Rage

Moses parked in the reserved bay and switched off the engine.

They had fifteen minutes to wait before the House went into session.

'Ten minutes to, Mr Courtney,' Tricia called Shasa on the intercom.

'You had better start going down, if you don't want to miss the opening of the PM's speech." 'Thank you, Tricia." Shasa had been totally absorbed with his own work. Verwoerd had asked him to draw up a full report on the country's ability to respond to an embargo on sales of military equipment to South Africa by her erstwhile western allies. Apparently Macmillan had hinted at this possibility to Verwoerd, a veiled threat in private conversation just before his departure. Verwoerd wanted the report before the month's end, which was typical of the man, and Shasa would have difficulty meeting that deadline.

'Oh, by the way, Mr Courtney,' Tricia stopped him breaking off the connection. 'I spoke to Odendaal." 'OdendaalT It took Shasa a moment to make the mental switch.

'Yes, about the work on your ceiling." 'Oh, I hope you gave him a flea in the ear. What did he say?" 'He says there has been no work done in your office, and no request from your wife or anybody else for rewiring of any kind." 'That's decidedly odd,' Shasa looked up at the damage, 'because somebody has definitely been fiddling around in here. If it wasn't Odendaal, then have you any idea who it might be, Tr, icia?" 'No, Mr Courtney." Nobody been in here to your knowledge?" Shasa insisted.

'Nobody, sir, except of course your wife and her driver." 'All right, thank you, Tricia." Shasa stood up and fetched his jacket from the dumb valet in the corner. While he shrugged into it, he studied the hole above his desk and the length of wire that had been drawn out of the corner beside the bookcase and the end tucked behind the row of encyclopaedias. Until Tricia mentioned it, he had forgotten his irritation in the face of other more dire considerations, but now he thought about the little mystery with full attention.

He crossed to the mirror and while he reshaped the knot of his tie and adjusted his black eye-patch, he pondered the additional enigma of Tara's new chauffeur. Tricia's remark had reminded him of it. He still hadn't taken the man to task for his unauthorized private use of the Chev. 'Damn - where have I seen him before?" he wondered, and with one last glance at the ceiling, he left the office. He was still thinking about the driver as he went down the corridor. Manfred De La Rey was waiting for him at the head of the stairs. He was smiling and quietly triumphant, and Shasa realized that he had not spoken to him in private since, the shock of Macmillan's speech.

'So,' Manfred greeted him, 'Britannia has cut the apron strings, my friend." 'Do you remember how once you called me Soutpiel?" Shasa asked.

'Ja." Manfred chuckled. '"Salt Prick" - with one foot in Cape Town and the other in London and the best part of you dangling in the Atlantic Ocean. Ja, I remember." 'Well, from now on I will have both feet in Cape Town,' Shasa told him. It was not until that moment, when the fact of Britain's rejection had sunk in, that Shasa realized for the first time that above all other things he was first and foremost a South African.

'Good,' Manfred nodded. 'So ,at last you understand that although we may not always like each other or agree, circumstances have made us brothers in this land. One cannot survive without the .other, and in the end we have only each other to turn to." They went down into the chamber and took their seats on the green leather benches, side by side.

When the Assembly rose to pray, to ask God's blessing on their deliberations, Shasa looked across the floor at Blaine Malcomess and felt a familiar rush of affection for him. Silver-haired but tanned and handsome with those protruding ears and big strong nose, Blaine had been a tower in his life for as long as he cared to remember. In his new mood of patriotism - and, yes, of defiance of Britain's rejection - he was glad of the knowledge that this would draw them still closer together. It would narrow the political differences between them, just as it had brought Afrikaner and Englishman closer.

As the prayer ended, he sat down and turned his attention to Dr Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd as he rose to make his address. Verwoerd was a strong articulate speaker and a brilliant debater. His address was sure to be long and carefully reasoned. Shasa knew they were in for fine entertainment and he crossed his arms, leaned against the padded back rest with anticipation and closed his eyes.

Then before Verwoerd could say his first word, Shasa opened his eyes and sat up straight on his bench. In that moment when he had cleared his mind of all recent worry, while he was relaxed and receptive, the ancient memory had flashed in upon him - full blown.

He remembered where and when he had last seen Tara's new chauffeur.

'Moses Gama,' he said aloud, but his words were lost in the applause that greeted the prime minister.

Tara gave the doorman at the main entrance to parliament a cheery smile, and was surprised at herself. She felt cocooned in a layer of unreality, as though she watched an actress playing her role.

She heard the muffled applause from the chamber as she swept up the stairs with Moses following her at a respectful distance in his chauffeur's uniform and burdened by an armful of parcels. They had done this so often, and Tara smiled again as they passed one of the secretaries in the corridor. She tapped on the door to Shasa's suite and without waiting for an answer swept into the outer office. Tricia rose from her desk.

'Oh, good morning, Mrs Courtney. You'll be late for the PM's address. You'd better hurry." 'Stephen, you can just leave the parcels." Tara stopped in front of Tricia as Moses closed the outer door.

'Oh, by the way. Somebody has been working on the ceiling of your husband's office,' Tricia came around the desk, as though to lead the way to Shasa's office. 'We wondered if you knew anything --' Moses placed the armful of parcels on a chair, and with his hands free turned to Tricia as she came level with him. He whipped one arm around her neck and with his other hand covered her mouth.

Tricia was powerless in his grip, but her eyes flew wide with shock.

'There are ropes and a gag in the top packet,' Moses spoke softly to Tara. 'Get them." Tara stood paralysed. 'You said nothing about this,' she blurted.

'Get them." His voice was still low, but it crackled with impatience and Tara sprang to obey.

'Tie her hands behind her,' Moses ordered, and while Tara fumbled at the knots, he stuffed a clean, white, folded cloth into the terrified girl's mouth and taped it in place.

'Stay in here,' he ordered Tara, 'in case somebody comes in,' and he bundled Tricia through into the inner office and forced her down on her stomach behind the desk. Swiftly he checked Tara's knots.

They were loose and sloppy. He retied them and then bound Tricia's ankles as securely.

'Come in here,' he called, and Tara was flustered and stammering as she rushed in.

'Moses, you haven't hurt her?" 'Stop that!" he told her. 'You have important work to do and you are behaving like a hysterical child." She closed her eyes, clenched her fists and took a deep breath.

'I'm sorry." She opened her eyes. 'I realize that it was necessary. I didn't think. I am all right now." Moses had already crossed to the corner of the bookshelf and he reached up and brought down the roll of wire from behind the encyclopaedias. He paid it out across the carpet as he moved back to the desk.

'Good,' he said. 'Now go to your seat in the gallery. Wait five minutes after Verwoerd begins to speak and then come back here. Do not run, do not even hurry. Do everything calmly and deliberately." 'I understand." Tara crossed to the mirror and opened her handbag. Quickly she ran a comb through her hair and retouched her lipstick.

Moses had gone to the altar chest and lifted the heavy bronze Bushman statue. He placed it on the carpet and lifted the lid of the chest. Tara hesitated, watching him anxiously.

'Why are you waiting'?." he asked. 'Go, woman, and do your duty." 'Yes, Moses." She hurried to the door of the outer office.

'Lock both doors behind you,' he ordered.

'Yes, Moses,' she whispered.

As Tara went down the corridor, she was searching in her handbag again, and she found her leather-bound notepad with the miniature gold-plated pencil in the spine loops. At the head of the stairs she paused, and used the banisters to steady the notepad while she scribbled hastily on a blank page.

Daddy, Centaine has been seriously injured in a motorcar accident.

She is asking for you. Please come quickly.

Tara She tore the page out of the notebook and folded it. It was the one appeal to which she knew her father would respond and she wrote his name on the folded note.

Instead of going directly to the visitors' gallery, she hurried down the wide staircase into the lobby and ran to one of the uniformed parliamentary messengers who was standing outside the main doors to the chamber.

bYou have to get this message to Colonel Malcomess,' she told lien.

'I don't like to go in now, Dr Verwoerd is speaking,' the messenger demurred, but she thrust the note into his hand.

It's terribly urgent,' she pleaded and her distress was evident. 'His wife is dying. Please - please." Tll do what I can." The messenger accepted the note, and Tara ran back up the stairs. She showed her pass to the doorman at the entrance to the visitors' gallery and squeezed past him.

The gallery was crowded. Somebody had taken Tara's seat, but she edged forward and craned to look down into the chamber. Dr Verwoerd was on his feet, talking in Afrikaans. His silvery curls were neatly cropped and his eyes slitted with concentration as he used both hands to emphasize his words.

'The question that this person from Britain put to us was not addressed to the South African monarchists, nor was it addressed to the South African republicans. It was to all of us that he spoke." Verwoerd paused. 'The question he asked was simply this. Does the white man survive in Africa or does he perish?" He had electrified the chamber. There was not a movement nor a shift of eyes from his face - until the uniformed parliamentary messenger slipped unobtrusively down the front row of opposition benches and stopped beside Blaine.

Even then he had to touch Blaine's shoulder to draw his attention, and Blaine accepted the note without seeming to realize what he was doing. He nodded at the messenger, and, with the folded scrap of paper unread in his fingers, once more focused all his attention on Verwoerd where he stood below the Speaker's throne.

'Read it, Daddy? Tara whispered aloud. 'Please read it." In all that multitude Shasa was the only one who was not mesmerized by Verwoerd's oratory. His thoughts were a jumbled torrent, one racing after another, overtaking and mingling as they followed without logical sequence.

'Moses Gama." It was scarcely believable that the memory had taken so long to return to him, even over the years and in spite o changes that time had wrought in both of them. They had once beer good friends, and the man had made a deep impression on Shasa a a formative period of his life.

Then again, Shasa had heard the name much more recently, it hoc been on the list of wanted revolutionaries during the 1952 troubles.

While the others, Mandela and Sobukwe and the rest, had stood trial, Moses Gama had disappeared, and the warrant for his arrest was outstanding. Moses Gama was still a criminal at large, and a dangerous revolutionary.

'Tara.t' His mind darted aside. She had selected Gama as her chauffeur and, given her political leanings, it was impossible that she didn't know who he was. Suddenly Shasa knew that Tara's meek repudiation of her previous left-wing companions and her new conciliatory behaviour had all been a sham. She had not changed at all. This man Moses Gama was more dangerous than all and any of her previous effete companions. Shasa had been hoodwinked. In fact she must have moved even further to the left, crossing the delicate line between legitimate political opposition and criminal involvement. Shasa almost rose to his feet, and then remembered where he was. Verwoerd was speaking already.

'The need to do justice to all, does not mean only that the black men must be nurtured and protected. It means justice and protection for the white men in Africa also --' Shasa glanced up at the visitors' gallery and there was a strangersitting in Tara's seat. Where was Tara? She must be in his office and the association of ideas led him on. -Moses Gama had been in his office. Shasa had seen him in the corridor and Tricia had told him, 'Only Mrs Courtney and her driver." Moses Gama had been in his office and somebody had drilled the ceiling and laid electrical wires. It had not been Odendaal or Maintenance. It hadn't been anyone who had authority to do so.

'We are not newcomers to Africa. Our forefathers were here before the first black man,' Verwoerd was saying. 'Three hundred years ago, when our ancestors set out into the interior of this land, it was an empty wilderness. The black tribes were still far to the north, making their way slowly southwards. The land was empty and our forefathers claimed it and worked it. Later they built the cities and laid the railways and sank the mine-shafts. Alone, the black man was incapable of doing any of these things. Even more than the black tribes we are men of Africa and our right to be here is as Godgiven and inalienable as is theirs." Shasa heard the words but made no sense of them - Moses Gama, probably with the help and connivance of Tara, had laid electrical wires in his office and - suddenly, he gasped aloud. The altar chest.

Tara had placed the chest in his office, like the Trojan horse.

Wild with anxiety now, he swivelled his whole body towards the visitors' gallery, and this time he saw Tara. She was squeezed against one wall and even at this distance Shasa could see that she was pale and distraught. She was watching someone or something on the opposition side of the chamber, and Shasa followed her gaze.

Blaine Malcomess was oblivious of all else as he followed the prime minister's speech. Shasa saw the messenger reach him and hand him the note.

Shasa looked back at the gallery and Tara was still concentrated on her father. After all the years Shasa could read her expression, and he had never seen her so worried and concerned, even when one of the children was gravely ill.

Then her face cleared with patent relief and Shasa glanced back at Blaine. He had unfolded the note and was reading it. Suddenly Blaine leapt to his feet and hurried towards the main doors.

Tara had summoned her father - that much was obvious. Shasa stared at her, trying to divine her purpose. Almost as though she sensed his gaze, Tara looked directly at him, and her relief crumbled into horror and wild guilt. She turned and fled from the visitors' gallery, pushing aside those who stood in her way.

A second longer Shasa stared after her. Tara had enticed her father out of the chamber, and her concern could only have been so intense had she believed he was in some kind of dire danger. This was followed by guilt and horror as she realized that Shasa was watching her. It was clear to Shasa then that something terrible was about to happen. Moses Gama and Tara - there was danger, mortal danger and Tara was trying to save her father. The danger was pressing and imminent - the wires in his office, the chest, Blaine and Tara and Moses Gama. He knew they were all interwoven and that he had little time in which to act.

Shasa jumped to his feet and strode down the aisle. Verwoerd frowned and checked his speech, watching him, while all around the chamber heads turned. Shasa quickened his stride. Manfred De La Rey reached out to touch him as he passed his bench, but without a glance at him Shasa brushed past his outstretched hand and went on.

As he hurried out into the lobby Shasa saw Blaine Malcomess near the front door talking agitatedly to the janitor. As soon as he saw Shasa he said, 'Thank God!" and came towards him across the chequered marble floor.

Shasa turned away from him and looked up the staircase. From the top Tara stared down at him, white-faced and terrified, held by some unnatural passion.

'Tara!" Shasa called and started towards the foot of the staircase, but she whirled and disappeared around the angle of the corridor.

Shasa flew at the stairs, taking them three at a time.

'What's happening, Shasa?" Blaine called after him, but Shasa did not answer.

He came out of the staircase still at a run, and as he rounded the corner Tara was halfway down the corridor ahead of him. He did not waste time by shouting at her, and instead flung himself forward, and sprinted after her. As she ran, Tara glanced over her shoulder and saw him swiftly overtaking her.

'Moses!" she screamed. 'Look out, Moses!" It was futile, the panelled walls of Shasa's office were too thick and soundproof for her warning to reach him, and her cry confirmed all Shasa's worst suspicions.

Instead of running straight on towards the front door of his suite as Shasa expected, Tara jinked suddenly into the side passage, ducking under Shasa's outstretched arm and he tried to turn with her but he was off balance as she disappeared into his blind spot.

Shasa ran into the corner of the wall, crashing into it head-first, taking it on the brow above his blind eye. The silk patch cushioned the impact slightly, but still the skin split and blood poured down his cheek. Although he was stunned, Shasa managed to keep his feet.

He staggered in a full circle, still dazed. Blaine was following him, his face flushed with effort and concern as he ran down the corridor.

What the hell is going on, Shasa?" he roared.

Shasa turned from him, and saw Tara at the door to the back entrance of his office. She had a key, but she was in such a state that her hands were shaking too wildly to insert it in the lock.

Shasa gathered himself, shaking the darkness out of his head, and the droplets of his blood splattered the wall beside him. Then he launched himself after Tara. She saw him coming and dropped the key, it tinkled at her feet, and she clenched her fists and beat with them on the closed door.

'Moses!" she screamed. 'Moses!" As Shasa reached her the door was jerked open from the inside, and Moses Gama stood in the threshold. The two men confronted each other over Tara's head until Tara ran forward.

Moses, I tried to warn you,' she screamed and threw both arms around him.

In that instant Shasa looked beyond the pair and saw that the altar chest stood open, its contents piled on the carpet. The coil of wire that he had found behind the encyclopaedias had been laid across the floor to his desk and connected to some kind of compact electrical apparatus. Shasa had never seen one before, but he knew instinctively that it was a detonation device and that it was ready to fire. On the desk top beside it lay an automatic pistol.

As a firearms enthusiast and collector, he recognized it as a Tokarev 7.62 men, the standard Russian military issue. On the floor behind his desk Tricia lay on her side. She was gagged and bound at wrists and ankles, but she was wriggling desperately and giving little muffled cries.

Shasa lunged forward to tackle Moses Gama, but the black man gathered Tara in his arms and hurled her into Shasa's chest. The two of them reeled backwards against the jamb of the door. Moses spun around and leapt to the desk, as Shasa tried to get free of Tara. She was clinging to him and moaning. 'No! No! He must do it." Shasa broke her grip and flung her aside, but across the room Moses was standing over the electrical transmitter. He pressed a switch and a bulb on the panel of the casing glared redly.

Shasa knew that he could not reach Moses across the floor before he fired the device, but his mind was racing ahead of his limbs and ( body. He saw the wire strung out across the carpet, almost at his feet, and he stooped and took a twist of it around his right hand and heaved back against it with all his strength.

The end of the wire was firmly attached to the transmitter, and as Shasa hauled on it the device was jerked out of Moses' hands and flew off the desk top to clatter across the floor, midway between the two of them.

They both leapt for it at the same instant, but Moses was by a fraction of a second the quickest, and his hands scrabbled on the transmitter. Shasa was in full stride, and he did not check. He leaned forward, and transferred all the weight and power of his body into his hips, swinging his right leg into the kick he aimed at Moses' head.

The kick caught Moses in the side of the temple, and snapped his head over. The transmitter tumbled from his grip and he was flung over backwards, rolling until he crashed into the desk.

Shasa followed him and aimed another flying kick at his head, but Moses caught his foot on his raised forearm and seized his ankle. He twisted violently, lifting the ankle and Shasa was caught on one foot with his weight backwards, and he fell heavily.

Moses pulled himself up the side of the desk and reached out for the Tokarev pistol, and Shasa scrambled after him on hands and knees. As Moses swung the pistol around, Shasa lunged at him again and grabbed his wrist with both hands. They wrestled over the floor, rolling and kicking and grunting, fighting for the Tokarev.

Tara had recovered and now she ran into the room and picked up the fallen transmitter. She stood helplessly with it in her hands.

'Moses, what must I do?" she cried.

Moses grunted with a supreme effort as he rolled on top of Shasa.

'The yellow button. Push the yellow button!" At that instant Blaine Malcomess ran in through the open door.

'Stop her, Blaine!" Shasa yelled. 'They are going to blow --' Moses' elbow hit him in the mouth and cut off the words.

While the two of them still struggled on the floor, Blaine held out both hands to his daughter.

Here, give that to me, Tara." 'Don't touch me, Daddy." She backed away from him, but she was trying to locate the yellow button, groping for it while she stared at her father. 'Don't try and stop me, Daddy." 'Blaine,' Shasa gasped, but broke off as Moses attempted once more to wrench his pistol arm out of Shasa's grip. The corded black muscles in Moses' arm bulged and writhed with the effort, and Shasa made a choking sound in his throat as he tried to hold him.

The muzzle blast of the pistol lit the room like a flash bulb and there was the immediate sharp stink of burnt powder.

Blaine Malcomess, his arms outstretched towards Tara, spun around as the bullet hit him and he went reeling into the bookcase.

He stood there for a moment with the blood starting to spread in a dark tide down the front of his white shirt and then he sagged slowly on to his knees.

'Daddy!" Tara dropped the transmitter and ran to him. She fell on her knees beside him.

Shock had weakened Shasa's grip for an instant and Moses twisted free and jumped to his feet, but as he lunged for the transmitter, Shasa was after him. He caught Moses from behind as he stooped over the transmitter and with one arm around his throat pulled him away from it. In his efforts to break the throttling grip, Moses dropped the pistol and clawed at Shasa's arm with both hands. They grappled wildly, twisting and grunting, and the transmitter lay at their feet.

Shasa shifted his weight, lifted one foot and drove his heel into the panel of the transmitter, the panel crackled as it was stove in, but the red bulb still burned.

Moses was galvanized to fresh effort by the damage to the transmitter, and he almost tore himself free of Shasa's grip, twisting to face him, but Shasa put out all his strength and they stood chest to chest, gasping and heaving, spittle and sweat and droplets of blood from Shasa's head wound smearing both their faces.

Again Shasa had him off balance for a moment, and he aimed another kick at the transmitter. He landed solidly and it went skidding across the floor and crashed into the wall beyond the desk.

The plastic case split open at the impact, the wire tore loose from the terminal and the red bulb flickered and then extinguished.

Moses gave a wild despairing cry and sent Shasa flying backwards over the desk. As he lay sprawled across the desk top, Moses scooped up the pistol from the carpet and staggered to the open doorway.

There he turned and raised the Tokarev and aimed at Shasa.

'You!" he gasped. 'You!" but his hands were shaking and the pistol wavered. He fired and the bullet thudded into the desk top beside Shasa's head, tearing up a blur of splinters.

Before Moses could fire again, Manfred De Le Rey bulked in the doorway behind him. He had seen Shasa's agitation and followed him up from the chamber.

He took in the situation at first glance, and he reacted instantly.

He swung the big hard fist that had won him an Olympic gold medal, and it crashed into the side of Moses Gama's neck below the ear.

The pistol fell from Moses' hand and he toppled forward unconscious on top of it.

( .

Shasa dragged himself off the desk and tottered across to Blaine.

'Here,' he whispered, as he dropped to his knees beside him. 'Let me have a look." Tara was blubbering incoherently. 'Daddy, I'm sorry. I didn't mean this to happen. I only did what I thought was right." Shasa tried to pull her away, but she clung to Blaine, blood on her hands and down the front of her dress.

'Let him alone,' Shasa said, but she was hysterical now, and tugged at her father so that his head jerked from side to side loosely.

'Daddy, speak to me, Daddy." Shasa leaned back and slapped her hard, knocking her head across.

'Leave him, you murderous bitch,' he hissed at her, and she crawled away from him, her face beginning to redden and swell from the blow. Shasa ignored her and gently opened the jacket of Blaine's dark suit.

Shasa was a hunter, and he recognized the bright clear colour of arterial blood seething with tiny bubbles from the torn lungs. 'No,' he whispered. 'Please, no!" Only then he realized that Blaine was watching his face, reading in it his own death.

'Your mother --' he said, and the wind of his lungs puffed through the bullet hole in his chest. 'Tell Centaine --' he could nol go on.

'Don't talk,' Shasa said. 'We will get a doctor." He shouted ovel his shoulder at Manfred who was already on the telephone, 'Hurry, man. Hurry!" But Blaine gripped his sleeve, tugging it urgently. 'Love --' he choked on his own blood. 'Tell her - love - tell her I love her." He got it out at last, and panted as the blood gurgled in his chest - and then he gathered himself for his last great effort.

'Shasa,' he said. 'Shasa, my son - my only son." The noble silver head fell forward, and Shasa held it to his chest, hugging him as he had never been able to before.

Then still holding him, Shasa wept for the man who had been his friend and his father. The tears squeezed out of his empty eyesocket and trickled from under the silk eye-patch down his face to mingle with his own blood and drip from his chin.

When Tara crawled forward on her knees, and reached out to touch her father's corpse, Shasa lifted his head and looked at her.

'Don't touch him,' he said softly. 'Don't you dare soil him with your touch." There was such a look in his single eye, such contempt and hatred in his face, that she recoiled from him and covered her face with both hands. Still on her knees, she began to sob hysterically.

The sound of it rallied Shasa. Gently he laid Blaine on his back and closed his eyes with his fingertips.

In the doorway Moses groaned and shuddered, and Manfred slammed the telephone back on its cradle and crossed to him. He stood over him, with those huge fists clenched and asked, 'Who is he?" 'Moses Gama." Shasa stood up, and Manfred grunted.

'So, we have been looking for him for years. What was he doing?" 'I'm not sure." Shasa went to where Tricia lay and stooped over her. 'But I think he has laid explosives somewhere in the House.

That is the transmitter. We'd better clear the place and have the army bomb disposal --' He didn't have to finish, for at that moment there was the sound of running men in the corridor and three of the security guards burst into the suite.

Manfred took over immediately, snapping orders at them. 'Get the handcuffs on that black bastard." He pointed at Moses. 'And then I want the building cleared." Shasa freed Tricia, leaving the gag until last, but the instant her mouth was clear Tricia pointed at Tara where she still knelt sobbing beside Blaine's corpse.

'She --' Shasa did not let her finish. He seized her wrist and jerked Tricia to her feet.

'Quiet!" he snarled at her, and his fury silenced the girl for a moment. He dragged her through into the outer office and closed the door.

'Listen to me, Tricia." He faced her, still holding both her wrists.

'But she was with him." Tricia was trembling. 'It was her --' 'Listen to me." Shasa shook her into silence. 'I know. I know all about it. But I want you to do something for me. Something for which I will always be grateful. Will you do it?" Tricia sobered and stared at him. She saw the blood and the tears on his face and thought her heart might break for him. Shasa took the handkerchief from his top pocket and wiped his face.

'For me, Tricia. Please,' he repeated and she gulped noisily and nodded.

'If I can,' she agreed.

'Don't say anything about my wife's part in this until the police take a formal statement from you. That won't be until much later.

Then you can tell them everything." 'Why?" she asked.

'For me and for my children. Please Tricia." Again she nodded and he kissed her forehead. 'You are a good brave girl,' he said and left her.

He went back into the inner office. The security police were grouped around Moses Gama. He was manacled but he lifted his head and stared at Shasa for a moment. It was a smouldering gaze, dark and filled with outrage. Then they led him away.

The office was crowded and noisy. White-uniformed ambulance attendants were bringing a stretcher through the doorway. A doctor, a member of parliament summoned from the chamber, was working over Blaine as he lay on his back, but now he stood up, shook his head and gestured at the stretcher bearers to take Blaine's body. The uniformed guards, supervised by Manfred De La Rey, were already gathering up the pieces of the smashed transmitter and beginning to trace the wire to its source.

Tara was sitting in the chair behind his desk, weeping silently into her halads. Shasa went past her to the wall safe hidden behind one of the paintings.

He tumbled the combination and swung open the steel door, screening it with his own body. Shasa always kept two or three thousand pounds in banknotes against an emergency. He stuffed the wads into his pockets, and then quickly he sorted through the stack of family passports until he found Tara's. He relocked the safe, went to where she sat and pulled her to her feet. 'Shasa, I didn't--' 'Keep quiet,' he hissed at her, and Manfred De La Rey glanced at him across the office.

'She's had a terrible shock,' Shasa said. 'I'm taking her home." 'Come back here as soon as you can,' Manfred nodded. 'We'll need a statement." Still gripping her arm, Shasa marched her out of the office and down the corridor. The fire alarm bells were ringing throughout the building and members and visitors and staff were streaming out through the front doors. Shasa joined them, and as soon as they were out in the sunlight he led Tara to the Jaguar.

'Where are we going?" Tara asked, as they drove away. She sat very small and subdued in her corner of the bucket seat.

'If you talk to me again, I may lose control,' he warned her tightly.

'I may not be able to stop myself strangling you." She did not speak again until they reached Youngsfield Airport, and Shasa pushed her up into the cockpit of the silver and blue Mosquito.

'Where are we going?" she repeated, but he ignored her as he went through the start-up procedures and taxied out to the end of the runway. He did not speak until they had climbed to cruise altitude and were flying straight and level.

'The evening flight for London leaves Johannesburg at seven o'clock. As soon as we are in radio contact, I will reserve your seat,' he told her. 'We will get there with an hour or so to spare." 'I don't understand,' she whispere into her oxygen mask. 'Are you helping me to escape? I don't understand why." 'For my mother, firstly. I don't want her to know that you murdered her husband - it would destroy her." 'Shasa, I didn't --' she was weeping again, but he felt no twinge of compassion.

'Shut up,' he said. 'I don't want want to listen to your blubbering.

You will never know the depths.of my feelings for you. Hatred and contempt are gentle words that do not describe them." He drew a breath.

Then went on, 'After my mother, I am doing it for my children. I don't want them to live their lives with the knowledge of what their mother truly was. That is too much for a young man or woman to be burdened with." Then they were both silent, and Shasa allowed the terrible grief of Blaine's death, which up until then he had suppressed, to rise up and engulf him. In the seat beside him Tara was mourning her father also, spasms of weeping shook her shoulders. Her face above the mask was chalky and her eyes were like wounds.

As strong as his grief was Shasa's hatred. After an hour's flying, he spoke again.

'If you ever return to this country again, I will see you hanged.

That is my solemn promise. I will be divorcing you for desertion as soon as possible. There will be no question of alimony or maintenance or child custody. You will have no rights nor privileges of any kind. As far as we are concerned, it will be as though you have never existed. I expect you will be able to claim political asylum somewhere, even if it is in Mother Russia." Again he was silent, gathering himself, regaining full control.

You will not even be at your father's funeral, but every minute of every day his memory will stalk you. That is the only punishment I am able to inflict upon you - God grant it is enough. If He is just, your guilt will slowly drive you mad. I pray for that." She did not reply, but turned her face away. Later, when they were on approach to Johannesburg, descending through ten thousand feet, with the skyscrapers and the white mine dumps glowing in the late sunlight ahead of them, Shasa asked: You were sleeping with him, weren't you?" Instinctively, she knew it was the last chance she would ever have to inflict pain upon him, and she turned in the seat to watch his face as she replied.

'Yes, I love him - and we are lovers." She saw him wince, but she wanted to hurt him more and she went on. 'Apart from my father's death, there is nothing I regret. Nothing I have done of which I am ashamed. On the contrary, I am proud to have known and loved a man like Moses Gama - proud of what I have done for him and for my country." 'Think of him kicking and choking on the rope, and be proud of that also, Shasa said quietly, and landed. He taxied the Mosquito to the terminal buildings and they climbed down on to the tarmac and faced each other. There was a bruise on her face where he had struck her, and the icy highveld wind pulled at their clothing and ruffled their hair. He handed her the little bundle of bank notes and her passport.

'Your seat on the London flight is reserved. There is enough here to pay for it and to take you where you want to go." His voice broke as his rage and his sorrow took control of him again. 'To hell or the gallows, if my wish for you comes true. I hope never to see or hear of you again." He turned away from her, but she called after him.

'We were always enemies, Shasa Courtney, even in the best times.

And we will be enemies to the very end. Despite your wish, you will hear of me again. I promise you that much." He climbed into the Mosquito and it was minutes before he had himself sufficiently in hand to start the engines. When he looked out through the windshield again, she was gone.

Centaine would not let them bury Blaine. She could not bear the thought of him lying in the earth, swelling and putrefying.

Mathilda Janine, Blaine's younger daughter, came down from Johannesburg with David Abrahams, her husband, in the company Dove, and they sat with the family in the front row of the memorial chapel at the crematorium. Over a thousand mourners attended the service and both Dr Verwoerd and Sir De Villiers Graaff, the leader of the opposition, were amongst them.

Centaine kept the little urn of Blaine's ashes on the table beside her bed for almost a month, before she could get up her courage.

Then she summoned Shasa, and the two of them climbed the hill to her favourite rock.

'Blaine and I used to come here so often,' she whispered. 'This will be the place where I shall come when I need to know that he is still close to me." She was nearly sixty years old, and when Shasa studied her with compassion, he saw that for the first time she truly looked that old.

She was letting the grey grow out in the thick bush of her hair and he saw that soon there would be more of it than the black. Grief had dulled her gaze and weighed down the corners of her mouth, and that clear youthful skin which she so carefully cherished, seemed overnight to have seamed and puckered.

'Do it for me, please Shasa,' she said, and handed him the urn.

Shasa opened it and stepped out of the lee of the rock, into the full force of the south-easter. The wind fluttered his shirt like a trapped bird, and he turned to look back at her.

Centaine nodded encouragement, and he held the urn high and upended it. The ashes streamed away like dust in the wind, and when the urn was empty, Shasa turned to her once more.

'Break it!" she commanded, and he hurled the vessel against the rock face. It shattered, and she gasped and swayed on her feet.

Shasa ran to her and held her in his arms.

'Death is the only adversary I know I shall never overcome.

Perhaps that is why I hate it so,' she whispered.

He led her to her seat on the rock and they were silent for a long while, staring out over the wind-speckled Atlantic and then Centaine said, 'I know you have been protecting me. Now tell me about Tara.

What was her part in this?" So he told her, and when he finished Centaine said, 'You have made yourself an accessory to murder. Was it worth it?" 'Yes. I think so,' he answered without hesitation. 'Could any of us have survived her trial if I had allowed her to be arrested and charged?" 'Will there be consequences?" Shasa shook his head. 'Maned - he will protect us again. Just as he did with Sean." Shasa saw her pain at the mention of Sean's name. Like him she had never recovered from it, but now she said quietly, 'Sean was one thing, but this is murder and treason and attempting to assassinate a head of state. It is fostering bloody revolution and attempting by force to overthrow a government. Can Manfred protect us from that?

And if he can, why should he?" I don't know the answers to that, Mater." Shasa looked at her searchingly. 'I thought that perhaps you did." 'What do you mean?" she asked, and he thought that he might have taken her unawares, for there was fear and confusion in her eyes for an instant. Blaine's death had slowed her and weakened her.

Before that, she would never have betrayed herself so readily.

'In protecting us, me in particular, Manfred is protecting himself and his political ambitions,' Shasa reasoned it out carefully. 'For if I am destroyed, then - I am his protbgd - his own career would be blighted. But there is more than that. More than I can fathom." Centaine did not reply, but she turned her head away and looked out to sea.

'It's as though Manfred De La Rey feels some strange loyalty to us, or a debt that he must repay - or even a' sense of deep guilt towards our fmily. Is that possible, Mater? Is there something that I do not know of that would put him under an obligation to us?

Have you withheld something from me all these years?" He watched her struggle with herself, and at one moment it seemed she might burst out with some long-hidden truth, or with a terrible secret that she had carried too long alone. Then he saw her expression firm and it was almost possible to watch the strength and force which had been drained from her since Blaine's death flow back into her.

It was a little miracle. Age seemed to fall away from her. Her eyes brightened and her carriage of head and shoulders was once more erect and perky. Even the lines and creases around her eyes and mouth seemed to smooth away.

'What ever gave you that idea?" she asked crisply, and stood up.

Tve been moping and pining far too long. Blaine would never have approved of that." She took Shasa's arm. 'Come along. I've still got a life to live and work to do." Half-way down the hill, she asked suddenly, 'When does the trial of Moses Gama begin?" 'The tenth of next month." 'Do you know he once worked for us, this Moses Gama?" 'Yes, Mater. I remembered him. That was how I was able to sto him." He was a terrible troublemaker even in those days. We must d all we can to enstlre that he pays the extreme penalty. That is th least we can do for Blaine's memory." 'I don't understand why you are saddling me with this little scrubber, Desmond Blake protested acidly. He had been twenty-two years on th.

newspaper and before the gin bottle had taken over, he had been th.

best courtroom and political journalist on the staff of the Golde City Mail. The quantities of gin which he absorbed had not onl placed a ceiling on his career but had greyed and prematurely line his face, ruined his liver and soured his disposition without, how.

ever, clouding his insight into the criminal mind nor spoiling hi political acumen.

'Well, he is a bright lad,' his editor explained reasonably.

'This is the biggest, most sensational trial of our century,' Desmond Blake said, 'and you want me to drag a cub reporter with me, a puking infant who couldn't even cover a local flower show or a mayoral tea party." 'I think he has a lot of potential - I just want you to take him in hand and show him the ropes." 'Bullshit!" said Desmond Blake. 'Now tell me the real reason." 'All right." The editor showed his exasperation. 'The real reason is that his grandmother is Centaine Courtney and his father is Shasa Courtney, and Courtney Mining and Finance have acquired thirty-five percent of the shareholding of our parent company over the past months, and if you know nothing else you should know that nobody bucks Centaine Courtney, not if they want to remain in business. Now take the kid with you and stop bitciting. I haven't got time to argue any more - I've got a paper to get out." Desmond Blake threw up both hands in despair, and as he rose to leave the office his editor added one last unsubtle threat.

'Just look at it this way, Des. It will be good job insurance, especially for an aging newshound who needs the price of a bottle of gin a day. Just think of the kid as the boss's son." Desmond wandered lugubriously down the length of the city room.

He knew the boy by sight. Somebody had pointed him out as a sprig of the Courtney empire and wondered aloud what the hell he was doing here instead of on the polo field.

Desmond stopped beside the corner desk which Michael was sharing with two other juniors.

'Your name is Michael Courtney?" he asked, and the boy leapt to his feet.

'Yes, sir." Michael was overcome at being directly addressed by somebody who had his own column and by-line.

'Shit!" said Desmond bitterly. 'Nothing is more depressing than the shining face of youth and enthusiasm. Come along, boy." 'Where are we going?" Michael snatched up his jacket eagerly.

'To the George, boy. I need a double to give me the strength to go through with this little lark." At the bar of the George, he studied Michael over the rim of his glass.

'Your first lesson, boy --' he took a swallow of gin and tonic.

'Nothing is ever what it seems to be. Nobody is ever what he says he is. Engrave that on your heart. Your second lesson. Stick to your orange juice. They don't call this stuff mother's ruin for nothing.

Your third lesson. Always pay for the drinks with a smile." He took another swig. 'So you are from Cape Town, are you? Well that's just fine, because that is where we are going, you and me. We are going to see a man condemned to die." Vicky Gama took the bus from Baragwanath Hospital to Drake's Farm. It went 0my as far as the administration building and the new government school. She had to walk the last mile through the narrow dusty lanes between the rows of raw brick cottages. She walked slowly, for although her pregnancy was only four months advanced, she was beginning to tire easily.

Hendrick Tabaka was in the crowded general dealer's shop, watching the tills, but he came to Vicky immediately and she greeted him with the respect due to her husband's eldest brother. He led her through to his of.rice, and called for one of his sons to bring her a comfortable chair.

Vicky recognized Raleigh Tabaka, and smiled at him as he placed her chair. 'You have grown into a fine young man, Raleigh. Have you finished your schooling now?" 'Yebo, sissie." Raleigh returned her greeting with polite reserve, for even though she was the wife of his uncle, she was a Zulu. His father had taught him to distrust all Zulus. 'I help my father now, sisMe. I learn the business from him and soon I will manage one of the shops on my own." Hendrick Tabaka smiled proudly at his favourite son. 'He learns fast, and I have great faith in the boy." He endorsed what Raleigh had said. 'I am sending him soon to our shop at Sharpeville near Vereeniging to learn the bakery business." Where is your twin brother, Wellington?" Vicky asked, and immediately Hendrick Tabaka frowned heavily and waved at Raleigh to leave the office. As soon as they were alone, he answered her question angrily. 'The white priests have captured Wellington's heart. They have seduced him from the gods of his tribe and his ancestors and taken him to the service of the white man's God. This strange Jesus God with three heads. It grieves me deeply, for I had hoped that Wellington, like Raleigh, would be the son of my old age. Now he studies to be a priest, and I have lost him." He sat down at the tiny cluttered table that served him as a desk and studied his own hands for a moment. Then he raised that bald cannonball head, the scalp criss-crossed with ridged scars from old battles.

'So, wife of my brother, we live in a time of great sorrow. Moses Gama has been taken by the white men's police, and we cannot doubt what they will do with him. Even in my sorrow, I must recall that I warned him that this would happen. A wise man does not throw stones at the sleeping lion." 'Moses Gama did what he knew was his duty. He lived out the deed for which he was born,' Vicky said quietly. 'He struck a blow for all of us - you and me and our children." She touched her belly where beneath the white nurse's uniform the first bulge of her pregnancy showed. 'And now he needs our help." 'Tell me how I can help." Hendrick inclined his head. 'For he was not only my brother, but my chief as well." 'We need money to hire a lawyer to defend him in the white man's court. I have been to see Marcus Archer and the others of the ANC at the house in Rivonia. They will not help us. They say that Moses acted without their agreement or approval. They say that it was agreed not to endanger human life. They say that if they give us money to help in the defence, the police will trace it to them. They say many other things - everything but the truth." 'What is the truth, my sister?" Hendrick asked.

And suddenly Vicky's voice was quivering with fury. 'The truth is that they hate him. The truth is that they are afraid of him. The truth is that they are jealous of him. Moses has done what none of them would have dared. He has aimed a spear at the heart of the white tyrant, and though the blow failed, now all the world knows that it was struck. Not only in this land, but beyond the sea, all the world knows now who is the leader of our people." 'That is true,' Hendrick nodded. 'His name is on every man's lips." 'We must save him, Hendrick my brother. We must do everything we can to save him.

Hendrick rose and went to the small cupboard in the corner. He dragged it aside to reveal the door of an ancient Chatwood safe built into the wall behind it.

When he opened the green steel door, the safe was packed with wads of banknotes.

'This belongs to Moses. It is his share. Take what you need,' said Hendrick Tabaka.

The Supreme Court of the Cape Province of South Africa stands on one side of the gardens that Jan van Riebeeck, the first governor of the Cape, laid out in the 1650s to provision the ships of the Dutch East India Company. On the opposite side of the beautiful gardens stand the houses of parliament that Moses Gama had attempted to destroy. So he was to be tried within a quarter of a mile of the scene of the crime of which he stood accused.

The case aroused the most intense international interest and the film crews and journalists began flying into Cape Town a.week before it was set down to commence.

Vicky Gama arrived by train after the thousand-mile journey down the continent from the Witwatersrand. She travelled with the white lawyer whowould defend Moses and more than fifty of the more radical members of the African National Congress, most of them, like herself, under thirty years of age, and many of them secret members of Moses Gama's Umkhonto we Sizwe military wing of the party. Amongst these was Vicky's half brother, Joseph Dinizulu, now a young man of almost twenty-one studying to be a lawyer at the black university of Fort Hare. The money given to Vicky by Hendrick Tabaka paid for all of them.

Molly Broadhurst met them at the Cape Town station. Vicky, Joseph and the defence lawyer would be staying at her home in Pinelands during the trial, and she had arranged accommodation for all the others in the black townships of Longa and Guguletu.

Desmotid Blake and Michael Courtney flew down together from Johannesburg on the commercial flight, and while Desmond put a severe strain on the bar service, Michael pored over the notebook in which he was roughing out a schedule of all the research into the history of the ANC and the background of Moses Gama and his tribe that he felt they would need.

Centaine Courtney-Malcomess was at the airport to meet the flight.

Much to Michael's embarrassment, she had two servants to carry Michael's single valise out to the daffodil-yellow Daimler that, as usual, she was driving herself. Since Tara had left, Centaine had once more taken over the running of Weltevreden.

'The paper has booked rooms for us at the Atlantic Hotel, Nana.

Michael protested, after he had dutifully embraced his grandmothei 'It's very convenient for the law courts and the national library." 'Nonsense,' said Centaine firmly. 'The Atlantic is a bug-run am Weltevreden is your home." 'Father said I wouldn't be welcome back." 'Your father has missed you even more than I have." Shasa sat Michael beside him at dinner, and even Isabella wa,.

almost totally excluded from their conversation. Shasa was so impressed by his youngest son's sudden new maturity that the followin morning he instructed his broker to purchase another hundred thousand shares in the holding company that owned the Golden Ci0 Mail.

Manfred and Heidi dined at Weltevreden the evening before the trial began and while they drank pre-prandial cocktails Manfred expressed the concern that Shasa and Centaine shared.

'What the prosecution and the court must avoid is allowing the proceedings to deteriorate into a trial not of a murderer and a terrorist, but of our social system and our way of life. The vultures of the international press are already assembled, eager to show us in the worst possible light, and as usual to distort and misrepresent our policy of apartheid. I only wish we had some control over the courts and the press." 'You know I can't agree with you on that one." Shasa shifted in his chair. 'The complete independence of our press and the impartiality of our judicial system gives us credibility in the eyes of the rest of the world." 'Don't lecture me. I am a lawyer,' Manfred pointed out stiffly.

It was strange how despite their enforced and mutually beneficial relationship, they were never truly friends and antagonism was always ready to surface between them. Now it took some little time for the tension to ease, and for them to adopt once more an outward show of cordiality. Only then 'could Manfred tell Shasa, 'We have finally agreed with the prosecution not to raise in court the matter of your wife's involvement with the accused. Apart from the difficulty of beginning extradition proceedings with Britain - she would almost certainly ask for political asylum - there is the consideration of her relationship with Gama. Black man and white woman--' Manfred's expression was one of deep disgust. 'It is repugnant to all decent principles. Raising the subject would not further the prosecution, but would simply give the yellow press something more to drool over. No, it will do none of us any good at all." Manfred put special emphasis on this last sentence. It was all that needed to be said, but Shasa did not let it pass.

'I owe you a great deal - for my son, Sean, and now my wife." 'Ja, you owe me a great deal,' Manfred nodded. 'Perhaps I will kT you for something in return one day." as hope so,' said Shasa. I do not like having outstanding debts." Outside the Supreme Court both pavements were filled with people.

They were standing shoulder to shoulder and overflowing into the street, complicating the efforts of the traffic wardens and impeding the flow of traffic until it was reduced to a crawl.

A newspaper poster, 'GUY FAWKES KILLER TRIAL BEGINS TODAY', hung drunkenly from one of the lampposts until it was knocked down by the push of the crowd and trodden underfoot.

The throng was thickest at the colonnaded entrance to the Supreme Court and each time one of the players in the drama arrived, the journalists and photographers surged forward. The state prosecutor smiled and waved to them like a film star, but most of the others, intimidated by the crowds and the exploding flash bulbs and shouted questions, scurried for the entrance and the protection of the police guards.

Only minutes before the court was due to go into session, a chartered bus turned into the slow-moving stream of traffic and came down towards the entrance. The sound of singing grew louder as it approached, the lovely haunting chorus of African voices rising and sinking and weaving the intricate tapestry of sound that thrilled the ears and raised the gooseflesh on the skins of the listeners.

When the bus finally halted in front of the Supreme Court, a young Zulu woman stepped down into the street. She wore a flowing caftan of green and yellow and black, the colours of the African National Congress, and her head was bound in a turban of the same colours.

Her pregnancy had given Vicky a fullness of body that enhanced her natural fine looks. There was no trace left of the shy little country girl. She carried her head high, and moved with all the confidence and style of an African Evita.

The press cameramen recognized instantly that they were being presented with an unusual opportunity and they rushed forward with their equipment to capture her dark beauty, and the sound of her voice as she sang the thrilling hymn to freedom. 'Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika - God Save Africa." Behind her, holding hands, and singing, came all the others, some of them white like Molly Broadhurst and some of them Indians and coloured like Miriam and Ben Afrika, but most of them pure African.

They streamed up the steps into the court house to fill the section of the gallery of the courtroom reserved for non-whites and to overflows into the corridors outside.

The rest of the court was packed with the press and the curious.

while a separate section had been set aside for observers from the diplomatic corps. Every one of the embassies was represented.

At every entrance to the court were police guards wearing sidearms, and four policemen of warrant officer rank were drawn up around the dock. The prisoner was a killer and a dangerous revolutionary. They were taking no chances.

Yet when he stepped up into the dock, Moses Gama seemed none of these things. He had lost weight during his imprisonment, but this merely enhanced his great height and the wide angularity of his shoulders. His cheeks were hollow, and the bones of his face and forehead were more prominent, but he stood proudly as ever with his chin up and that dark messianic glow in his eyes.

His presence was so overpowering that he seemed to take possession of the room; the gasp and hum of curiosity as he stood before them was subdued by an almost tangible sense of awe. In the back of the gallery Vicky Dinizulu sprang to her feet and began to sing, and those around her came in with the chorus. As he listened to her beautiful ringing voice, Moses Gama inclined his head slightly, but he did not smile or give any other sign of recognition.

Vicky's freedom song was interrupted by a cry of 'Stilte in die hof/ Opstaan! Silence in the court! Stand up!" The judge-president of the Cape, wearing the scarlet robes which indicated that this was a criminal trial, took his seat on the bench beneath the carved canopy.

Justice Andr Villiers was a big man with a famboyant courtroom style. He had a reputation for being a connoisseur of food, good wine and pretty girls. He was also noted for handing down savage sentences for crimes of violence.

Now he slumped massively on the bench and glowered around his court as the charge sheet was rad, but his gaze checked momentarily as it reached each female, the length of the pause proportional to the prettiness of the recipient. On Kitty Godolphin he spent at least two seconds and when she smiled her angelic little-girl smile at him, he hooded his eyes slightly before passing on.

There were four main charges on the sheet against Moses Gama, two of attempted murder, and one each of high treason and murder.

Every one of these was a capital offence but Moses Gama showed no emotion as he listened to them read out.

Judge Villiers broke the expectant silence that followed the reading.

'How do you plead to these charges?" Moses leaned forward, both clenched fists on the rail of the dock and his voice was low and full of scorn, but it carried to every corner of the crowded court.

'Verwoerd and his brutal government should be in this dock,' he said. 'I plead not guilty." Moses sat down and did not raise his eyes while the judge enquired who appeared for the crown, and the prosecutor introduced himself to the court, but when Mr Justice Villiers asked: 'Who appears for the defence?" before the advocate whom Vicky and Hendrick Tabaka had retained could reply, Moses sprang to his feet again.

'I do,' he cried. 'I am on trial here for the aspirations of the African people. No other can speak for me. I am the leader of my people, I will answer for myself and for them." There was such consternation in the court now, such uproar that for a few moments the judge, pounded his gavel in vain, demanding silence, and when it was at last obtained, he threatened them.

'If there is another such demonstration of contempt for this court, I will not hesitate to have it cleared." He turned back to Moses Gama to reason with him and try to persuade him to accept legal representation, but Moses forestalled him.

'I wish to move immediately that you, Judge Villiers, recuse yourself from this case,' he challenged, and the scarlet-robed judge blinked and was for a moment stunned into silence.

Then he smiled grimly at the prisoner's effrontery and asked, 'On what grounds do you make this application?" 'On the grounds that you, as a white judge, are incapable of being impartial and fair to me, a black man, forced to submit to the immoral laws of a parliament in which I have no representation." The judge shook his head, half in exasperation and half in admiration. 'I am going to deny your application for recusal,' he said. 'And I am going to urge you to accept the very able services of the counsel who has been appointed to represent you." 'I accept neither his services, nor the competence of this court to condemn me. For all the world knows that is what you propose. I accept only the verdict of my poor enslaved people and of the free nations out there. Let them and history decide my innocence or guilt." The press were electrified, some of them so enchanted that they made no effort to write down his words. None of them would ever forget them. For Michael Courtney sitting in the back row of the press section, it was a revelation. He had lived with Africans all his life, his family employed them by the tens of thousands, but until this moment he had never met a black man of such dignity and aweinspiring presence.

Judge Villiers sagged down in his seat. He always maintained hi place firmly in the centre-stage of his court, overshadowin everybody in it with the ruthless authority of a born actor. Here hid sensed he had met an equal. The entire attention of everybody in th court was captivated by Moses Gama.

'Very well,' Judge Villiers said at last. 'Mr Prosecutor, you ma proceed to present the case for the crown." The prosecutor was a master of his profession and he had all infallible case. He worked it up with meticulous attention to detail with logic and with skill.

One at a time he submitted his exhibits to the court. The wirinl and the electrical detonator, the Tokarev pistol and spare magazines Although it was considered too dangerous to allow the blocks o plastic explosives and the detonators into the courtroom, photo graphs were submitted and accepted. The altar chest was too larg to bring into court, and again photographs were accepted by Judg Villiers. Then there were the gruesome photographs of Shasa's office with Blaine's covered body against the bookcases and his blooc splashed over the carpet, and the wreckage of broken furniture and scattered papers. Centaine turned her face away as the photograph, were handed in and Shasa squeezed her arm and tried to shield bel from the curious glances.

After all the exhibits had been tabled, the prosecutor called his first witness. 'I call the honourable Minister of Mines and Industry Mr Shasa Courtney." Shasa was on the witness stand for the rest of that day and all of the following morning, describing in detail how he had discovered and thwarted the bombing.

The prosecutor took him back to his first childhood meeting with Moses Gama, and as Shasa described their relationship, Moses raised his head and for the first time since he had taken the stand looked d!rectly into Shasa's face. In vain Shasa searched for the slightest trace of that sympathy they lad once shared, but there was none.

Moses Gama's stare was baleful and unwavering.

When at last the prosecutor had finished with Shasa, he turned to the accused. 'Your witness,' he said, and Justice Villiers roused himself.

'Do you wish to cross-examine the witness?" Moses shook his head and looked away, but the judge insisted.

'This will be your last opportunity to query or refute the witness's evidence. I urge you to make full use of it." Moses crossed his arms over his chest, and closed his eyes as though in sleep, and from the non-white section of the court there were hoots of laughter and the stamping of feet.

Justice Villiers raised his voice, 'I will not warn you again,' and there was silence in the face of his anger.

Over the next four days the prosecutor placed his witnesses on the stand.

Tricia, Shasa's secretary, explained how Moses had gained entrance to the office suite in the guise of a chauffeur and how on the day of the murder Moses had seized and bound her. How she had watched him fire the fatal shot that killed Colonel Malcomess.

'Do you wish to cross-examine the witness'?." Judge Villiers asked, and once again Moses shook his head.

Manfred De La Rey gave his evidence and described how he had found Moses Gama with the pistol in his hand and Blaine Malcomess lying on the floor dying. How he had heard him cry, 'You! You!" and saw him deliberately fire the pistol at Shasa Courtney.

Do you wish to cross-examine the witness'?." the judge asked, and this time Moses did not even look up.

An electrical engineer described the captured equipment and identified the transmitter as being of Russian origin. An explosives expert told the court of the destructive power of the plastic explosives placed beneath the government benches.

en my opinion it would have been sufficient to destroy totally the entire chamber and the adjoining rooms. It would certainly have killed every person in the main chamber, and most of those in the lobby and the surrounding offices." After each witness had finished his evidence Moses again refused to cross-examine. At the end of the fourth day the crown had presented its case, and Judge Villiers adjourned the court with one last appeal to the prisoner.

'When the court reconvenes on Monday, you will be required to answer the charges against you. I must once more impress upon you the grave nature of the accusations, and point out to you that your very life is at stake. Yet again I urge you to accept the services of legal counsel." Moses Gama smiled at him with contempt.

Dinner at Weltevreden that evening was a sombre affair. The only one who was unaffected by the day's events was Garry, who had flown down in the Mosquito from the Silver River Mine for the weekend.

While the rest of the family sat in silence, each of them brooding on the events of these last days and their own particular part in them, Garry was enthusiastically selling to Centaine and Shasa his latest plan for reducing costs at the mine.

'Accidents cost us money in lost production. I'll admit that in the last two years our safety record has been about average for the industry as a whole, but if we could cut down our fatalities to one per hundred thousand shifts or better, we could reduce our overall production costs by over twelve percent. That is twenty million pounds a year. On top of that we would get the added bonus of worker satisfaction and cooperation. I have put all the figures through the computer." Garry's eyes behind his spectacles glittered as he mentioned that piece of equipment. Shasa had reports from Dave Abrahams and the general manager of the Silver River that Garry sometimes sat all night at one of the terminals of the new IBM computer that the company had at last installed.

'The lad knows his way around the machine as well, if not better, than any of our full-time operators. He can almost make it sit up and whistle God Save the Queen"." David Abrahams had not attempted to conceal his admiration and Shasa had remarked deprecatingly, to conceal his paternal pride, 'That will be a redundant accomplishment by next year, when we become a republic." Oh, Garry, you are being an utter bore,' Isabella interrupted him at last. 'All that business about tonnages and penny weights - at the dinner table, what's more. No wonder you can't find a girlfriend." For once I think Bella is right,' Centane said quietly from the end of the table. 'That's enough for one night, Garry. I just cannot concentrate at the moment. I think this has been one of the worst weeks of my entire life, having to watch that monster, with Blaine's blood on his hands, sitting there defying us and making a mockery of our system of justice.

He threatens to tear down the whole structure of government, to plunge us all into anarchy and the same savagery of Africa which rent the land before we whites arrived. Then he smirks at us from the dock.

I hate him. I have never hated anything or anybody as much as I hate him. I pray each night that the hang him." Unexpectedly it was Michael who replied. 'Yes, we hate him, Nana. We hate him because we are afraid of him, and we are afraid of him because we do not understand him or his people." They all stared at him in astonishment.

'Of course we understand him,' Centaine said. 'We have lived in Africa all our lives. We understand them as nobody else does." 'I don't think so, Nana. I think if we had truly understood and listened to what this man had to say, Blaine would be alive today. I think he could have been an ally and not our deadly enemy. I think Moses Gama could have been a useful and highly respected citizen, and not a prisoner on trial for his life." 'What strange ideas you have picked up on that newspaper of yours! He murdered your grandfather,' Centaine said, and shot a glance down the table at Shasa. Shasa interpreted it fluently and it meant, 'We have another problem on our hands here,' but Michael was going on obliviously.

'Moses Gama will die on the gallows - I think we all know that.

But his words and his ideas will live on. I know now why I had to be a journalist. I know what I have to do. I have to explain those ideas to the people of this land, to show them that they are just and fair, and not dangerous at all. In those ideas are the hopes for our survival as a nation." It is a good thing I sent the servants out,' Centaine interrupted him. 'I never thought to hear words like those spoken in the diningroom of Weltevreden." Vicky Gama waited for over an hour in the visitors' room at Roeland Street prison while the warders examined the contents of the package she had brought for Moses and made up their minds whether or not to allow her to hand it to the prisoner.

'It is only clothing,' Vicky pointed out reasonably.

'These aren't ordinary clothes,' the senior warden protested.

They are the traditional robes of my husband's tribe. He is entitled to wear them." In the end the prison governor was called in to arbitrate and when he finally gave his permission, Vicky complained, 'Your men have been deliberately rude and obstructive to me." He smiled at her sarcastically. 'I wonder how you will treat us, madam, if you and your brothers in the ANC ever seize power. I wonder if you will allow us even the courtesy of a trial or whether you will slaughter us in the streets, as your husband tried to do." When Vicky was at last allowed to hand the parcel to Moses under the watchful eye of four warders, he asked her, 'Whose idea was this?" 'It was mine but Hendrick paid for the skins and his wives sewed them." 'You are a clever woman,' Moses commended her, 'and a dutiful wife." 'You, my lord, are a great chief, and it is fitting that you should wear the robes of your office." Moses held up. the full-length cloak of leopard skins, heavy and glossy golden, studded with the sable rosettes.

'You have understood,' he nodded. 'You have seen the necessity of using the white man's courtroom as a stage from which to shout our craving for freedom to the world." Vicky lowered her eyes and her voice. 'My lord, you must not die.

If you die, then the great part of our dream of freedom dies with you. Will you not defend yourself, for my sake and for the sake of our people?" 'No, I will not die,' he assured her. 'The great nations of the world will not let that happen. Britain has already made her position clear and America cannot afford to let them execute me. Her own nation is wracked by the struggle of the American coloured people - she cannot afford to let me go to my death." 'I do not trust the altruism of great nations,' Vicky said softly.

'Then trust in their own self-interest,' Moses Gama told her. 'And trust in me." When Moses Gama rose before the court in the golden and black robes of leopard skin, he seemed a reincarnation of one of the ancient black kings. He riveted them.

'I call no witnesses,' Gama told them gravely. 'All I will do is to make a statement from the dock. That is as far as I am prepared to cooperate in this mockery of justice." 'My lord,' the prosecutor was on his feet immediately. 'I must point out to the court--' 'Thank you!" Judge Villiers interrupted him in frigid tones. 'I do not need to be told how to conduct this trial,' and the prosecutor sank back into his seat, still making inarticulate sounds of protest.

Heavily the scarlet-robed justice turned his attention back to Moses Gama.

'What counsel for the prosecution is trying to tell me is that I should make it clear to you that if you do not enter the witness stand and take the oath, if you do ndt submit to cross-examination, then what you have to say will have little relevance to the proceedings." 'An oath to your white man's God, in this courtroom with a white judge and a white prosecutor, with white prosecution witnesses and white policemen at the doors. I do not deign to submit to that kind of justice." Judge Villiers shook his head with a woeful expression and turned both his hands palms up. 'Very well, you have been warned of the consequences. Proceed with your statement." Moses Gama was silent for a long time, and then he began softly.

'There was once a small boy who wandered with joy through a beautiful land, who drank from the sweet clear rivers, who listened with pleasure to the song of the bird and studied the antics of the springbok and pangolin and all the marvelous wild things, a small boy who tended his father's herds, and sat at night by the fire and listened to the tales of the great heroes of his people, of Bambata and Sekhukhuni and mighty Chaka.

This boy believed himself to be one of a peaceful people who owned the land on which they lived and were free to move wherever they wished in confidence and joy. Then one day when the boy was nine years of age a curious being came to the kraal at which the boy lived, a creature with a red face and a lordly manner, and the boy saw that the people were afraid, even his father and his grandfather who were chieftains of the tribe, were afraid as the boy had never seen them afraid before." There was no sound nor movement in the crowded courtroom as, Moses Gama described his loss of innocence and how he had learned the bitter truths of his existence. He described his bewilderment as the universe he knew was proved an illusion. He told them of his first journey into the outside world, where he learned that as a man with a black skin there were places where his existence was circumscribed and limited.

When he went to the white man's towns, he found that he could not walk the streets after curfew without a pass, that he could not live outside the areas that had been set aside for his people on the outskirts of that town, but most important to him he found that he could not attend the white man's schools. He learned that in nearly every public building there was a separate entrance for him to use, that there were skills he was not allowed to acquire, and that in almost every way he was considered different and inferior, condemned by the pigmentation of his skin, always to remain on the bottom rung of existence.

Yet he knew that he was a man like other men, with the same hopes and desires. He knew that his heart beat as fiercely and that his body was as strong, and his brain was as bright and quick as any other. He decided that the way to rise above the station in life that had been allotted him was to use that brain rather than employ his body like a beast of burden as most of his people were forced to do.

He turned to the white maws books and was astonished to find that the heroes of his people were described as savages and cattlethieves and treacherous rebels. That even the most sympathetic and charitable of the authors he read referred to his people as children, unable to reason or think for themselves, children who must be sternly protected but prevented from taking part in the decisions which governed their lives.

He described to them how at last he had realized that it was all some monstrous lie. That he was not different, that because his ski: was black he was not unclean or contaminated or childlike. He knew then for what purpose he had been put upon this earth.

'I came to know that the struggle against injustice was my life,' he said simply. 'I knew that I had to make the white men who ruled me and my people understand." He explained how each of his attempts to get the white men to listen had failed. How all his people's efforts had resulted only in more savage and draconian laws, in fiercer oppressions.

'In the end I had to accept that there was only one course left to me. That was to take up arms and to strike at the head of the serpent whose venom was poisoning and destroying my people." He was silent and his audience who had listened in complete and rigid silence for most of the morning, sighed and stirred, but as soon as Moses Gama spread his arms they were completely attentive once more.

'Every man has a right and a sacred duty to protect his family and his nation from the tyrant, to fight against injustice and slavery.

When he does so he becomes a warrior and not a criminal. I challenge this judge and this white man's court to treat me as a soldier and a prisoner of war. For that is what I am." Moses Gama drew his leopard skins about him and sat down, leaving them all shaken and silenced.

Judge Villiers had sat through the entire address with his chin couched in his hand, his eyes hooded with concentration, but-now he let his hand drop and he leaned forward to glower at the prisoner.

'You claim to be the leader of your people." 'I do,' Moses replied.

'A leader is chosen or elected. How were you chosen?" 'When an oppressed people has no voice, then their leaders come forward of their own accord to speak for them,' Moses told him.

'So you are a self-proclaimed leader,' the judge said quietly. 'And your decision to declare war on our society was taken alone. Is that correct?" 'We are involved in a colonial war of liberation,' Moses Gama replied. 'Like our brothers in Algeria and Kenya." 'You approved of the methods of the Mau Mau then?" Judge Villiers asked.

'Their cause was just - their methods, vhatever they ,might have been, were therefore just." 'The end justifies the means - any means?" 'The struggle for liberation is all, in the name of liberty any deed is sanctified." 'The slaughter and mutilation of innocents, of women and children. These are also justified?" bIf one innocent should die that a thousand might go free, then it is justified." Tell me, Moses Gama, do you believe in democracy - in the concept of 'One man, one vote"?" I believe that every man should have one vote to elect the leaders of the nation." 'And after the leaders are chosen, what should happen?" I believe that the people should submit to the wisdom of their chosen leaders." 'A one-party state - with a president for life?" 'That is the African way,' Moses Gama agreed.

'It is also the way of the Marxists,' Judge Villiers observed drily.

'Tell me, Moses Gama, what makes a black totalitarian government superior to a white totalitarian government?" 'The wishes of the majority of the people." 'And the sanction of your people, of which only you are aware, makes you a holy crusader - above the laws of civilized man?" In this land there are no such laws, for the men who make the laws are barbarians,' said Moses Gama softly, and Judge Villiers had no more questions to put to him.

Twenty-four hours later Mr Justice Andr Villiers delivered his judgement to a hushed and expectant court.

'The basis of the case brought by the crown against the accused rests upon the consideration of how an individual reacts to what he perceives as an injustice. It raises the question of the individual's right or duty to resist those laws which he considers unjust or evil. I have had to consider what loyalty a person owes to a government, which was elected by a process from which he was totally excluded, a government which has furthermore embarked upon a programme of legislation that will deliberately alienate that person from most of the major rights, privileges and benefits of the society of which he is a member --' For almost an hour Judge Villiers enlarged on and examined this proposition, then he summed up. 'I have therefore reached the conclusion that no duty of loyalty exists towards a state in which the individual is denied the basic democratic right of representation. Accordingly, on the charge of high treason I find the accused not guilty." There was a throaty roar from the body of the court and in the non-white section of the gallery they were dancing and singing. For almost a full minute Judge Villiers watched them, and those member of the court who knew him well were amazed by his forbearance But the judge's features were crumpled with an unusual compassion and terrible sadness as he took up his gavel to quieten them.

In the silence he spoke again. 'I come now to the other charges against the accused. Those of murder and attempted murder. The crown has, with the help of the most eminent and trustworthy witnesses, made out a case which the accused has not attempted to challenge. I accept that the accused placed a large body of explosive in the assembly chamber of the South African parliament with the intention of detonating that charge during a speech by the prime minister and thereby inflicting the greatest possible damage and death. I accept also that when his plot was discovered, he slew Colonel Blaine Malcomess and immediately thereafter attempted to murder Minister Courtney." The judge paused and turned his head towards Moses Gama who sat impassively in the dock, still wearing his leopard-skin robes of chieftainship.

'The accused has offered the defence that he is a soldier in a war of liberation and is therefore not subject to the civil law. While I have already e4pressed my sympathy for and understanding of the accused's aspirations and those of the black people whom he claims to represent, I cannot entertain his demand that he be treated as a prisoner of war. He is a private individual who, while fully aware of the consequences of his actions, set out on the dark road of violence, determined to inflict the greatest possible destruction in the most indiscriminate fashion. It is therefore without any hesitation whatsoever that I find the accused guilty of murder and two charges of attempted murder." There was no sound in the courtroom as Judge Villiers went on softly, 'The prisoner will rise for sentence." Slowly Moses Gama came to his full height and he regarded Judge Villiers with an imperial stare.

'Is there anything you wish to say before sentence is passed upon you?" the judge asked.

'This is not justice. We both know that - and history will record it SO." 'Is there anything further you wish to say?" When Moses shook his head, Judge Villiers intoned, 'Having found you guilty on the three main charges, I have carefully considered whether any extenuating circumstances exist in your case - and at last having determined that there are none, I have no alternative but to impose upon you the maximum penalty which the law decrees.

On all the remaining charges, taken jointly and severally, I sentence you, Moses Gama, to death by hanging." The silence persisted for a moment longer and then from the rear of the court a woman's voice rose in keening ululation, the harrowing wall of African mourning. It was taken up immediately by all the other black women in the courtroom and Judge Villiers made no attempt to silence it.

In the dock Moses Gama raised a clenched fist above his head.

'Amandla." he roared, and his people answered him with a single voice: 'Ngan'ethu/ Mayibuye! Afrika!" Manfred De La Rey sat high in the grandstand, in one of the special boxes reserved for the most important spectators. Every single seat in the stand had been sold weeks before and the standing areas around the field were crammed to capacity. This great concourse of humanity had assembled to watch one of the major events of the sporting calendar, the clash between the Western Province and Northern Transvaal rugby football teams. At stake was the Currie Cup, a trophy for which every province of South Africa competed annually in a knock-out tournament. The fanatical partisanship which this contest evoked went far beyond that of mere sporting competition.

Manfred smiled sardonically as he looked around him. The Englishman Macmillan had said that theirs was the first of the African nationalisms. If that was correct, then this was one of their most important tribal rituals, one that united and reaffirmed the Afrikaners as a cohesive entity. No.outsider could grasp the significance of the game of rugby football in their culture. True it had been developed at a British public school qlmost one hundred and fifty years ago, but then, Manfred thought wryly, it was too good for the rooinekke and it took an Afrikaner to understand the game and play it to its full potential.

Then again to call it a game was the same as calling politics or war, a game. It was more, a thousand times more. To sit here amongst his own, to be a part of this immense spirit of Afrikanerdom, gave him the same sort of religious awe that he felt when he stood within the congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church, or when he was part of the throng that gathered before the massive Voortrekker Monument that stood on the hills above the city of Pretoria. On the day of the Covenant with God, his people gathered there each year to celebrate the victory that the Almighty had given them over the Zulu King Dingaan at the battle of Blood River.

As was fitting on such an occasion as this, Manfred wore his green blazer piped in gold with the flying Springbok emblem on the pocket and the legend 'Boxing 1936' below it. No matter that the buttons could no longer fasten across his dignified girth, he wore it with pride.

His pride was infinitely magnified when he looked down on the field. The turf was scared by the frosts of early winter but the highveld sunlight gave everything a lucid quality so that Manfred could make out every detail of his son's beloved features as he stood out near the centre of the field.

Lothar De La Rey's magnificent torso was not obscured by the blue woollen jersey that he wore, rather it was emphasized by the thin stuff, so that the lean hard muscle in his belly and chest stood proud.

His bare legs were sturdy, but at the same time long and shapely, and the cap of close-cropped hair, coppery blond, burned like fire in the bright highveld sunshine.

Slowly Lothar bowed his head, as though to pray, and a hush fell over the packed grandstand. There was no breath of sound from even one of the forty thousand throats, and Lothar's dark brows clenched in complete concentration.

Slowly he lifted his arms, spreading them like the wings of a falcon on the edge of flight, until they were at the level of his shoulders, a strangely graceful gesture, and he raised his body on tiptoe so that the great muscles of his thighs tightened and changed shape -and then he began to run.

He ran with the bounding motion of that hunting cat, the cheetah, lifting his knees high and driving his whole body forward. Behind him the turf was scarred by the power of his studded boots, and in the immense silence of the arena his grunting breaths, timed to the long elastic strides, carried to where Manfred sat.

The leather ball, shiny brown and ovate, was balanced on one point, and as Lothar bore down on where it stood on the green turf, his pace quickened yet his body remained in perfect balance. The kick was a continuation of that long driving stride, his right leg whipped straight at the exact instant that his toe struck the ball and his weight was so far forward that his leg swung on up in an arcing parabola until his foot, with his toe extended like that of a ballet dancer, was high above his head, while both his arms were flung forward to maintain that graceful balance. The ball was grossly deformed by the brutal impact of the kick, but in flight it snapped back into shape, and rose in a flat hard trajectory towards the two tall white goalposts at the end of the field. It neither tumbled nor wobbled, but flew with a stable motion, as steady in the air as a flighted arrow.

However, a hoarse and anxious sigh went up from the watchers, as they realized that it was aimed too far to the right. Although the power of that mighty right leg had driven it high above the level of the cross bar, it was going to miss the goalposts on the right and Manfred came to his feet with forty thousand others and groaned in helpless agony.

A miss would mean ignominious defeat, but if the ball passed between the white uprights, it would be victory, sweet and famous, by a single point.

The ball rose higher still, up out of the sheltered arena, and it caught the wind. Lothar had studied the flags on the roof of the grandstand before he began his run, and now the wind swung the ball in gently, but not enough, oh, sweet God, not nearly enough.

Then gradually the ball lostimpetus and power as it reached the zenith of its trajectory, and as it slowed, so the wind took charge, curving it ever more sharply to the left, and Manfred's groan turned to a roar of delight as it fell through the very centre of the goalposts, grazing the white cross bar, and the referee's shrill long-drawn-out whistle signalled the end of the match.

Beside Manfred, his boyhood friend, Roelf Stander, was pounding his back in congratulation.

'Man, I tell you, he is going to be a Springbok for sure, just like his Pa." On the field Lothar was surrounded by his team mates who were fighting for a chance to embrace him, while from the stands a wave of spectators was sweeping across the field to lionize him.

'Come, let's go down to the dressing-room." Manfred took his companion's arm, but it was not that easy. They were stopped every few paces by the well-wishers and Manfred smiled and shook their hands and accepted their congratulations. Although this was part of his life, and his very soul fed on the adulation and enormous respect which every one of them, even the richest and most famous of them, showed towards him, yet today it irked Manfred to be kept from his son.

When at last they reached the dressing-room, the crowd that filled the corridor outside opened miraculously before them, and where others were turned away, they were respectfully ushered through into the steamy noisy room that stank of sweaty clothing and stale urine and hot masculine bodies.

Lothar was in the centre of the crowd of naked young men, singing and wrestling in rough camaraderie, but when he saw his father he broke away and came to him immediately, dressed only in a pair of grass-stained shorts with his magnificent young body glossy with sweat and a brown beer bottle clutched in one hand. His face was rapturous with pride and the sense of his own achievement.

'My son --' Manfred held out his right hand and Lothar seized it joyously." 'My son --' Manfred repeated, but his voice failed him and his vision misted over with pride. He jerked his son's hand, pulling him against his own chest, and held him hard, hugging him unashamedly, even while Lothar's sweat stained his shirt and his team mates howled with delight.

The three of them, Manfred, Roelf Stander and Lothar, drove home in the new ministerial Cadillac. They were happy as schoolboys, grinning and joshing each other and singing the bawdy old rugby songs. When they stopped at the traffic lights before entering the main traffic stream at Jan Smuts Drive that would take them the thirty miles across the grassy undulating highveld to Pretoria, there were two small black urchins darting and dodging perilously amongst the vehicles, and one of them peered through the side window of the Cadillac at Manfred, grinning cockily and holding up a copy of the Mail from the bundle of newspapers he carried under his arm.

Manfred was about to dismiss him with an impatient gesture, for the Mail was an English rag. Then he saw the headlines: 'Appeal Fails: Guy Fawkes Killer to Hang' and he rolled down his side window and flipped the child a coin.

He passed the paper to RoeIf Stander with the terse command, 'Read it to me!" and drove on.

This morning the appeal of Moses Gama against his conviction for murder and attempted murder by the Cape division of the Supreme Court was dismissed by a full bench of the Appellate Division in Bloemfontein and the date set for the execution by hanging was confirmed.

'Ja, goed." Although Manfred scowled with concentration as he listened, his relief was intense. Over the months the media and the public had come to accept the Gama case as something intimately linked to Manfred De La Rey. The fact that he had personally made the arrest and that he was minister of police had combined so that the prosecution of the case had become in the public imagination, a measure of the strength and efficiency of the police force and of Manfred's kragdadigheid, his own personal power.

More than any other quality the Afrikaner Volk demanded strength and determination in its leaders. This case, with its terrifying message of black peril and bloody revolution, had invoked the most intense feelings of insecurity throughout the land. People wanted to be reassured that their safety and the security of the state were in strong hands. Manfred, with his sure political instincts, had realized that the dice of his future were being cast.

Unfortunately, there had been a complication in what should have been a straightforward matter of justice and swift retribution. The fact that the judge of the Supreme court had dismissed the charge of high treason and had made some controversial and ill-considered remarks about the individual's duty of loyalty to a state in which he was denied direct representation had been taken up by the foreign press and the case had captured the attention of left-wing liberals and Bolsheviks around the western world. In America the bearded hippies and commie university students had formed 'Save Moses Gama' committees and had picketed the White House and the South African embassy in Washington, while even in England there had been demonstrations in Trafalgar Square outside South Africa House by communist-inspired and -financed gangs of black expatriates and some white riff-raft. The British prime minister had summoned the South African high commissioner for consultations and President Eisenhower had instructed his ambassador in Pretoria to call upon Hendrik Verwoerd and appeal for mercy for the condemned man.

The South African government had stood firm in its rejection of these appeals. Their position was that the matter was one for the judiciary and that they would not interfere with the course of justice.

However, their lordships of the Appellate Division were occasionally known to indulge in unwise demonstrations of compassion or obscure legal dialectic, in fits of independent thinking which accorded ill with the hard task of the police and the aspirations of the Afrikaner Volk.

This time, mercifully, they had been spared one of their lordships' quirky decisions and in that little green-painted room in Pretoria Central Prison the noose now waited for Moses Gama, and he would crash through the trap to the eternity into which he had planned to send the leaders of the nation.

'Ja, goed/Now read the editorial!" Manfred ordered Roelf Stander.

The Golden Cia' Mail was one of the English language newspapers, and even for that section of the press the views it held were liberal.

Manfred would never have bought it for preference, but having done so he was now prepared to dilute his grim satisfaction at the appeal court's verdict, with the irritation of listening to the left-wing erudition of the Mai/'s editorial staff.

Roelf Stander rustled the news sheet and cleared his throat.

'A Martyr is Born,' he read, and Manfred gave a growl of anger.

When Moses Gama dies at the end of the hangman's rope, he will become the most significant martyr in the history of the black African struggle for liberation.

Moses Gama's elevation will not be on account of his moving eloquence nor from the awe-inspiring power of his presence. Rather it will be for the simple reason that he has posed a question so grave and so fateful that by its very nature the answer to it can never be given by a single national court of law. The answer rests instead in the heart of mankind itself. For that question is aimed at the very foundation of man's existence upon this earth. Simply stated, it is this: is a man who is deprived of any peaceful or lawful means of asserting his basic human rights justified in turning, in the last resort, to violence?

Manfred snorted. 'Enough of that. I should not have bothered to have you read it out. It is so predictable. If the black savages cut the throats of our children and eat their raw livers, there would still be those rooinekke who would chastize us for not having provided salt for the feast! We will not listen to any more of that. Turn to the sports page. Let us hear what they have to say about Lothie and his manne, though I doubt that those souties can tell the difference between a stick of biltong and a rugby ball." When the Cadillac pulled up the long drive to Manfred's official residence in the elite suburb of Waterkloof, there was a large gathering of family and friends at the swimming-pool at the far end of the wide green lawns and the younger ones came running to meet them and to embrace Lothar as soon as he stepped out of the Cadillac.

'We listened on the radio,' they cried, as they clamoured for a turn to hug and kiss him. 'Oh Lothie, you were wonderful." Each of his sisters took one of his arms, while their friends and the Stander girls crowded as close as they could to him as they escorted him down to the pool where the older women waited to congratulate him.

Lothar went to his mother first, and while they embraced Manfred watched them with an indulgent smile of pride. What a fine-looking family he had. Heidi was still a magnificent woman and no man could ask for a more dutiful wife. Not once in all the years had he ever regretted his choice.

'My friends, my family, all my loved ones,' Manfred raised his voice, and they turned to him and fell into silent expectation.

.... Ma_rtfred.. a. colJ_,." . iek. c ..a. no, t l-ie.V r u-'"ceptible to oratory and fine words for they were constantly exposed to them, from pulpit and political platform, from the cradle to the grave.

'When I look at this young man who is my son, at this fine young South African, and those of our young people like him, then I know that I need not worry for the future of our Volk,' Manfred proclaimed in the sonorous tones to which his listeners responded instinctively, and they applauded and cried 'Haar, boot!" each time he paused.

Amongst the listeners there was one at least who was not entirely captivated by his artistry. Although Sarah Stander smiled and nodded, she could feel her stomach churn and her throat burn with the acid of her rejected love.

Sitting in this lovely garden, watching the man she had loved beyond life itself, the man to whom she would have dedicated every moment of her existence; the man to whom she had given her girlish body and the tender blossom of her virginity, the man whose seed she had taken joyously into her womb, that ancient, now rancid passion changed its shape and texture to become hard and bitter hatred. She listened to Manfred extolling his wife, and she knew that she should have been that woman, those praises should have been for her alone. She should have been at his side to share his triumphs and his achievements.

She watched Manfred embrace Lothar and with his arm around his shoulders, commend his firstborn to them all, smiling with pride as he recited his virtues, and Sarah Stander hated them both, father and son, for Lothar De La Rey was not his firstborn.

She turned her head and saw Jakobus standing on the periphery, shy and self-effacing, but every bit as handsome as the big goldenheaded athlete. Jakobus, her own son, had the dark brows and pale topaz-coloured eyes of the De La Reys. If Manfred were not blind, he would see that. Jakobus was as tall as Lothar, but was not possessed of his half-brother's raw-boned frame and layers of rippling muscle. He had an appealing fragility of body, and his features were not so dashingly masculine. Instead, he had the face of a poet, sensitive and gentle.

Sarah's own expression went dreamy and soft as she remembered his conception. She had been little more than a child, but her love had been that of a mature woman, as she crept through the silent old house to the room in which Manfred slept. She had loved him all her life, but in the morning he was leaving, sailing away to a far-off land, to Germany as a member of the Olympic team, and she had been troubled for weeks with a deep premonition of losing him for ever. She had wanted in some way to ensure against that insupportable loss, to try to make certain of his return, so she had given him everything that she had, her heart and her soul and her barely matured body, trusting him to return them to her.

Instead he had met the German woman and had married her.

Sarah could still vividly recall the cablegram from Germany that had announced his dreadful betrayal, and her own devastation when she read the fateful words. Part of her had shrivelled and died on that day, part of her soul had been missing ever since.

Manfred De La Rey was still speaking, and he had them laughing now with some silly joke, but he looked towards her and saw that she was serious. Perhaps he read something of her thoughts in her eyes for his own gaze flicked across to where Jakobus stood and then back to her and for an instant she sensed an unusual emotion regret or guilt - within him.

She wondered not for the first time if he knew about Jakobus.

Surely he must at least have suspected it. Her marriage to Roelf had been so hasty, so unheralded, and the birth of Kobus had followed so swiftly. Then the physical resemblance of son to father was so strong, surely Manfred knew it.

Roelf knew, of course. He had loved her without hope until Manfred rejected her, and he had used her pregnancy to gain her consent. Since then he had been a good and dutiful husband and his love and concernTor her had never faltered - but he was not Manfred De La Rey. He was not, nor could he ever be, a man as Manfred De La Rey was a man. He had never had Manfred's force and power, his drive and personality and ruthlessness, and she could never love him as she loved Manfred.

Yes, she admitted to herself, I have always loved Manfred, and I will love him to the end of my life, but my hatred of him is as strong as my love and with time it will grow stronger still. It is all that I have to sustain me.

Manfred was ending his speech now, talking about Lothar's promotion. Of course, Sarah thought bitterly, his promotion would not have been so rapid if his father had not been the minister of police and he had not had such skill with a rugby ball. Her own Kobus could expect no such preferment. Everything he achieved would be with his own talent and by his own efforts. She and Roelf could do little for him. Roelf's influence was minimal, and even the university fees for Jakobus' education were a serious drain on their family finances. She had been forced to face the fact that Roelf would never go much further than he was now. His entry into legal practice had been a mistake and a failure. By the time he he accepted that fact and returned to the academic life as a lecturer in law, he had lost so much seniority that it would be many years, if ever, before he was given the chair of law. No there was not much they could do to help Kobus - but then, of course, none of the family, not even Kobus himself, knew what he wanted from life. He was a brilliant student, but he totally lacked direction or purpose, and he had always been a secretive lad. It was so difficult to draw him out. Once or twice Sarah had succeeded in doing so, but she had been frightened by the strange and radical views he expressed. Perhaps it was best not to explore her son's mind too deeply, she thought, and smiled across at him just as, at last, Manfred stopped singing his own son's praises.

Jakobus came to her side now. 'Can I get you another orange juice, Mama? Your glass is empty." 'No, thank you, Kobus. Stay with me for a while. I see so little of you these days." The men had charged their beer tankards and led by Manfred trooped towards the barbecue fires on the far side of the pool. Amid laughter and raillery Manfred and Lothar were tying candy-striped aprons around their waists and arming themselves with long-handled forks.

On a side table there was a huge array of platters piled with raw meat, lamb chops and sosaties on long skewers, German sausages and great thick steaks, enough to feed an army of starving giants and, Sarah calculated sourly, costing almost her husband's monthly salary.

Since Manfred and his one-armed demented father had mysteriously acquired shares in that fishing company in South West Africa, he had become not only famous and powerful, but enormously rich as well. Heidi had a mink coat now and Manfred had purchased a large farm in the rich maize-producing belt of the Orange Free State.

It was every Afrikaner's dream to own a farm, and Sarah felt her envy flare as she thought about it. All that should have been hers.

She had been deprived of what was rightly hers by that German whore. The word shocked her, but she repeated it silently - whore!

He was mine, whore, and you stole him from me.

Jakobus was talking to her, but she found it difficult to follow what he was saying. Her attention kept stealing back to Manfred De La Rey. Every time his great laugh boomed out she felt her heart contract and she watched him from the corners of her eyes.

Manfred was holding court; even dressed in that silly apron and with a cooking fork in his hand, he was still the focus of all attention and respect. Every few minutes more guests arrived to join the gathering, most of them important and powerful men, but all of them gathered slavishly around Manfred and deferred to him.

'We should understand why he did it,' Jakobus was saying, and Sarah forced herself to concentrate on her son. 'Who did it, dear?" she asked vaguely.

'Mama, you haven't been listening to a word,' Jakobus smiled gently. 'You really are a little scatterbrain sometimes." Sarah always felt vaguely uncomfortable when he spoke to her in such a familiar fashion, none of her friends' children would show such disrespect, even in fun.

'I was talking about Moses Gama,' Jakobus went on, and at the mention of that name everybody within earshot turned towards the two of them.

'They are going to hang that black thunder, at last,' somebody said, and everybody agreed immediately.

'Ja, about time." 'We have to teach them a lesson - you show mercy to a kaffir and he takes it as weakness." 'Only one thing they understand --' 'I think it will be a mistake to hang him,' Jakobus said clearly, and there was a stunned silence.

'Kobie! Kobie!" Sarah tugged at her son's arm. 'Not now, darling.

People don't like that sort of talk,' 'That is because they never hear it - and they don't understand it,' Jakobus explained reasonably, but some of them turned away deliberately while a middle-aged cousin of Manfred's said truculently, 'Come on, Sarie, can't you stop your brat talking like a commie." 'Please, Kobie,' she used the diminutive as a special appeal, 'for my sake." Manfred De La Rey had become aware of the disturbance and the flare of hostility amongst his guests, and now he looked across the fires on which the steaks were sizzling and he frowned.

'Don't you see, Mama, we have to talk about it. If we don't, people will never hear any other point of view. None of them even read the English newspapers--' 'Kobie, you will anger your uncle Manie,' Sarah pleaded. 'Please stop it now." 'We Afrikaners are cut off in this little make-believe world of ours.

We think that if we make enough laws the black people will cease to exist, except as our servants --' Manfred had come across from the fires now, and his face was dark with anger.

'Jakobus Stander,' he rumbled softly. 'Your father and your mother are my oldest and dearest friends, but do not trespass on the hospitality of this house. I will not have wild and treasonable ideas bandied about in front of my family and friends. Behave yourself, or leave immediately." For a moment it seemed the boy might defy him. Then he dropped his gaze and mumbled, 'I'm sorry, Oom Manie." But when Manfred turned and strode back to the barbecue fire, he said just loud enough for Sarah to hear, 'You see, they won't listen. They don't want to hear. They are afraid of the truth. How can you make a blind man see?" Manfred De La Rey was still inwardly seething with anger at the youth's ill-manners, but outwardly he was his usual bluff self as he resumed his self-imposed duties over the cooking fires, and led the jovial banter of his male guests. Gradually his irritation subsided, and he had almost put aside Moses Gama and the long shadow that he had thrown over them all, when his youngest daughter came running down from the long low ranch-type house. 'Papa, Papa, there is a telephone call for you." 'I can't come now, skatjie,' Manfred called. 'We don't want our guests to starve. Take a message." 'It's Oom Dame,' his daughter insisted, 'and he says he must talk to you now. It's very important." Manfred sighed and grumbled good-naturedly as he untied his apron, and handed his fork to RoeIf Stander. 'Don't let them burn!" and he strode up to the house.

'Ja.t' he barked into the telephone.

'I don't like to disturb you, Manie." 'Then why do you do it9." Manfred demanded. Dame Leroux was a senior police general, and one of his most able officers. 'It's this man Gama." Let the black bastard hang. That is what he wants." 'No! He wants to do a deal." 'Send someone else to speak to him, I do not want to waste my time." 'He will only talk to you, and we believe he has something important he will be able to tell you." Manfred thought for a moment. His instinct was to dismiss the request out of hand, but he let reason dictate to him.

'All right,' he agreed heavily. 'I will meet him." There would also be a perverse pleasure in confronting a vanquished foe. 'But he is going to hang - nothing will stop that,' he warned quietly.

The prison authority had confiscated the leopard-skin robes of chieftainship, and Moses Gama wore the prison-issue suiting of coarse unbleached calico.

The long unremitting strain of awaiting the outcome of his appeal had told heavily. For the first time Vicky noticed the frosting of white in his cap of dark crinkling hair, and his features were gaunt, his eyes sunken in dark bruised-looking hollows. Her compassion for him threatened to overwhelm her, and she wished that she could reach out and touch him, but the steel mesh screen separated them.

'This is the last time I am allowed to visit you,' she whispered, 'and they will only let me stay for fifteen minutes." 'That will be long enough, for there is not much to say, now that the sentence has been confirmed." 'Oh, Moses, we were wrong to believe that the British and the Americans would save you." 'They tried,' he said quietly.

'But they did not try very hard, and now what will I do withou you. What will the child I am carrying do without a father?" 'You are a daughter of Zulu, you will be strong." 'I will try, Moses my husband,' she whispered. 'But what of you: people? They are also children without a father. What will becom of them?" She saw the old fierce fire burn in his eyes. She had feared it hoc been for ever extinguished, and she felt a brief and bitter joy tr know it was still alight.

'The others will seek to take your place now. Those of the Congres who hate and envy you. When you die they will use your sacrifice t( serve their own ambitions." She saw that she had reached him again, and that he was angry She sought to inflame his anger to give him reason and strength tr go on living.

'If you die, your enemies will use your dead body as a stepping.

stone to climb to the place you have left empty." 'Why do you torment me, woman?" he asked.

'Because I do not want you to die, because I want you to live - lo me, for our child, and for your people." 'That cannot be,' he said.

'The hard Boers will not yield, not even to the demands of the great powers. Unless you can find wings fol me to fly over these walls, then I must go to my fate. There is nc other way." 'There is a way,' Vicky told him. 'There is a way for you to survive - and for you to put down the enemy who seek to usurp your place as the leader of the black nations." He stared at her as she went on.

'When the day comes that we sweep the Boers into the sea, and open the doors of the prisons, you will emerge to take your rightful place at the head of the revolution." 'What is this way, woman? What is this hope that you hold out to me?" He listened without expression as she propounded it to him, and when she had finished, he said gravely, 'It is true that the lioness is fiercer and crueller than the lion." 'Will you do it, my lord - not for your own sake, but for all us weak ones who need you so?" 'I will think on it,' he conceded.

There is so little time,' she warned The black ministerial Cadillac was delayed only briefly at the gates to the prison for they were expecting Manfred De La Rey. As the steel gates swung open, the driver accelerated through into the main courtyard and turned into the parking slot that had been kept free.

The prison commissioner and two of his senior staff were waiting, and they hurried forward as soon as Manfred climbed out of the rear door.

Briefly Manfred shook hands with the commissioner and said, 'I wish to see the prisoner immediately." Of course, Minister, it has been arranged. He is waiting for you." 'Lead the way." Manfred's heavy footfalls echoed along the dreary green-painted corridors, while the senior warders scurried ahead to unlock the interleading doors of each section and relock them as Manfred and the prison commissioner passed through. It was a long walk, but they came at last to the condemned block.

'How many awaiting execution?" Manfred demanded.

'Eleven,' the commissioner replied. The figure was not unusually high, Manfred reflected. Africa is a violent land and the gallows play a central role in the administration of justice.

'I do not want to be overheard, even by those soon to die." et has been arranged,' the commissioner assured him. 'Gama is being kept separate from the others." The warders opened one last steel door and at the end of a short passage was a barred cell. Manfred went through but when the commissioner would have followed, Manfred stopped him.

'Wait here!" he ordered. 'Lock the door after me and open it again only when I ring." As the door clanged shut Manfred walked on to the end of the passage.

The cell was small, seven foot by seven, and almost bare. There was a toilet bowl against the side wall and a single iron bunk fixed to the opposite wall. Moses Gama sat on the edge of the bunk and he looked up at Manfred. Then slowly he came to his feet and crossed the cell to face him through the green-painted bars.

Neither man spoke. They stared at each other. Though only the bars separated them, they were a universe and an eternity apart.

Though their gazes locked, there was no contact between their minds, and the hostility was a barrier between them more obdurate and irreconcilable than the steel bars.

'Yes?" Manfred asked at last. The temptation to gloat over a vanquished adversary was strong, but he withstood it. 'You asked to see me?" q have a proposal to put to you,' Moses Gama said.

'You wish to bargain for your life?" Manfred corrected him, and when Moses was silent, he smiled. 'So it seems that you are no different from other men, Moses Gama. You are neither a saint nor even the noble martyr that some say you are. You are no better than other men, no better than any of us. In the end your loyalty is to yourself alone. You are weak as other men are weak, and like them, you are afraid." 'Do you wish to listen to my proposal?" Moses asked, without a sign of having heard the taunts.

'I will hear what you have to say,' Manfred agreed. 'That is why I came here." 'I will deliver them to you,' Moses said, and Manfred understood immediately.

'By "them" you mean those who also claim to be the leaders of your people? The ones who compete with your own claim to that position?" Moses nodded and Manfred chuckled and shook his head with admiration.

'I will give you the names and the evidence. I will give you the times and the places." Moses was still expressionless. 'You have underestimated the threat that they are to you, you have underestimated the support they can muster, here and abroad. I will give you that knowledge." 'And in return?" Manfred asked.

'My freedom,' said Moses simply.

'Magtig!" The blasphemy was a measure of Manfred's astonishment. 'You have the effrontery of a white man." He turned away so that Moses could not see his face while he considered the magnitude of the offer.

Moses Gama was wrong. Manfred was fully aware of the threat, and he had a broad knowledge of the extent and the ramifications of the conspiracy. He understood that the world he knew was under terrible siege. The Englishman had spoken of the winds of changethey were blowing not only upon the African continent, but across the world. Everything he held dear, from the existence of his family to that of his Volk and the safety of the land that God had delivered unto them, was under attack by the forces of darkness.

Here he was being offered the opportunity to deal those forces a telling blow. He knew then what his duty was.

'I cannot give you your freedom,' he said quietly. 'That "is too much - but you knew that when you demanded it, didn't you?" Moses did not answer him, and Manfred went on, 'This is the bargain I will offer you. I will give you your life. A reprieve, but you will never leave prison again. That is the best I can do." The silence went on so long that Manfred thought he had refused and he began to turn away when Moses spoke again. 'I accept." Manfred turned back to him, not allowing his triumph to show.

'I will want all the names, all the evidence,' he insisted.

'You will have it all,' Moses assured him. 'When I have my reprieve." 'No,' Manfred said quietly. 'I set the terms. You will have your reprieve when you have earned it. Until then you will get only a stay of execution. Even for that I will need you to name a name so that I can convince my compatriots of the wisdom of our bargain." Moses was silent, glowering at him through the bars.

'Give me a name,' Manfred insisted. 'Give me something to take to the prime minister." 'I will do better than that,' Moses agreed. 'I will give you two names. Heed them well. They are - Mandela and Rivonia." Michael Courtney was in the city room of the Mail when the news that the Appellate Division had denied Moses Gama's appeal and confirmed the date of his execution, came clattering out on the tape.

He let the paper strip run through his fingers, reading it with total concentration, and when the message ended, he went to his desk and sat in front of his typewriter.

He lit a cigarette and sat quietly, staring out of the window over the tops of the scraggly trees in Joubert Park. He had a pile of work in his basket and a dozen reference books on his desk. Desmond Blake had slipped out of the office to go down to the George to top up his gin tank and left Michael to finish the article on the American elections. Eisenhower was nearing the end of his final term and the editor wanted a pen portrait of the presidential candidates. Michael was working on his biographical notes of John Kennedy, but having difficulty choosing the salient facts from the vast amount that had been written about the young Democratic candidate, apart from those that everybody knew, that he was a Catholic and a New Dealer and that he had been born in 1917.

America seemed very far away that morning, and the election of an American president inconsequential in comparison with what he had just read on the tape.

As part of his self-education and training, Michael made a practice each day of selecting an item of important news and writing a two-thousand-word mock editorial upon it. These exercises were for his own sake, the results private and jealously guarded. He showed them to no one, especially not Desmond Blake whose biting sarcasm and whose willingness to plagiarize Michael had learned to fear. He kept these articles in a folder in the locked bottom drawer of his desk.

Usually Michael worked on these exercises in his own time, staying on for an hour or so in the evening or sitting up late at night in the little bed-sitter he rented in Hillbrow, pecking them out on his rickety old secondhand Remington.

However, this morning he had been' so moved by the failure of Gama's appeal that he could not concentrate on the Kennedy story.

The image of the imperial-looking black man in his leopard-skin robes kept recurring before Michael's eyes, and his words kept echoing in Michael's ears.

Suddenly he reached forward and ripped the half-completed page out of his machine. Then he swiftly rolled a clean sheet into it. He didn't have to think, his fingers flew across the keys, and the words sprang up before his eyes: 'A Martyr is Born." He rolled the cigarette to the side of his mouth and squinted against the spiral of blue smoke, and the words came in short staccato bursts. He did not have to search for facts or dates or figures. They were all there, crisp and bright in his head. He never paused. He never had to weigh one word against another. The precise word was there on the page almost of its own volition.

When he finished it half an hour later, he knew that it was the best thing he had ever written. He read it through once, shaken by the power of his own words, and then he stood up. He felt restless and nervous. The effort of creation rather than calming or exhausting him had excited him. He had to get outside.

He left the sheet in the typewriter and took his jacket off the back of his chair. The sub glanced up at him enquiringly.

'Going to find Des,' he called. In the newsroom there was a conspiracy to protect Desmond Blake from himself and the gin bottle and the sub nodded agreement and returned to his work.

Once he was out of the buildfng, Michael walked fast, pushing his way through the crowds on the sidewalks, stepping out hard with both hands thrust into his pockets. He didn't look where he was going, but it didn't surprise him when at last he found himself in the main concourse of the Johannesburg railway station.

He fetched a paper cup of coffee from the kiosk near the ticket office and took it to his usual seat on one of the benches. He lit a cigarette and raised his eyes towards the domed glass ceiling. The Pierneef murals were placed so high that very few of the thousands of commuters who passed through the concourse each day ever noticed them.

For Michael they were the essence of the continent, a distillation of all of Africa's immensity and infinite beauty. Like a celestial choir, they sang aloud all that he was trying to convey in clumsy stumbling sentences. He felt at peace when at last he left the massive stone building.

He found Des Blake on his usual stool at the end of the bar counter at the George.

'Are you your brother's keeper?" Des Blake enquired loftily, but his words were slurred. It took a great deal of gin to make Des Blake slur.

'The sub is asking for you,' Michael lied.

He wondered why he felt any concern for the man, or why any of them bothered to protect him - but then one of the other senior journalists had given him the answer to that. 'He was once a great newspaperman, and we have to look after our own." Des was having difficulty fitting a cigarette into his ivory holder.

Michael did it for him, and as he held a match he said, 'Come on, Mr Blake. They are waiting for you." 'Courtney, I think I should warn you now. You haven't got what it takes, I'm afraid. You'll never cut the mustard, boy. You are just a poor little rich man's son. You'll never be a newspaperman's anus." 'Come along, Mr Blake,' said Michael wearily, and took his arm to help him down off the stool.

The first thing Michael noticed when he reached his desk again was that the sheet of paper was missing from his typewriter. It was only in the last few months, since he had been assigned to work with Des Blake, that he had been given his own desk and machine, and he was fiercely jealous and protective of them.

The idea of anyone fiddling with his typewriter, let alone taking work out of it, infuriated him. He looked around him furiously, seeking a target for his anger, but every single person in the long, crowded noisy room was senior to him. The effort it cost him to contain his outrage left him shaking. He lit another cigarettes, the last one in his pack, and even in his agitation he realized that that made it twenty since breakfast.

'Courtney!" the sub called across to him, raising his voice above the rattle of typewriters. 'You took your time. Mr Herbstein wants you in his office right away." Michael's rage subsided miraculously. He had never been in the editor's office before, Mr Herbstein had once said good morning to him in the lift but that was all.

The walk down the newsroom seemed the longest of his life, and though nobody even glanced up as he passed, Michael was certain that they were secretly sniggering at him and gloating on his dilemma.

He knocked on the frosted-glass panel of the editor's door and there was a bellow from inside.

Timidly Michael pushed the door open and peered round it. Leon Herbstein was on the telephone, a burly man in a sloppy hand-knitted cardigan with thick horn-rimmed spectacles and a shock of thick curly hair shot through with strands of grey. Impatiently he waved Michael into the room and then ignored him while he finished his conversation on the telephone.

At last he slammed down the receiver and swivelled his chair to regard the young man who was standing uneasily in front of his desk.

Ten days before, Leon Herbstein had received a quite unexpected invitation to a luncheon in the executive dining-room of the Courtney Mining and Finance Company's new head office building. There had been ten other guests present, all of them leaders of commerce and industry, but Herbstein had found himself in the right hand seat beside his host.

Leon Herbstein had never had any great admiration for Shasa Courtney. He was suspicious of vast wealth, and the two Courtneys - mother and son - had a formidable reputation for shrewd and ruthless busirless practices. Then again, Shasa Courtney had forsaken the United Party of which Leon Herbstein was an ardent supporter, and had gone across to the Nationalists. Leon Herbstein had never forgotten the violent anti-semitism which had attended the birth of the National Party, and he considered the policy of apartheM as simply another manifestation of the same grotesque racial bigotry.

As far as he was concerned, Shasa Courtney was one of the enemy.

However, he sat down at his luncheon table quite unprepared for the man's easy and insidious charm and his quick and subtle mind. Shasa devoted most of his attention to Leon Herbstein, and by the end of the meal the editor had considerably moderated his feelings towards the Courtneys. At least he was convinced that Shasa Courtney truly had the best interests of all the people at heart, that he was especially concerned with improving the lot of the black and underprivileged sections, and that he was wielding an important moderating influence in the high councils of the National Party.

In addition, he left the Courtney building with a heightened respect for Shasa Courtney's subtlety. Not once had Shasa mentioned the fact that he and his companies now owned 42 percent of the stock of Associated Newspapers of South Africa or that his son was employed as a junior journalist on the Mail. It hadn't been necessary, both men had been acutely aware of these facts while they talked.

Up to that time Leon Herbstein had felt a natural antagonism towards Michael Courtney. Placing him in the care of Des Blake had been all the preference he had shown to the lad. However, after that luncheon he had begun to study him with more attention. It didn't take an old dog long to attribute the improvement in much of the copy that Des Blake had been turning out recently to the groundwork that Michael Courtney was doing for him. From then onwards whenever he passed Michael's desk, Herbstein made a point of quickly and surreptitiously checking what work was in his machine or in the copy basket.

Herbstein had the journalist's trick of being able to assimilate a full typed sheet at a single glance, and he was grimly amused to notice how often Des Blake's column was based on the draft by his young assistant, and how often the original was better than the final copy.

Now he studied Michael'closely as he stood awkwardly before his desk. Despite the fact that he had cropped his hair in one of those appalling brush cuts that the youth were affecting these days and wore a vividly patterned bow tie, he was a likable-looking lad, with a strong determined jawline and clear intelligent eyes. Perhaps he was too thin for his height, and a little gawky, but he had quite noticeably matured and gained in self-assurance during the short period he had been at the Mail.

Suddenly Leon realized that he was being cruel, and that his scrutiny was subjecting the lad to unnecessary agony. He picked up the sheet of typescript that lay in front of him, and slid it across his untidy desk.

'Did you write that?" he demanded gruffly, and Michael snatched up the sheet protectively.

'I didn't mean anybody to read it,' he whispered, and then remembered who he was talking to and threw in a lame, 'sir." 'Strange." Leon Herbstein shook his head. 'I always believed we were in the business of writing so that others could read." 'I was just practising." Michael held the sheet behind his back.

'I made some corrections,' Herbstein told him, and Michael jerked the page out from behind him and scanned it anxiously.

'Your third paragraph is redundant, and "scar" is a better word than "cicatrice" - otherwise we'll run it as you wrote it." 'I don't understand, sir,' Michael blurted.

'You've saved me the trouble of writing tomorrow's editorial." Herbstein reached across and took the page from Michael's limp fingers, tossed it into his out basket and then concentrated all his attention on his own work.

Michael stood gaping at the top of his head. It took him ten seconds to realize that he had been dismissed and he backed towards the door and closed it carefully behind him. His legs just carried him

!iFi to his desk, and then collapsed under him. He sat down heavily in his swivel chair and reached for his cigarette pack. It was empty and he crumpled it and dropped it into his wastepaper basket.

Only then did the full significance of what had happened hit him and he felt cold and slightly nauseated.

'The editorial,' he whispered, and his hands began to tremble.

Across the desk Desmond Blake belched softly and demanded, 'Where are the notes on that American what's-'is-name fellow?" 'I haven't finished it yet, Mr Blake." 'Listen, kid. I warned you. You'll have to extract your digit from your fundamental orifice if you want to get anywhere around here." Michael set his alarm clock for five o'clock the next morning and went downstairs with his raincoat over his pyjamas. He was waiting on the street corner with the newspaper urchins when the bundles of newsprint were tossed on to the pavement from the back of the Mail's delivery van.

He ran back up the stairs clutching a copy of the paper and locked the door to his bed-sitter. It took all his courage to open it at the editorial page. He was actually shaking with terror that Mr Herbstein might have changed his mind, or that it was all some monstrous practical joke.

There under the Mail's crest at the very top of the editorial page was his headline: 'A MARTYR IS BOR'.

He read it through quickly, and then started again and read it aloud, mouthing each word, rolling it over his tongue like a noble and precious wine. He propped the paper, open at the editorial, beside the mirror while he shaved, and then carried it down to the Greek fast-food car where he had his breakfast each morning and showed it to Mr Costa, who called his wife out of the kitchen.

'Hey, Michael, you a big shot now." Mrs Costa embraced him, smelling of fried bacon and garlic. 'You a big shot newspaperman now." She let him use the telephone in the back room and he gave the operator the number at Weltevreden. Centaine answered on the second ring.

'Mickey!" she cried delightedly. 'Where are you? Are you in Cape Town?" He calmed her down and then read it to her. There was a long silence. 'The editorial, Mickey. You aren't making this up, are you?

I'll never forgive you if you are." Once he had reassured her, Centaine told him, 'I can't remember ever being so excited about anything in years. I'm going to call your father, you must tell him yourself." Shasa came on the line, and Michael read it to him. 'You wrote that?" Shasa asked. 'Pretty hot stuff, Mickey. Of course I don't agree with your conclusions - Gama must hang. However, you almost convinced me otherwise, but we can debate that when next we are together. In the meantime, congratulations, my boy. Perhaps you did make the right decision after all." Michael found that he was a minor celebrity in the newsroom, even the sub stopped by his desk to congratulate him and discuss the article for a few moments, and the pretty little blonde on the reception desk who had never before been aware of his existence, smiled and greeted him by name.

'Listen, kid,' said Desmond Blake. 'One little fart doesn't make a whole sewage farm. In future I don't want you pushing copy over my head. Every bit of shit you write comes across my desk, get it?" 'I'm sorry, Mr Blake. I didn't--' 'Yeah! Yeah! I know, you didn't mean it. Just don't go getting a big head. Remember whose assistant you are." The news of Moses Gama's reprieve threw the newsroom into a state of pandemonium that didn't subside for almost a week. Michael was drawn in and some of his days ended at midnight when the presses began their run, and began when the first papers hit the streets the next morning.

However, he found that the excitement seemed to release limitless reserves of energy in him and he never felt tired. He learned to work quickly and accurately and his way with words gradually assumed a deftness and polish that was apparent even to himselfi Two weeks after the reprieve the editor called him into his office.

He had learned not to knock, any waste of time irritated Leon Herbstein and made him bellow aggressively. Michael went straight on in, but he had not yet entirely mastered the pose of world-weary cynicism which he knew was the hallmark of the veteran journalist, and he was all radiant eagerness as he asked, 'Yes, Mr Herbstein?" 'Okay, Mickey, I've got something for you." Every time Mr Herbstein used his Christian name, Michael still thrilled with delicious shock.

'We are getting a lot of requests from readers and overseas correspondence. With all the interest in the Gama case, people want to know more about the black political movements. They want to know the difference between the Pan Africanist Congress and the African National Congress, they want to know who's who - who the hell are Tambo and Sisulu, Mandela and Moses Gama and what do they stand for? All that sort of stuff. You seem to be interested in black politics and enjoy digging around in the archives - besides I can't spare one of my top men on this sort of background stuff. So get on with it." Herbstein switched his attention back to the work on his desk, but Michael by now had sufficient confidence to stand hi: ground.

'Am I still working under Mr Blake?" he asked. He had learned b this time if you called him 'sir' it just made Leon Herbstein mad.

Herbstein shook his head but did not even look up. 'You are or your own. Send everything to me. No hurry, any time in the nex five minutes will do nicely." Michael soon discovered that the Mail's archives were inadequate, and served merely to initiate him into the complexity and daunting size of the project he had been set. However, from them he was a!

least able to draw up a list of the various black political groups and related associations such as the officially unrecognized black trade unions, and from there to compile a list of their own leaders and officials.

He cleared one wall of his bed-sitting room and put up a board on which he pinned all this information, using different-coloured cards for each grouping and press photographs of the principal black leaders.

All this achieved was to convince him of how little was known about the black movements by even the most well-informed of the white section of the nation.

The public library added very little to his understanding. Most of the books on the subject had been written ten or more years before and simply traced the African National Congress from those distant days of its inception in 1912 and the names mentioned were all of men now dead or in their dotage.

Then he had his first inspiration. One of the Mail's sister publications under the banner of Associated Newspapers of South Africa was a weekly magazine called Assegai after the broad-bladed war spear that the impis of Chaka the Zulu conqueror had wielded. The magazine was aimed at the educated and more affluent section of the black community. Its editorial policy was dictated by the white directors of Associated Newspapers but amongst the articles and photographs of African football stars and torch singers, of black American athletes and film actors, an occasional article slipped through of a fiercely radical slant.

Michael borrowed a company car and went out to see the editor of Assegai in the vast black location of Drake's Farm. The editor was a graduate of the black university of Fort Hare, a Xhosa named Solomon Nduli. He was polite but cool, and they had chatted for half an hour before a barbed remark let Michael know that he had been recognized as a spy for the security police, and that he would learn nothing of value.

A week later the Mail published the first of Michael's articles in its Saturday magazine edition. It was a comparison of the two leading African political organizations: the Pan Africanist Congress which was a jealously exclusive body to which only pure-blooded African blacks were admitted and whose views were extremely radical, and the much larger African National Congress which, although predominantly black, also included whites and Asians and mixed blood members such as the Cape coloureds, and whose objectives were essentially conciliatory.

The article was accurate, obviously carefully researched, but, most important, the tone was sympathetic, and it carried the by-line 'by Michael Courtney'.

The following day Solomon Nduli called Michael at the offices of the Mail, and suggested another meeting. His first words when they shook hands were, 'I'm sorry. I think I misjudged you. What do you want to know?" Solomon took Michael into a strange world that he had never realized existed - the world of the black townships. He arranged for him to meet Robert Sobukwe, and Michael was appalled by the depth of the resentblent the black leader of the Pan Africanist Congress expressed, particularly for the pass laws, by his enormous impatience to effect an upheaval of the entire society, and by the thinly veiled violence in the man.

'I will try to arrange for you to meet Mandela,' Solomon promised, 'although, as you know, he is underground now, and wanted by the police. But there are others you must talk to." He took Michael to Baragwanath Hospital and introduced him to the wife of Moses Gama, the lovely young Zulu woman he had seen at the trial in Cape Town. Victoria was heavily pregnant, but with a calm dignity that impressed Michael deeply until he sensed the same terrible resentment and latent violence in her that he had found in Robert Sobukwe.

The next day Solomon took him back to Drake's Farm to meet a man named Hendrick Tabaka, a man who seemed to own most of the small businesses in the location and looked like a heavyweight wrestler with a head like a cannonball crisscrossed with scars.

He appeared to Michael to represent the opposite end of the black protest consciousness. 'I have my family and my business,' he told Michael, 'and I will protect them from anybody, black or white." And Michael was reminded of a view that his father had often expressed, but to which Michael had not given much consideration before this. 'We must give' the black people a piece of the pie,' Shasa Courtney had said. 'Give them something of their own. The truly dangerous man is one with nothing to lose." Michael gave the second article in the series the title 'Rage' and in it he tried to describe the deep and bitter resentment that he had encountered on his journeys into the half-world of the townships. Iended the article with the words: Despite this deep sense of outrage, I never found the least indication hatred towards the white person as an individual by any of the bla leaders with whom I was able to speak. Their resentment seemed ton to be directed only at the Nationalist government's policy of aparthe while the vast treasure of mutual goodwill built up over three hundrc years between the races seems to be entirely undiminished by it.

He delivered the article to Leon Herbstein on the Thursday an found himself immediately embroiled in an editorial review of it th lasted until almost eight o'clock that evening. Leon Herbstein calle in his assistant and his deputy editor, and their views were divide between publishing with only minor alterations and not publishin at all, for fear of bringing down the wrath of the publications contrc board, the government censors who had the power to ban the Ma and put it out of business.

'But it's all true,' Michael protested. 'I have substantiated ever single fact I have quoted. It's true and it's important - that is all that really matters." And the three older journalists looked at him pityingly.

'All right, Mickey,' Leon Herbstein dismissed him at last. 'Yo can go on home. I will let you know the final decision in due course.

As Michael moved dispiritedly towards the door, the deputy edito nodded at him. 'Publish or not, Mickey, it is a damned good effort You can be proud of it." When Michael got back to his apartment he found' somebody sitting on a canvas holdall outside his front door. Only when the person stood up did he recognize the massively developed shoulders.

the glinting steel-rimmed spectacles and spiky hairstyle.

'Garry,' he shouted joyously, and rushed to embrace his elder brother.

x They sat side by side on the bed and talked excitedly, interrupting each other and laughing and exclaiming at each other's news.

'What are you doing in Jo'burg?" Michael demanded at last.

'I've come up from Silver River just for the weekend. I want to get at the new computer main frame in head office, and there are a few things I want to check at the land surveyor's office. So I thought, what the hell - why spend money on a hotel when Mickey has a flat? So I brought my sleeping-bag. Can I doss on your floor?" 'The bed pulls out into a double,' Mickey told him happily. 'You don't have to sleep on the floor." They went down to Costa's restaurant and Garry bought a pack of chicken curry and half a dozen Cokes. They ate the food out of the pack, sharing a spoon to save washing up, and they talked until long after midnight. They had always been very close to each other.

Even though he was younger, Michael had been a staunch ally during those dreadful childhood years of Garry's bed-wetting and stuttering and Sean's casually savage bullying. Then again Michael had not truly realized how lonely he had been in this strange city until this moment, and now there were so many nostalgic memories and so much unrequited need for affection to assuage, so many subjects of earth-shattering importance to discuss. They sat up into the small hours dealing with money and work and sex and the rest of it.

Garry was stunned to learn that Michael earned thirty-seven pounds ten shillings a month.

'How much does this kennel cost you a month?" he demanded.

'Twenty pounds,' Michael told him.

'That leaves you seventeen pounds ten a month to eat and exist.

They should be arrested for slave labour." 'It's not as bad as that - Pater gives me an allowance to make do.

How much do you earn, Garry?" Michael demanded, and Garry looked guilty.

'I get my board and lodging and all my meals at the mine, single quarters, and I am paid a hundred a month as an executive trainee." 'Son of a gun!" Michael was deeply impressed. 'What do you do with all that?" It was Garry's turn to look amazed. 'Save it, of course. I've got over two thousand in the bank already." 'But what are you going to do with all that?" Michael insisted.

'What are you going to spend it on?" 'Money isn't for spending,' Garry explained. 'Money is for saving - that is, if you want to be rich." 'And you want to be rich?" Michael asked.

'What else is there?" Garry was genuinely puzzled by the question.

'What about doing an important job the best way you can? Isn't that something to strive for, even better than getting rich." 'Oh sure!" said Garry with vast relief. 'But then, of course, you won't get rich unless you do just that." It was almost two in the morning when Michael at last switched off the bedside lamp and they settled down nose to toes, until Garry asked in the darkness the question he had not been able to ask until then.

'Mickey, have you heard from Mater at all?" Michael was silent for so long that he went on impetuously. 'I have tried to speak to Dad about her, but he just clams up and won't say a word. Same with Nana, except she went a little further.

She said "Don't mention that woman's name in Weltevreden again.

She was responsible for Blaine's murder." I thought you might know where she is." 'She's in London,' Michael said softly. 'She writes to me every week." 'When is she coming back, Mickey?" 'Never,' Michael said. 'She and Pater are getting a divorce." 'Why, Mickey, what happened that she had to leave like that, without even saying goodbye?" 'I don't know. She won't say. I wrote and asked her, but she wouldn't tell me." Garry thought he had gone to sleep, but after a long silence Michael said so softly that he barely caught the words, 'I miss her, Garry. Oh God, how much I miss her." The too,' said Garry dutifully, but each week that passed was so filled with excitement and new experience that for Garry her memory had already faded and blurred.

The next morning Leon Herbstein called Mickey into his office.

'Okay, Mickey,' he said. 'We are going to run the "Rage" article as you wrote it." Only then did Michael realize how important that decision had been to him. For the rest of that day his jubilation was tempered by that reflection. Why was his feeling of relief so powerful?

Was it the personal achievement, the thought of seeing his name in print again? It was part of that, he was honest with himself, but there was something else even deeper and more substantial. The truth. He had written the truth and the truth had prevailed. He had been exonerated.

Michael went down early the next morning and brought a copy of the Mail up to the bed-sitter. He woke Garry up and read the 'Rage' feature to him. Garry had only come in a few hours before dawn. He had spent most of the night in the computer room at the new Courtney Mining building in Diagonal Street. David Abrahams, on Shasa's discreet suggestion, had arranged for him to have a free hand with the equipment when it wasn9t being used on company business.

This morning Garry was red-eyed with exhaustion and his jowls were covered with a dense dark pelt of new beard. However, he sat up in his pyjamas and listened with attention while Michael read to him, and when he had finished Garry put on his spectacles and sat solemnly reading it through for himself while Michael brewed coffee on the gas-ring in the corner.

It's funny, isn't it,' Garry said at last. 'How we just take them for granted. They are there, working the shifts at the Silver River or harvesting the grapes at Weltevreden, or waiting on table. But you never think of them as actually having feelings and desires and thoughts the same as we do - not until you read something like this." 'Thank you, Garry,' Michael said softly.

'What for?" 'That's the greatest compliment anybody has ever paid me,' Michael said.

He saw very little more of Garry that weekend. Garry spent the Saturday morning at the deeds registry until that office closed at noon and then went on up to the Courtney building to take over the computer as soon as the company programmers went off for their weekend.

He let himself back into the flat at three the next morning and' climbed into the bottom end of Michael's bed. When they both awoke late on the Sunday morning, Michael suggested, 'Let's go out to Zoo Lake. It's a hot day and the girls will be out in their sundresses." He offered the bait deliberately for he was desperate for Garry's company, lonely and suffering from a sense of anti-climax after all the worry and uncertainty previous to the printing of the 'Rage' article and the subsequent apparent lack of any reaction to it.

'Hey, Mickey, I'd love to come with you -but I want to do something on the computer. It's Sunday, I'll have it to myself all day." Garry looked mysterious and self-satisfied. 'You see, I'm on to something, Mickey. Something incredible, and I can't stop now." Alone Michael caught the bus out to Zoo Lake. He spent the day sitting on the lawns reading and watching the girls. It only made him feel even more lonely and insignificant. When he got back to his dreary little flatlet, Garry's bag was gone and there was a message written with soap on his shaving mirror: 'Going back to Silver River.

Might see you next weekend. G." When Michael walked into the Mail's offices on the Monday morning he found that those members of the newspaper's staff who had arrived ahead of him were gathered in a silent nervous cluster in the middle of the newsroom while half a dozen strangers were going through the filing cabinets and rifling the papers and books on the desks. They had already assembled a dozen large cardboard cartons of various papers, and these were stacked in the aisle between the desks.

'What is happening?" Michael asked innocently, and his sub gave him a warning glance as he explained.

'These are police officers of the security branch." 'Who are you?" The plain-clothes officer who was in charge of the detail came across to Michael, and when he gave his name the officer checked his list.

'Ah, yes - you are the one we want. Come with me." He led Michael down to Leon Herbstein's office and went in without knocking.

There was another stranger with Herbstein. 'Yes, what is it?" he snapped, and the security policeman answered diffidently.

i!~

'This is the one, Captain." The stranger frowned at Michael, but before he could speak Leon Herbstein interrupted quickly.

'It's all right, Michael. The police have come to serve a banning order on the Saturday edition with the "Rage" article in it, and they have a warrant to search the offices. They also want to talk to you, but it's nothing to worry about." 'Don't be too sure of that,' said the police captain heavily. 'Are you the one who wrote that piece of commie propaganda?" 'I wrote the "Rage" article,' Michael said clearly, but Leon Herbstein cut in.

'However, as the editor of the Golden City Mail it was my decision to print it, and I accept full responsibility for the article." The captain ignored him and studied Michael for a moment before going on. 'Man, you are just a kid. What do you know, anyway?" 'I object to that, Captain,' Herbstein told him angrily. 'Mr Courtney is an accredited journalist --' 'Ja,' the captain nodded, 'I expect that he is." But he went on addressing Michael, 'What about you? Do you object to coming down to Marshall Square police headquarters to help us with our investigations?" Michael glanced at Herbstein and he said immediately, 'You don't have to go, Michael. They don't have a warrant for your arrest." 'What do you want from me, Captain?" Michael hedged.

'We want to know who told you all that treasonable stuff you wrote about." 'I can't disclose my sources,' Michael said quietly.

'I can always get a warrant if you refuse to cooperate,' the captain warned him ominously.

'I'll come with you,' Michael agreed. 'But I won't disclose my sources. That's not ethical." 'I'll be down there with a lawyer right away, Michael,' Herbstein promised. 'You don't have to worry, the Mail will back you all the way." 'All right. Let's go,' said the police captain.

Leon Herbstein accompanied Michael down the newsroom and as they passed the cartons of impounded literature the captain observed gloatingly, 'Man, you've got a pile of banned stuff there, Karl Marx and Trotsky even - that's really poisonous rubbish." 'It's research material,' said Leon Herbstein.

'Ja, try telling that to the magistrate,' the captain chortled.

As soon as the doors of the elevator closed on the captain and Michael, Herbstein trotted heavily back to his office and snatched up the telephone.

'I want an urgent call to Mr Shasa Courtney in Cape Town. Try his home at Weltevreden, his office in Centaine House and his ministerial office at the houses of parliament." He got through to Shasa in his parliamentary suite and Shasa listened in silence while Herbstein explained to him what had happened.

'All right,' Shasa said crisply at the end of it. 'You get the Associated Newspapers lawyers down to Marshall Square immediately, then ring David Abrahams at Courtney Mining and tell him what has happened. Tell him I want a massive reaction, everything we have got. Tell him also that I will be flying up immediately in the company jet. I want a limousine at the airport to meet me, and I will go to see the minister of police at the Union Buildings in Pretoria the minute I arrive." Even Leon Herbstein, who had seen it all before, was impressed by the mobilization of the vast resources of the Courtney empire.

At ten o'clock that evening Michael Courtney was released from interrogation on the direct orders of the minister of police and when he walked out of the front entrance of Marshall Square headquarters he was flanked by half a dozen lawyers of formidable reputation who had been retained by Courtney Mining and Associated Newspapers.

At the Pavement Shasa Courtney was waiting in the back seat of the black Cadillac limousine. As Michael climbed in beside him, he said grimly, 'It is possible, Mickey, to be a bit too bloody clever for your own good. Just what the hell are you trying to do? Burn down everything we have worked for all our lives?" 'What I wrote was the truth. I thought you, of all people, would understand, Pater." 'What you wrote, my boy, is incitement. Taken by the wrong people and used on simple ignorant black folk, your words could help to open a Pandora's box of horrors. I want no more of that sort of thing from you, do you hear me, Michael?" 'I hear you, Pater,' Michael said softly. 'But I can't promise to obey you. I'm sorry, but I have to live with my own conscience." 'You are as bad as your bloody mother,' said Shasa. He had sworn twice in as many minutes, the first time in his life that Michael had ever heard his father use coarse language. That and the mention of his mother, also the first time Shasa had done so since she left, silenced Michael completely. They drove without speaking to the Carlton Hotel. Shasa only spoke again when they were in his permanent suite.

'All right, Mickey,' he said with resignation. 'I take that back.

I can't demand that you live your life on my terms. Follow your conscience, if you must, but don't expect me to come rushing in to save you from the consequences of your actions every time." 'I have never expected that, sir,' Michael said carefully. 'And I won't in future either." He paused and swallowed hard. 'But all the same, sir, I want to thank you for what you did. You have always been so good to me." 'Oh Mickey, Mickey!" Shasa cried, shaking his head sorrowfully.

'If only I could give you the experience I earned with so much pain.

If only you didn't have to make exactly the same mistakes I made at your age." 'I am always grateful for your advice, Pater,' Michael tried to placate him.

'All right then, here's a piece for nothing,' Shasa told him. 'When you meet an invincible enemy you don't rush headlong at him, swinging with both fists. That way you merely get your head broken.

What you do is you sneak around behind him and kick him in the backside, then run like hell." 'I'll remember that, sir,' Michael grinned, and Shasa put his arm around ,his shoulders. 'I know you smoke like a bush fire, but can I offer you a drink, my boy?" 'I'll have a beer, sir." The next day Michael drove out to visit Solomon Nduli at Drake's Farm. He wanted to have his views on the 'Rage' article, and tell him of the consequences he had suffered at Marshall Square.

That was not necessary. Solomon Nduli somehow knew every detail of his detention and interrogation and Michael found he was a celebrity in the offices of Assegai magazine. Nearly every one of the black journalists and magazine staff wanted to shake his hand and congratulate him on the article.

As soon as they were alone in his office, Solomon told him excitedly, 'Nelson Mandela has read your piece and he wants to meet you." 'But heis wanted by the police - he's on the run." 'After what you wrote, he trusts you,' Solomon said, 'and so does Robert Sobukwe. He also wants to see you again." Then he noticed Michael's expression, and the excitement went out of him as he asked quietly, 'Unless you think it's too dangerous for you." Michael hesitated only a moment. 'No, of course not. I want to meet them both. Very much." Solomon Nduli said nothing. He simply reached across the desk and clasped Michael's shoulder. It was strange what a pleasurable sensation that grip gave Michael, the first comradely gesture he had ever received from a black man.

Shasa banked the HS 125 twin-engined jet to give himself a better view of the Silver River Mine a thousand feet below.

The headgear was of modern design, not the traditional scaffolding of steel girders with the great steel wheels of the haulage exposed. It was instead a graceful unbroken tower of concrete, tall as a tenstorey building, and around it the other buildings of the mine complex, the crushing works and uranium extraction plant and the gold refinery, had been laid out with equal aesthetic consideration.

The administration block was surrounded by green lawns and flowering gardens, and beyond that there were an eighteen-hole golf course, a cricket pitch and a rugby field for the white miners. An Olympic-size swimming-pool adjoined the mine club and single quarters. On the opposite side of the property stood the compound for the black mineworkers. Here again Shasa had ordered that the traditional rows of barracks be replaced by neat cottages for the senior black staff and the bachelor quarters were spacious and pleasant, more like motels than institutions to house and feed the five thousand tribesmen who had been recruited from as far afield as Nyasaland in the north and Portuguese Mozambique in the east. There were also soccer fields and cinemas and a shopping complex for the black employees, and between the buildings were green lawns and trees.

The Silver River was a wet mine and each day millions of gallons of water were pumped out of the deep workings and these were used to beautify the property. Shasa had reason to be proud.

Although the main shaft had intersected the gold-bearing reef at great depth - more than a mile below the surface - still the ore was so rich that it could be brought to the surface for enormous profit.

What's more, the price could not be pegged at $35 per ounce for much longer. Shasa was convinced that it would double and even treble.

'Our guardian angel,' Shasa smiled to himself as he levelled the wings of the HS 125, and began his preparations for the landing.

'Of all the blessings that have been heaped upon this land, gold is the greatest. It has stood us through the bad times, and made the good times glorious. It is our treasure and more, for when all else fails, when our enemies and the fates conspire to bring us down, gold glows with its bright particular lustre to protect us. A guardian angel indeed." Although the company pilot in the right-hand seat watched critically, for Shasa had only converted to jets within the last twelve months, Shasa brought the swift machine in to the long blue tarmac strip with casual ease. The HS 125 was painted in silver and blue with the stylized diamond logo on the fuselage, just as the old Mosquito had been. It was a magnificent machine. With its seating for eight passengers and its blazing speed, it was infinitely more practical than the Mosquito, but Shasa still occasionally mourned her loss. He had flown over five thousand hours in the old Mosquito before at last donating her to the airforce museum, where, restored to her combat camouflage and armaments, she was one of the prime exhibits.

Shasa rolled the glistening new jet down to the hangar at the far end of the strip, and reception committee was out to meet him headed by the general manager of the Silver River, all of them holding their ears against the shrill wall of the engines.

The general manager shook Shasa's hand and said immediately, 'Your son asked me to apologize that he wasn't able to meet you, Mr Courtney.

He is underground at the moment, but asked me to tell you he will come up to the guest house as soon as he gets off shift." The general manager, emboldened by Shasa's smile of paternal approval, risked a pleasantry. 'It must run in the family, but it's difficult to get the little blighter to stop working, we almost have to tie him down." There were two guest houses, one for other important visitors to the mine, and this one set aside exclusively for Shasa and Centaine.

It was so sybaritic and had cost so much that embarrassing questions had been put to Shasa at the annual general meeting of the company by a group of dissident shareholders. Shasa was totally unrepentant. 'How can I work properly if I'm not allowed at least some basic comforts? A roof over my head - is that too much to ask?" The guest house had its own squash court and heated indoor pool, cinema, conference room, kitchens and wine cellar. The design was by one of Frank Lloyd Wright's most brilliant pupils and Hicks had come out from London to do the interior. It housed the overflow of Shasa's art collection and Persian carpets from Weltevreden, and the mature trees in the landscaped garden had been selected from all over the country to be replanted'here. Shasa felt very much at home in this little pied-a-terre.

The underground engineer and the chief electrical engineer were already waiting in the conference room and Shasa went straight in and was at work within ten minutes of landing the jet. By eight o'clock that evening he had exhausted his engineers and he let them go. Garry was waiting next door in Shasa's private study, filling in the time playing with the computer terminal, but he leapt up as Shasa ú walked in.

'Dad, I'm so glad I've found you. I've been trying to catch up with you for days - I'm running out of time." He was stuttering again.

These days he only did that when he was wildly over-excited.

'Slow down, Garry. Take a deep breath,' Shasa advised him, but the words kept tumbling out, and Garry seized his father's hand and led him to the computer to illustrate what he was trying to put across.

'You know what Nana has always said, and what you are always telling me about land being the only lasting asset, well--' Garry's powerful spatulate fingers rippled over the computer keys. Shasa watched with curiosity as Garry presented his case, but when he realized what the boy was driving at, he quickly lost interest and concentration.

However, he listened to it all before he asked quietly, 'So you have paid for the option with your own money?" 'I have it signed, here!" Garry brandished the document. 'It cost me all my savings, over two thousand pounds just for a one-week option." 'Let me recap, then,' Shasa suggested. 'You have spent two thousand pounds to acquire a one-week option on a section of agricultural ground on the northern outskirts of Johannesburg which you intend to develop as a residential township, complete with a shopping complex, theatres, cinemas and all the trimmings--' 'There is at least twenty million pounds of profit in the development - at the very least." Garry manipulated the computer keyboard and pointed to the rippling green figures. 'Just look at that, Dad!" 'Garry! Garry!" Shasa sighed. 'I think you have just lost your two thousand pounds, but the experience will be worth it in the long run.

Of course, there is twenty million profit in it. Everybody knows that, and everybody wants a piece of that action. It's just for that reason that there is such strict control on township development. It takes at least five years to get government approval for a new township, and there are hundreds of pitfalls along the way. It's a highly complex and specialized field of investment, and the outlay is enormous millions of pounds at risk. Don't you see, Garry? Your piece of land is probably not the best available, there will be a dozen other projects ahead of yours and township development just isn't one of the areas which we deal in--' Shasa broke off and stared at his son. Garry was flapping his hands and stuttering so badly that Shasa had to warn him again, 'Big breath." Garry gasped and his barrelchest expanded until his shirt buttons strained. It came out quite clearly.

'I already have approval,' he said.

'That takes years - I've explained." Shasa was brusque. He began to rise. 'We should change for dinner. Come on." 'Dad, you don't understand,' Garry insisted. 'Approval has already been granted." Shasa sat down slowly. 'What did you say?" he asked quietly.

'Township approval was granted in 1891 by the Volksraad of the old Transvaal republic. It was signed by President Kruger himself, but it is still perfectly legal and binding. It was just forgotten, that is all." 'I don't believe it." Shasa shook his head. 'How on earth did you get on to this, Garry?" 'I was reading a couple of old books about the early days of the Witwatersrand and the gold-mines. I thought that if I was going to learn mining, the very least I could do was bone up on the history of the industry,' Garry explained. 'And in one of the books there was a mention of one of the old Rand lords and his grandiose idea of building a paradise city for the very rich away from the coarse and rowdy centre of Johannesburg. The author mentioned that he had actually bought a six-thousand-acre farm and had it surveyed and that approval had been granted by the Volksraad, and then the whole idea had been abandoned." 'What did you do then?" 'I went to the archives and looked up the proceedings of the Volksraad for the years 1889 to 1891 and there it was - the approval.

Then I researched the title deeds of the property at the deeds registry and went out to the farm itself. It's called Baviaansfontein and it's owned by two brothers, both in their seventies. Nice old fellows, we got on well and they showed me their horses and cattle, and invited me to lunch. They thought the option was a big joke, but when I showed them my two thousand pounds, they had never seen so much money in one pile in their lives." Garry grinned. 'Here are copies of the title deeds and the original township approval." Garry handed them to his father and Shasa read through slowly, even moving his lips like a semi-literate so as to savour every word of the ancient documents.

'When does your option expire?" he asked at last, without looking up.

'Noon on Thursday. We will have to act fast." 'Did you take out the option in the name of Courtney Mining?" Shasa asked.

No. In my own name, but of course, I did it for you and the company." 'You thought this out alone,' Shasa said carefully. 'You researched it yourself, dug up the original approval, negotiated the option with the owners, paid for it with two thousand of your own hard-earned cash. You did all the work and took all the risks and now you want to hand it over to someone else. That isn't very bright, is it? 'I don't want to hand it over to just anybody - to you, Dad.

Everything I do is for you, you know that." 'Well, that changes as of now,' said Shasa briskly. 'I will personally lend you the two hundred thousand purchase price and we will fly up to Johannesburg first thing tomorrow to clinch the deal. Once you own the land, Courtney Mining will begin negotiating with you the terms of a joint venture to develop it." The negotiations started tough, and then as Garry got his first taste of blood, they grew tougher.

'My God, I've sired a monster,' Shasa complained, to hide his pride in his offspring's bargaining technique. 'Come on, son, leave something in it for us." To mollify his father a little Garry announced a change in the name of the property. In future it would be known as Shasaville.

When they at last signed the final agreement, Shasa opened a bottle of champagne and said, 'Congratulations, my boy." That approbation was worth more to Garry than all the townships and every grain of gold on the Witwatersrand.

Lothar De La Rey was one of the youngest police captains on the force, and this was not entirely on account of his father's position and influence. From the time he had been awarded the sword of honour at police college, he had distinguished himself in every field that was considered important by the higher command. He had studied for and passed all his promotion examinations with distinction. A great emphasis was placed on athletic endeavour and rugby football was the major sport in the police curriculum. It was now almost certain that Lothar would be chosen as an international during the forthcoming tour by the New Zealand All Blacks. He was well liked both by his senior officers and his peers, and his service record was embellished by an unbroken string of excellent ratings. Added to this he had shown an unusual aptitude for police work. Neither the plodding monotony of investigation nor the routine of patrol wearied him, and in those sudden eruptions of dangerous and violent action, Lothar had displayed resourcefulness and courage.

He had four citations on his service record, all of them for successful confrontation with dangerous criminals. He was also the holder of the police medal for gallantry, which he had been awarded after he had shot and killed two notorious drug dealers during a foot-chase through the black township at night, and a single-handed shoot-out from which he had emerged unscathed.

Added to all this was the assessment by his superiors that while himself amenable to discipline, he had the qualities of command and leadership highly developed. Both these were very much Afrikaner characteristics. During the North African campaign against Rommel, General Montgomery, when told that there was a shortage of officer material, had replied, 'Nonsense, we've got thousands of South Africans. Each of them is a natural leader - from childhood they are accustomed to giving orders to the natives." Lothar had been stationed at the Sharpeville police station since graduating from police college and had come to know the area intimately. Gradually he had built up his own network of informers, the basis of all good police work, and through these prostitutes and shebeen owners and petty criminals, he was able to anticipate much of the serious crime and to identify the organizers and perpetrators even before the offence was committed.

The higher command of the police force was well aware that the young police captain with illustrious family connections was in a large measure responsible for the fact that the police in the Sharpeville location had over the past few years built up a reputation of being one of the most vigorous and active units in the heavily populated industrial triangle that lies between Johannesburg, Pretoria and Vereeniging.

In comparison to greater Soweto, Alexandra or even Drake's Farm, Sharpeville was a small black township. It housed a mere forty thousand or so of all ages, and yet the police raids for illicit liquor and pass offenders were almost daily routine, and the lists of arrests and convictions by which the efficiency of any station is judged were out of all proportion to its size. Much of this industry and dedication to duty was quite correctly attributed to the energy of the young second-in-command.

Sharpeville is an adjunct to the town of Vereeniging where in 1902

the British Commander Lord Kitchener and the leaders of the Boer commandos negotiated the peace treaty which brought to an end the long-drawn-out and tragic South African war. Vereeniging is situated on the Vaal river fifty miles south of Johannesburg and its reasons for existing are the coal and iron deposits which are exploited by Iscor, the giant state-owned Iron and Steel Corporation.

At the turn of the century the black workers in the steel industry were originally housed in the Top Location, but as conditions there became totally inadequate and outmoded, a new location was set aside for them in the early 1940s and named after John Sharpe, the mayor for the time being of the town of Vereeniging. As the new dwellings in Sharpeville became available, the population was moved down from Top Location, and although the rents were as high as œ2 7s 6d per month, the translocations were effected gradually and peaceably.

Sharpeville was, in fact, a model township, and though the cottages were the usual box shape, they were all serviced with water-borne sewerage and electricity, and there were all the other amenities including a cinema, shopping areas and sports facilities, together with their very own police station.

In the midst of one of the most comprehensive pieces of social engineering of the twentieth century - which was the policy of apartheid in practice - Sharpeville was a remarkable area of calm.

All around, hundreds of thousands of people were being moved and regimented and reclassified in accordance with those monumental slabs of legislation, the Group Areas Act and the Population Registration Act. All around the fledgeling leaders of black consciousness and liberation were preaching and exhorting and organizing, but Sharpeville seemed untouched by it all. The white city fathers of Vereeniging pointed out with quite justifiable satisfaction that the communist agitators had been given short shrift in the Sharpeville location and that their black people were law-abiding and peaceful.

The figures for serious crime were amongst the lowest in the industrialized ction of the Transvaal, and offenders were taken care of with commendable expedition. Even the rent-defaulters were evicted from the location in summary fashion, and the local police force was always cooperative and conscientious.

When the law was extended to make it obligatory for black women to carry passes, as well as their menfolk, and when throughout most of the country this innovation was strenuously resisted, the ladies of Sharpeville presented themselves at the police station in such numbers and in such cooperative spirit that most of them had to be turned away with the injunction to 'come back later'.

In early March of 1960 Lothar De La Rey drove his official LandRover through this stable and law-abiding community, following the wide road across the open space in front of the police station. The cluster of police buildings, in the same austere and utilitarian design as the others in the location, were surrounded by a wire mesh fence about eight feet high, but the main gates were standing open and unguarded.

Lothar drove through and parked the Land-Rover below the flagpole on which the orange, blue and white national flag floated on a breeze that carried the faint chemical stink of the blast furnaces at the ISCOR plant. In the charge office he was immediately the centre of attention as his men came to congratulate him on the kick that had won the Currie Cup.

'Green and gold next,' the duty sergeant predicted as he shook Lothar's hand, referring to the colours of the national rugby team jersey.

Lothar accepted their admiration with just the right degree of modesty, and then put an end to this breach of discipline and routine.

'All right, back to work everybody,' he ordered, and went to check the charge book. Where a charge office in Soweto might expect to have three or four murders and a dozen or so rape cases, there had not been a single 'schedule one' crime committed in Sharpeville during the previous twenty-four hours and Lothar nodded with satisfaction and went through to report to his station commander.

In the doorway he came to attention and saluted, and the older man nodded and indicated the chair opposite him. 'Come in, Lothie. Sit down!" He rocked his chair on to its back legs and watched Lothar as he removed his uniform cap and gloves.

'Bakgat game on Friday,' he congratulated him. 'Thank you for the tickets. Hell, man, that last kick of yours!" He felt a stab of envy as he examined his number two. Liewe land!

Beloved Land, but he looked like a soldier, so tall and straight! The commander glanced down at his own slack guts, and then back at the way the lad wore his uniform on those wide shoulders. You had only to look at him to see his class. It had taken the commander until the age of forty to gain the rank of captain, and he was resigned to the fact that he would go on pension at the same rank - but this one. No what! He would probably be a general before he was forty.

'Well, Lothie,' he said heavily. 'I'm going to miss you." He smiled at the gleam in those alert but strangely pale yellow eyes. 'Ja, my young friend,' he nodded, 'your transfer - you leave us at the end of May." Lothar leaned back in his chair and smiled. He suspected that his own father had been instrumental in keeping him so long on this station, but although it had been increasingly irksome to waste time in this little backwater, his father knew best and Lothar was grateful for the experience he had gained here. He knew that a policeman only really learns his job on the beat, and he had put in his time. He knew he was a good policeman, and he had proved it to them all.

Anybody who might be tempted to attribute his future promotions to his father's influence had only to look at his service record. It was all there. He had paid his dues in full, but now it was time to move on.

'Where are they sending me, sir?" 'You lucky young dog." The commander shook his head with mock envy. 'You are going to CID headquarters at Marshall Square." It was the plum. The most sought-after, the most prestigious posting that any young officer could hope for. CID headquarters was right at the very nerve centre and heart of the entire force. Lothar knew that from there it would be swift and sure. He would have his general's stars while he was still a young man, and with them the maturity and reputation to make his entry into politics smooth and certain. He could retire from the force on the pension of a general, and devote the rest of his life to his country and his Volk. He had it all planned. Each step was clear to Lothar. When Dr Verwoerd went, he knew that his father would be a strong contender to take over the premiership. Perhaps one day there would be a second minister of police with the name of De La Rey, and after that another De La Rey at the head of the nation. He knew what he wanted, what road he had to follow, and he knew also that his feet were securely upon that road.

'You are being given your chance, Lothie,' the commander echoed his own thoughts. 'If you take it, you will go far - very far." 'However far it is, sir, I will always remember the help and encouragement you have given me here at Sharpeville." 'Enough of that. You have a couple of months before you go." The commander was suddenly embarrassed. Neither of them were men who readily displayed their emotions. 'Let's get down to work.

What about the raid tonight? How many men are you going to use?" Lothar had the headlights of the Land-Rover switched off, and he drove slowly for the four-cylinder petrol engine had a distinctive beat that his quarry would pick up at a distance if the vehicle was driven hard.

There wasa sergeant beside him, and five constables in the rear of the Land-Rover, all of them armed with riot batons. In addition, the sergeant had an automatic twelve-gauge Greener shotgun and Lothar wore his sidearm on his Sam Browne belt. They were lightly armed, for this was merely a liquor raid.

Sale of alcohol to blacks was strictly controlled, and was restricted to the brewing of the traditional cereal-based beer by state-controlled beer-halls. The consumption of spirits and wines by blacks was forbidden, but this prohibition caused illicit shebeens to flourish.

The profits were too high to be passed by. The liquor was either stolen or purchased from white bottle stores or manufactured by the shebeen owners themselves. These home brews were powerful concoctions known generally as skokiaan, and according to the recipe of the individual distiller, could contain anything from methylated spirits to the corpses of poisonous snakes and aborted infants. It was not uncommon for the customers of the shebeens to end up permanently blinded, or demented, or occasionally dead.

Tonight Lothar's team was setting out to raid a newly established shebeen which had been in business for only a few weeks. Lothar's information was that it was controlled by a black gang called 'The Buffaloes'.

Of course, Lothar was fully aware of the size and scope of the Buffaloes' operations. They were without doubt the largest and most powerful underworld association on the Witwatersrand. It was not known who headed the gang but there had been hints that it was connected to the African Mineworkers' Union and to one of the black political organizations. Certainly it was most active on the gold-mining properties closer to Johannesburg, and in the large black townships such as Soweto and Drake's Farm.

Until now they had not been bothered by the Buffaloes here in Sharpeville, and for this reason the setting up of a controlled shebeen was alarming. It might herald a determined infiltration of the area which would almost certainly I'e followed by a campaign to politicize the local black population, with the resulting protest rallies and boycotts of the bus line and white-owned businesses, and all the other trouble whipped up by the agitators of the African National Congress and the newly formed Pan Africanist Congress.

Lothar was determined to crush it before it spread like a bush fire through his whole area. Above the soft burble of the engine, out there in the darkness he heard a sharp double fluted whistle and almost immediately it was repeated at a distance, down near the end of the avenue of quiet cottages.

'Magtig!" Lothar swore softly but bitterly. 'They've spotted us!" The whistles were the warnings of the shebeen lookouts.

He switched on the headlights and gunned the Land-Rover. They went hurtling down the narrow street.

The shebeen was at the end of the block, in the last cottage hard up against the boundary fence with a stretch of open veld beyond.

As the headlights swept across the front of the cottage, he saw half a dozen dark figures pelting away from it, and others were fighting each other to get out of the front door and leaping from the windows.

Lothar swung the Land-Rover up over the pavement, through the tiny garden, and braked it into a deliberate and skilfully executed broadside, blocking the front door.

'Let's go!" he yelled, and his men flung the doors open and sprang out.

They grabbed the bewildered shebeen drinkers who were trapped between the Land-Rover and the cottage wall. As one of them began to resist, he dropped to a practised swing of a riot baton and the limp body was bundled into the back of the vehicle.

Lothar sprinted around the side of the cottage, and caught a woman in his arms as she jumped through the window. He turned her upside down in the air and held onto one ankle as he reached out and seized the arm of the next man through the window. In a single swift motion he handcuffed the two of them together, wrist to ankle, and left them floundering and falling over each other like a pair of trussed hens.

Lothar reached the back door of the cottage, and made his first mistake. He seized the handle and jerked the door open. The man had been waiting on the inside, poised and ready, and as the door began to open he hurled his full weight upon it and the edge of it crashed into Lothar's chest. The wind was driven from his lungs, and hissed up his throat as he went over backwards down the steps, sprawling on the hard sun-baked earth, and the man leaped clean over him.

Lothar caught a glimpse of him against the light, and saw that he was young and well built, lithe and .quick as a black cat. Then he was racing away into the darkness, heading for the boundary fence that backed up to the cottage.

Lothar rolled over on to his knees and came to his feet. Even with the start the fugitive had, there was nobody who could outrun Lothar in a fair match. He was at the peak of fitness, after months of rigorous training for the Currie Cup match and the national trials, but as he started forward the agony of his empty lungs made him double over and wheeze for breath.

Ahead of him the fleeing figure ducked through a hole in the mesh of the fence, and Lotbar fell to his knees and snapped open the holster at his side. Three months before, he had been runner-up in the police pistol championships at Bloemfontein, but now his aim was unsteidy with agony and the dark figure was merging with the night, quartering away from him. Lothar fired twice but after each long bright muzzle flash there was no thumping impact of bullet into flesh and the runner was swallowed up by darkness. Lothar slid the weapon back into his holster, and fought to fill his lungs - his humiliation was more painful than his injury. Lothar was unaccustomed to failure.

He forced himself to get to his feet. None of his men should see him grovelling, and after only a minute, and even though his lungs were still on fire, he went back and dragged his two captives to their feet with unnecessary violence. The woman was stark naked.

Obviously she had been entertaining a client in the back bedroom, but now she was wailing tragically.

'Shut your mouth, you black cow,' he told her, and shoved her through the back door of the cottage.

The kitchen had been used as the bar. There were cases of liquor stacked to the ceiling, and the table was piled with a high pyramid of empty tumblers.

In the front room the floor was covered with broken glass and spilled liquor, evidence of the haste with which it had been vacated, and Lothar wondered how so many customers had fitted into a room that size. He had seen at least twenty escape into the night.

He shoved the naked prostitute towards one of his black constables. 'Take care of her,' he ordered, and the man grinned lasciviously and tweaked one of her tawny melon-round breasts.

'None of that,' Lothar warned him. He was still angry at the one who had got away, and the constable saw his face and sobered. He led the woman through into the bedroom to find her clothing.

Lothar's other men were coming in, each of them leading two or three sorry-looking captives.

'Check their passes,' Lothar ordered, and turned to his sergeant.

'All right, Cronje, let's get rid of this stuff." Lothar watched as the cases of liquor were carried out and stacked in front of the cottage. Two of his constables opened them and smashed the bottles against the edge of the kerb. The sweet fruity smell of cheap brandy filled the night and the gutter ran with the amber-brown liquid.

When the last bottle had been destroyed, Lothar nodded at his sergeant. 'Right, Cronje, take them up to the station." And while the prisoners were loaded into the two police trucks that had followed his Land-Rover, Lothar went back into the cottage to check that his men had not overlooked anything of importance.

In the back room with its tumbled bed and stained sheets, he opened the single cupboard and distastefully used the point of his riot baton to rummage through it.

Beneath the pile of clothing at the bottom of the cupboard was a small cardboard carton. Lotlar pulled it out and tore open the lid. It was filled with a neat stack of single-leaf pamphlets, and idly he glanced at the top one until its impact struck him. He snatched up the sheet and turned it to the light from the bare bulb in the ceiling.

'This is the Poqo of which it is said, "Take up your spear in your right hand, my beloved people, for the foreigners are looting your land"' Poqo was the military branch of the Pan Africanist Congress. The word Poqo meant pure and untainted, for none other than pureblooded African Bantu could become members, and Lothar knew it for an organization of young fanatics already responsible for a number of vicious and brutal murders. In the little town of Paarl in the Cape, Poqo had marched hundreds strong upon the police station and when driven back had vented their fury upon the civilian population, massacring two white women, one a girl of seventeen years.

In the Transkei they had attacked a road-party encampment and murdered the white supervisor and his family in the most atrocious manner. Lothar had seen the police photographs and his skin crawled at the memory. Poqo was a name to fear and Lothat read the rest of the pamphlet with full attention.

On Monday we are going to face the police. All the people of Sharpeville will be as one on that day. No man or woman will go to his place of work. No man or woman will leave the township by bus or train or taxi. All the people will gather as one and march to the police station.

We are going to protest at the pass law which is a terrible burden, too heavy for us to carry. We will make the white police fear us.

Any man or woman who does not march with us on Monday will be hunted down. On that day all the people will be as one.

Poqo has said this thing. Hear it and obey it.

Lothar read the crudely printed pamphlet through again, and then he murmured, 'So it has come at last." He picked out the sentence which had offended him most, 'We will make the white police fear us,' and he read it aloud.

So! We will see about that!" And he shouted for his sergeant to take the carton of subversive leaflets out to the truck.

There was an inevitability in Raleigh Tabaka's life. The great river of his existence carried him along with it so that he was powerless to break free f it or even swim against the current.

His mother, as one of the most adept of the tribal sangomas of Xhosa had first instilled in him the deep awareness of his African self. She had showed him the mysteries and the secrets, and read the future for him in the casting of the bones.

'One day you will lead your people, Raleigh Tabaka,' she prophesied. 'You will become one of the great chiefs of Xhosa and your name will be spoken with those of Makana and Ndlame - all these things I see in the bones." When his father, Hendrick Tabaka, sent him and his twin brother , Wellington across the border to the multi-racial school in Swaziland, his Africanism had been confirmed and underscored, for his fellow pupils had been the sons of chiefs and black leaders from countries like Basutoland and Bechuanaland. These were countries where black tribes ruled themselves, free of the white man's heavy paternal fluences, and he listened with awe as they spoke of how their families lived on equal terms with the whites around them.

This came as a total revelation to Raleigh. In his existence the whites were a breed apart, to be feared and avoided, for they wielded an unchallenged power over him and all his people.

At Waterford he learned that this was not the law of the universe.

There were white pupils, and although it was at first strange, he ate at the same table as they did, from the same plates and with the same utensils, and slept in a bed alongside them in the school dormitory, and sat on the toilet seat still warm from a white boy's bottom and vacated it to another little white boy waiting impatiently outside the door for him to finish. In his own country none of these things were allowed, and when he went home for the holidays he read the notices with his eyes wide open - the notices that said 'Whites Only Blankes Alleenlik'. From the windows of the train he saw the beautiful farms and the fat cattle that the white men owned, and the bare eroded earth of the tribal reservations, and when he reached home at Drake's Farm he saw that his father's house, which he remembered as a palace, was in reality a hovel - and the resentment began to gnaw at his soul and the wounds it left festered.

Before Raleigh left to go to school, his Uncle Moses Gama used to visit his father. From infancy he had been in awe of his uncle, for power burned from him like one of those great veld fires which consumed the land and towered into the heavens in a column of dense smoke and ash and sparks.

Even though Moses Gama had been absent from Drake's Farm for so many years, his memory had never been allowed to grow dim, and Hendrick had read aloud to the family the letters that he had received from him in distant lands.