one of the conspirators, she was certain of that, but he was close enough to the plot to be caught up in the tidal wave that flowed from it. Heidi had been his mistress for almost a year now, but she had begun to notice the first signs of his waning interest in her, and she knew that his days of influence and power were numbered. Soon she would be alone again, without special food rations for herself and little Lothar.

She listened to the bombers. The raid was over, and the sound of their motors dwindled away to a mosquito hum, but they would be back. In the silence after their departure, she thought about Manfred and the letters he had written to which she had never replied. He was in Lisbon, and in Portugal there were no bombers.

She spoke to Sigmund the next day at breakfast. It is only little Lothar I am thinking of, she explained, and she thought she saw a glimmer of relief in his expression. Perhaps he had already been calculating how he could be rid of her without a fuss. That afternoon she wrote to Manfred, care of the German consulate in Lisbon, and she enclosed a photograph of herself and Lothar.

Colonel Sigmund Boldt moved quickly. He still had influence and power in the department sufficient for him to procure her travel pass and documents within a week, and he drove her out to Tempelhof airport in the black Mercedes and kissed her goodbye at the foot of the boarding ladder of the Junkers transport aircraft.

Three days later Sigmund Boldt was arrested in his home at Granewald and a week later he died under interrogation in his cell at the Gestapo headquarters, still protesting his innocence.

Little Lothar De La Rey caught his first glimpse of Africa peering between the rails of the Portuguese freighter as it steamed into Table Bay. He stood between his father and mother, holding their hands and chuckling with delight at the steam tugs that came bustling out to welcome their ship.

The war had ended two years ago, but Manfred had taken extraordinary precautions before bringing his family to Africa. First he had written to Uncle Tromp who had been released from internment at the end of the war, and from him learned all the family and political news. Aunt Trudi was well and both the girls were married now. Roelf had been released at the same time as Uncle Tromp and had returned to his job at the university. He and Sarah were happy and well and expecting another addition to their family before the year's end.

Politically the news was promising. Although the Ossewa Brandwag and the other paramilitary organizations had been discredited and disbanded, their members had been absorbed into the National Party under Dr Daniel Malan, and the Party was rejuvenated and strengthened by their numbers. Afrikaner unity had never been more solid, and the dedication of the massive Voortrekker monument on a kopje above Pretoria had rallied the Volk so that even many of those who had joined Smuts army and fought in North Africa and Italy were flocking to the cause.

A backlash was developing against Smuts and his United Party. The feeling was that he placed the interests of the British Commonwealth, which he had done so much to bring into being, before the interests of South Africa.

Furthermore, Smuts had made a political misjudgement by inviting the British Royal Family to visit the country, and their presence had served to polarize public feelings between the English-speaking jingoists and the Afrikaners.

Even many of those who had been Smuts men were offended by the visit.

Doctor Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd who had left his teaching post at Stellenbosch University to become editor of Die Vaderland allowed only one reference to the royal visit in his newspaper. He warned his readers that there might be some disruption of traffic in Johannesburg owing to the presence of foreign visitors in the city.

On the occasion of the loyal address at the opening of the South African Parliament, Dr Daniel Malan and all his Nationalist members had absented themselves from the House in protest.

Uncle Tromp ended his letter, So we have come through the storm strengthened and purified as a Volk, and more determined than ever in our endeavours. There are great days ahead, Manie. Come home. We need men like you. Still Manfred did not move immediately. First he wrote to Uncle Tromp again. In veiled terms he asked what the position was with regard to a white sword he had left behind, and after a delay he received assurance that nobody knew anything about his sword. Discreet enquiries through friends in the police force had elicited the information that although the dossier on the missing sword was still open, it was no longer under active investigation and nobody knew its whereabouts or to whom it belonged. It must be assumed that it would never be found.

Leaving Heidi and the boy in Lisbon, Manfred travelled by train to Zihich where he sold the remainder of the diamonds. In the post-war euphoria prices were high, and he was able to deposit almost 1,200,000 in a numbered account with Credit Suisse.

When they reached Cape Town the family went ashore without attracting attention, although as an Olympic gold medallist Manfred could have found himself the centre of a great deal of publicity if he had wished. Quietly he felt his way, visiting old friends, former OB members and political allies, making certain that there were no nasty surprises in store for him before he gave his first interview to the Burger newspaper. To them he explained how he had passed the war in neutral Portugal because he had declined to fight for either side, but now he had returned to the land of his birth to make whatever contribution he could to political progress towards what was every Afrikaner's dream, a Republic of South Africa, free from the dictates of any foreign power.

He had said all the right things, and he was an Olympic gold medallist in a land where athletic prowess was venerated. He was handsome and clever and devout, with an attractive wife and son. He still had friends in high places and the number of those friends was increasing each day.

He purchased a partnership in a prosperous Stellenbosch law firm. The senior partner was an attorney named Van Schoor, very active in politics and a luminary of the Nationalist Party. He sponsored Manfred's entry into the Party.

Manfred devoted himself to the affairs of Van Schoor and De La Rey and just as single-mindedly to those of the Cape Nationalist Party. He showed great skills as an organizer and as a fund-raiser, and by the end of 1947 he was a member of the Broederbond.

The Broederbond, or brotherhood, was another secret society of Afrikaners. It had not replaced the defunct ossewa Brandwag, but had existed concurrently, and often in competition with it. Unlike the OB it was not flamboyant and overtly militant, there were no uniforms or torchlit rallies.

It worked quietly in small groups in the homes and offices of powerful and influential men for membership was only bestowed upon the brightest and the best. It considered its members to be an elite of super-Afrikaners, whose end object was the formation of an Afrikaner Republic. Like the disbanded OB, the secrecy surrounding it was iron-clad. Unlike the OB, a member must be much more than merely a pureblooded Afrikaner. He must be a leader of men, or at the very least a potential leader, and an invitation to join the brotherhood held within it the promise of high political preference and favour in the future Republic.

Manfred's first rewards of membership came almost immediately, for when the campaign for the general election of 1948 opened, Manfred De La Rey was nominated as the official Nationalist candidate for the marginal seat of Hottentots Holland.

Two years previously, in a by-election, the seat had been won for Smuts United Party by a young war-hero from a rich English-speaking Cape family. As the incumbent, Shasa Courtney had been nominated by the United Party as their candidate to contest the general election.

Manfred De La Rey had been offered a safer seat but he had deliberately chosen Hottentots Holland. He wanted the opportunity to meet Shasa Courtney again. He recalled vividly their first meeting on the fish jetty at Walvis Bay. Since then their destinies seemed to have been inextricably bound together in a knot of Gordian complexity, and Manfred sensed that he had to face this adversary one more time and unravel that knot.

To prepare himself for the campaign as well as to satisfy his brooding enmity towards them, Manfred began an investigation of the Courtney family, in particular Shasa and his mother Mrs Centaine de Thiry Courtney. Almost immediately he found areas of mystery in the woman's past, and these grew deeper as his investigations continued. Finally he . was sufficiently encouraged to employ a Parisian firm of private investigators to examine in detail Centaine's family background and her origins.

On his regular monthly visit to his father in Pretoria Central Prison, he brought up the Courtney name and begged the frail old man to tell him everything he knew about them.

When the campaign opened, Manfred knew that his m'vestigations had given him an important advantage, and he threw himself into the rough and tumble of a South African election with gusto and determination.

Centaine de Thiry Courtney stood on the top of Table Mountain, a little apart from the rest of the party. Since Sir Garry's murder the mountain always saddened her, even when she looked at it from the windows of her study at Weltevreden.

This was the first time that she had been on the summit since that tragic day, and she was here only because she could not refuse Blaine's invitation to act as his official partner. And, of course, I am still enough of a snob to relish the idea of being introduced to the king and the queen of England! She was truthful with herself.

The Ou Baas was chatting to King George, pointing out the landmarks with his cane. He was wearing his old Panama hat and baggy slacks, and Centaine felt a pang at his resemblance to Sir Garry. She turned away.

Blaine was with the small group around the royal princesses. He was telling a story and Margaret Rose laughed delightedly. How pretty she is, Centaine thought. What a complexion, a royal English rose. The princess turned and said something to one of the other young men. Centaine had been introduced to him earlier; he was an airforce officer as Shasa was, a handsome fellow with a fine sensitive face, she thought, and then her female instincts were alerted as she caught the secret glance the couple exchanged. It was unmistakable, and Centaine felt that little lift of her spirits she always enjoyed when she saw two young people in love.

It was followed almost immediately by a return of her sombre mood.

Thinking of love and young lovers, she studied Blaine. He was unaware of her gaze, relaxed and charming, but there was silver in his hair, shining silver wings above those sticky-out ears she loved so well, and there were deep creases in his tanned face, around the eyes and at the corners of his mouth and his big aquiline nose. Still his body was hard and flat-bellied from riding and walking, but he was like the old lion, and with a further slide of her spirits she faced the fact that he was no longer in his prime. Instead he stood at the threshold of old age.

Oh, God, she thought, even I will be forty-eight years old in a few months, and she lifted her hand to touch her head. There was silver there also, but so artfully tinted that it seemed merely a bleaching of the African sun. There were other unpalatable truths that her mirror revealed to her in the privacy of her boudoir, before she hid them with the creams and powders and rouges.

How much more time is there, my darling? she asked sadly but silently. Yesterday we were young and immortal, but today I see at last that there is a term to all things. At that moment Blaine looked across at her, and she saw his quick concern as he noticed her expression. He murmured an apology to the others and came to her side.

Why so serious on such a lovely day? he smiled.

I was thinking how shameless you are, Blaine Malcomess, she answered, and his smile slipped.

What is it, Centaine? How can you blatantly parade your mistress before the crowned heads of Empire, she demanded. I have no doubt it is a capital crime, you could have your head struck off on Tower Green! He stared at her for a moment, and then the grin came back, boyish and jubilant. My dear lady, there must be some way I can escape that fate. What if I were to change your status, from scarlet mistress to demure wife? She giggled. She very seldom did that, but when she did, he found it irresistible. What an extraordinary time and place to receive a proposal of marriage, and an even more extraordinary time and place to accept one. What do you think their majesties would say if I were to kiss you here and now? He leaned towards her and she leapt back startled.

Crazy man, you just wait until I get you home, she threatened. He took her arm and they went to join the company.

Weltevreden is one of the loveliest homes in the Cape, Blaine agreed. But it doesn't belong to me, and I want to carry my bride over the threshold of my own home. We cannot live in Newlands House. Centaine did not have to say more, and for a moment Isabella's ghost passed between them like a dark shadow.

What about the cottage? He laughed to banish Isabella's memory. 'It's got a magnificent bed, what else do we need? We'll keep that, she agreed. And every now and then we will slip away to revisit it. 'Dirty weekends, good-oh! You are vulgar, do you know that? So where shall we live? We will find a place. Our own special place. It was five hundred acres of mountain, beach and rocky coastline with a profusion of protea plants and grand views across Hout Bay and out to the cold green Atlantic.

The house was a huge rambling Victorian mansion, built at the turn of the century by one of the old mining magnates from the Witwatersrand, and in desperate need of the attention that Centaine proceeded to lavish upon it. However, she kept the name Rhodes Hill. For her one of its chief attractions was that a mere twenty minutes in the Daimler took her over the Constantia Nek pass and down to the vineyards of Weltevreden.

Shasa had taken over the chairmanship of Courtney Mining and Finance at the war's end, although Centaine kept a seat on the board and never missed a meeting. Now Shasa and Tara moved into the great chateau of Weltevreden that she had vacated, but Centaine visited there every weekend and sometimes more often. It gave her a pang when Tara rearranged the furniture that she had left and relandscaped the front lawns and gardens, but with an effort she managed to hold her tongue.

often these days she thought of the old Bushman couple who had rescued her from the sea and the desert, and then she would sing softly the praise song that O'wa had composed for the infant Shasa: His arrows will fly to the stars and when men speak his name it will be heard as far And he will find good water, wherever he travels, he will find good water.

Although after all these years the clicks and tones of the San language tripped strangely on her tongue, she knew that the blessing of O'wa had borne fruit. That, and her own rigorous training had led Shasa to the good waters of life.

Gradually Shasa with the help of David Abrahams in Windhoek had instilled into the sprawling Courtney Mining and Finance Company a new spirit of youthful vigour and adventure. Although the old hands, Abe Abrahams and Twenty-man-Jones, grumbled and shook their heads and although Centaine was occasionally forced to side with them and veto Shasa's wilder more risky projects, the company regained direction and increased in stature. Each time that Centaine examined the books or took her seat below her son at the boardroom table, there was less to complain about and more cause for self-congratulation. Even Dr Twenty-man-Jones, that paragon of pessimists, had been heard to mutter, 'The boy has got a head on his shoulders. And then appalled at his own lapse, he had added morosely, Mind you, it will take a full day's work from all of us to keep it there. When Shasa had been nominated as the United Party candidate for the parliamentary by-election of Hottentots Holland and had snatched a close-fought victory from his Nationalist opponent, Centaine saw all her ambitions for hi-in becoming reality. He would almost certainly be offered something more important after the next general election, perhaps the job as deputy minister of mines and industry.

After that, a full seat in the cabinet, and beyond that? She let the idea of it send little thrills up her spine, but did not allow herself to dwell on it in case the thought brought illfortune on the actuality. Still it was possible. Her son was well favoured, even the eye-patch added to his individuality, he spoke amusingly and articulately, and he had the trick of making people listen and like him. He was rich and ambitious and clever, and he had herself and Tara behind him. It was possible and more than possible.

By some remarkable dialectic contortion Tara Malcomess Courtney had retained her social conscience intact while taking up the management of the Weltevreden household as though to the manner born.

it was typical that she retained her maiden name, and that she could rush from the elegant surroundings of Weltevreden to the slum clinics and feeding centres for the poor out on the Cape flats without missing a step, taking with her larger charitable donations than Shasa really liked to part with.

She threw herself into the duties of motherhood with equal abandon. Her first three efforts were all male, healthy and rumbustious. In order of seniority they were Sean, Garrick and Michael. With her fourth visit to the childbed she produced, with little effort and time wasted in labour, her masterpiece. This one Tara named after her own mother, Isabella and from the moment he first picked her up and she puked a little sour clotted milk on his shoulder, Shasa was totally besotted with her.

Up to this time it was Tara's spirit and intriguing individuality that had kept Shasa from growing bored and responding to the subtle and less than subtle invitations that were showered on him by circling female predators.

Centaine, fully aware that Shasa's veins were charged with hot de Thiry blood, agonized that Tara seemed oblivious of the danger and dismissed her veiled warnings with an offhand, Oh, Mater, Shasa isn't like that. Centaine knew that was exactly the way he was. Mon Dieu, he started at fourteen. But she relaxed after the other woman finally entered his life in the shape of Isabella de Thiry Malcomess Courtney. It would have been so easy for a fatal slip to spoil it all, to dash the sweet cup from her lips just as she was able to savour it to the full, but now at last Centaine was secure.

She sat under the oaks beside the polo practice grounds of Weltevreden, a guest on the estate she had built up and cherished, but an honoured guest and well content. The coloured nannies had charge of the babies, Michael just a year and a bit and Isabella still at the breast.

Sean was out in the middle of the field. He sat on the pommel of Shasa's saddle, shrieking with excitement and delight, as his father ran the pony at a full gallop down between the far goal posts, brought him up short in a swirl of dust, pivoted and came back in a crescendo of hoof beats.

Meanwhile Sean, secure in the circle of Shasa's left arm, urged him Faster! Faster, Papa! Go faster! On Centaine's knee Garrick bounced impatiently, Me! he yelled. Now me! Shasa. brought the pony in still at full gallop, then reined him down to a dead stop. He lifted Sean off the pommel against his best effort to stick like a bush tick. Garrick slipped off Centaine's lap and toddled to his father.

The, Daddy, my turn! Shasa leaned out of the saddle, swung the child up in front of him and they were off again at a gallop. It was a game of which they never tired; they had already exhausted two ponies since lunchtime.

There was the sound of a motor vehicle coming down from the chateau, and Centaine sprang to her feet involuntarily as she recognized the distinctive beat of the Bentley's engine.

Then she composed herself and went to meet Blaine with a little more dignity than her eagerness dictated, but as he stepped out of the vehicle she saw his expression and she quickened her step.

What is it, Blaine? she demanded as he kissed her cheek.

Is something wrong? No, of course not, he assured her. The Nationalists have announced their candidates for the Cape constituencies, that's all., Who have they put up against you? She was all attention now. Old Van Schoor again? No, my dear, new blood. Someone you have probably never heard of, Dawid Van Niekerk. 'Who have they nominated for Hottentots Holland? When he hesitated, she was immediately insistent. Who is it, Blaine? He took her arm and began to walk her slowly back to join the family at the tea-table under the oaks.

Life is a strange thing, he said.

Blaine Malcomess, I asked you for an answer, not a few gems of homespun philosophy. Who is it? I'm sorry my dear, he murmured regretfully. They have nominated Manfred De La Rey as their official party candidate. Centaine stopped dead, and she felt the blood drain from her face. Blaine tightened his grip on her arm to steady her as she swayed on her feet. Since the beginning of the war Centaine had heard or seen nothing of her second, unacknowledged, son.

Shasa began his campaign with an open meeting in the Boy Scouts hall of Somerset West.

He and Tara drove out the thirty miles from Cape Town to this beautiful little village which nestled at the foot of Sir Lowry's Pass beneath the rugged barrier of the Hottentots Holland mountains. Tara insisted that they take her old Packard. She never felt comfortable in Shasa's new Rolls.

How can you bear to drive around on four wheels that cost enough to clothe, educate and feed a hundred black children from the cradle to the grave? For once Shasa saw the practical wisdom of not flaunting his wealth in front of his constituents. Tara was really tremendous value for money, Shasa reflected. An aspiring politician could not ask for a better running mate, a mother of four lovely children, outspoken, holding strong opinions and possessing a natural shrewdness that anticipated the prejudices and fickle enthusiasm of the herd. She was also strikingly beautiful with all that smouldering auburn hair and a smile that could light up a dreary meeting, and despite four childbirths in almost as many years, her figure was still marvelous, small waist, good hips, only her bosom had burgeoned.

I'd back her in a showdown with Jane Russell, tit for tat she'd win by a length going away. Shasa chuckled aloud, and she looked across at him.

That's your dirty laugh, she accused. Don't tell me what you are thinking. Let me hear your speech instead. He rehearsed it for her, with appropriate gestures and she made an occasional suggestion on content and delivery. I would pause longer there, I and, look fierce and determined, or, I wouldn't make too much of that bit about the Empire.

Not really in fashion any more. Tara still drove furiously and the journey was soon over.

There were larger-than-life posters of Shasa pasted at the entrance and the hall was gratifyingly full. All the seats ken and there were even a dozen or so younger men were ta standing at the back - they looked like students, Shasa doubted they were old enough to vote.

The local United Party organizer, a Party rosette on his lapel, introduced Shasa as a man who needed no introduction and extolled the fine work he had done for the constituency during his previous short term of office.

Then Shasa rose, tall and debonair in a dark blue suit that was not too new or fashionably cut, but with a crisp white shirt, only spivs wore coloured shirts, and an airforce tie to remind them of his war record. The eye-patch further emphasized what he had sacrificed for his country and his smile was charming and sincere.

My friends he began, and got no further. He was drowned out by a pandemonium of stamping and chanting and jeering. Shasa tried to make a joke of it, pretending to conduct the orchestrated abuse, but his smile became steadily less sincere as the uproar showed no signs of abating, instead becoming louder and more vindictive as the minutes passed. Finally he began to deliver his address, bellowing it out to be heard above the din.

There were about three hundred of them, taking up the entire back half of the hall, and they made clear their allegiance to the Nationalist Party and its candidate, waving Party banners that depicted the powder horn insignia and holding up posters of Manfred De La Rey's gravely handsome portrait.

After the first fcw minutes a number of the elderly and middle-aged voters in the front of the hall, sensing the violence that was coming, helped their wives from their seats and scuttled out of the side entrance to a renewed outburst of jeers.

Suddenly Tara Courtney leapt to her feet beside Shasa.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew was apologetic.

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

Life and death? she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The eyes were her own, she recognized them immediately.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You have been very thorough, she said softly.

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

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

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

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

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

At noon the following day Andrew Duggan telephoned her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I just cannot believe it, Tara whispered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The End

The novels of Wilbur Smith

The Courtney Novels:

When the Lion Feeds

The Sound of Thunder

A Sparrow Falls

The Burning Shore

Power of the Sword

Rage

A Time to Die

The Ballantyne Novels:

A Falcon Flies

Men of Men

The Angels Weep

The Leopard Hunts in Darkness

Also:

The Dark of the Sun

Shout at the Devil

Gold Mine

The Diamond Hunters

The Sunbird

Eagle in the Sky

The Eye of the Tiger

Cry Wolf

Hungry as the Sea

Wild justice

Golden Fox

Elephant Song

River God

Power of the Sword

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

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