Rage

The young warriors of Umkhonto we Sizwe willingly acted as Moses' scouts in the weeks that followed. They arranged the meetings, the small clandestine gatherings of the most fierce and bloody-minded amongst their own ranks. After Moses had spoken to them, the smouldering resentments which they felt towards the conservative and pacific leadership of the Congress was ready to burst into open rebellion.

Moses sought out and talked with some of the older members of Congress who, despite their age, were radical and impatient. He met secretly with the cell leaders of his own Buffaloes without the knowledge of Hendrick Tabaka for he had sensed the change in his brother, the cooling of his political passions which had never boiled at the same white heat as Moses' own. For the first time in all the years he no longer trusted him entirely. Like an axe too long in use, Hendrick had lost the keen bright edge, and Moses knew that he must find another sharper weapon to replace him.

'The young ones must carry the battle forward,' he told Vicky Dinizulu. 'Raleigh, and yes, you also, Vicky. The struggle is passing into your hands." At each meeting he listened as long as he spoke, picking up the subtle shifts in the balance of power which had taken place in the years that he had been in foreign lands. It was only then that he realized how much ground he had lost, how far he had fallen behind Mandela in the councils of the African National Congress and the imagination of the people.

'It was a serious error on my part to go underground and leave the country,' he mused. 'If only I had stayed to take my place in the dock beside Mandela and the others --' 'The risk was too great,' Vicky made excuse for him. 'If there had been another judgement - if any of the Boer judges other than Rumpff had tried them, they might have gone to the gallows and if you had gone with them the cause would have died upon the rope with all' of you. You cannot die, my husband, for without you we are children without a father." Moses growled angrily. 'And yet, Mandela stood in the dock and made it a showcase for his own personality. Millions who had never heard his name before, saw his face daily in their newspapers and his words became part of the language." Moses shook his head. 'Simple words: Amandla and Ngawethu, he said, and everyone in the land listened." ' 'They know your name also, and your words, my lord." Moses glared at her. 'I do not want you to try to placate me, woman. We both know that while they were in prison during the trial - and I was in exile - they formally handed over the leadership to Mandela. Even old Luthuli gave his blessing, and since his acquittal Mandela has embarked on a new initiative. I know that he

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has been travelling around the country, in fifty different disguis consolidating that leadership. I must confront him, and wrest t leadership back from him very soon, or it will be too late and I be forgotten and left behind." 'What will you do, my lord? How will you unseat him? He riding high now - what can we do?" 'Mandela has a weakness - he is too soft, too placatory towar the Boers. I must exploit that eakness. He said it quietly, but the W was such a fierce light in his eyes that Victoria shivered involuntaril and then with an effort closed her mind against the dark images 1 words had conjured up.

'He is my husband,' she told herself, fervently. 'He is my lord, or whatever he says or does is the truth and the right." The confrontation took place in the kitchen at Puck's Hill. Outsic the sky was pregnant with leaden thunder clouds, dark as bruis that cast an unnatural gloom across the room and Marcus Arche switched on the electric lights that hung above the long table in thei pseudo-antique brass fittings.

The thunder crashed like artillery and rolled heavily back and fort] through the heavens. Outside the lightning flared in brilliant crackling white light and the rain poured from the eaves in a rippling silve curtain across the windows. They raised their voices against tumult uous nature so they were shouting at each other. They were the higt command of Umkhonto we Sizwe, twelve men in all, all of then black except Joe Cicero and Marcus Archer - but only two of theft counted, Moses Gama and Nelson Mandela. All the others wer silent, relegated to the role of observers, while these two, like dominant black-maned lions, battled for the leadership of the pride.

'If I accept what you prolose,' Nelson Mandela was standing, leaning forward with clenched fists on the table top, 'we will forfeit the sympathy of the world." 'You have already accepted the principle of armed revolt that I have urged upon you all these years." Moses leaned back in the wooden kitchen chair, balancing on its two back legs with his arms folded across his chest. 'You have resisted my call to battle, and instead you have wasted our strength in feeble demonstrations of defiance which the Boers crush down contemptuously." 'Our campaigns have united the people,' Mandela cried. He had grown a short dark beard since Moses had last seen him. It gave him the air of a true revolutionary, and Moses admitted to himself that Mandela was a fine-looking man, tall and strong and brimming with confidence, a formidable adversary.

'They have also given you a good look at the inside of the white man's gaol,' Moses told him contemptuously. 'The time for those childish games has passed. It is time to strike ferociously at the enemy's heart." 'You know we have agreed." Mandela was still standing. 'You know we have reluctantly agreed to the use of force --' Now Moses leapt to his feet so violently that his chair was flung crashing against the wall behind him.

'Reluctantly!" He leaned across the table until his eyes were inches from Mandela's dark eyes. 'Yes, you are as reluctant as an old woman and timid as a virgin. What kind of violence is this you propose - dynamiting a few telegraph poles, blowing up a telephone exchange?" Moses's tone was withering with scorn. 'Next you will blow up a public shit house and expect the Boers to come cringing to you for terms. You are naive, my friend, your eyes are full of stars and your head full of sunny dreams. These are hard men you are taking on and there is only one way you will get their attention.

Make them bleed and rub their noses in the blood." 'We will attack only inanimate targets,' Mandela said. 'There will be no taking of human life. We are not murderers." 'We are warriors." Moses dropped his voice, but that did not reduce its power. His words seemed to shimmer in the gloomy room.

'We are fighting for the freedom of our people. We cannot afford the scruples with which you seek to shackle us." The younger men at the foot of the table stirred with a restless eagerness, and Joe Cicero smiled slightly, but his eyes were fathomless and his smile was thin and cruel.

'Our violent acts should be symbolic,' Mandela tried to explain, but Moses rode over him.

'Symbols! We have no patience with symbolic acts. In Kenya the warriors of Mau Mau took the little children of the white settlers and held them up by their feet and chopped between their legs with razor-sharp pangas and threw the pieces into the pit toilets, and that is bringing the whtte men to the conference table. That is the type of symbol the white men understand." 'We will never sink to such barbarism,' Nelson Mandela said firmly, and Moses leaned even closer to him, and their eyes locked.

As they stared at each other, Moses was thinking swiftly. He had forced his opponent to make a stand, to commit himself irrevocably in front of the militants on the high command. Word of his refusal to engage in unlimited warfare would be swiftly passed to the Youth Leaguers and the young hawks, to the Buffaloes and the others who made up the foundation of Moses' personal support.

He would not push Mandela further now, that could only Moses some of his gains. He would not give Mandela the opportunity to explain that he might be willing to use harder measure: in the future. He had made Mandela appear a pacifist in the eye,.

of the militants, and in contrast had shown them his own fierce heart.

He drew back disdainfully from Nelson Mandela and he gave soft scornful chuckle, as he glanced at the young men at the end all the table and shook his head as though he had given up on a dul and stubborn child.

Then he sat down, crossed his arms over his chest and let his chin sink forward on his chest. He took no further part in the conference.

remaining a massive brooding presence, by his very silence mocking Mandela's proposals for limited acts of sabotage on government property.

He had given them fine words, but Moses Gama knew that they would need deeds before they all accepted him as the true leader.

'I will give them a deed - such a deed that will leave not a doubt in their hearts,' he thought, and his expression was grim and determined.

The motorcycle was a gift from his father. It was a huge Harley Davidson with a seat like a cowboy saddle and the gear shift was on the side of the silver tank. Sean was not quite sure why Shasa had given it to him. His final results at Costello's Academy didn't merit such paternal generosity. Perhaps Shasa was relieved that he had managed to scrape through at all, and on the other hand perhaps he felt that encouragement was what Sean needed now, or again it might merely be an expression of Shasa's guilt feelings towards his eldest son. Sean didn't care to consider it too closely. It was a magnificent machine, all chrome and enamel and red glass diamond reflectors, flamboyant enough to catch the eye of any young lady and Sean had wound it up to well over the ton on the straight stretch of road beyond the airport.

Now, however, the engine was burbling softly between his knees, -- andasthey reac"nd the crest of th'filll he switched off the headlight and then as gravity took the heavy machine, he cut the engine. They free-wheeled down silently in darkness, and there were no street lights in this elegant suburb. The plots of land around each grand home were the size of small farms.

Near the foot of the hill Sean swung the Harley Davidson off the road. They bumped through a shallow ditch into a clump of trees.

They climbed off and Sean pulled the motorcycle up on to its kick stand.

'Okay?" he asked his companion. Rufus was not one of Sean's friends whom he could invite back to Weltevreden to meet the folks.

Sean had only met him through their mutual love for motorcycles.

He was smaller than Sean by at least four inches, and at first glance appeared to be a skinny runt of a lad with a grey complexion as though road grime and sump oil had soaked mt his skin. He had nervously shy mannerisms, hanging his head and avoiding eye contact. It had taken some time for Sean to realize that Rufus's lean body was sinewy hard, that he was as quick and agile as a whippet, and that his whining voice and shifty eyes hid a sharp street-wise intelligence and a caustic and irreverent wit. It had not taken long after that for him to be promoted to the rank of principal lieutenant in Sean's gang.

Since graduating without particular distinction from Costello's Academy, his father had insisted that Sean enter articles with the object of one day becoming a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants. The auditors of the Courtney Mining and Finance, Messrs Rifkin and Markovitch, had been prevailed upon, not without some misgivings on their part, to accept Sean as an articled clerk.

This employment was not as dreary as Sean had at first imagined.

He had no compunction in using the family name and his boundless charm to work himself into the plummiest audits, preferably of those companies which employed a large female staff, and none of the senior partners had courage enough to report to Shasa Courtney that his favourite son was on a free ride. The Courtney account was worth almost a quarter of a million pounds annually.

Sean was never more than an hour late for work in the morning, his hangover or his lack of sleep hidden by gold-framed aviator's glasses and his brilliant smile. A little judicious rest during the morning and some light banter with the typists and female clerks would set him up for a lunch at the Mount Nelson or Kelvin Grove which ended just in time for a swift return to the office to hand in an imaginative rep(;rt to the senior partner, after which he was free for a game of squash or an hour's polo practice at Weltevreden.

He usually took dinner at home, it was cheaper than eating out, and although Shasa added substantially to the miserly salary paid 'by Messrs Rifkin and Markovitch, Sean was always in a financial crisis.

After dinner he was free to shed his dinner jacket and black tie and change into a leather cycling jacket and steel-shod boots and then his other life beckoned, the life so different from his diurnal existence, a life of excitement and danger, full of colourful fascinating beings, of eager women and satisfying companions, of deliberate risks a: wild adventures - like the one this evening.

Rufus unzipped his black leather jacket and grinned at hiJ 'Ready, willing and able, as the actress said to the bishop." Und the jacket he wore a black roll-neck sweater, black trousers and his head a black cloth cap.

They didn't have to discuss what they were about to do. They hi worked together on the same kind of job four times already, and the planning had been gone over in detail. However, Rufus's gr was pale and tense in the starlight beneath the trees. This was the most ambitious project yet. Sean felt the delicious blend of fear or excitement like raw spirit in his blood tingling and charging him.

This was what he did it for, this feeling, this indescribable euphor with which danger always charged him. This was just the first tick of it, it would grow stronger, more possessing, as the danger il creased. He often wondered just how high he could go, there mu: be a zenith beyond which it was not possible to rise, but unlike tk sexual climax which was intense but so fleeting, Sean knew he had not even approached the ultimate thrill of danger. He wondered what it would be like, killing a man with his bare hands? Killing a woma the same way - but doing it as she reached her own climax beneat him? The very idea of that always gave him an aching erection, bu until those opportunities presented themselves, he would savour th lesser moments such as these.

'Nail?" Rufus asked, offering him his cigarette tin, but Sean shoal his head. He wanted nothing to blunt his enjoyment, not nicotine no alcohol, he wanted to experience the utmost enjoyment of every instant 'Smoke half of it and then follow me,' he ordered, and slipper away amongst the trees.

He followed the footpath along the low bank of the stream an( then crossed at a shallow place, stepping lightly over the exposer rocks. The high diamond-mesh security fence was on the opposit bank, and he squatted below it. He didn't have to wait long. Withir seconds a wolflike shape appeared out of the darkness beyond the fence, and the moment it saw him the German shepherd rushed all him, hurling itself against the heavy-gauge wire fence.

'Hey, Prince,' Sean said quietly, leaning toward the animal, showing not the least sign of fear. 'Come on, boy, you know me." The dog recognized him at last. It had only barked once, not creating enough of an uproar to alert the household, and now Sean gently pushed his fingers through the diamond mesh, talking softly and soothingly. The dog .sniffed his hand and its long tail began to wave back and forth in friendly salutation. Sean had a way with all living creatures, not only humans. The dog licked his fingers.

Sean whistled softly and Rufus scrambled up the bank behind him. Immediately the German shepherd stiflened and the hair on its back came erect. It growled throatily and Sean whispered, 'Don't be a fool, Prince. Rufus is a friend." it took another five minutes for Sean to introduce the two of them, but at last in response to Sean's urging, Rufus gingerly put his fingers through the mesh and the dog sniffed them carefully and wagged his tail.

TI1 go over first,' Sean said, and swarmed up the high fence. There were three strands of barbed wire at the top, but Sean flicked his body over, feet first, arching his back like a gymnast. He dropped lightly to earth and the dog rose on its hind legs and placed its front paws on his chest. Sean fondled his head holding him while Rufus came over the barbed wire with even greater agility than Sean had.

'Let's go,' Sean whispered, and with the guard dog padding along beside them they went up towards the house, crouching as they ran and keeping to the shadow of the ornamental shrubs until they flattened against the wall, shrinking into the leafy ivy that covered the brickwork.

The house was a double-storied mansion, almost as imposing as Weltevreden. It belonged to another leading Cape family, close friends of the Courtneys. Mark Weston had been at school with Shasa and in the same engineering class at university. His wife, Marjorie, was a contemporary of Tara Courtney's. They had two teenage daughters, the elder of which Sean had deprived of her virginity the previous year, and then dropped without another phone call.

The seventeen-year-old child had suffered a nervous breakdown, refusing to eat, threatening suicide and weeping endlessly until she had to be taken out of school. Marjorie Weston had sent for Sean to try to remonstrate with him, and persuade him to let her daughter down gently. She had arranged the meeting without her daughter's knowledge, and while her husband was on one of his regular business trips to Johannesburg.

She took Sean to her sewing room on the ground floor and locked the door. It was Thursday afternoon, the servants' day off, and her younger daughter was at school while the eldest, Veronica, was in her bedroom upstairs palely pining.

Marjorie patted the sofa. 'Please come and sit next to me, Sean." She was determined to keep the interview friendly. It was only when he was beside her that Marjorie realized how infernally good-looking he was. Even more so than his father, and Marjorie had always had a strong fancy for Shasa Courtney.

She found that she was becoming a little breathless as she reasoned with Sean, but it was only when she placed her hand on his bare arm and felt the elastic muscle under the smooth young skin that she realized what was happening.

Sean had the philanderer's sure and certain instinct, perhaps he had inherited it from his father. He hadn't really thought about Veronica's mother that way. God! She was as old as his mother.

However, since Clare East he had always had a taste for older women, and Marjorie Weston was slim and athletic from swimming and tennis and meticulously tanned to disguise the crow's feet at the corners of her eyes and the first signs of craping at her throat; and where Veronica was vacuous and simpering, her mother was poised and mature, but with the same mauve-blue eyes that had first attracted him to the daughter and an even more carefully groomed mane of thick tawny hair.

As Sean became aware of her excitement, the flush of blood beneath her tan, the agitated breathing that made her bosom beneath the angora jersey and pearls work like a bellows and the subtle change in her body odour that the average male would not have noticed, but which to Sean was like an invitation on an embossed card, he found his own arousal was spiced by the perversity of the situation.

'A double,' he thought. 'Mother and daughter - now that's something different." He didn't have to plot further, he let his infallible instinct guide him.

'You are much more attractive than your daughters could ever be - the main reason I broke off with Ronny was I couldn't bear being near you without being able to do this --' and he leaned over her and kissed her with an open mouth.

Marjorie had believed herself to be in complete control of the situation right up until the moment she tasted his mouth. Neither of them spoke again until he was kneeling in front of her, holding her knees apart with both hands, and she was sprawled across the sofa with her pleated skirt rucked up around her waist. Then she panted brokenly, 'Oh Christ, I can't believe this is happening - I must be crazy." Now she sat at the foot of the stairs in her satin bathrobe. She was naked under the robe and every few seconds she shivered in a brief spasm. The night was warm, and the house was in darkness. The girls were asleep upstairs and Mark was away on one of his regular business trips. This was the first chance at an assignation there had been in almost two weeks and she was shivering with anticipation.

She had switched off the burglar alarms at nine o'clock as they had arranged - Sean was almost half an hour late. Perhaps something had happened and he wasn't coming after all. She hugged herself and shivered miserably at the thought, then she heard the light tap on the glass of the french windows leading on to the swimming-pool patio, and she leapt to her feet and raced across the darkened room.

She found she was panting as she fumbled with the latch.

Sean stepped into the room and seized her. He was so tall and powerful that she turned to putty in his arms. No man had ever kissed her like this, so masterfully and yet so skilfully. She sometimes wondered who had taught him and then was consumed by jealousy at the thought. Her need of him was so intense that waves of giddy vertigo washed over her and without his arms to support her she was certain she would have sagged to the floor. Then he tugged at the knot that secured the belt of her robe. It came undone and he thrust his hand into the opening. She shifted her weight, setting her feet wider apart so he could reach her more easily, and she gave a stifled gasp as she felt him slip his forefinger into her and she pushed hard against his hand.

'Lovely,' Sean chuckled in her ear. 'Like the Zambezi river in flood." 'Shh,' she whispered. 'You'll wake the girls." Marjorie liked to think of herself as genteel and refined, yet his crude words increased her excitation to a fever. 'Lock the door,' she ordered him, her voice thick and shaking. 'Let's go upstairs." He released her and turned to the door. He pressed it closed until the catch snapped and then turned the key and in the same instant reversed the movement, leaving it unlocked.

'All right." He turned back to Marjorie. 'All set." They kissed again, and she ran her hands frantically down the front of his body, feeling the throbbing hardness through the thin cloth. It was she who broke away at last.

'Oh God, I can't wait any longer." She took his hand and dragged him up the marble staircase. The girls' bedrooms were in the east wing and Marjorie locked the heavy mahogany door that secured the master suite. They were safe from discovery here, and at last she could let herself go completely.

Marjorie We, stan had been married for over twenty years, and she had taken about the same number of lovers in that time. Some of them had merely been mad one-night frolics, others had been longer more permanent liaisons. One had lasted for almost all these twenty years, an erratic on-and-off arrangement, passionate interludes interspersed with long periods of denial. However, none of her other lovers had been able to match this stripling in beauty and performance, in physical endurance and in devilish inventiveness, not even Shasa Courtney who was that other long-term lover. The son had the same intuitive understanding of her needs. He knew when to be rough and cruel and when to be loving and gentle, but in other ways he outstripped his father. She had never been able to exhaust him or even to force him to falter, and he had a streak of genuine brutality and inherent evil in him that could terrify her at times. Added to that was the almost incestuous delight of taking the son after having had the father.

Tonight Sean did not disappoint her. While she was driving hard towards her first climax of the evening he suddenly reached out to the bedside table and lifted the telephone receiver.

'Ring your husband,' he ordered, and thrust the instrument into her hand.

'God, are you mad!" she gasped. 'What would I say to him?" 'Do it!" he said, and she realized that if she refused, he would slap her across the face. He had done that before.

Still holding him between her thighs, she twisted awkwardly and dialled the Carlton Hotel in Johannesburg. When the hotel operator answered, she said, 'I wish to speak to Mr Mark Weston in Suite 1750." 'You are going through,' the operator said, and Mark answered on the third ring.

'Hello darling,' Marjorie said, and above her Sean began to move again. 'I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd ring you. Sorry if I woke you." It became a contest will Sean trying to force her to gasp or cry out, while she attempted to maintain a casual conversation with Mark. When he succeeded and she gave a little involuntary squeal, Mark asked sharply, 'What was that?" 'I made myself a cup of Milo and it was too hot. I burned my lip." She could see how it was exciting Sean also. His face was no longer beautiful but swollen and flushed so that his features seemed coarsened, and in her she felt him swell and harden, filling her to bursting point, until she could control herself no longer, and she broke off the telephone conversation abruptly. 'Goodnight, Mark, sleep well,' and slammed the receiver down on its cradle, just as the first scream came bursting up her throat.

Afterwards they lay still, both of them regaining their breath, but when he tried to roll off her she tightened the grip of her legs and held him hard. She knew that if she could keep him from sliding out, within minutes he would be ready again.

Outside on the front lawn, the dog barked once. 'Is someone there?" she asked.

'No Prince is just being naughty,' Sean murmured, but he was listening intently, even though he knew that Rufus was too good to be heard, and they had planned every detail with care. Both he and Rufus knew exactly what they were after.

To commemorate the first month of their affair, Marjorie had bought Sean a set of Victorian dress studs and links in platinum and onyx and diamonds. She had invited him up to the house on a Thursday afternoon and led him through to Mark Weston's panelled study on the ground floor. While Sean watched, she checked the combination of the wall safe which was discreetly engraved on the corner of the silver-framed photograph of herself and the girls on Mark's desk, and then she had swung aside the false front of the section of the bookcase that concealed the safe and tumbled the combination of the lock.

She left the safe door ajar when she brought the gift to him. Sean had demonstrated his gratitude by pulling her skirts up and her peach-coloured satin bloomers down, then sitting her on the edge of her husband's desk, he lifted her knees and placed her feet on each corner of the leather-bound blotter. Then while he stood in front of her and made love to her, he evaluated the contents of the safe over her shoulders.

Sean had heard his father talk about Mark Weston's collection of British and South African gold coins. It was apparently one of the ten most important in private hands anywhere in the world. In addition to the dozen thick leather-bound albums which contained the collection, the middle shelf of the safe held the ledgers and cash books for the running of the estate and household, and a small gentleman's jewel box, while the top shelf was crammed with wads of pristine banknotes still in the bank wrappers and a large canvas bag stencilled 'Standard Bank Ltd' which obviously contained silver.

There could not have been less than œ5,000 in notes and coins in the safe.

Sean had explained to Rufus exactly where to look for the safe combination, how to open the false front of the bookcase and what to expect when he did.

The knowledge that Rufus was at work downstairs and the danger of possible discovery stimulated Sean so that at one point Marjorie blurted, 'You aren't human - you are a machine." He left'her at last, lying in the big bed like a wax doll that had melted in the sun, her limbs soft and plastic, the thick mane of her hair darkened and sodden with her own sweat and her mouth smeared out of shape by exhausted passions. Her sleep was catatonic.

Sean was still pent up and excited. He looked into Mark Weston's study on the way out. The front of the bookcase was open, the safe door wide, the ledgers and cash books tumbled untidily on the floor, and the excitement came on him again in a thick musky wave and he found he was once more fully tumescent.

It was dangerous to remain in the house another minute, and the knowledge made his arousal unbearable. He looked up the marble staircase again and only then did the idea come to him. Veronica's room was the second door down the east wing passage. She might scream if he woke her suddenly, she might hate him so that she would scream when she recognized him, but on the other hand she might not. The risk was lunatic, and Sean grinned in the darkness and started back up the marble staircase.

A silver blade of moonlight pierced the curtains and Fell on Veronica's pale hair that swirled across the pillow. Sean leaned over her and covered her mouth with his hand. She came awake struggling and terrified.

'It's me,' he whispered. 'Don't be afraid, Ronny. It's me." Her struggles stilled, the fear faded from her huge mauve eyes, and she reached up for him with both arms. He lifted his hand off her mouth and she said, 'Oh, Sean, deep down I knew it. I knew you still loved me." Rufus was furious. 'I thought you had been caught,' he whined.

'What happened to you, man?" 'I was doing the hard work." Sean kicked the Harley Davidson and it roared into life. As he turned back on to the road he felt the weight of the saddle bags pull the machine off balance, but he met her easily and straightened up.

'Slow down, man,' Rufus leaned forward from the pillion to caution him. 'You'll wake the whole valley." And Sean laughed in the wild rush of wind, drunk with excitement, and they went up over the crest at a hundred miles an hour.

Sean parked the Harley Davidson on the Kraaifontein road and they scrambled down the bank and squatted in the dry culvert beneath the road. By the light of an electric torch they shared the booty.

'You said there would be five grand,' Rufus whined accusingly.

'Man, there isn't more than a hundred." 'Old man Weston must have paid his slaves." Sean chuckled carelessly as he split the small bundle of bank notes, and pushed the larger pile towards Rufus. 'You need it more than me, kid." The jewel box contained cuff-links and studs, a diamond tie-pin that Sean judged to be fully five carats in weight, masonic medallions, Mark Weston's miniature decorations on a bar - he had won an M.C. at E1 Alamein and a string of campaign medals - a Pathek Philippe dress watch in gold and a handful of other personal items.

Rufus ran over them with an experienced eye. 'The watch is engraved, all the other stuff is too hot to move, too dangerous, man.

We'll have to dump it." They opened the coin albums. Five of them were filled with sovereigns. 'Okay,' Rufus grunted. 'I can move that small stuff, but not these. They are red hot, burn your fingers." With scorn he discarded the albums of heavy coins, the five-pound and five-guinea issues of Victoria and Elizabeth, Charles and the Georges.

After he dropped Rufus off at the illicit shebeen in the coloured District Six where Rufus had parked his own motorcycle, Sean rode out alone along the high winding road that skirts the sheer massif of Chapman's Peak. He parked the Harley on the edge of the cliff. The green Atlantic crashed against the rock five hundred feet below where he stood. One at a time Sean hurled the heavy gold coins out over the edge. He flicked them underhanded, so that they caught the dawn's uncertain light, and then were lost in the shadows of the cliff face as they fell, so he could not see them strike the surface of the water far below. When the last coin was gone, he tossed the empty albums after them and they fluttered as they caught the wind. Then he flung the gold wristwatch and the diamond pin out into the void.

He kept the medals for last. It gave him a vindictive satisfaction to have screwed Mark Weston's wife and daughter, and then to throw his medals into the sea.

When he mounted the Harley Davidson and turned it back down the steep winding road, he pushed the goggles up on to his forehead and let the wind beat into his face and rake his eyes so that the tears streamed back across his cheeks. He rode hard, putting the glistening machine over as he went into the turns so that the footrest struck a shower of sparks from the road surface.

'Not much profit for a night's work,' he told himself, and the wind tore the words from his lips. 'But the thrills, oh, the thrills!" When all his best efforts to interest Sean and Michael in the planetary system of the Courtney companies had resulted in either lukewarm and devioasly feigned enthusiasm or in outright disinterest, Shasa had gone through a series of emotions, beginning with puzzlement.

He tried hard to see how anyone, particularly a young man of superior intellect, and even more particularly a son of his, could find the whole complex interlinking of wealth and opportunity, of challenge and reward, less than fascinating. At first he thought that he was to blame, that he had not explained it sufficiently, that he had somehow taken their response for granted and had through his own omissions, failed to quicken their attention.

To Shasa it was the very stuff of life itselfi His first waking thought each morning and his last before sleep each night, was for the welfare and sustenance of the company. So he tried again, more patiently, more exhaustively. It was like trying to explain colour to a blind man, and from puzzlement Shasa found himself becoming angry.

'Damn it, Mater,' he exploded, when he and Centaine were alone at her favourite place on the hillside above the Atlantic. 'They just don't seem to care." 'What about Garry?" Centaine asked quietly.

'Oh Garry!" Shasa chuckled disparagingly. 'Every time I turn around I trip over him. He is like a puppy." 'I see you have given him his own office on the third floor,' Centaine observed mildly.

'The old broom cupboard,' Shasa said. 'It was a joke really, but the little blighter took it seriously. I didn't have the heart --' 'He takes most things seriously, does young Garrick,' Centaine observed. 'He's the only one who does. He's quite a deep one." 'Oh, come on, Mater! Garry?" 'He and I had a long chat the other day. You should do the same, it might surprise you. Did you know that he's in the top three in his year?" 'Yes, of course, I knew - but I mean, it's only his first year of business administration. One doesn't take that too seriously." 'Doesn't one?" Centaine asked innocently, and Shasa was unusually silent for the next few minutes.

The following Friday Shasa looked into the cubbyhole at the end of the passage which served as Garry's office when he was temporarily employed by Courtney Mining during his college vacations.

Garry leapt dutifully to his feet when he recognized his father and he pushed his spectacles up on the bridge of his nose.

'Hello, champ, what are you up to?" Shasa asked, glancing down at the forms that covered the desk.

'It's a control,' Garry was caught in a cross-fire - awe at his father's sudden interest in what he was doing and desperation to retain his attention and to obtain his approval.

'Did you know that we spent over a hundred pounds on stationery last month alone?" He was so anxious to impress his father that he stuttered again, something he only did when he was overexcited.

'Take a deep breath, champ." Shasa eased into the tiny room. There was just room for the two of them. 'Speak slowly, and tell me about it." One of Garry's official duties was to order and issue the office stationery. The shelves behind his desk were filled with sheaves of typing paper and boxes of envelopes.

'According to my estimates we should be able to cut that below eighty pounds. We could save twenty pounds a month." 'Show me." Shasa perched on the corner of the desk and applied his mind to the problem. He treated it with as much respect as if they were discussing the development of a new gold-mine.

'You are quite right,' Shasa approved his figures. 'You have full authority to put your new control system into practice." Shasa stood up. 'Well done,' he said, and Garry glowed with gratification. Shasa turned to the door so the lad wouldn't see his expression of amusement, and then he paused and looked back.

'Oh, by the way, I'm flying up to Walvis Bay tomorrow. I'm meeting the architects and the engineers on site to discuss the extensions to the canning factory. Would you like to come along?" Unable to trust his voice lest he stutter again, Garry nodded emphatically.

Shasa allowed Garry to fly. Garry had been granted his private pilot's licence two months previously, but he still needed a few hours for his twin-engine endorsement. A year older than Garry, Sean had been given his licence immediately he was eligible. Sean flew the way he rode and shot, naturally, gracefully, but carelessly. He was one of those pilots who flew by the grace of God and the seat of his pants.

In contrast, Garry was painstaking and meticulous and therefore, Shasa admitted grudgingly, the better pilot. Garry filed a flight plan as though he was submitting a thesis for his doctorate, and his preflight checks went on so long that Shasa squirmed in the right-hand seat and only just contained himself from crying out, 'For God's sake, Garry, let's get on with it." Yet it was a mark of his trust that he allowed Garry to take the controls of the Mosquito at all. Shasa was prepared to take over at the first sign of trouble, but he was amply rewarded for his forbearance when he saw the sparkle of deep pleasure behind Garry's spectacles as he 'handled the lovely machine, lifting her up through the silver wreaths of cloud into a blue African sky where Shasa could share with him a rare feeling of total accord.

Once they arrived at Walvis Bay Shasa tended to forget that Garry was with him. He had become accustomed to his middle son's close attendance, and though he did not really think of it, it was becoming familiar and comforting to have him there. Garry seemed to anticipate his smallest need, whether it was a light for his cigarette or a piece of scrap paper and pencil on which to illustrate an idea to the architect. Yet Garry was quiet and unobtrusive, not given to inane questions and bumptious or facetious remarks.

The cannery was fast becoming one of the big winners in the Courtney stable of companies. For three seasons they had captured their full quota of pilchards, and then there had been an unusual development. In a private meeting Manfred De La Rey had suggested to Shasa that if the company were to issue a further ten thousand bonus shares in the name of a nominee in Pretoria, the consequences might be very much to everybody's advantage. Taking Manfred on trust, Shasa had issued the shares as suggested, and within two months there had been a review of their quota by the government Department of Land and Fisheries and that quota had been almost doubled to the two hundred thousand tons of pilchard that they were now permitted to capture annually.

'For three hundred years the Afrikaners have been left out of business,' Shasa smiled cynically as he received the glad tidings. 'But they are catching on fast. They are in the race now, and not too fussy about how they win. The Jews and the English had better look to their business laurels, here come the Nats." And he set about planning and financing the extension to the cannery.

It was late afternoon before Shasa finished with the architects, but at this season there were still a few hours of daylight remaining.

'How about a swim at Pelican Point?" Shasa suggested to Garry, and they took one of the cannery Land-Rovers and drove along the hard wet sand at the edge of the bay. The waters of the bay stank of sulphur and fish offal, but behind it the high golden dunes and arid mountains rose in desolate grandeur, while out over the protected and silken waters the flamingo flocks were such a brilliant pink as to seem improbable and theatrical. Shasa drove fast around the curve of the bay with the wind ruffling their hair.

'So what, if anything, did you learn today?" I learned that if you want other people to talk too freely, you keep quiet and look sceptical,' Garry answered, and Shasa glanced at his son with a startled expression. That had always been a deliberate technique of his, but Shasa had never expected anyone so young and inexperienced to see through it. 'Without saying anything, you made the architect admit that he really hasn't worked out a solution to siting the boiler room yet,' Garry went on. 'And even I could see that his present proposal is an expensive compromise." 'Is that so?" It had taken Shasa a full day of discussion to reach the same conclusion, but he wasn't going to say so. 'What would you do then?" 'I don't know, Pater, not for sure,' Garry said. He had a peciantic manner of delivering an opinion which had at first irritated Shasa, but which now amused him, particularly as the opinions were usually worth listening to. 'But instead of simply sticking on another boiler, I would explore the possibility of installing the new Patterson process --' 'What do you know about the Patterson process?" Shasa demanded sharply. He had only heard about it himself very recently. Suddenly Shasa found himself arguing as though with an equal. Garry had read all the sales pamphlets and memorized the specifications and figures of the process, and had worked out for himself most of the advantages and disadvantages over the conventional method of preparation and canning.

They were still arguing as they rounded the sandy horn of the bay, and beyond the lighthouse the deserted beach, clean and white, stretched away in dwindling perspective to the horizon. Here the Atlantic waters were wild and green, cold and clean, foamy and effervescent with the rush of the surf.

They stripped off their clothes and, naked, swam out into the tumultuous seas, diving deep beneath each curling wave as it came hissing down upon them. At last they emerged, their bodies tinted blue with the cold, but laughing breathlessly with exhilaration.

As they stood beside the Land-Rover and towelled themselves, Shasa studied his son frankly. Even though sodden with salt water, Garry's hair stuck up in disorderly spikes and without his spectacles he had a bemused myopic look. His torso was massively developed, his chest was like a pickle barrel and he had grown such a coat of dark body hair that it almost obscured the ridges of muscle that covered his belly like chain mail.

'Looking at him, there is no way you would ever suspect that he was a Courthey. If I didn't know better, I would think that Tara had a little fling on the side." Shasa was certain that Tara might be capable of many things, but never infidelity or promiscuity. 'There is nothing about him of his ancestry,' he thought, and then looked further and grinned suddenly.

'Well at least, Garry, you have inherited one of the Courthey gifts.

You've got a-wanger on you that would make old General Courtney himself turn in his grave with envy." Hurriedly Garry covered himself with his towel and reached into the Land-Rover for his underpants, but secretly he was pleased. Up until now he had always regarded that portion of his anatomy with suspicion. It seemed to be an alien creature with a will and existence of its own, determined to embarrass and humiliate him at the most unexpected or inappropriate moments, like that unforgettable occasion when he was standing in front of the commerce class at business school giving his dissertation and the girls in the front row started giggling, or when he was forced to retreat in confusion from the typing-pool at Centaine House because of the alien's sudden but very apparent interest in the surroundings. However, if his father spoke respectfully of it, and the shade of the legendary general approved, then. Garry was prepared to reconsider his own relationship with it and come to terms.

They flew on to the H'am Mine the next morning. All three of the boys had done their stint at the H'am. As indeed had Shasa so many years before, they had been required to work their way through every part of the mine's operaton, from the drilling and blasting in the deep amphitheatre of the open pit, to the final separation rooms where at last the precious crystals were recovered from the crushed blue ground.

That forced labour had been more than sufficient for both Sean and Michael and neither of them had ever shown the least desire to return to the H'am Mine again. Garry was the exception, he seemed to have developed the same love for these remote wild hills as both Shasa and Centaine shared. He asked to accompany his father here whenever Shasa's regular inspection tours were scheduled. In a few short years he had built up an expert knowledge of the mine's operation, and had at one time or another personally performed all of the tasks involved in the process of production. So on their last evening at the mine the two of them, Shasa and Garry, stood on the brink of the great pit and while the sun set over the desert behind them, they stared down into its shadowy depths.

'It's strange to think that it all came out of there,' Garry said softly. 'Everything that you and Nana have built up. It makes one feel somehow humble, like when I am in church." He was silent for a long moment and then went on. 'I love this place. I wish we could stay longer." To hear his own feeling echoed like this, moved Shasa deeply. Of his three sons, this was the only one who understood, who seemed capable of sharing with him the almost religious awe that this massive excavation and the wealth it produced evoked in him. This was the fountainhead, and only Garry had recognized it.

He placed his arm around Garry's shoulders and tried to find words, but after a moment he simply said, 'I know how you feel, champ. But we have to get back home. I have to introduce my budget to the House on Monday." It was not what he had wanted to say, but he sensed that Garry knew that, and as they picked their way down the rough pathway in the dusk, they were closer in spirit than they had ever been.

The budget for Shasa's ministry of mines and industry had been almost doubled this year, and he knew that the opposition were planning to give it a rough passage. They had never forgiven him for changing parties. So he was on his mettle as he rose to his feet and sought the Speaker's recognition, and then instinctively glanced up at the galleries.

Centaine was in the middle of the front row of the visitors' gallery.

She was always there when she knew that either Shasa or Blaine was going to speak. She wore a small flat hat tilted forward over her eyes with a single yellow bird of paradise feather raked back at a jaunty angle, and she smiled and nodded encouragement as their eyes met.

Beside Centaine sat Tara. Now that was unusual. He couldn't remember when last she had come to listen to him.

'Our bargain doesn't include torture by boredom,' she had told him, but there she was looking surprisingly elegant in a dainty straw basher with a trailing pink ribbon around the crown and elbowlength white gloves. She touched the brim in a mocking salute, and Shasa lifted an eyebrow at her and then turned to the press gallery high above the Speaker's throne. The political correspondents from the English-speaking press were all there, pencils poised eagerly.

Shasa was one of their favourite prey, but all their attacks seemed only to consolidate his position in the National Party, and by their pettiness and subjectivity point up the efficiency and effectiveness with which he ran his ministry.

He loved the rough and tumble of parliamentary debate, and his single eye sparkled with battle lust as he took up his familiar slouch, both hands in his pockets, and launched into his presentation.

They were at him immediately, yapping and snapping at his heels, interjecting with expressions of disbelief and outrage, calling out 'Shame on you, sir!" and 'Scandal!" and Shasa's grin infuriated them and goaded them to excesses which he brushed aside with casual contempt, holding his own easily and then gradually overwhelming them and turning their own ridicule back upon them, while around him his colleagues grinned with admiration and encouraged his more devastating sallies with cries of 'Haar, boot! - Hear, hear!" When the division was called, his party backed him solidly, and his budget was approved by the expected majority. It was a performance which had enhanced his stature and standing. He was no longer the junior member of the cabinet and Dr Verwoerd passed him a note.

'I was right to keep you on the team. Well done." In the front of the visitors' gallery Centaine caught his eye, and clasped both hands together in a boxer's victory flourish, yet somehow she made the gesture appear at once regal and ladylike.

Shasa's smile faded as he realized that beside her Tara's seat was empty, she had left during the debate, and Shasa was surprised by his own feeling of disappointment. He would have liked her to witness his triumph.

The House was moving on to other business which did not concern ..... him 'and on an irdpuFs'e nasa rose and let the chamber. He went up the wide staircase and down the long panelled passageway to his office suite. As he approached the front entrance to the suite, he checked suddenly and again on impulse turned at the corner of the passage and went down to the unobtrusive and unmarked doorway at the end.

This was the back door to his office, a convenient escape route from unwanted visitors which had been ordered by old Cecil John Rhodes himself as a by-pass of the front waiting-room, a means for special visitors to reach him and leave again unobserved. Shasa found it equally convenient. The prime minister used it occasionally, as did Manfred De La Rey, but the majority of other users were female, and their business with Shasa was seldom political.

Instead of rattling the key in the Yale lock, Shasa slipped it in silently and turned it gently, then pushed the door open sharply. On the inside the door was artfully blended into the panelling of his office and few people knew of its existence.

Tara was standing with her bhck towards him, bending over the altar chest. She did not know the door existed. Except for the gift of the chest, she had taken little interest in the decoration and furbishment of his office. It was a few seconds before she sensed that she was not alone, and then her reaction was extravagant. She jumped back from the chest and whirled to face him, and as she recognized Shasa, instead of showing relief, she paled with agitation and began to explain breathlessly.

'I was just looking at it - it's such a magnificent piece of work.

Quite beautiful, I had forgotten how beautiful--' One thing Shasa realized immediately, she was as guilty as if she had been caught red-handed in some dreadful crime, but he could not imagine what had made her react that way. She was quite entitled to be in his office, she had her own key to the front door, and she had given him the chest - she could admire it whenever she chose.

He remained silent and fastened his eye upon her accusingly, hoping to trick her into over-explaining, but she left the chest and moved across to the window behind his desk.

'You were doing very well on the floor,' she said. She was still a little breathless, but her colour had returned and she was recovering her composure. 'You always put on such a good show." 'Is that why you left?" he asked, as he closed the door andspointedly crossed the room to the chest.

'Oh you know how useless I am with figures, you quite lost me towards the end." Shasa studied the chest carefully. 'What was she up to."?" he asked himself thoughtfully, but he could not see that anything was altered.

The Van Wouw bronze sculpture of the Bushman was still in its place, so she could not have opened the lid.

'It's a marvelous piece,' he sai& and stroked the effigy of St Luke at the corner.

'I had no idea there was a door in the panel." Clearly Tara was trying to distract his attention from the chest, and her efforts merely piqued his curiosity. 'You gave me quite a turn." Shasa refused to be led and ran his fingers over the inlaid lid.

'I should get Dr Findlay from the National Gallery to have a look at it, Shasa mused. 'He's an expert on medieval and Renaissance religious art." 'Oh, I promised Tricia I would let her know when you arrived." Tara sounded almost desperate. 'She's got an important message for you? She crossed quickly to the interleading door and opened it.

'Tricia, Mr Courtney's here now." Shasa's secretary popped her head into the inner office.

'Do you know a Colonel Louis Nel.?" she asked. 'He's been trying to get hold of you all morning." 'Nel?." Shasa was still studying the chest. 'Nel.9 No, I don't think so." 'He says he knows you, sir. He says you worked together during the war?

'Oh, good Lord, yes!" She had Shasa's full attention now. 'It was so long ago - but, yes, I know him well. He wasn't a colonel then." 'He's head of CID for the Cape of Good Hope now,' Tricia told him. 'And he wants you to telephone him as soon as you can. He says it's very urgent, he actually said "life and death"." 'Life and death, hey,' Shasa grinned. 'That probably means he wants to borrow money. Get him on the blower, please Trish." He went to his desk, sat down and pulled the telephone towards him. He motioned Tara towards the couch, but she shook her head.

'I'm meeting Sally and Jenny for lunch,' and she sidled towards the door with a relieved expression. But he wasn't looking at her, he was staring out of the window over the oaks to the slopes of Signal Hill beyond, and he didn't even glance round as she slipped out of the room and closed the door quietly behind her.

Louis Nel's call had transported Shasa back almost twenty years in time. 'Was it that long ago.9' he wondered. 'Yes, it was. My God, how quickly the years have passed." Shasa had been a young squadron leader, invalided back from the campaign in Abyssinia where he had lost his eye fighting the Duke of Aosta's army on the drive up to Addis Ababa. At a loose end, certain that his life was ruined and that he was a cripple and a burden on his family and friends, Shasa had gone into seclusion and started drinking heavily and letting himself slip into careless despondency. It had been Blaine Malcomess who had sought him out and given him a scornful and painful tongue-lashing, and then offered him a job helping track down and break up the Ossewa Brandwag, the Sentinels of the Wagon Train, a secret society of militant nationalist Afrikaners who were virulently opposed to FieldMarshal Jan Christian Smuts' pro-British war efforts.

Shasa had worked in cooperation with Louis Nel, establishing the identity of the leading members of the pro-Nazi conspiracy and preparing the warrants for their arrest and internment. His investigations of the Ossewa Brandwag's activities had put him in contact with a mysterious informer, a woman who had contacted him only by telephone and who took every precaution to conceal her identity. To this day Shasa did not know who she had been, or indeed if she were still alive.

This informer had revealed to him the OB theft of weapons from the government arms and munitions factory in Pretoria, and enabled them to deal a major blow to the subversive organization. Then the same informer had warned Shasa of the White Sword conspiracy.

This was an audacious plot to assassinate Field-Marshal Smuts, and in the ensuing confusion to seize control of the armed forces, declare South Africa a republic, and throw in their lot with Adolf Hitler and the Axis powers.

Shasa had been able to foil the plot at the very last minute, but only by the most desperate efforts, and at the cost of his own grandfather's life. Sir Garrick Courtney had been shot by the assassin in mistaken identity, for the old mail had physically resembled his good and dear friend, Field-Marshal Smuts.

Shasa had not thought about those dangerous days for many years.

Now every detail came back vividly. He lived it all again as he waited for the telephone on his desk to ring; the reckless climb up the sheer side of Table Mountain as he tried to catch his grandfather and the Field-Marshal before they could reach the summit where the killer was waiting for them. He recalled his dreadful sense of helplessness as the rifle shot crashed and echoed against the rocky clEiffs and he realized he was too late, the horror of finding his grandfather lying in the track with the ghastly bullet wound which had blown his chest open, and the old Field-Marshal kneeling beside him strickon with grief.

Shasa had chased the killer, using his intimate knowledge of the mountain to cut off his retreat against the top of the cliff. They fought chest to chest, fought for their very lives. White Sword had used his superior strength to break away and escape, but not before Shasa had put a bullet from his 6.5 men Beretta into his chest. White Sword disappeared and the plot to overthrow Smuts' government collapsed, but the killer had never been brought to justice, and Shasa felt once again the agony of his grandfather's murder. He had loved the old man and named his second son after him.

The telephone rang at last and Shasa snatched it up.

'Louis?" he asked.

'Shasa!" Shasa recognized his voice immediately. 'It's been a long time." 'It's good to speak to you." 'Yes, but I wish I was the bearer of better news. I'm sorry." 'What is it?" Shasa was immediately serious.

'Not on the telephone - can you come down to Caledon Square as soon as possible?" 'Ten minutes,' Shasa said, and hung up.

The headquarters of the CID were only a short walk from the House of Assembly and he stepped it out briskly. The episode with Tara and the chest was put out of his mind as he tried to imagine what bad news Louis Nel had for him.

The sergeant at the front desk had been alerted and he recognized Shasa immediately.

'The colonel is expecting you, Minister. I'll send someone to show you up to his office,' and he beckoned one of the uniformed constables.

Louis Nel was in his shirt-sleeves and he came to the door to welcome Shasa and lead him to one of the easy chairs. 'How about a drink?" 'Still too early for me." Shasa shook his head, but he accepted the cigarette Louis offered him.

The policeman was lean as ever, but he had lost most of his hair and what remained was ice white. There were dark pouches beneath his eyes and after his welcoming smile his mouth settled back into a thin nervous line. He looked like a man who worried a lot, worked too hard and slept badly at night. He must be past retirement age, Shasa thought.

'How's the family - your wife?" Shasa asked. He had met her only once or twice and could not remember her name or what she looked like.

'We were divorced five years ago." 'I'm sorry,' Shasa said, and Louis shrugged.

'It was bad at the time.". Then he leaned forward. 'Your family you have three boys and a girl. That's right?" 'Ah! You have been doing a police number on me,' Shasa smiled, but Louis did not respond. His expression remained serious as he went on.

'Your eldest son - his name is Sean. That's right, isn't it?" Shasa nodded, he was no longer smiling either, and he was seized by a sudden presentiment.

'You want to speak to me about Sean?" he asked softly.

Louis stood up abruptly and crossed to the window. He was looking down into the street as he answered.

'This is off the record, Shasa. Not the way we usually do things, but there are extraordinary factors here. Our past association, your present rank --' He turned back from the window. 'In the usual circumstances this would probably not have been brought to my notice at all, at least not at this stage of the investigation." The word 'investigation' startled Shasa, and he wanted Louis to give him the bad news and get it over with but he controlled his agitation and impatience and waited quietly.

'For some time now we have been troubled by a series of housebreakings in the better-class suburbs - you have surely read about them. The press are calling the thief the "Cape Raffles"." 'Of course,' Shasa nodded. 'Some of my friends, good friends, have been the victims - the Simpsons, the Westons. Mark Weston lost his collection of gold coins." 'And Mrs Simpson lost her emeralds,' Louis Nel agreed. 'Some of those emeralds, the earrings, were recovered when we raided a fence in District Six. We were acting on a tip-off and we recovered an enormous quantity of stolen articles. We arrested the fence - he's a coloured chap who was running an electrical business in the front of his premises and receiving stolen goods through the back door. We have had him locked up for two weeks now, and he is beginning to cooperate. He gave us a list or names, and on it was one lovable little rogue named Rufus Constantine, ever heard of him?" Shasa shook his head. 'How does this link up with my son?" 'I'm coming to that. This Constantine was apparently the one who passed the emeralds and some of the other booty. We picked him up and brought him in forquestioning. He is a tough little monkey, but we found a way to open him up and make him sing to us. Unfortunately the tune wasn't very pretty." 'Sean?" Shasa asked, and Louis nodded.

'I'm afraid so. Looks as though he was the leader of an organized gang." 'It doesn't make sense. Not Sean." 'Your son has built up quite a reputation." 'He was a little wild at one time,' Shasa admitted, 'but he is settling down to his articles now, working hard. And why would he want to get involved in something like that? I mean, he doesn't need the money." 'Articled clerks are not paid a great fortune." 'I give him an allowance,' Shasa shook his head again. 'No, I don't believe it. What would he know about house-breaking?" 'Oh, no - he doesn't do it himself. He sets up the job and Rufus and his henchman do the dirty work." 'Sets it up - what do you mean by that?" 'As a son of yours he is welcome in any home in the city, that is right, isn't it?" 'I suppose so." Shasa was cautious.

'According to little Rufus, your son studies each prospective victim's home, decides on what valuables there are and pinpoints where they are kept - strong rooms, hidden drawers, wall safes and that sort of thing. Then he begins an affair with one of the family, the mother or a daughter, and uses his opportunities to let his accomplice into the home while he is entertaining the lady of his choice upstairs." Shasa stared at him wordlessly.

'By all accounts it works very well, and in more than one case the theft was not even reported to us - the ladies involved were more concerned with their reputations and their husband's wrath than with the loss of their jewellery." 'Marge Weston?" Shasa asked. 'She was one of the ladies?" 'According to our information - yes, she was." Shasa whispered, 'The little bastard." He was appalled, and totally convinced. It all fitted too neatly not to be true. Marge and Sean, his son and one of his mistresses, it was just not to be tolerated. 'This time he has gone too far." 'Yes,' Louis agreed. 'Too far by a mile. Even as a first offender, he will probably get five or six years." All Shasa's attention snapped back to him. The shock to Shasa's pride and sense of propriety was such that he had not even begun to consider the legal implications, but now his righteous rage was snuffed out at the suggestion of his eldest son standing in the dock and being sentenced to long-term imprisonment.

'Have you prepared a docket yet?" he asked. 'Is there a warrant out?" 'Not yet." Louis was speaking as carefully. 'We were only given this information a few hours ago." He crossed to his desk and picked up the blue interrogation folder.

'What can I do?" Shasa asked quietly. 'Is there anything we can do 'I've done all I can,' Louis answered. 'I've done too much alread, I could never justify holding up this information, nor could I justii informing you of an investigation in progress. I've already stretche my neck way out, Shasa. We go back a long way, and I'll never forget the work you did on White Sword - that's the only reason took the chance --' he paused to take a deep breath, and Shas sensing there was more to come, remained silent. 'There is nothin else I can do. Nothing else anyone can do at this level." " ' He place peculiar emphasis on the last three words, and then he added seem ir/gly incongruously, 'I'm retiring next month, there'll be someore else in this office after that." 'How long do I have?" Shasa asked, and he did not have to elabor.

ate. They understood each other.

'I can sit on this file for another few hours, until five o'clock today, and then the investigation will have to go ahead." Shasa stood up. 'You are a good friend." 'I'll walk you down,' Louis said, and they were alone in the lift before they spoke again. It had taken Shasa that long to master his perturbation.

'I hadn't thought about White Sword for years,' he changed the subject easily. 'Not until today. All that seems so far away and long ago, even though it was my own g and father.

r 'I've never forgotten it,' Louis Nel said softly. 'The man was a murderer. If he had succeeded, if you hadn't prevented it, all of us in land would be a lot worse off than we are today." th!sI wonder what happened to White Sword - who he was and where he is now? Perhaps he is long dead, perhaps--' 'I don't think so - there is something that makes me doubt it. A few years ago I wanted to go over the White Sword file--' The lift stopped at the ground floor and Louis broke off. He remained silent as they crossed the lobby and went out into the sunlight. On the front steps of the headquarters building, they faced each other.

'Yes?" Shasa asked. 'The file, the White Sword file?" 'There is no file,' Louis said softly.

'I don't understand." 'No file,' Louis repeated. 'Not in police records or the Justice Department or the central records. Officially, White Sword never existed." Shasa stared at him. 'There must be a file - I mean, we worked on it, you and I. It was this thick --' Shasa held his thumb and forefinger apart. 'It can't have dsappeared!" 'You can take my word for it. It has." Louis held out his hand.

'Five o'clock,' he said gently. 'No later, but I will be in my office all day right up to five, if anyone wanted to telephone me there." Shasa took his hand. 'I will never forget this." He glanced at his wristwatch as he turned away. It was a few minutes before noon, and most fortuitously he had a lunch date with Manfred De La Rey.

He headed back up Parliament Lane, and the noon-day gun fired just as he went in through the main doors. Everybody in the main lobby, including the ushers, instinctively checked their watches at the distant clap of cannon shot.

Shasa turned towards the members' dining-room, but he was far too early. Except for the white-uniformed waiters, it was deserted. In the members' bar he ordered a pink gin and waited impatiently, glancing every few seconds at his watch, but his appointment with Manfred was for twelve-thirty and it was no good going to search for him. He could be anywhere in the huge rambling building, so Shasa employed the time in cherishing and fanning his anger.

'The bastard!" he thought. 'I've allowed him to fool me all these years. All the signs were there, but I refused to accept them. He's dirty rotten, right to the core --' and then his indignation went off in , a new direction. 'Marge Weston is old enough to be his mother, how many of my other women has he been boffing? Is nothing sacred to the little devil?" Manfred De La Rey was a few minutes early. He came to the members' bar smiling and nodding and shaking hands, playing the genial politician, so that it took him a few minutes to cross the room.

Shasa could barely contain his impatience, but he didn't want anyone to suspect his agitation.

Manfred asked for a beer. Shasa had never seen him take hard spirit, and only after he had taken his first sip did Shasa tell him quietly, 'I'm in trouble - serious trouble." Manfred's easy smile never faltered, he was too shrewd to betray his emotions to a room full of adversaries and potential rivals, but his eyes went cold and pale as those of a basilisk.

'Not here,' he said, and led Shasa through to the men's room.

They stood shoulder to shoulder at the urinal and Shasa spoke softly but urgently, and when he finished, Manfred stood staring at the white ceramic through for only a few seconds before he roused himself.

'What is the number?" Shasa slipped him a card with Louis Nel's telephone number at CID headquarters.

'I'll have to use the security line from my office. Give me fifteen minutes. I will meet you back at the bar." Manfred zipped his fly closed and strode out of the lavatory.

He was back in the members' bar within ten minutes, by whic time Shasa was entertaining the four other members of the lunct eon party, all of them influential back-benchers. When the finished their drinks, Shasa suggested, 'Shall we go through?" A they moved towards the dining-room Manfred took his upper art in a firm grip, and leaned close to him, smiling as though conveying a pleasantry.

'I've squashed it, but he is to be out of the country within twenty four hours, and I don't want him back. Is that a bargain?" 'I am grateful,' Shasa nodded, and his anger at his son wa: compounded by this obligation that had been forced upon him. I was a debt that he would have to repay, with interest.

Sean's Harley was parked down at the sports hall that Shasa hoc built as a joint Christmas present for all three boys two years pre.

Obviously. It contained a gymnasium and squash court, half Olympic.

size indoor swimming-pool and change rooms. As Shasa approached.

he heard the explosive echo of the rubber ball from the courts and he went up to the spectators' gallery.

Sean was playing with one of his cronies. He wore white silk shorts but'his chest was bare. There was a white sweat band around his forehead, and white tennis shoes on his feet. His body glistened with sweat and was tanned to a golden brown. He was impossibly beautiful, like a romantic painting of himself, and he moved with the unforced grace of a hunting leopard, driving the tiny black ball against the high white wall with such deceptive power that it resounded like a fusillade of rifle fire as it rebounded. He saw Shasa in the gallery and flashed him a dazzle of even white teeth and green eyes, so that despite his anger, Shasa suffered a sudden pang at the idea of having to part from him.

In the change room Shasa dismissed his playing partner curtly: 'I want to speak to Sean - alone,' and as soon as he was gone he turned on his son. 'The police are on to you,' he said. 'They know all about you." He waited for a reaction, but he was disappointed.

Sean towelled his face and neck. 'Sorry, Pater, you've lost me there. What is it they know?" He was cool and debonair, and Shasa exploded.

'Don't play your games with me, young man. What they know can put you behind bars for ten years." Sean lowered the towel and stood up from the bench. He was serious at last. 'How did they find out?" 'Rufus Constantine." 'The little prick. I'll break his neck." He wasn't going to deny it and Shasa's last hope that he was innocent faded.

'I'll break any necks that have to be broken,' Shasa snapped.

'So what are we going to do?" Sean asked, and Shasa was taken aback by his casual assumption.

'We?" he asked. 'What makes you think that I'm going to save your thieving hide?" 'Family honour,' Sean was matter-of-fact. 'You'll never let me go to court. The family would be on trial with me - you would never allow that." 'That was part of your calculations?" Shasa asked, and when Sean shrugged, he added, 'You don't, understand the words honour or decency." 'Words,' Sean replied. 'Just words. I prefer actions." 'God, ! wish I could prove you wrong,' Shasa whispered. He was so furious now that he wanted the satisfaction of physical violence.

'I wish I could let you rot in some filthy cell." His fists were clenched, and before he thought about it, he shifted into balance for the first blow, and instantly Sean was on guard, his hands stiffening into blades crossed before his chest and his eyes were fierce. Shasa had paid hundreds of pounds for his training by the finest instructors in Africa, and all of them had at last admitted that Sean was a natural fighter and that the pupil in each case outstripped the master.

Delighted that Sean had at last found something that could hold his interest, Shasa had, before Sean began his articles, sent him to Japan for three months to study under a master of the martial arts.

Now as he confronted his son, Shasa was suddenly aware of every one of his forty-one years, and that Sean was a man in full physical flower, a trained fighter and an athlete in perfect condition. He realized that Sean could toy with him and humiliate him, he could even read in Sean's expression that he was eager to do so. Shasa stepped back and unclenched his fists.

'Pack your bags,' he said quietly. 'You are leaving and you are not coming back." They flew north in the Mosquito, landing only to refuel in .Johannesburg and then flying on to Messina on the border with Rhodesia. Shasa had a thirty percent shareholding in the copper mine at Messina, so when he radioed ahead there was a Ford pickup waiting for him at the airstrip.

Sean tossed his suitcase in the back of the truck and Shasa took the wheel. Shasa could have flown across the border to Salisbury or Lourenqo Marques, but he wanted the break to be clean and definite.

Sean crossing a border on foot would be symbolic and salutary. As he drove the last few miles through the dry hot bushveld to the bridge over the Limpopo river, Sean slumped down in the seat beside him, hands in his pockets and one foot up on the dashboard.

'I've been thinking,' he spoke in pleasant conversational tones.

'I've been thinking what I should do now, and I have decided to joi] one of the safari companies in Rhodesia or Kenya or Mozambique Then when I've finished my apprenticeship, I'll apply for a huntinl concession of my own. There is a fortune in it and it must be th, best life in the world. Imagine hunting every day!" Shasa had determined to remain withdrawn and stern, and uI until now he had succeeded in speaking barely a word since leavin Cape Town, but at last Sean's total lack of remorse and his cheerfull selfish view of the future forced Shasa to abandon his good intentions.

'From what I hear, you wouldn't last a week without a woman,' he snapped, and Sean smiled.

'Don't worry about me, Pater. There will be bags of jig-jig, that's part of the perks - the clients are old and rich and they bring their daughters or their new young wives with them--' 'My God, Sean, you are completely amoral." 'May I take that as a compliment, sir?" 'Your plans to apply for your own hunting concession and to run your own safari company - what do you intend using in lieu of money?" Sean looked puzzled. 'You are one of the richest men in Africa.

Just think - free hunting whenever you wanted it, Pater. That would be part of our deal." Despite himself, Shasa felt a prickle of temptation. In fact, he had already considered starting a safari operation and his estimates showed that Sean was correct. There was a fortune to be made in marketing the African wilderness and its unique wild life. The only thing that had prevented him doing it before was that he had never found a trustworthy man. who understood the special requirements of a safari company to run it for him.

'Damn it --' he broke off that line of thought, 'I've spawned a devil's pup. He could sell a secondhand car to the judge who was passing the death sentence on him." He felt his anger softened by reluctant admiration, but he spoke grimly. 'You don't seem to understand, Sean. This is the end of the road for you and me." As he said it they topped the rise. Ahead of them lay the Limpopo river, but despite Mister Rudyard Kipling, it was neither grey green nor greasy and there was not a single fever tree on either bank. This was the dry season and though the river was half a mile wide, the flow was reduced to a thin trickle down the centre of the bed. The long low concrete bridge stretched northwards crossing the orangecoloured sand and straggly clumps of reeds.

They drove over the bridge in silence and Shasa stopped the pickup at the barrier. The border post was a small square building with a corrugated-iron roof. Shasa kept the engine of the Ford running.

Sean climbed out and lifted his suitcase out of the back of the truck, then crossed in front of the bonnet and came to Shasa's open window.

'No, Dad." He leaned into the window. 'You and I will never reach the end of the road. I am part of you, and I love you too deeply for that ever to happen. You are the only person or thing I have ever loved." Shasa studied his face for any trace of insincerity, and when he found none, he reached up impulsively and embraced him. He had not meant this to happen, had been determined that it would not, but now he found himself reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket and bringing out the thick sheaf of banknotes and letters that he had carried with him, despite his best intentions to turn Sean loose without a penny.

'Here are a couple of pounds to tide you over,' he said, and his voice was gruff. 'And there are three letters of introduction to people in Salisbury who may be able to help you." Carelessly Sean stuffed them into his pocket and picked up his suitcase.

'Thanks, Pater. I don't deserve it." 'No,' Shasa agreed. 'You don't - but don't worry too much about it. There won't be any more. That's it, Sean, finished. The first and only insraiment of your inheritance." As always Sean's smile was a little miracle. It made Shasa doubt, despite all the evidence, that his son was thoroughly bad.

TI1 write, Pater. You'll see, one day we'll laugh about this - when we are together again." Lugging his suitcase Sean passed through the barrier, and after he disappeared into the customs hut, Shasa was left with an unbearable sense of futility. Was this how it ended after all the care and love over all the years?

Shasa was amused by the ease with which Isabella was able to overcome her lisp. Within two weeks of enrolling at Rustenberg Girls' Senior School, she was talking, and looking, like a little lady.

Apparently the teachers and her fellow pupils had not been impressed by babytalk.

It was only when she was trying to wheedle her father that she still employed the lisp and the pout. She sat on the arm of his chair now and stroked the silver wings of hair above Shasa's ears.

'I have the most beautiful daddy in the world,' she crooned, and indeed the flashes of silver contrasted with the dense darkness of the rest of his hair and the tanned almost unlined skin of his face to enhance Shasa's looks. 'I have the kindest and most loving daddy in the world." 'And I have the most scheming little vixen in the world for a daughter,' he said, and she laughed with delight, a sound that made his heart contract, and her breath in his face smelled milky and sweet as a newborn kitten, but he shored up his crumbling defences.

'I have a daughter who is only fourteen years old--' 'Fifteen,' she corrected him.

'Fourteen and a half,' he countered.

'Almost fifteen,' she insisted.

'A daughter under fifteen years of age, who is much too precious to allow out of my house after ten o'clock at night." 'Oh, my big cuddly growly bear,' she whispered in his ear and hugged him hard, and as she rubbed her soft cheek against his, her breasts pressed against his arm.

Tara's breasts had always been large and shapely, he still found them immensely attractive. Isabella had inherited them from her. Over the last few months Shasa had watched with pride and interest their phenomenal growth, and now they were firm and warm against his arm.

'Are there going to be boys there?" he asked, and she sensed the first rack in his defence.

'Oh, I m not interested in boys, Papa,' and she shut her eyes tight in case a thunderbolt came crashing down on her for such a fib.

These days Isabella could think of little else but boys, they even occupied her dreams, and her interest in their anatomy was so intense that both Michael and Garry had forbidden her to come into their rooms while they were changing. Her candid and fascinated examination was too disconcerting.

'How will you get there and back? You don't expect your mother to wait up until midnight, do you? And I'll be in Jo'burg that night,' Shasa asked and she opened her eyes.

'Stephen can take me and bring me back." 'Stephen?" Shasa asked sharply.

'Mommy's new chauffeur. He's so nice and awfully trustworthyMommy says so." Shasa wasn't aware that Tara had taken on a chauffeur. She usually drove herself, but that reprehensible old Packard of hers had finally given up the ghost when she was away at Sundi and he had prevailed on her to accept a new Chevvy station wagon. Presumably the chauffeur went with it. She should have consulted him - but they had drifted further and further apart over the last few years and seldom discussed domestic routine.

'No,' he said firmly. 'I won't have you driving around on your own at night." 'I'll be with Stephen,' she pleaded, but he ignored the protest. He knew nothing about Stephen, except that he was male and black.

'I'll tell you what. If you can get a written guarantee from one of the other girls' parents - somebody I know - that they will get you there and back before midnight - well, then, all right, you may go." 'Oh Daddy! Daddy!" She showered soft warm kisses on his face, and then leapt up and did a little victory pirouette around his study.

She had long willowy legs under the flaring skirt and a tight little bottom in lace panties.

'She is probably,' he thought, and then corrected himself, 'she is without doubt the most beautiful child in the entire world." Isabella stopped suddenly, and assumed a woebegone expression.

'Oh, Papa!" she cried in anguish.

'What is it now?" Shasa leaned back in his swivel chair and hid his smile.

'Both Patty and Lenora are going to have new dresses, and I shall look an awful frump." 'A frump, forsooth! We cannot have that now, can we?" And she rushed to him.

'Does that mean I may have a new dress, Daddy darling?" She wound both arms around his neck again. The sound of a motor car coming up the drive interrupted their idyll.

'Here comes Mommy!" Isabella sprang from his lap and seizing his hand dragged him to the window. 'We can tell her about the party and the dress now, can't we, darling Daddy." The new Chevrolet with the high tail fins and great chromed grille pulled up at the front steps, and the new chauffeur stepped out. He was an imposing man, tall and broad-shouldered in a dove-grey livery and cap with patent-leather peak. He opened the rear door, and Tara slipped out of her seat. As she passed him she tapped the chauffeur on the arm, an over-friendly gesture so typical of Tara's treatment of the servants which irritated Shasa as much as usual.

Tara came up the front stairs and disappeared from Shasa's view, while the chauffeur went back into the driver's seat and pulled away towards the garages. As he drove below the windows of the study, he glanced up. His face was half obscured by the peak of his cap, but there was something vaguely familiar about his jawline and the way his head was set on that corded neck and those powerful shoulders.

Shasa frowned, trying to place him, but the memory was an ancient one, or erroneous, and then behind him Isabella was calling in her special honeyed voice.

'Oh Mommy, Daddy and I have something to tell you,' and Shasa turned from the window, steeling himself for Tara's familiar accusation of favouritism and indulgence.

The hidden door to Shasa's parliamentary suite of offices provide› the key to the problem that they had been working on over the weeks that Moses Gama had been in Cape Town.

It was simple enough for Moses to enter the parliament buildin itself, dressed in chauffeur's livery and carrying an armful oJ shopping - shoe boxes and hat boxes from the most expensive stores He merely followed Tara as she swept past the doormen at the front entrance. There was virtually no security in operation, no register to sign, no lapel badges were necessary. A stranger might be asked to show a visitor's pass at the entrance, but as the wife of cabinet minister, Tara merited a respectful salute, and she made point of getting to know the doormen. Sometimes she paused to ask after a sick child, or the janitor's arthritis, and with her sunny personality and her concerned condescension, she was soon a favourite of the uniformed staff who guarded the entrance.

She did not take Moses in with her on every occasion, only when she was certain that there was no risk of meeting Shasa. She brought him often enough to establish his presence and his right to be there. When they reached Shasa's suite, Tara would order him to place the parcels in the inner office while she paused to chat with Shasa's secretary. Then, when Moses emerged from the office emptyhanded, she would dismiss him lightly.

'Thank you, Stephen. You may go down now. I will need the car at eleven. Please bring it around to the front and wait for me." Then Moses would walk down the main staircase, standing respectfully aside for parliamentary messengers and members and cabinet members, once he even passed the prime minister on the stairs, and he had to drop his gaze in case Verwoerd recognized the hatred in his eyes. It gave him a weird feeling of unreality to pass only arm's length from the man who was the author of his people's misery, who more than any other represented all the forces of injustice and oppression. The man who had elevated racial discrimination to a quasi-religious philosophy.

Moses found he was trembling as he went on down the stairs, but he passed the doormen without a glance and the janitor in his cubicle barely lifted his eyes before concentrating once more on his newspaper.

It was vital to Moses' plans that he should be able to leave the building unaccompanied, and constant repetition had made that possible.

To the doormen he was almost invisible.

However, they had still not solved the problem of access to Shasa's inner office. Moses might go in there long enough to deposit the armful of parcels, but he could not risk remaining longer, and especially he could not be in there behind a closed door, or alone with Tara. Tricia, Shasa's secretary, was alert and observant, and obsessively loyal to Shasa; like all Shasa's female employees she was more than just a little in love with him.

The discovery of the concealed rear door to the suite came as a blessing when they were almost desperately considering leaving the final preparation to Tara alone.

'Heavens, it was so simple, after all our worrying!" Tara laughed with relief, and the next time Shasa left for his inspection tour of the H'am Mine, taking Garry with him as usual, she and Moses made one of their visits to parliament to test their arrangement.

After Moses had left her parcels in the inner office and in front of Tricia, Tara sent him away. 'I won't need the car until much later, Stephen, I'm having lunch with my father in the dining-room." Then as he left, closing the outer door behind him, Tara turned back to Tricia.

'I have a few letters to write. I'll use my husband's office. Please see that I'm not disturbed." Tricia looked dubious, she knew that Shasa was fussy about his desk and the contents of his drawers, but she could not think of any way to prevent Tara making use of it, and while she hesitated, Tara marched into Shasa's office, closed the door and firmly locked it behind her. Another precedent had been set.

On the outside there was a light tap, and it took her a moment to discover the inside lock, disguised as a light switch. She opened the panelled door a crack, Moses slipped through it into the office. She held her breath against the snap of the lock, and then turned eagerly to Moses.

'Both doors are locked,' she whispered, and she embraced him.

'Oh Moses, Moses - it's been so long." Even though they spent so much time in each' other's company, the moments of total privacy were rare and precious and she clung to him.

'Not now,' he whispered. 'There is work to do." Reluctantly she opened her embrace and let him go. He went to the window first, standing to one side as he drew the drapes so that he could not be seen from outside, and then he switched on the desk lamp and removed his uniform jacket, hanging it on the back of Shasa's chair, before crossing to the altar chest. He paused before it, putting Tara in mind of a worshipper, for his head was bowed and his hands clasped before him reverently. Then he roused himself and lifted the heavy bronze Van Wouw sculpture from the top of th chest. He carried it across the room and placed it on Shasa's desk He went back and carefully opened the lid, wincing as the antiqu, hinges squeaked.

The interior of the chest had been half-filled with the overflor from Shasa's bookshelves. Piles of old copies of Hansard, out-of date white papers and old parliamentary reports. Moses was annoye( at this unexpected obstacle.

'You must help me,' he whispered to Tara, and between them the began to unpack the chest.

'Keep everything in the same order,' Moses warned, as he passer the piles of publications to her. 'We will have to leave it exactly as il was." The chest was so deep that at the end Moses found it easier to climb into it and pass the last of the contents out to her. The carpel was covered with stacks of paper now, but the chest was empty.

'Let me have the tools,' Moses ordered. They were in one of the packets that Moses had carried up from the car, and she handed them to him.

'Don't make any noise,' she pleaded.

The chest was large enough to conceal him completely. She went to the door and listened for a moment. Tricia's typewriter was tapping away reassuringly. Then she went back to the chest and peered into it.

Moses was on his knees working on the floor of the chest with a screwdriver. The screws were authentically antique, taken from another old piece of furniture so that they were not obvious recent additions, and the floor panels of the chest were likewise aged oak and only close examination by an expert would have revealed that they were not original. Once the screws were loose, Moses lifted out the panels to reveal the compartment beneath. This was tightly packed with cotton waste and gently Moses worked it loose, and as he removed the top layer placed it in the package that had contained the tools.

Tara watched with awful fascination as the contents of the first secret compartment came into view. They were small rectangular blocks of some dark amorphous material, like sticky toffee or carpenter's putty, each covered with a translucent greaseproof wrapper and with a label marked in Russian Cyrillic script.

There were ten blocks in the top layer, but Tara knew that there must be two layers below that. Thirty blocks in all, each block weighed two pounds, which made a total of sixty pounds of plastic explosive. It looked mundane and harmless as some kitchen commodity, but Moses had warned her of its lethal power.

'A two-pound brick will destroy the span of a steel bridge, ten pounds would knock down the average house, sixty pounds --' he shrugged. 'It's enough to do the job ten times over." Once he had removed the packing and reassured himself of the contents, Moses replaced the panel and screwed it closed. Then he opened the centre panel of the floor. Again it was packed with cotton waste. As he removed it, he explained in a whisper, 'There are four different types of detonators to cover all possible needs. These,' he gingerly lifted a small flat tin the size of a cigarette pack out of its nest of cotton packing, 'these are electrical detonators that can be wired up to a series of batteries or to the mains. These,' he returned the tin to its slot and lifted the loose cotton to reveal a second larger tin, 'these are radio receiver detonators and are set off by a VHF transmission from this miniature transmitter." It looked to Tara like one of the modern portable radios. Moses lifted it out of its nest. 'It needs only six torch batteries to activate it. Now these are simple acid time-fused detonators, primitive, and the time delay isn't very accurate, but this here is a trembler detonator. Once it is primed, the slightest movement or vibration will set it off. Only an expert will be able to defuse the charge once it is in place." Until this moment she had considered only the abstract dialectic of what they were doing, but now she was faced with the actuality.

Here before her was the very stuff of violent death and'destruction, the innocent appearance no less menacing than the coils of a sleeping mamba, and she found herself wavering.

'Moses,' she whispered. 'Nobody will be hurt. No human life, you said that - didn't you?" 'We have discussed that already." His expression was cold and scornful, and she felt ashamed. 'Forgive me, please." Moses ignored her and unscrewed the third and last panel. This compartment contained an automatic pistol and four clips of ammunition. It took up little space and the rest of the compartment was packed with cotton waste which Moses removed.

'Give me the other packet,' he ordered, and when she passed it to him, he began to pack the contents into the empty recess. Firstly there was a compact tool kit which contained a keyhole saw and hand drill, drill bits and augers, a box of hearing-aid batteries for the detonator and torch batteries for the transmitter, a Penlite torch, a five-hundred-foot roll of thin electrical wire, diamond glass-cutters, putty, staples and tiny one-ounce tins of touch-up paint. Lastly there was a pack of hard rations, dried biscuit and cans of meat and vegetables.

'I wish you had let me give you something more appetizing." 'It will be only two days,' Moses said, and she was reminded ho little store he set by creature comforts.

Moses replaced the panel, but he did not tighten the retainin screws fully, so that they could be loosened by hand.

'All right, pass the books to me now." He repacked the ches replacing the bundles in the same order as he had found them, s that to a casual glance it would not be apparent that the contents c the chest had been disturbed. Carefully Moses closed the chest an replaced the bronze statue on the lid. Then he stood in front of th desk and surveyed the room carefully. 'I will need a place to hide." 'The drapes,' Tara suggested, and he nodded.

'Not very original, but effective." The curtains were embroidere brocade, cut full, and they reached to the floor.

'A key to that door - I'll need one." He indicated the hidden doo: in the panelling.

'I will try --' Tara began and then broke off as there was a knoc on the interleading door. For a moment he thought she might panic and he squeezed her arm to calm her.

'Who is it?" Tara called in a level voice.

'It's me, Mrs Courtney,' Tricia called respectfully. 'It's one o'clock and I'm going to take my lunch." 'Go ahead, Tricia. I'll be a little longer, but I'll lock up when I leave." They heard the outer door close, and then Moses released her arm. 'Go out and search her desk. See if she has a key to the back door." Tara was back within minutes with a small bunch of keys. She tried them in the lock and the third one turned the door in the panelling.

'The serial number is on it." She scribbled a note of the number on Shasa's noteblock and ripped off the top sheet. Tll return the keys to Tricia's desk." When she came back, Moses was buttoning his uniform jacket, but she locked the door behind her.

'What I need now is a plan of the building. There must be one in the public works department, and you must get me a copy. Tell Tricia to do it." 'How?" she asked. 'What excuse can I give?" 'Tell her that you want to change the lighting in here,' he gestured at the chandelier in the roof. 'Tell her you must have an electrical plan of this section, showing the circuits and wall-fittings." 'Yes, I can do that,' she agreed.

'Good. We are finished here for the time being. We can go now." 'There is no hurry, Moses. Tricia will not be back for another hour." He looked down at her, and for a moment she thought she saw a flash of contempt, even disgust, in those dark brooding eyes, but she would not let herself believe that, and she pressed herself to him, hiding her face against his chest. Within seconds she felt the swelling and hardening of his loins through the cloth that separated their lower bodies, and her doubts were dispelled. She was certain that in his own strange African way he loved her still and she reached down to open his clothing and bring him out.

He was so thick that she could barely encompass him within the circle of her thumb and forefinger, and he was hot and hard as a shaft of black ironstone that had lain in the full glare of the sun at midday.

Tara sank down onto the thick silken rug, drawing him down on top of her.

Every day now increased the danger of discovery and both of them were aware of it.

'Will Shasa recognize you?" Tara asked Moses more than once. 'It is becoming more and more difficult to keep you from meeting him face to face. He asked about my new chauffeur a few days ago." Isabella had apparently drawn Shasa's attention to the new employee for her own selfish reasons, and Tara could cheerfully have thrashed her for it. But there had been the danger of establishing the importance of her new driver even more clearly in the child's devious mind, so she had let it pass without comment.

'Will he know you?" she insisted, and Moses considered it carefully.

'It was long ago, before the war. He was a child." Moses shook his head. 'The circumstances were so different, the place so remote and yet for a short while we were close. I believe we made a deep impression upon each other - if merely because of the unlikelihood of such a relationship, black man and white boy becoming familiar, developing an intimate friendship." He sighed. 'It is certain, however, that at the time of the trial he must have read the intelligence reports and known of the warrant for my arrest which, by the way, is still in force. Whether he would connect the wanted revolutionary criminal with his childhood friend, I do not know, but we cannot take that chance. We must do what has to be done as soon as possible." 'It seems that Shasa has been out of town every weekend for the last five years." Tara bit her lip with frustration. 'But now that I want him gone, he won't leave Weltevreden for a single day. Firsl it's this damned polo b ' ' usmess. The Argentinian polo team was touring the country, and Shasa was hosting their stay in Cape Town, while the polo fields of Weltevreden would be the venue for the first test match of their visit. 'Then immediately after that it will be the British prime minister, Harold Macmillan's visit. Shasa won't be leaving Cape Town before the end of the month at the very arhest.

e ' ' She watched his face in the driving-mirror as he pondered it.

'There is risk either way,' he said softly. 'To delay is as dangerous as to act hastily. We must choose the exact moment." Neither of them spoke again until they reached the bus stop, and Moses parked the Chev on the opposite side of the road. Then he switched off the engine and asked: 'This polo match. When will it take place?" 'The test match is on Friday afternoon." 'Your husband will be playing?" 'The South African team will be announced in the middle of the week, but Shasa is almost certain to be on the team. He might even be chosen as captain." 'Even if he is not, he will be the host. He must be there." Yes,' Tara agreed.

'Friday - that will give me the whole weekend." He made up his mind. 'We will do it then." For a few moments Tara felt the suffocating desperation of somebody trapped in quicksand, sinking slowly, and yet there was an inevitability about it that made fear seem superfluous. There was no escape and she felt instead an enervating sense of acceptance.

'Here is the bus,' Moses said, and she heard the faintest tremor of excitement in his voice. It was one of the very few times that she had ever known his personal feelings to betray him.

As the bus drew up at the halt, she saw the woman and child standing on the platform at the rear. They were both peering eagerly at the parked Chev, and when tara waved the child hopped down and started across the road. The bus pulled away and Miriam Afrika stayed on the platform at the back of the bus, staring back at them until it turned the next corner.

Benjamin came to meet them, his face bright with anticipation. He was growing into a likely lad, and Miriam always dressed him so well - clean white shirt, grey shorts and polished black shoes. His toffee-coloured skin had a scrubbed look and his crisp dark curls were trimmed into a neat cap.

'Isn't he just too gorgeous?" Tara breathed. 'Our son, Moses, our fine son." The boy opened the door and jumped in besides Moses. He looked up at him with a beaming smile and Moses embraced him briefly.

Then Tara leaned over the seat and kissed him and gave him a brief but fierce hug. In public she had to limit any show of affection, and as he grew older, their relationship became more difficult and obscure.

The child still believed that Miriam Afrika was his mother, but he was almost six years old now, and a bright intelligent and sensitive boy. She knew that he suspected some special relationship between the three of them. These clandestine meetings were too regular, and emotionally charged, for him not to suspect that something had remained to be fully explained to him.

Benjamin had been told merely that they were good friends of the family, but even at his tender age he would be aware of the social taboos that they were flouting, for his very existence must be permeated by the knowledge that white and black were somehow different and set apart from his own light brown, and sometimes he stared at Tara with a kind of wonder as though she were some fabulous creature from a fairy tale.

There was nothing Tara could think of that could fulfill her more than taking him in her arms and telling him, 'You are my baby, my own true baby, and I love you as much as I love your father." But she could not even let him sit on the seat beside her in case they were seen together.

They drove out across the Cape Flats towards Somerset West, but before they reached the village, Moses turned off onto a side track, through the dense stands of Port Jackson willow until they came out on to the long deserted curve of beach with the green waters of False Bay before them, and on each side the mountainous ramparts that formed the horns of the wide bay.

Moses parked the Chev and fetched the picnic basket from the boot, and then the three of them followed the footpath along the top of the beach until they reached their favourite spot. From here anyone approaching along the beach would be obvious from half a mile, while inland the exotic growth formed an almost impenetrable jungle. The only persons likely to venture this far along the lonely beach were surf fishermen casting into the tumbling waves for kob and steenbras, or lovers seeking seclusion. Here they felt safe.

Tara helped Benjamin change into his bathing-costume, and then all three of them went hand in hand to the enclosed rock pool where the child splashed and played like a spaniel puppy. When at last he was chilled through and tired, Tara towelled down his shivering body and dressed him again. Then he helped Moses build a fire amongst the dunes and grill the raw sausages and chops upon the coals.

After they had eaten, Benjamin wanted to swim again, but gently Tara forbade him. 'Not on a full stomach, darling." So he went to search for shells along the tide-mark of the beach, and Tara and Moses sat on the crest of the dune and watched him. Tara was as happy and contented as she could ever remember being until Moses broke the silence.

'This is what we are working for,' he said. 'Dignity and a chance for happiness for all in this land." 'Yes, Moses,' she whispered.

'It is worth any price." 'Oh, yes,' she agreed fervently. 'Oh yes!" 'Part of the price is the execution of the architect of our misery,' he said sharply. 'I have kept this from you until now, but Verwoerd must die and all his henchmen with him. Destiny has appointed me his executioner - and his successor." Tara paled at his words, but they came as such a shock that she could not speak. Moses took her hand with a strange and unusual gentleness.

'For you, for me and for the child - that he may live with us in the sunshine of freedom." She tried to speak, but her voice faltered, and he waited patiently until she was able to enunciate. 'Moses, you promised!" 'No." He shook his head. 'You persuaded yourself of that, and it was not the time to disillusion you." 'Oh God, Moses!" The enormity of it crashed in upon her. 'I thought you were going to blow up the empty building as a symbolic gesture, but all along you planned to --' she broke off, unable to complete the sentence, and he did not deny it.

'Moses - my husband Shasa, he will be on the bench beside Verwoerd." 'Is he your husband?" Moses asked. 'Is he not one of them, one of the enemy?" She lowered her eyes to acknowledge the truth of this, and then suddenly she was agitated again. 'My father - he will be in the House." 'Your father and your husband are part of your old life. You have left that behind you. Now, Tara, I am both your father and your husband, and the struggle is your new life." 'Moses, isn't there some way they can be spared?" she pleaded.

He did not speak, but she saw the answer in his eyes and she covered her face with both hands and began to weep. She wept silently, but the spasms of grief shook her whole body. Down on the beach the child's happy cries came to her faintly on the wind, and beside her Moses sat unmoving and without expression. After a while, she lifted her head and wiped the tears from her face with the palms of her hands.

'I'm sorry, Moses,' she whispered. 'I was weak, please forgive me.

I was mourning my father, but now I am strong again, and ready to do whatever you require of me." The test match against the visiting Argentinian polo team was the most exciting event that had taken place at Weltevreden in a decade or more.

As mistress of the estate, the planning and organization of the event should have fallen to Tara, but her lack of interest in the sport and her poor organizational skills were too much for Centaine Courtney-Malcomess to abide. She began by giving discreet advice and ended in exasperation by taking all responsibility out of her daughter-in-law's hands. The result was that the occasion was in every respect a towering success. After Centaine had chivvied the coloured greensman, and with Blaine's expert advice, the turf on the field was green and velvety, the going beneath it neither hard enough to jar the legs of the ponies nor soft enough to slow them down. The goalposts were painted in the colours of the teams, the pale blue and white of Argentina, and orange, blue and white of South Africa, and two hundred flags in the same colours flew from the grandstand.

The stand itself was freshly painted, as were the fence pickets and the stables. A fence was erected to keep the general public out of the chfiteau's private grounds, but the new facilities designed by Centaine especially for the occasion included an extension to the grandstand, with public toilets below and an open air restaurant that could seat two hundred guests. The extensions to the stables were sufficient for fifty ponies, and there were new quarters for the grooms. The Argentinians had brought their own, and they wore traditional gaucho costume with wide hats and their chaps decorated with silver coins.

Garry tore himself away from his new office at Centaine House which was on the top floor, only three doors down from Shasa, and he spent two days at the stables watching and learning from these masters of horsecraft and the game of polo.

Michael had at last managed to secure an official assignment. He blissfully believed that the Golden City Mail in Johannesburg had appointed him their local correspondent on his own merits as a cubreporter. Centaine, who had made a discreet telephone call to the chairman of Associated Newspapers of South Africa who owned the Mail, did nothing to disillusion him. Michael was to be paid five guineas for the day, plus a shilling a word for any copy of his actually printed by the newspaper. He interviewed every member of both teams, including the reserves, all the grooms, the umpire and referees.

He drew up a full history and score card of all previous matches played between the two countries going back to the 1936 Olympic Games, and he worked out the pedigrees of all the ponies - but here he showed restraint by limiting the listing to only two generations.

Even before the match day he had written enough to make Gone with the Wind look like a pamphlet. Then he insisted on telephoning this important copy through to a long-suffering sub at the newspaper offices, and the telephone charges far outstripped his five-guinea salary.

'Anyway, Mickey,' Shasa consoled him, 'if they print everything you have written at a shilling a word, you'll be a millionaire." The big disappointment for the family came on the Wednesday when the South African team was announced. Shasa was chosen to play in his usual position at Number Two but he was passed over for the captaincy. This went to Max Theunissen, a flamboyant, hardriding millionaire farmer from Natal who was a long-time rival of Shasa's, ever since their first meeting on this same field as juniors many years before.

Shasa hid his disappointment behind a rueful grin. 'It means more to Max than it does to me,' he told Blaine, who was one of the selectors, and Blaine nodded.

'Yes,' he agreed. 'That's why we gave it to him, Shasa. Max values it." Isabella fell desperately in love with the Argentinian Number Four, a paragon of masculinity with olive skin, dark flashing eyes, thick wavy hair and dazzling white teeth.

She changed her frock three and four times a day, trying out all the most sophisticated of the clothes with which Shasa had filled her wardrobes. She even applied a very light coat of rouge and lipstick, not enough to catch Shasa's attention but just enough, she hoped, to pique Jos Jesfis Goncalves De Shntos interest. She exercised all her ingenuity in waylaying him, hanging around the stables endlessly and practising her most languid poses whenever he hove into view.

The object of her adoration was a man in his early thirties who was convinced that the Argentinian male was the world's greatest lover and that he, Jos Jesfis Goncalves De Santas, was the national champion. There were at least a dozen mature and willing ladies vying for his attention at any one time. He did not even notice the antics of this fourteen-year-old child, but Centaine did.

'You are making an exhibition of yourself, Bella,' she told her.

'From now on you are forbidden to go near the stables, and if I see one speck of make-up on your face again, you may be certain your father will learn about it." Nobody went against Nora's orders, not even the boldest and most love-lorn, so Isabella was forced to abandon her fantasy of ambushing Jos in the hayloft above the stables and presenting him with her virginity. Isabella was not entirely certain what this entailed.

Lenora had lent her a forbidden book which referred to it as 'a pearl beyond price'. Whatever it was, Jos Jeshs could have her pearl and anything else he wanted.

However, Nana's strictures reduced her to trailing around after him at a discreet distance, and directing burning but long-range looks at him whenever he glanced in her direction.

Garry intercepted one of these passionate looks and was so alarmed by it that he demanded in a loud voice, and within earshot of her beloved, 'Are you sick, Bella? You keep looking like you are going to throw up." It was the first time in her life that she truly hated her middle brother.

Centaine had planned for two thousand spectators. Polo was an elite sport with a limited following, and at two pounds each, tickets were expensive, but on the day the gate exceeded five thousand. This guaranteed the club a healthy profit but put a considerable strain on Centaine's logistics. All her reserves, which included Tara, were thrown in to deal with the overflow and to organize the additional food and drink required, and only when the teams rode out on to the field could Tara escape her mother-in-law's all-seeing eye and go up into the stand.

For the first chukka Shasa was riding a bay gelding whose hide was burnished until it shone like a mirror in the sunlight. In his green jersey piped with gold, and his snowy white breeches and glossy black boots, Tara had to admit to herself that Shasa looked magnificent. As he cantered below the stand he looked up and smiled, the black eye-patch gave an intriguing sinister nuance to his otherwise boyish and charming grin, and despite herself Tara responded, waving to him, until she realized that Shasa was not smiling at her but at someone below her in the stand. Feeling a little foolish, she stood on tiptoe and peered down to try and see who it was. The woman was tall with a narrow waist, but her face was obscured by the brim of a garden party hat decorated with roses. However, the arm she lifted to wave at Shasa was slim and tanned with diamond engagement and gold wedding rings on the third finger of her shapely hand.

Tara turned away and removed her hat so that Centaine could not easily pick her out of the crowd, and she worked her way quickly but unobtrusively to the side exit of the stand. As she crossed the carpark and headed around the back of the stables, the first roaring cheer went up from the stand. Nobody would look for her for a couple of hours now, and she began to run. Moses had the Chev parked in the plantation of pines, near the guest cottages and she pulled open the back door and tumbled into the seat.

'Nobody saw me leave,' she panted, and he started the engine and drove sedately down the long driveway and out through the Anreith gateway.

Tara checked her wristwatch; it was a few minutes past three o'clock, but it would take forty minutes to round the mountain and reach the city. They would reach the parliament building at four o'clock when the doormen were thinking about their tea-break. It was a Friday afternoon, and the House was in Committee of Supply, the kind of boring routine business which would leave the members nodding on the benches. In fact, Blaine and Shasa had tactfully arranged this schedule with the whips so that they, and quite a few of their peers, might sneak away to the polo without missing any important debate or division. Many of the other members must have made plans to leave early for the weekend, for the building was quiet and the lobby almost deserted.

Moses parked in the members' carpark and went around to the back of the station wagon to bring out the packages. Then he followed Tara at a respectful distance as she climbed the front staircase. Nobody challenged them, it was all so easy, almost an anti-climax, and they went up to the second floor, past the press gallery entrance, where Tara had a glimpse of three junior reporters slumped dispiritedly on their benches as they listened to the honourable minister of posts and telegraphs droning out his selfcongratulations on the exemplary fashion in which he had conducted his department during the previous fiscal year.

Tricia was sitting behind her desk in the outer office painting her fingernails with varnish, and she looked flustered and guilty as Tara walked in.

'Oh, Tricia, that is a pretty colour,' Tara said sweetly, and Tricia tried to look as though her fingers didn't belong to her, but the varnish was wet and she didn't quite know what to do with them.

'I've finished all the letters Mr Courtney left for me,' she tried to excuse herself, 'and it's been so quiet today, and I've got a date tonight - I just thought --' she petered out lamely.

'I've brought up some samples of curtain material,' Tara told her.

'I thought we'd change them when we installed the new light fittings.

I would like it to be a surprise for Shasa, so don't mention it to him, if you can avoid it." ?f course not, Mrs Courtney." I will be trying to work out the new colour scheme for the curtains, and I'll probably be here until long after five o'clock. If you've finished your work, why don't you go off early? I will take any phone calls." 'Oh, I'd feel bad about that,' Tricia protested half-heartedly.

'Off you go!" Tara ordered firmly. 'I'll hold the fort. You enjoy your date - I hope you have a lovely evening." 'It's so kind of you, Mrs Courtney. It really is." 'Stephen, take those samples through and put them on the couch please,' Tara ordered without looking at Moses, and she lingered while Tricia cleared her desk with alacrity and headed for the door.

'Have a super weekend, Mrs Courtney - and thanks a lot." Tara locked the door after her and hurried through to the inner office.

'That was a bit of luck,' she whispered.

'We should give her some time to get clear,' Moses told her, and they sat side by side on the sofa.

Tara looked nervous and unhappy, but she kept silent for many minutes before she blurted out, 'Moses, about my father - and Shasa." 'Yes?" he asked, but his voice was bleak, and she hesitated, twisting her fingers together nervously. 'Yes?" he insisted.

'No - you are right,' she sighed. 'It has to be done. I must be strong." 'Yes, you must be strong,' he agreed. 'But now you must go, and leave me to do my work." She stood up. 'Kiss me please, Moses,' she whispered, and then after a moment broke from his embrace. 'Good luck,' she said softly.

She locked the outer door of the office and went down the staircase into the main lobby, and half-way down she was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of doom. It was so strong that she felt the blood drain from her head and an icy sweat broke out on her forehead and upper lip. For a moment she felt dizzy, and had to clutch the banisters to prevent herself from falling. Then she forced herself to go on down and cross the lobby.

The janitor was staring at her strangely. She kept walking. He was leaving his cubicle and coming to intercept her. She felt panic come at her and she wanted to turn and run back up the stairs, to warn Moses that they had been discovered.

'Mrs Courtney." The janitor stopped in front of her, blocking her path.

'What is it?" she faltered, trying to think up a plausible reply to his demands.

'I've got a small bet on the polo this afternoon, do you know how it's going?" She stared at him, and for a moment it did not make sense.

She almost blurted out, 'Polo, what polo?" and then she caught herself and with an enormous effort of will and concentration chatted with the man for almost a minute before she could escape. In the carpark she could no longer control her panic and she ran to the Chev and flung herself behind the wheel sobbing for breath.

When he heard the key turn in the lock of the outer door, Moses went back into Shasa's office and drew the drapes over the windows.

Then he went to the bookshelves and studied the titles. He would not unpack the altar chest until the last moment. Tricia might return for something she had forgotten, there might be a routine check of the offices by the parliamentary staff. Shasa might even come in on the Saturday morning. Although Tara had assured him that Shasa would be fully occupied at Weltevreden with his guests over the whole weekend, Moses would take no chances. He would disturb nothing in the office until it was absolutely necessary.

He smiled as he saw Macaulay's History of England on the shelf.

It was an expensive leather-bound edition, and it brought back vivid memories of the time when he and the man he was about to kill had been friends - of that time long ago when there had still been hope.

He passed on down the shelves until he reached a section in which Shasa obviously kept all those works with whose principles he differed, works ranging from Mein Kampf to Karl Marx with Socialism in between. Moses chose a volume of the collected works of Lenin and took it across to the desk. He settled down to read, confident that any unwanted visitor must give him sufficient time to reach his hiding-place behind the drapes.

He read until the dusk fell and, the light failed in the room, then he took the blanket from the package he had brought up from the Chev and settled down on the sofa.

He woke early on Saturday morning, when the rock pigeons began crooning on the ledge outside the window, and let himself out of the panel door. He used the toilets at the end of the passage in the knowledge that it was going to be a long day, and took a cynical pleasure in defying the 'Whites Only' sign on the door.

Although the House did not sit on a Saturday, the main doors were open and there would still be some activity in the building, cleaners and staff, perhaps ministers using their offices. He could do nothing until the Sunday, when Calvinist principles forbade any work or unnecessary activity outside the body of the church. Again he spent the day reading, and at nightfall he ate from the supplies he had brought with him and disposed of the empty cans and wrappers in the rubbish bin in the toilets.

He slept fitfully and was fully awake before dawn on Sunday morning. He ate a frugal breakfast and changed into workman's overalls and tennis shoes from the package before he began a cautious reconnaissance of the House. The building was utterly silent and deserted. Looking down the stairs he saw that the front doors were barred and all the lights were extinguished. He moved about with more confidence, and tried the door to the press gallery. It was unlocked and he stood at the rail and looked down into the chamber where all the laws that had enmeshed and enslaved his people had been enacted and he felt his rage like a captive animal inside his chest, clamouring to be set free.

He left the gallery and went down the staircase into the entrance lobby and approached the high main doors of the chamber. His footsteps echoed from the marble slabs. As he had expected, the doors were locked, but the locks were massive antiques. He knelt in front of them, and from his pocket took the folding wallet of locksmith's picks.

His training in Russia had been exhaustively thorough and the lock resisted him for less than a minute. He opened one leaf of the door a crack and slipped through, closing it behind him.

Now he stood in the very cathedral of apartheid, and it seemed to him that the evil of it was a palpable thing that pressed in upon him with a physical weight and shortened his breathing. He moved slowly up the aisle towards the Speaker's throne with the massive coat of arms above it, and then he turned to the left, skirting the table on which the mace and despatch boxes would lie, until he stood at the head of the government front benches, at the seat of the prime minister, Dr Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd,'and Moses' broad nostrils flared open as though he smelled the odour of the great beast.

With an effort he roused himself, setting aside his feelings and his passions, and became as objective as a workman. He examined the bench carefully, going down on his stomach to peer beneath it. Of course, he had studied every photograph of the chamber that he had been able to obtain, but these had been pathetically inadequate.

Now he ran his hands over the green leather; the padding was indented by the weight of the men who had sat upon it, and at this close range it was scuffed and cracked with wear over the years. The bench frame was of massive mahogany, and when he groped up beneath the seat he found the heavy cross members that strengthened it. There were no surprises here, and he grunted with satisfaction.

He returned to Shasa's office, letting himself in through the panel door, and went immediately to unpack the altar chest. Once again he was careful to lay out the contents so that it could be repacked in exactly the same order. Then he climbed into the chest and lifted the floor panels.

The food he set aside for his evening meal, and he piled the blocks of plastic into the blanket. One of the advantages of this explosive was that it was inert and could endure the roughest handling.

Without a detonator, it was completely safe.

He picked up the four corners of the blanket and slung it over his shoulder like a tent bag, and then hurriedly went down to the assembly chamber again. He stowed the blanket and its contents under a bench where it would escape casual discovery and. went back to the office to fetch the tool kit. The third time he descended to the chamber, he locked the main doors behind him, so as to be able to work in total security.

He could not risk the noise of using an electric drill. He lay on his back beneath the prime minister's bench and began laboriously setting the staples into the mahogany above his face, boring the holes with the hand drill and then screwing in the threaded staples. He worked meticulously, pausing to measure and mark each hole, so it was almost an hour before he was ready to start placing the blocks of plastic. He arranged them in stacks of five, ten pounds of plastic in each stack, and wired them together. Then he wriggled back under the bench and secured each stack of five blocks in place. He threaded each tag end of wire through the loop of a separate staple and twisted them up tightly, then he reached for the next stack of bricks and set that in neatly against the last until the entire underside of the bench was lined with explosive.

Then he crawled out and checked his progress. There was a lip of mahogany below the leather cushion which completely hid the layer of blocks. Even when he squatted down as a person might do to retrieve a pen or fallen order paper from under the bench, he could not see a trace of his handiwork.

'That will do,' he murmured, and started to clean up. Meticulously he brushed up every speck of sawdust from the drilling and the offcuts of wire, then he gathered his tools.

'Now we can test the transmitter,' he told himself and hurried upstairs to Shasa's office.

He inserted the new torch batteries in the transmitter and checked it. The test globe lit up brightly. He switched it off. Next he took the radio detonator from its cardboard box and placed the hearing-aid battery in its compartment. The detonator was the size of a matchbox, made of black bakelite with a small toggle switch at one end. The switch had three positions: 'off', 'test' and 'receive'. A thin twist of wire prevented the switch accidentally being moved to 'on'.

Moses switched it to 'test' and laid it on the sofa, then he went to the transmitter and flipped the 'on' switch. Immediately the tiny globe at one end of the detonator case lit up and there was a loud buzz, like a trapped bee inside the casing. It had received the signal from the transmitter. Moses switched off the transmitter and the buzz ceased and the globe extinguished.

'Now I must check if it will transmit from here to the assembly chamber." He left thee transmitter on and descended once again to the chamber. Kneeling beside the prime minister's bench, he held the detonator in the palm of his hand and held his breath as he switched it to 'test'.

Nothing happened. He tried it three times more, but it would not receive the signal from the office upstairs. Clearly there was too much brick and reinforced concrete between the two pieces of equipment.

'It was going too easily,' he told himself ruefully. 'There had to be a snag somewhere,' and he sighed as he took the roll of wire from the tool kit. He had wanted to avoid stringing wire from the chamber to the office on the second floor; even though the wire was gossamer thin and the insulating cover was a matt brown, it would infinitely increase the risk of discovery.

'Nothing else for it,' he consoled himselfi He had already studied the electrical wiring plan of the building that Tara had procured from the public works department, but he unrolled it and spread it on the bench beside him to refresh his memory as he worked.

There was a wall plug in the panelling behind the back benches of the government section. From the plan he saw that the conduit was laid behind the panelling and went up the wall into the roof. The diagram also showed the main fuse box in the janitor's office opposite the front door. The office was locked but he picked the lock without difficulty and threw the main switch.

Then he returned to the chamber, located the wall plug and removed the cover, exposing the wiring, and was relieved to find that it was colour-coded. That would make the job a lot easier.

So he left the chamber and went up to the second floor. There was a cleaner's cupboard in the men's toilet that contained a step-.

ladder. The trap door that gave access to the roof was also in the men's toilet. He found it and set the step-ladder below it. From the top of the ladder he removed the trap door and wriggled up through the square opening.

The space below the roof and the ceiling was dark and smelled of rats. He switched on his Penlite and began to pick his way through the forest of timber joists and roof posts. The dust had been undisturbed for years and rose in a languid cloud around his feel He sneezed and covered his mouth and nose with a handkerchief a he went forward carefully, stepping from beam to beam, countinl each pace to keep himself orientated.

Above the exposed section of wall that was certainly the top of th rear side wall of the chamber, he found the electrical conduits. Thert were fifteen of them laid side by side. Some had been there a ion time, while others were obviously new additions.

It took him a while to isolate the conduit that led down to th chamber below, but when he unscrewed the joint in it, he recognizec the coded wiring of the wall-socket that it contained. His relief was intense. He had anticipated a number of problems that he might have encountered at this stage, but now it would be a simple matter to get his own wire into the roofi He uncoiled the long flexible electrician's spring that he had brought from his tools and fed the end of it into the open conduit tubing until he felt it encounter resistance. Then he began the tedious journey back through the roof, down the step-ladder, along the passage, down the staircase and into the chamber.

He found the end of the electrician's spring protruding from the open wall-socket, and he attached the end of the coil of light detonator wire to it and laid out the rest of the wire so that it would feed smoothly into the conduit when he drew the spring in from the other end.

Back in the roof he recovered the spring and the end of the wire came up with it. Gently he drew in the rest of it, working overhand like a fisherman recovering his handline until it came up firmly against the knot that held the far end to the bench in the chamber below. He coiled the wire neatly and left it, while he returned to the chamber. By this time his overalls were filthy with dust and cobwebs.

He untied the loose end .of the wire from the bench and laid it out on the floor, leading it to the 'pack of plastic explosive under the front bench, making certain he had given himself sufficient slack.

Then he worked carefully to conceal' the exposed wire from casual detection. He threaded it under the green wall-to-wall carpeting and stapled it securely to the underside of the government benches. He filed a notch in the enamelled metal plate that covered the wallsocket and laid the wire into it while he screwed the cover back into place.

Then he went carefully over the floor and carpet to make certain he had left no trace of his work. Apart from the few inches of unobtrusive wire protruding from the wall socket, there was nothing to betray his preparations and he sat on Dr Verwoerd's bench to rest for a few minutes before beginning the final phase. He returned upstairs.

The most difficult and frustrating part of the entire job was placing himself in the roof directly above Shasa's office. Three times he had to climb down the ladder into the toilet and then pace out the angles of the passages and the exact location of the office suite before once more climbing back into the ceiling and attempting to follow the same route through the dust and the roof timbers.

Finally he was sure he was in the correct position and gingerly he bored a small hole through the ceiling between his feet. Light came up through the hole, but even when he knelt and placed his eye to the aperture, it was too small to see what lay below. He enlarged it slightly, but he still could see nothing, and yet again he had to make the journey back to the trap door and along the passage to Shasa's office.

Immediately he let himself into the office he saw that he had misjudged. The hole he had bored through the ceiling was directly above the desk, and in enlarging it he had cracked the plaster and dislodged a few fragments which had fallen on to the desk top. He realized that this could be a serious mistake. The hole was not large, but the network of hair cracks around it would be apparent to anyone studying the ceiling.

He thought about trying to cover or repair the damage, .but knew that he would only aggravate it. He brushed the white crumbs of plaster off the desk, but this was all he could do. He would have to take comfort in the unlikelihood that anybody would look at the ceiling, and even if they did, that they would think nothing of the minute blemish. Angrily aware of his mistake, he did what he should have done originally and bored the next hole from below, standing on one of the bookshelves to reach the ceiling. Between the window drapes and the edge of the bookshelves, the hole was almost invisible to any but the most painstaking inspection. He went up into the roof and paid the end of the wire down through the second hole. When he returned to the office he found it dangling down the wall, the end of it lying in a tangle on the carpet in the'corner.

He gathered and coiled the end and tucked it carefully behind the row of Encyclopaedia Britannica on the top shelf and then arranged the window drapes to cover the two or three inches that were visible protruding from the puncture in the ceiling. Once again he cleaned up, going over the shelf and floor for the last speck of plaster, and then, still not satisfied, returning to the desk. Another tiny crumb of white plaster had fallen and he wetted his finger with saliva and picked it up. Then he polished the desk top with his sleeve.

He left the office through the panel door, and went back over everything he had done. He closed the trap door in the roof of the toilet and brushed up the dust that he had dislodged. He replaced the cleaner's ladder in the closet and then returned for the last time to the chamber.

At last he was ready to wire up the detonator. He removed the wire safety device and switched the detonator on. He bored a hole in the soft centre block of explosive and placed the detonator into it.

He taped it firmly in place, and then scraped the last inch of insulation from the gleaming copper wire and screwed that into the connector in the end of the black cylindrical detonator and crawled out from under the bench.

He gathered up his tools, made one last thorough check for any tell-tale evidence, and then satisfied at last, he left the chamber, locking the main doors behind him and carefully polishing his sweaty fingerprints from the gleaming brass. Then he let himself into the janitor's office and switched on the current at the mains.

He retreated up the stairs for the last time and locked himself in Shasa's office before he checked his wristwatch. It was almost half past four. It had taken him all day, but he had worked with special care and he was well satisfied as he slumped down on the sofa. The strain on his nerves and the unremitting need for total concentration had been more wearying than any physical endeavour.

He rested awhile before repacking the altar chest. He stuffed his dirty overalls into the empty explosives compartment and placed the transmitter on top of them where he could reach it quickly. It would be a few minutes' work to retrieve it, connect it to the loose wire that was concealed behind the row of encyclopaedia, close the circuit and fire the detonator in the chamber below. He had calculated that Shasa's office was far enough from the centre of the blast, and that there were sufficient walls and cast concrete slabs between to cushion the effects of the explosion and ensure his own survival, but the chamber itself would be totally devastated. A good day's work indeed, and as the light in the room faded, he settled down on the sofa and pulled the blanket up over his shoulders.

At dawn he roused himself and made one last check of the office, glancing ruefully up at the insignificant spider-web of cracks in the ceiling. He gathered up his packages, then he let himself out through the panel door and went to the men's toilet.

He washed and shaved in one of the basins. Tara had provided a razor and hand towel in the packet of food. Then he donned his chauffeur's jacket and cap and locked himself in one of the toilets.

He could not wait in Shasa's office for Tricia would come in at nine o'clock, nor could he leave until the House activity was in full swing and he could pass out through the front doors unremarked.

He sat on the toilet seat and waited. At nine o'clock he heard footsteps passing down the passage. Then somebody came in and used the cubicle next to his, grunting and farting noisily. At intervals over the next hour men came in, singly or in groups, to use the basins and urinals. However, in the middle of the morning there was a tull. Moses stood up, gathered his parcels, braced himself, let himself out of the cubicle, and briskly crossed to the door into the passage.

The passageway was empty and he started towards the head of the staircase, and then halfway there he chilled with horror and checked in mid-stride.

Two men came up the stairs, and into the passageway, directly towards Moses. Walking side by side, they were in earnest conversation and the shorter and elder of the two was gesticulating and grimacing with the vehemence of his explanation. The younger taller man beside him was listening intently, and his single eye gleamed with suppressed amusement.

Moses forced himself to walk on to meet them, and his expression fixed into that dumb patient mould with which the African conceals all emotion in the presence of his white master. As they approached each other, Moses stepped respectfully aside to let the two of them pass. He did not look directly at Shasa Courtney's face, but let his eyes slide by without making contact.

As they came level, Shasa burst out laughing at what his companion had told him.

'The silly old ass!" he exclaimed, and he glanced sideways at Moses.

His laughter checked and a puzzled frown creased his forehead.

Moses thought he was going to stop, but his companion seized his sleeve.

'Wait for the best bit - she wouldn't give him his pants until he --' he led Shasa on towards his own office, and without looking back or quickening his pace, Moses went on down the staircase and out through the front doors.

The Chev was parked in the lot at the top of the lane where he expected it to be. Moses placed his parcels in the back and then went round to the driver's door. As he slid in behind the steering-wheel, Tara leaned forward from the back seat and whispered: 'Oh thank God, I was so worried about you." The arrival of Harold Macmillan and his entourage in Cape Town engendered real excitement and anticipation, not only in the mother city but throughout the entire country.

The British prime minister was on the final leg of an extensive journey down the length of Africa where he had visited each of the British colonies and members of the Commonwealth on the continent, of which South Africa was the largest and richest and most prosperous.

His arrival meant different things for different sections of the white population. For the English-speaking community it was an affirmation of the close ties and deep commitment that they felt towards the old country. It reinforced the secure sense of being part of the wider body of the Commonwealth, and the certain knowledge that there still existed between their two countries, who had stood solidly beside each other for a century and more through terrible wars and economic crises, a bond of blood and suffering hat could never be eroded. It gave them an opportunity to reaffirm their loyal devotion to the queen.

For the Nationalist Afrikaners it meant something entirely different. They had fought two wars against the British crown, and though many Afrikaners had volunteered to fight beside Britain in two other wars - Delville Wood and El Alamein were only part of their battle honours - many others, including most members of the Nationalist cabinet, had vehemently opposed the declarations of war against Kaiser Wilhelm and Adolf Hitler. The Nationalist cabinet included members who had actively fought against the Union of South Africa's war efforts under Jan Smuts, and many now high in government, men like Manfred De La Rey, had been members of the Ossewa Brandwag. To these men the British prime minister's visit was an acknowledgement of their sovereign rights and their importance as rulers of the most advanced and prosperous nation on the continent of Africa.

During his stay Harold Macmillan was a guest at Groote Schuur the official residence of the South African prime minister, and the climax of his visit was to be an tddress to both houses of the legislature of the Union of South Africa, the Senate and the House of Assembly, sitting together. On the evening of his arrival in Cape Town, the British prime minister was to be the guest of honour at a private dinner party to meet the ministers of Dr Verwoerd's cabinet, the leaders of the opposition United Party and other dignitaries.

Tara hated these official functions with a passion, but Shasa was insistent. 'Part of our bargain, my dear. The invitation is specifically for Mr and Mrs, and you promised not to make an ass of me in public." In the end she even wore her diamonds, something she had not done in years, and Shasa was appreciative and complimentary.

'You really are a corker when you take the trouble to spruce up like that,' he told her, but she was silent and distracted on the drive around the southern slope of Table Mountain to Groote Schuur.

'Something is worrying you,' Shasa said as he steered the Rolls with one hand and lit a cigarette with his gold Ronson lighter.

'No,' she denied quickly. 'Just the prospect of saying the right things to a room full of strangers." The true reason for her concern was a long way from that. Three hours previously, while Moses drove her back from a meeting of the executive of the Women's Institute, he had told her quietly, 'The date and the time has been set." He did not have to elaborate. Since she had picked him up outside the Parliament House just after ten o'clock the previous Monday, Tara he been haunted night and day by her terrible secret knowledge. 'When?" she whispered.

'During the Englishman's speech,' he said simply, and Tara winced.

The logic of it was diabolical.

'Both houses sitting together,' Moses went on. 'All of them, all the slave-masters and the Englishman who is their accomplice and their protector. They will die together. It will be an explosion that will be heard in every corner of our world." Beside her Shasa snapped the cap of the Ronson and snuffed out the flame. 'It won't be all that unpleasant. I've arranged with protocol that you will be Lord Littleton's dinner partner - you get on rather well with him, don't you?" 'I didn't know he was here,' Tara said vaguely. This conversation seemed so petty and pointless in the face of the holocaust which she knew was coming.

'Special adviser on trade and finance to the British government." Shasa slowed the Rolls and lowered his side window as he turned into the main gates of Groote Schuur and joined the line of limousines that were moving slowly down the driveway. He showed his invitation to the captain of the guard and received a respectful salute.

'Good evening, Minister. Please go straight on down to the front entrance." Groote schuur was high Dutch for 'The Great Barn'. It had once been the home of Cecil John Rhodes, empire builder and adventurer, who had used it as his residence while he was prime minister of the old Cape Colony before the act of Union in 1910 had united the separate provinces into the present Union of South Africa. Rhodes had left the huge house, restored after it was destroyed by fire, to the nation. It was a massive and graceless building, reflecting Rhodes' confessed taste for the barbaric, a mixture of different styles of architecture all of which Tara found offensive.

Yet the view from the lower slopes of Table Mountain out ov the Cape Flats was spectacular, a field of lights spreading out to tl dark silhouette of the mountains that rose against the moonbrigl sky. Tonight the bustle and excitement seemed to rejuvenate t ponderous edifice.

Every window blazed with light and the uniformed footmen wei meeting the guests as they alighted from their limousines an ushering them up the broad front steps to join the reception line i the entrance lobby. Prime Minister Verwoerd and his wife Betsi were at the head of the line, but Tara was more interested in thei guest.

She was surprised by Macmillan's height, almost as tall as Ver woerd, and by the close resemblance he bore to all the cartoons she had seen of him. The tufts of hair above his ears, the horsy teeth an› the scrubby mustache. His handshake was firm and dry and hi, voice as he greeted her was soft and plummy, and then she and Shasa had passed on into the main drawing-room where the other dinner guests were assembling.

There was Lord Littleton coming to her, still wearing the genteelly shabby dinner jacket, the watered silk of: the lapels tinged with the verdigris of age, but his smile was alight with genuine pleasure.

'Well, my dear, your presence makes the evening an occasion for me!" He kissed Tara's cheek and then turned to Shasa. 'Must tell you of our recent travels across Africa - fascinating,' and th three of them were chatting animatedly.

Tara's forebodings were for the moment forgotten, as she exclaimed, 'Now, Milord, you cannot hold up the Congo as being typical of emerging Africa. Left to his own devices, Patrice Lumumba would be an example of what a black leader--' 'Lumumba is a rogue, and a convicted felon. Now Tshombe--' Shasa interrupted her and Tara rounded on him, 'Tshombe is a stooge and a Quisling, a puppet of Belgian colonialism." 'At least he isn't eating the opposition like Lumumba's lads are,' Littleton interjected mildly, and Tara turned back to him with the battle light in her eyes.

'That isn't worthy of somebody--' she broke off with an effort.

Her orders were to avoid radical arguments and to maintain her role as a dutiful establishment wife.

'Oh, it's so boring,' she said. 'Let's talk about the London theatre.

What is on at the moment?" 'Well, just before I left I saw The Caretaker, Pinter's new piece,' Littleton accepted the diversion, and Shasa glanced across the room.

Manfred De La Rey was watching him with those intense pale eyes, and as he caught Shasa's eye he inclined his head sharply.

'Excuse me a moment,' Shasa murmured, but Littleton and Tara were so occupied with each other that they barely noticed him move away and join Manfred and his statuesque German wife.

Manfred always seemed ill at ease in tails, and the starched wing collar of his dress shirt bit into his thick neck and left a vivid red mark on the skin.

'So, my friend,' he teased Shasa. 'The dagoes from South America thrashed you at your horse games, hey?" Shasa's smile slipped a fraction. 'Eight to six is hardly a massacre,' he protested, but Manfred was not interested in his defence.

He took Shasa's arm and leaned closer to him, still smiling jovially as he said, 'There is some nasty work going on." 'Ah!" Shasa smiled easily and nodded encouragement.

'Macmillan has refused to show Doctor Henk a copy of the speech he is going to deliver tomorrow." 'Ah!" This time Shasa had difficulty in maintaining the smile. If this was a fact, then the British prime minister was guilty of a flagrant breach of etiquette. It was common courtesy for him to allow Verwoerd to study his text so as to be able to prepare a reply.

'It's going to be an important speech,' Manfred went on.

'Yes,' Shasa agreed. 'Maud returned to London to consult with him and help him draw it up, they must have been polishing it up since then." Sir John Maud was the British high commissioner to South Africa.

For him to be summoned to London underlined the gravity of the situation.

'You are friendly with Littleton,' Manfred said quietly. 'See if you can get anything out of him, even a hint as to what Macmillan is going to do." 'I doubt he knows much,' Shasa was still smiling for the benefit of anybody watching them. 'But I'll let you know if I can find out anything." The dinner was served on the magnificent East India Company service, but was the usual bland and tepid offering of the civil service chefs whom Shasa was certain had served their apprenticeship on the railways. The white wines were sweet and insipid, but the red was a 1951 Weltevreden Cabernet Sauvignon. Shasa had influenced the choice by making a gift of his own cru for the banquet, and he judged it the equal of all but the very best Bordeaux. It was a pity that the white was so woefully bad. There was no reason for it, they had the climate and the soil. Weltevreden had always concentrated on the red but he made a resolution to improve his own production of whites, even if it meant bringing in another wine-master from Germany or France and buying another vineyard on the Stellenbosch side of the peninsula.

The speeches were mercifully short and inconsequential, a brief welcome from Verwoerd and a short appreciation from Macmillan, and the conversation at Shasa's end of the table never rose above such earth-shaking subjects as their recent defeat by the Argentinians on the polo field, Denis Compton's batting form and Stirling Moss' latest victory in the Mille Miglia. But as soon as the banquet ended Shasa sought out Littleton who was still with Tara, drawing out the pleasure of her company to the last.

'Looking forward to tomorrow,' he told Littleton casually. 'I hear your Super Mac is going to give us some fireworks." 'Wherever did you hear that?" Littleton asked, but Shasa saw the sudden shift of his gaze and the guarded expression that froze his smile.

'Can we have a word?" Shasa asked quietly, and apologized to Tara.

'Excuse me, my dear." He took Littleton's elbow and chatting amicably steered him through the glass doors on to the paved stoep under the trellised vines.

'What is going on, Peter?" He lowered his voice. 'Isn't there anything you can, tell me?" Their relationship was intimate and of long standing; such a direct appeal could not be ignored.

'I will be frank with you, Shasa,' Littleton said. 'Mac has something up his sleeve. I don't know what it is, but he is planning on creating a sensation. The press at home have been put on the alert.

It's going to be a major policy statement, that is my best guess." 'Will it alter things between us - preferential trade, for instance?" Shasa demanded.

'Trade?" Littleton chuckled. 'Of course not, nothing alters trade.

More than that I can't tell you. We will all have to wait for tomorrow." Neither Tara nor Shasa spoke on the drive back to W.eltevreden until the Rolls passed beneath the Anreith gateway and then Tara asked, her voice strained and jerky, 'What time is Macmillan making his speech tomorrow?" 'The special session will begin at eleven o'clock,' Shasa replied,' but he was still thinking of what Littleton had told him.

'I wanted to be in the visitors' gallery. I asked Tricia to get me a ticket." 'Oh, the session isn't being held in the chamber - not enough seating. It will be in the dining-room and I don't think they will allow visitors --' he broke off and stared at her. In the reflected light of the headlamps she had gone deathly pale. 'What is it, Tara?" 'The dining-room,' she breathed. 'Are you sure?" 'Of course I am. Is something wrong, my dear?" 'Yes - no! Nothing is wrong. Just a little heartburn, the dinner--' 'Pretty awful,' he agreed, and returned his attention to the road.

'The dining-room,' she thought, in near panic. 'I have to warn Moses. I have to warn him it cannot be tomorrow - all his arrangements will have been made for the escape. I have to let him know." Shasa dropped her at the front doors of the chiteau and took the Rolls down to the garages. When he came back, she was in the blue drawing-room and the servants, who had as usual waited up for their return, were serving hot chocolate and biscuits. Shasa's valet helped him change into a maroon velvet smoking-jacket, and the housemaids hovered anxiously until Shasa dismissed them.

Tara had always opposed this custom. 'I could easily warm up the milk myself and you could put on a jacket without having another grown man to help you,' she complained when the servants had left the room. 'It's feudal and cruel to keep them up until all hours." 'Nonsense, my dear." Shasa poured himself a cognac to go with his chocolate. 'It's a tradition they value as much i3s we do - makes them feel indispensable and part of the family. Be'sides, chef would have a seizure if you were to mess with his kitchen." Then he slumped into his favourite armchair and became unusually serious. He began to talk to her as he had at the beginning of their marr4age when they had still been in accord.

'There is something afoot that I don't like. Here we stand at the opening of a new decade, the 1960s. We have had nearly twelve years of Nationalist rule and none of my direst predictions have come to pass, but I feel a sense of unease. I have the feeling that our tide has been at full flood, but the turn is coming. I think that tomorrow may be the day when the ebb sets in --' he broke off, and grinned shamefacedly. 'Forgive me. As you know, I don't usually indulge in fantasy,' he said and sipped his chocolate and his cognac in silence.

Tara felt not the least sympathy for him. There was so much she wanted to say, so many recriminations to lay upon him, but she could not trust herself to speak. Once she began, she might lose control and divulge too much. She might not be able to prevent herself gloating on the dreadful retribution that awaited him and all those like him, and she did not want to prolong this tte-a-tdte, she wanted to be free to go to Moses, to warn him that today was not the day he had planned for.

So she rose. 'You know how I feel, we don't have to discuss it. I'm going to bed. Excuse me." 'Yes, of course." He stood up courteously. 'I'll be working for the next few hours. I have to go over my notes for my meeting with Littleton and his team tomorrow afternoon, so don't worry about me." Tara checked that Isabella was in her room and asleep, before went to her suite and locked the door. She changed out of her lc dress and jewellery into jeans and a dark sweater, then she made cannabis cigarette and while she smoked it, she waited fifteen minu by her watch for Shasa to settle down to his work. Then she switch off her lights. She dropped the cigarette butt into the toilet a: flushed it away, before she let herself into the passage once ago locking her suite against the unlikely chance that Shasa might cot up to look for her. Then she went down the back stairs.

As she crossed the wide stoep, keeping against the wall, staying the shadows and moving silently, a telephone rang in the libra wing and she froze involuntarily, her heart jarring her ribs. Then s] realized that the telephone must be Shasa's private line, and she w, about to move on, when she heard his voice. Although the curtail were drawn› the windows of his study were open and she could s.

the shadow of his head against the drapes.

'Kitty!" he said. 'Kitty Godolphin, you little witch. I should ha guessed that you'd be here." The name startled Tara, and brought back harrowing memorie but she could not resist the temptation to creep closer to the curtaine window.

'You always follow the smell of blood, don't you?" Shasa said, an chuckled at her reply.

'Where are you? The Nellie." The Mount Nelson was simply th best hotel in Cape Town. 'And what are you doing now - I meal right this moment? Yes, I know it's two o'clock in the morning, bu any time is a good time - you told me that yourself a long time ago It will take me half an hour to get there. Whatever else you do, don' start without me." He hung up and she saw his shadow on the curtaiI as he stood up from his desk.

She ran to the end of the long stoep and jumped down into th hydrangea bed and crouched'in the bushes. Within a few minute, Shasa came out of the side door. He had a dark overcoat over his smoking-jacket. He went down to the garages and drove away in the Jaguar. Even in his haste he drove slowly through the vineyards so as not to blow dust on his precious grapes, and, watching the headlights disappear, Tara hated him as much as she ever had. She thought that she should have grown accustomed to his philandering, but he was like a torn cat in rut - no woman was safe from him, and his moral outrage against Sean, his own son, for the same behaviour, had been ludicrous.

Kitty Godolphin - she cast her mind back to their first meeting and the television reporter's reaction to the mention of Shasa's name and now the reason for it became clear.

'Oh God, I hate him so. He is totally without conscience or pity.

He deserves to die!" She said it aloud, and then clapped her hand over her mouth. 'I shouldn't have said it, but it is true! He deserves to die and I deserve to be free of him - free to go to Moses and my child." She rose out of the hydrangea bushes, brushed the clinging soil from her jeans and crossed the lawns quickly. The moon was in its first quarter, but bright enough to throw her shadow in front of her, and she entered the vineyard with relief and hurried down the rows of vines that were heavy with leaf and grape. She skirted the winery and the stables and reached the servants' cottages.

She had placed Moses in the room at the end of the second row of cottages and his window faced out on to the vineyard. She tapped on his window and his response was almost immediate; she knew he slept as lightly as a wild cat. 'It's me,' she whispered.

'Wait,' he said. 'I will open the door." He loomed in the doorway, naked except for a pair of white shorts, and his body shone in the moonlight like wet tar.

'You are foolish to come here,' he said, and taking her arm drew her into the single room. 'You are putting everything at risk." 'Moses, please, listen to me. I had to tell you. It cannot be tomorrow." He stared at her contemptuously. 'You were never a true daughter of the revolution." 'No, no, I am true, and I love you enough to do anything, but they have changed the arrangements. They will not use the chamber where you have set the charge. They will meet in the parliamentary dining-room." He stared at her a second longer, then he turned and went to the narrow built-in cupboard at the head of his bed and began to dress in his uniform.

'What are you going to dot she asked.

'I have to warn the others - they also are in danger." 'What others'?." she asked. 'I did not know there were others." 'You know only what you have to know,' he told her curtly. 'I must use the Chev - is it safe?" 'Yes, Shasa is not here. He has gone out. Can I come with you."?" 'Are you mad?" he asked. 'If the police find a black man and a white woman together at this time of night--' he did not finish the sentence. 'You must go back to the house and make a phone call.

Here is the number. A woman will answer, and you will say only "Cheetah is coming - he will be there in thirty minutes." That is all you will say and then you will hang up." Moses threaded the Chev through the maze of narrow streets c District Six, the old Malay quarter. During the day this was colourful and thriving community of small stores and businesse..

General dealers and tailors and tinsmiths and halaal butcherk occupied the ground-floor shops of the decrepit Victorian building while from the cast-iron fretwork of the open balconies above him a festival of drying laundry, and the convoluted streets were clarr.

orous with the cries of street vendors, the mournful horns of itinerar fishmongers and the laughter of children.

At nightfall the traders shuttered their premises and left the streel to the street gangs and the pimps and the prostitutes. Some of th more daring white revellers came here late at night, to listen to th jazz players in the crowded shebeens or to look for a pretty coloure, girl - more for the thrill of danger and discovery than for any physJ cal gratification.

Moses parked the Chev in a dark side street. On the wall were th graffiti that declared this the territory of the Rude Boys, one of th most notorious of the street gangs, and he waited only a few second before the first gang member materialized out of the shadows, all urchin with the body of a child and the face of a vicious old man.

'Look after it well,' Moses flipped him a silver shilling. 'If th tyres are slashed when I come back, I'll do the same for your back side." The child grinned at him evilly.

He climbed the dark and narrow staircase to the Vortex Club. t couple on the landing were copulating furtively but furiously agains the wall as Moses squeezed past. The white man turned his fac away but he never missed a beat.

At the door to the club somebody studied him briefly through th peephole and then let him enter. The long crowded room was haz with tobacco smoke and the sweet smell of cannabis. The clientel included the full spectrum from gang members in zoot suits an( wide ties to white men in dinNer-jackets. Only the women were all coloured.

Dollar Brand 'and his Quartet were playing a sweet soulful jaz and everybody was still and attentive. Nobody even looked up a Moses slipped down the side wall to the door at the far end, but th man guarding it recognized Moses and stood aside for him to enter In the backroom there was only one man sitting at a rounc gambling table under a green shaded light. There was a cigarette smouldering between his fingers, and his face was pale as putty, hi, eyes implacable dark pits.

'You are foolhardy to call a meeting now,' said Joe Cicero, 'with.

out good reason. All the preparations have been made. There is nothing more to discuss." 'I have good reason,' said Moses, and sat down on the empty chair, facing him across the baize-covered table.

Joe Cicero listened without expression, but when Moses finished, he pushed the lank hair off his forehead with the back of his hand.

Moses had learned to interpret that gesture as one of agitation.

'We cannot dismantle the escape route and then set it up again later. These things take time to arrange. The aircraft is already in position." It was an Aztec chartered from a company in Johannesburg, and the pilot was a lecturer in political philosophy at Witwatersrand University, the holder of a private pilot's licence and a secret member of the South African Communist Party.

'How long can he wait at the rendezvous?" Moses asked, and Cicero thought about it a moment.

'A week at the longest,' he replied.

The rendezvous was an unregistered airstrip on a large droughtstricken ranch in Namaqualand which was lying derelict, abandoned by the discouraged owner. From the airfield it was a four-hour flight to Bechuanaland, the British protectorate that lay against the northwestern .border of the Union of South Africa. Sanctuary had been arranged for Moses there, the beginning of the pipeline by which most political fugitives were channelled to the north.

'A week must be enough,' Moses said. 'Every hour increases the danger. At the very first occasion that we can be sure Verwoerd will take his seat again, I will do it." It was four o'clock in the morning before Moses left the Vortex Club and went down to where he had parked the Chev.

Kitty Godolphin sat in the centre of the bed, naked and crosslegged with all the shameless candour of a child.

In the years Shasa had known her, she had changed very little physically. Her body had matured slightly, her breasts had more weight to them and the tips had darkened. He could no longer make out the rack of her ribs beneath the smooth pale skin, but her buttocks were still lean as a boy's and her limbs coltishly long and slim.

Nor had she lost the air of guileless innocence, that aura of eternal youth which so contrasted with the cynical hardness of her gaze. She was telling him about the Congo. She had been there for the last five months and the material she had filmed would surely put her in line for her third Emmy and confirm her position as the most successful television journalist on the American networks. She was speaking in the breathless voice of an ingdnue.

'They caught these three Simba agents and tried them under th mango trees outside the burnt-out hospital, but by the time they ha sentenced them to death, the light was too bad for filming. I gave th commander my Rolex watch, and in return he postponed the executions until the sun was up the next morning so that Hank could filr It was the most incredible footage. The next morning they paraded th condemned men naked through the market-place and the local wome bargained for the various parts of their bodies. The Baluba have always been cannibals. When they had sold all three of them, they too] them down to the river and shot them, in the head, of course, so a not to damage the meat, and they butchered them there on the rive bank and the women queued up to claim their portions." She wa trying to shock him, and it irritated Shasa that she had succeeded.

'Where do you stand, my love?" he asked bitterly. 'One day yol are sympathetically interviewing Martin Luther King, and the nex you are portraying all the grossest savagery of Africa." She laughed, that throaty chuckle that always roused him. 'Ant the very next day I am recording the British imperialist makin bargains with your gang of bully boys while you stand with a loo on the neck of your slaves." 'Damn it, Kitty. What are you - what are you trying to do?" 'Capture reality,' she told him simply.

And when reality doesn't conform to your view of it, you bribe somebody with a Rolex watch to alter it." 'I've made you mad." She laughed delightedly, and he stood UlC from the bed and crossed to where he had thrown his clothes ovel the back of the chair. 'You look like a little boy when you sulk,' she called after him.

'It will be light in an hour. I have to get back home and change,' he said. 'I've got an appointment with my Imperialist slave-masters at eleven." 'Of course, you've got to be there to hear Supermac tell you how much he wants to buy your gold and diamonds - and he doesll't care whether they are dripping with the sweat and blood--' 'All right, sweetness,' he cut her off. 'That's enough for one night." He stepped into his trousers, and as he tucked in his shirt, he grinned at her. 'Why do I always pick screaming radical females?" 'You like the stimulation,' she suggested, but he shook his head, and reached for the velvet smoking-jacket.

'I prefer the loving - talking of which, when will I see you again?" 'Why, at eleven o'clock at the houses of parliament, of course.

I'll try to get you in the shot, you are so photogenic, darling." He went to the bed and stooped over her to kiss that angelic smile on her lips. 'I can never understand what I see in you,' he said.

He was still thinking of her as he went down to the hotel carpark and wiped the dew off the windshield of the Jaguar. It was amazing how she had been able so effortlessly to hold his interest over all these years. No other woman, except Tara, had ever done that. It was silly how good he felt when he had been with her. She could still drive him wild with erotic desire, her tricks still worked on him, and afterwards he felt elated and wonderfully alive - and, yes, he enjoyed arguing with her.

'God, I haven't closed my eyes all night, yet I feel like a Derby winner. I wonder if I am still in love with the little bitch." He took the Jaguar down the long palm-lined drive from the Mount Nelson Hotel. Considering the proposition and recalling his proposal of marriage and her outright rejection, he went out through the hotel gates and took the main road that skirted the old Malay quarter of District Six. He resisted the temptation to shoot the red of the traffic lights at the foot of Roeland Street. It was highly unlikely there would be other traffic at this time of the morning, but he braked dutifully and was startled when another vehicle shot out of the narrow cross street and turned in front of his bonnet.

It was a sea-green Chevrolet station wagon, and he didn't have to check the number plate to know that it was Tara's. The headlights of the Jaguar shone into the cab of the Chev and for an instant he had a full view of the driver. It was Tara's new chauffeur. He had seen him twice before, once at Weltevreden and once in the House of Assembly, but this time the driver was bare-headed and Shasa could see the full shape of his head.

As he had on both the previous occasions, Shasa had a strong sense of recognition. He had definitely met or known this man before, but the memory was eroded by time and quickly extinguished by his annoyance. The chauffeur was not permitted to use the Chev for his own private purposes, and yet here he was in the small hours of the morning driving around as though the vehicle belonged to him.

The Chev pulled away swiftly. The chauffeur had obviously recognized Shasa and the speed was proof of his guilt. Shasa's first instinct was to give chase and confront the man, but the traffic light was still red against him and while he waited for it to change, he had time to reflect. He was in too good a mood to spoil it with unpleasantness, besides which any confrontation at four in the morning would be undignified, and would inevitably lead to questions about his own presence at the same hour on the fringes of the city's notorious redlight area. There would be a better time and place to deal with the driver, and Shasa let him go, but he had neither forgiven nor forgotten.

Shasa parked the Jaguar in the garage at Weltevreden, and the green Chev was in its place at the end of the line of cars, betwee Garry's MG and Shasa's customized Land-Rover. As he passed i he laid his hand on the bonnet of the Chev and it was still hot, t metal ticking softly as it cooled. He nodded with satisfaction an went on up to the house, amused by the necessity to creep up to hid own suite like a burglar.

He still felt light and happy at breakfast and he hummed as loaded his plate with eggs and bacon from the silver chafing dish o the sideboard. He was the first one down but Garry was only minute behind him.

'The boss should always be the first man on the job, and tl last man off it,' he had taught Garry, and the boy had taken it t heart. 'No, no longer boy." Shasa corrected himself, as he studie Garry. His son was only an inch shorter than he was, but wid across the shoulders and heavier in the chest. Down the full lengt of the corridor Shasa had often heard him grunting over his hody building weights. Even though he had just shaved, Garry's jaw wa blue with beard that by evening would need the razor again, an despite the Brylcreem his hair was already springing up in unrul spikes.

He sat down beside Shasa, took a mouthful of his omelette an, immediately began talking shop. 'He just isn't up to the job an more, Pater. We need a younger man in that position, especiall with all the extra responsibility of the Silver River Mine coming o: stream." 'He has been with us twenty years, Garry,' Shasa said mildly.

'I'm not suggesting we shoot him, Dad. Just let him take his re tirement. He is almost seventy." 'Retirement will kill him." 'If he stays it will kill us." 'All right,' Shasa sighed. Garry was right, of course, the man hal outlived his usefulness. 'But I, will speak to him personally." 'Thanks, Dad." Garry's spectacles gleamed victoriously.

'Talking about the Silver River Mine, I have arranged for you to begin your stint up there just as soon as you have written your sup.

Garry spent more time at Centaine House than in his lecture room at business school. As a consequence, he was carrying one subjec for his Bachelor's degree in Commerce. He would write the supple mentary examination the following week and Shasa was sending bin up to work on the Silver River Mine for a year or two.

'After all, it has taken over from the old H'am now as th Company flagship. I want you to move more and more into th centre of things." He saw the glow of anticipation behind Garry'..

spectacles.

'Oh boy, am I looking forward to really starting work, after bashing the books all these dreary years." Michael came bursting breathlessly into the dining-room. 'Thank goodness, Pater, I thought I had missed you." 'Slow down, Mickey,' Shasa cautioned him. 'You'll burst a blood vessel. Have some breakfast." 'I'm not hungry this morning." Michael sat down opposite his father. 'I wanted to talk to you." 'Well, open fire then,' Shasa invited.

'Not here,' Michael demurred. 'I rather hoped we could talk in the gun room,' and all three of them looked grave. The gun room was only used on the most portentous occasions, and a request for a meeting in the gun room was not to be taken lightly.

Shasa glanced at his watch. 'Mickey, Harold Macmillan is addressing both houses--' 'I know, Pater, but this won't take long. Please, sir." The fact that Michael was calling him 'sir' underlined the seriousness of the request, but Shasa resented the deliberate timing.

Whenever Michael wanted to raise a contentious issue, he did so when Shasa's opportunity to respond was severely curtailed. The lad was as devious as his mother, whose child he indubitably was, spiritually as well as physically.

'Ten minutes, then,' Shasa agreed reluctantly. 'Will you excuse us please, Garry?" Shasa led the way down the passage and locked the gun-room door behind them.

'Very well." He took his usual place in front of the fireplace. 'What is it, my boy?" 'I've got a job, Dad." Michael was breathless again.

'A job. Yes, I know you have a part-time job as local stringer for the Mail. I enjoyed your report on the polo - in fact you read it to me. Very good it was,' Shasa grinned, 'all five lines of it." 'No, sir, I've got a full-time job. I spoke to the editor of the Mail and they have offered me a job as a cub reporter. I start the first of next month." Shasa's grin faded into a scowl. 'Damn it, Mickey. You can't be serious - what about your education? You have two more years to go at university." 'I am serious, sir. I will get my education on the paper." 'No,' Shasa raised his voice. 'No, I forbid it. I won't have you leaving university before you are capped." 'I'm sorry, sir. I've made up my mind." Michael was pale and trembling, yet he had that obstinate set expression that infuriated $hasa even more than the words - but he controlled himself.

'You know the rules,' Shasa said. 'I've made them clear to all of you. If you do things my way, there is no limit to the help I will giv you. If you go your own way, then you are on your own --' he too a breath, and then said it, surprised at how painful it was '-- like Sean." God, how he still missed his eldest son.

'Yes, sir,' Michael nodded. 'I know the rules." 'Well?" 'I have to do it, Sir. There is nothing else I want to do with my lif I want to learn to write. I don't want to go against you, Pater, but simply have to do it." 'This is your mother's doing,' Shasa said coldly. 'She has put yo up to this,' he accused, and Michael looked sheepish.

'Mater knows about it,' he admitted, 'but it's my decision aloin sir." 'You understand that you will be forfeiting my support? You' not receive another penny from me once you leave this hous You'll have to live on the salary of a cub reporter." 'I understand, sir,' Michael nodded.

'All right, then, Michael. Off you go,' he said, and Michael looke.

stunned.

'Is that all, sir?" 'Unless you have some other announcement to make." 'No, sir." Michael's shoulders slumped. 'Except that I love yo very much, Pater, and I appreciate all that you have done for me." 'You have,' said Shasa, 'a most peculiar way of demonstratin that appreciation, if you don't mind me saying so." He went to th door.

He was halfway into the city, racing the Jaguar down the the highway between the university and Groote Schuur, before he re covered from his affront at Michael's disloyalty, for that is how Shas saw his son's decision. Now suddenly he began to think about news papers again. Publicly he had always disparaged the strange suicida impulse that gripped so manysuccessful men in their middle years t, own their own newspaper. It was notoriously difficult to milk a reason able profit from a newspaper, but in secret Shasa had felt th sneaking temptation to indulge in the same rich man's folly.

'Not much profit,' he mused aloud, 'but the power! To be able t, influence the minds of people!" In South Africa the English press was hysterically anti-government, while the Afrikaans press was fawningly and abjectly the slav of the National Party. A thinking man could trust neither.

'What about an English-language paper that was aimed at th, business community and politically uncommitted,' he wondered, a he had before. 'What if I were to buy one of the smaller weake papers and build it up? After the Silver River Mine's next dividend i declared, we are going to be sitting on a pile of money." Then he grinned. 'I must be getting senile, but at least I'll be able to guarantee a job for my drop-out journalist son!" And the idea of Michael as editor of a large influential newspaper had an increasing appeal, the longer he thought about it. Still, I wish the little blighter would get himself a decent education first,' he grumbled, but he had almost forgiven him for his treachery by the time he parked the Jaguar in the parking area reserved for cabinet ministers. 'Of course, I'll keep him on a decent allowance,' he decided. 'That threat was just a little bluff." A sense of excited expectation gripped the House as Shasa went up the stairs to the front entrance. The lobby was crowded with senators and members of parliament. The knots of dark-suited men formed and dissolved and re-formed, in the intricate play of political cross-currents that fascinated Shasa. As an insider he could read the significance of who was talking to whom and why.

It took him almost twenty minutes to reach the foot of the staircase for as one of the prime actors he was drawn inexorably into the subtle theatre of power and favour. At last he escaped and with only minutes to spare hurried up the stairs and down the passage to his suite.

Tricia was hovering anxiously. 'Oh, Mr Courtney, everybody is looking for you. Lord Littleton telephoned and the prime minister's secretary left a message." She was reading from her pad as she followed him into the inner office.

'Try to get the PM's secretary first, then Lord Littleton." Shasa sat at his desk, and frowned as he noticed some chalky white specks on his blotter. He brushed them away irritably, and would have given Tricia an order to speak to the cleaners, but she was still reading from her pad and he had less than an hour to tackle the main items on her list before the joint sitting began.

He dealt with the queries that Verwoerd's secretary had for him.

The answers were in his head and he did not have to refer to anybody in his department - and then Littleton was on the line. He wanted to discuss an addition to the agenda for their meeting that afternoon, and once they had agreed that, Shasa asked tactfully, 'Have you found out anything about the speeches this morning?" 'Afraid not, old man. I'm as much in the dark as you are." As Shasa reached across the desk to replace the receiver, he noticed another white speck of chalk on his blotter that had not been there a minute before; he was about to brush that away also, when he paused and looked up to see where it had come from. This time he scowled as he saw the small hole in his ceiling and the hair-line cracks around it. He pressed the switch on his intercom.

'Tricia, please come in here a moment." When she stood in the doorway, he pointed at the ceiling. 'What do you make of that?" Tricia looked mystified and came to stand beside his chair. They both peered at the damage.

'Oh, I know,' Tricia looked relieved, 'but I'm not supposed to tell you." 'Spit it out, woman!" Shasa ordered.

'Your wife, Mrs Courtney, said she was planning some renovations to your office as a surprise. I suppose she has asked Maintenance to do the work for her." 'Damn!" Shasa didn't like surprises which interfered with the comfortable tenor of his existence. He liked his office the way it was and he didn't want anybody, particularly anyone of Tara's avant garde taste, interfering with something that worked extremely well as it was.

'I think she is planning to change the curtains also,' Tricia added innocently. She didn't like Tara Courtney. She considered her shallow, insincere and scheming. She didn't approve of her disrespectful attitude to Shasa, and she wasn't above sowing a few seeds of dissension. If Shasa were free, there was just a chance, a very small and remote chance that he might see her clearly and realize just how much she, Tricia, felt for him, 'And she was talking about altering the light fittings,' she added.

Shasa jumped up from his desk and went to touch his curtains. He and Centaine had studied at least a hundred samples of fabric before choosing this one. Protectively he rearranged the drapes, and then he noticed the second hole in the ceiling and the thin insulated wire that protruded from it. He had difficulty controlling his fury in front of his secretary.

'You get on to Maintenance,' he instructed. 'Talk to Odendaal himself, not one of his workmen, and you tell him I want to know exactly what is going on. Tell him whatever it is, it's damned shoddy workmanship and that there is plaster all over my desk." Tll do that this morning,' Tricia promised, and then, placatingly, 'It's ten minutes to, Mr Courtney - you don't want to be late." Manfred De La Rey was just leaving his own office as Shasa came down'the passage, and they fell in side by side.

'Have you found out anything?" 'No - have you?" Manfred shook his head. 'It's too late anyway- nothing we can do now." Shasa saw Blaine Malcomess at the door of the dining-room and went to greet him. They filed into the panelled dining-room together.

'How is Mater?" 'Centaine is fine - looking forward to seeing you for dinner tomorrow evening." Centaine was holding a dinner party in Littleton's honour out at Rhodes Hill. 'I left her giving the chef a nervous breakdown." They laughed together and then found their seats in the front row of chairs. As minister and deputy leader of the opposition, they both warranted reserved seats.

Shasa swivelled in his seat and looked to the back of the large hall where the press cameras had been set up. He picked out Kitty Godolphin, looking tiny and girlish beside her camera crew, and she winked at him mischievously. Then the two prime ministers were taking their places at the top table and Shasa leaned across to Manfred De La Rey and murmured, 'I hope this isn't all a boo-ha over nothing - and that Supermac has really got something of interest to tell us." Manfred shrugged. 'Let's hope it isn't too exciting either,' he said.

'Sometimes it's safer to be bored --' but he broke off as the Speaker of the House called for silence and rose to introduce the prime minister of Great Britain and the packed room, filled with the most powerful men in the land, settled into attentive and expectant silence.

Even when Macmillan, tall and urbane and strangely benign in expression, rose to his feet, Shasa had no sense of being at the anvil while history was being forged and he crossed his arms over his chest and lowered his chin in the attitude of listening and concentration in which he followed all debate and argument.

Macmillan spoke in an unemotional voice, but with weight and lucidity, and his text had all the indications of having been carefully prepared, meticulously polished and rehearsed.

'The most striking of all the impressions I have formed since I left London a month ago,' he said, 'is the strength of this African national consciousness. In different places it may take different forms, but it is happening everywhere. The wind of change is blowing through the continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact. Our national policies must take account of it." Shasa sat up straight and unfolded his arms, and around him there was a similar stirring of incredulity. It was only then that Shasa realized with a clairvoyant flash that the world he knew had altered its shape, that in the fabric of life that had held together their diverse nation for almost three hundred years, the first rent had been torn by a few simple words, a rent that could never be repaired. While he attempted to grasp the full extent of the damage, Macmillan was going on in those plummy measured tones.

'Of course, you understand this as well as anyone. You are sprung from Europe, the home of nationalism." Cunningly, Macmillan was including them in his new sweeping view of Africa. 'Indeed, in the history of our times yours will be recorded as the first of the African nationalisms." Shasa glanced at Verwoerd beside the British prime minister and he could see that he was agitated and alarmed. He had been caught unawares by Macmillan's stratagem of withholding his text from him.

'As a fellow member of the Commonwealth, it is our earnest desire to give South Africa our support and encouragement, but I hope you won't mind me saying frankly that there are some aspects of your policies which make it impossible for us to do this without being false to our own deep convictions about the political destinies of free men." Macmillan was announcing nothing less than a parting of ways and Shasa was devastated by the idea. He wanted to leap to his feet and shout, 'But I am British also - you cannot do this to us." He looked around him almost pleadingly and saw his own deep distress echoed on the faces of Blaine and most of the other English members of the House.

Macmillan's words had devastated them.

Shasa's mood persisted over the remainder of that day and the next. The atmosphere at the meetings with Littleton and his advisers was one of mourning, and though Littleton himself was apologetic and conciliatory, they all knew that the damage was real and irreparable. The fact was undeniable. Britain was dropping them. She might go on trading with them, but at arm's length. Britain had chosen sides.

Late on the Friday a special session of the House was announced for the following Monday, when Verwoerd would make his accounting to his parliament and his people. They had the weekend to brood over their fate. Mactnillan's speech even cast a shadow over Centaine's dinner party on the Friday evening, and Centaine took it as a personal insult.

The man's timing is atrocious,' she confided to Shasa. 'The day before my party! Perfidious Albion!" 'You French have never trusted the British,' Shasa teased her, his first attempt at humour in forty-eight hours.

'Now I know why,' Centaine retorted. 'Look at the man - typically English. He hides expediency in a cloak of high moral indignation.

He does what is best for England and makes himself a saint while he does it." It was left for Blaine Malcomess to sum up after the women had left the men to their port and cigars in Rhodes Hill's magnificent dining-room.

'Why are we so incredulous?" he asked. 'Why do we feel it so impossible that Britain would reject us, simply because we fought two wars for her?" He shook his head. 'No, the caravan moves on and so must we. We must ignore the gloating of the London press, we must ignore their delight in this unprecedented rebuke and repudiation of all of us, the Nationalists and those that strenuously oppose them. From now on we will be increasingly alone, and we must learn to stand on our own feet." Shasa nodded. 'Macmillan's speech was a huge political gain for Verwoerd. There is only one way for us to go now. The bridge has been chopped down behind us. No retreat is possible. We have to go along with Verwoerd. South Africa will be a republic before the year is out, mark my words, and after that --' Shasa drew on his cigar while he considered '-- and after that only God and the Devil know for certain." 'At times it seems that God and fate take a direct hand in our petty affairs,' Tara said softly. 'But for a tiny detail, the choice of the dining-room rather than the chamber, we might have destroyed the man who had brought us a message of hope." 'For once it does seem that your Christian God favours us." Moses watched her in the driving-mirror as he drove the Chevrolet through the Monday rush hour traffic. 'Our timing has been perfect. At the moment when the British Government, supported by the British press and the nation, has recognized our rights, the political destinies of free men, as Macmillan put it, we will deliver our first hard blow for the promised freedom." 'I am afraid, Moses, afraid for you and for all of us." 'The time for fear has passed,' he told her. 'Now is the time for courage and resolution, for it is not oppression and slavery that breeds revolution. The lesson is clear. Revolution rises out of the promise of better things. For three hundred years we have borne oppression in weary resignation, but now this Englishman has shown us a glimpse of the future and it is golden with promise. He has given our people hope, and after today, after we have struck down the most evil man in Africa's dark and tormented history, when Verwoerd is dead, the future will at last belong to us." He had spoken softly, but with that peculiar intensity that made her blood thrill through her veins and pound in her eardrums. She felt the elation, but also the sorrow and the fear.

'Many men will die with him,' she whispered. 'My father. Is there no way he can be spared, Moses?" He did not reply, but she saw the reflection of his gaze in the mirror and she could not bear the scorn. She dropped her own eyes and murmured.

'I'm sorry - I will be strong. I will not speak of it again." But her mind was racing. There must be some way to keep her father out of the chamber at'the fateful moment, but it would have to be compelling. As deputy leader of the opposition, he must attend such solemn business as Verwoerd's speech. Moses disturbed her thoughts. 'I want you to repeat your duties to me,' he said.

'We have gone over it so often,' she protested weakly.

'There must be no misunderstanding." His tone was fierce. 'Do as I tell you." 'Once the House is in session - so that we are certain Shasa will not intercept us - we will go up to his suite in the usual way,' she began, and he nodded confirmation as she went over the arrangements, correcting her when she omitted a detail. 'I will leave the office at exactly ten-thirty and go to the visitors' gallery. We must be certain that Verwoerd is there." 'Do you have your pass?" 'Yes." Tara opened her handbag and showed him. 'As soon as Verwoerd rises to begin his address, I will return to the office, using the panel door. By that time you will have --' her voice faltered.

'Go on,' he ordered harshly.

'You will have connected the detonator. I will confirm that Verwoerd is in his seat, and you will --' again her voice dried up.

'I will do what has to be done,' he finished for her and then went on, 'After the explosion there will be a period of total panic and confusion - with enormous damage to the ground floor. There will be no control, no organized police or security effort. That period will last sufficiently long for us to go downstairs and leave the building unchallenged, just as rn'ost other survivors will be doing." 'When you leave the country, can I come with you, Moses?" she pleaded.

'No." He shook his head firmly. 'I must travel swiftly and you would impede us and put us in danger. You will be safer here. It will only be for a short time. After the assassination of the white slavemasters, our people will rise. The young comrades of Umkhonto we Sizwe are in position and ready to call the nation to revolution.

Millions of our people will spontaneously fill the streets. When they have seized the power, I will return. Then you will have a place of high honour by my side." It was amazing how naYvely she accepted his assurances, he thought grimly. Only a besotted woman could doubt that afterwards the security police would take her away, and her interrogation would be brutal. It did not matter. It did not matter if they tried and hanged her. Her husband would be dead with Verwoerd and Tara Courtney's usefulness would be at an end. One day when the people's democratic government of the African National Congress ruled the land, they would name a street or a square after her, the white woman martyr, but now she was expendable.

'Give me your promise, Moses,' she begged him.

His voice was a deep reassuring rumble. 'You have done well, everything I have required of you. You and your son will have a place at my side just as soon as that is possible. I give you my promise." 'Oh Moses, I love you,' she whispered. 'I shall always love you." Then she sat back in her seat and adopted the role of cool white madam, as Moses turned the Chevrolet out of Parliament Lane into the members' carpark and the constable at the gate saw the sticker on the windshield and saluted respectfully.